While Colin Montgomerie found Ernie Els something of a nemesis during the 1990s, Els had the misfortune to play some of his best golf just as Tiger Woods arrived. Combining power – thanks, in part, to great athleticism, as well as technological advances in clubs and balls – with controlled precision, when Tiger won the Masters by 12 strokes in 1997 it was obvious a whole new era in the game had begun. Yet this turned out to be just a forewarning – it was what he did in 2000 that left his peers gasping in wonder. At the US Open at Pebble Beach he won by 15 stokes and never three-putted. A month later at the Open at St. Andrews he again won comfortably and without finding a bunker on the Old Course. Els was a distant runner-up on each occasion. Woods went on to win the USPGA and then the Masters in 2001, becoming the first player ever to hold all four of the major trophies at the same time. Others, like Els, Vijay Singh, Phil Mickelson and David Duval had to grab what spoils they could, when they could. In women’s golf, the game became increasingly global, with Laura Davies triumphing all round the world and Karrie Webb, Se Ri Pak, Lorena Ochoa and Yani Tseng emerging as stars. But for Tiger-like domination, there was no one to match Annika Sörenstam.
Ernie Els is such a familiar figure after two decades on tour that it is instructive to be reminded of his impact in the early 1990s. It was almost Greg Norman-like. He won the South African hat-trick of Open, PGA and Masters titles and Gary Player, whose mantle as his country’s best player he inherited, said: ‘When I first saw Ernie play golf I knew I was witnessing one of golf’s next generation of superstars.’ At six feet, three inches, he had a natural, graceful, fluid swing; such power, seemingly such little effort. ‘The one thing that has stayed the same in my golf, ever since I was a boy, is my rhythm,’ he said. European tour player Mark Roe said: ‘The first time I played with him I was impressed immediately. It was his power, the sheer effortlessness of his swing.’ Seve Ballesteros said he was a player from another planet. After Els won the US Open at the age of 24, Curtis Strange called him the ‘next god of golf’.
He won again in 1997 at Congressional and then took the Open in 2002 in the first ever four-man playoff in a major. The previous Sunday night the first thing he had done on arriving at Muirfield was to view the scene at the 18th in the setting sun. ‘If that does not inspire you,’ he told his companion, ‘nothing will.’ Peter Dawson, the chief executive of the R&A, said: ‘There is no side with Ernie, what you see is what you get. I enjoy his company immensely. He is a fine ambassador as our Open champion.’
They call him the ‘Big Easy’. It matches his swing and his temperament. At least, most of the time. He is far too intense a competitor to live up to his laid-back image all the time. After two bogeys in the last three holes at the 1996 Open, a couple of unfortunates got both barrels in the locker room, followed by an apology. His golf has never dominated his life, even if a sailing trip in the Mediterranean in 2005 led to an anterior cruciate injury. His son Ben was diagnosed with autism, and raising awareness and money for autism charities is now more of a priority. His form returned, after turning to an eye specialist and a belly putter, sufficiently to win the Open again in 2012 at Royal Lytham. A magnificent putt on the final green helped eclipse the memory of Adam Scott’s four closing bogeys, and nothing became the restored champion more than his graciousness in victory and genuine sympathy for ‘my good buddy’ Scott.
Els took the fight to Tiger Woods more than most but admitted he was embarrassed to finish 15 strokes behind at the 2000 US Open. He was runner-up again at the following Open. Els said: ‘You can beat the field but it doesn’t mean you’re going to beat Tiger. If it wasn’t for one guy, Mickelson might have two or three majors by now, David Duval might have won the Masters and who knows, I could have won four or five majors. This guy is a totally different talent than the world has ever seen. In a way I’m kind of glad I’m playing at this time and in another way I’m unhappy about it.’
Like Ben Hogan, Vijay Singh, whose name means ‘Victorious Lion’, dug it out of the dirt. But this was no Texan dirt. This was the dirt of Fiji and Borneo, as well as the lush practice ranges of tournaments all over the world. Singh kept working and where did it get him? Three majors, most wins by an overseas player on the PGA Tour, most wins by anyone in their 40s on the American circuit, and the World Golf Hall of Fame. It is one of golf’s most incredible journeys.
Singh, a Fijian of Indian-Hindu descent, was the son of an airport worker at Nadi, who was also captain of the golf club there. Getting to the course meant ducking down through the flowing drainage pipes under the runway, or sprinting across it. He read the golf magazines that came to the airport and, being tall and having a languid swing, he took particular notice of any swing sequences of Tom Weiskopf.
‘I think the thing that has separated me is that I would do whatever it took,’ Singh told Golf Digest. ‘I did that from a young age, and it gave me the toughness. I didn’t have any money, and I wasn’t going to get any pocket money from my dad. He had six kids and in Fiji the taxes were about 50 per cent, and we never really lived comfortably. I understand how much pressure that put on him. My dad was a tough guy. He had to be. And to play golf, I had to be tough, too.’
There was a rules incident in Indonesia when Singh was accused of altering his card. He said it was a misunderstanding with his marker. ‘My marker was the son of a VIP in the Indonesian PGA, so to save some embarrassment they chose to get me.’ Singh was not just disqualified but banned for two years. He took a club pro’s job in the rain forests of Borneo. ‘A loner, a fighter, a challenger who was banished from the world in which he wanted to live and play and then, like some tormented character in a Joseph Conrad novel, he lashed himself to the mast,’ wrote sports journalist Art Spander. There was nothing to do but practise. Ardena, Singh’s wife, recalled: ‘God, when I look back at those times, I can’t fathom how we managed to get from there to here. We didn’t see people for weeks on end. It was totally desperate, and yet Vijay kept going, getting up early, practising, never losing sight of his dream. It has hardened his character.’
Eventually he escaped to the Safari Tour in Africa, then to Europe, where he was briefly a nightclub bouncer in Edinburgh, and then to the USA. He became a Masters champion and in 2004 topped the world money rankings. ‘He is the only guy who got better, not just maintained his level, but got better in his 40s,’ said Colin Montgomerie. Ernie Els said: ‘I think people have a misconception of Vijay. Golf should be proud of him.’
At the Solheim Cup in 2009 Juli Inkster became both the highest ever point scorer for America and the oldest player to play in the match. When she was announced as an assistant captain for the 2011 match in Ireland, it might have suggested that Inkster’s golfing career was slowing down. Not a bit of it. At the age of 51, she qualified to play for America yet again, alongside team-mates who in some cases were no older than her own daughters. ‘They call me Grandma,’ she said. ‘Kids on the tour say to me, “You’re older than my mom.” I think it’s a compliment. With the beauty of this game, age is not really a factor.’
Playing golf may not be her whole life but it has been such a part of it that, despite last adding to her tally of 31 official victories in 2006, there has not yet been any thought of retirement. ‘If you can still do it, do it,’ has been her attitude. Her career has had three distinct phases. First she was a leading amateur who won the American national title three times in a row, becoming the first to do so since 1934. ‘When I look back at it now I don’t know how in the world I won three in a row because in match play you get somebody hot and you’re out of there,’ said Inkster. ‘It’s probably my best accomplishment as a golfer, either professional or amateur.’ The first of her Amateur titles arrived in 1980 just weeks after marrying Brian Inkster, a club pro at Los Altos. This was where Juli Simpson had learnt the game, starting by parking the carts, moving on to working in the pro shop and then ever upwards.
Following her amateur career, she won her fifth start as a professional in 1983 and a new star was confirmed with two majors the next year and another in 1989.
Then came the third phase of her career as Hayley arrived in 1990 and Cori in 1994. Arguably her finest achievement was to raise her daughters as well as returning right to the top of her profession, two US Opens the crowning glory. ‘Until I had kids, for almost my whole life my whole day was being Juli Inkster. It was about me. You have to be a little selfish.
‘And then that all changed. There were a lot of times when I was running around with my head cut off, and in the mid-1990s my golf had to take a back seat.’ At the opening ceremony for the 1998 Solheim Cup, her team-mates requested Inkster raise the American flag accompanied by her daughters. ‘It was the moment I realised I could play golf and be a mother,’ she said. Her best season followed in 1999.
Inkster added: ‘My daughters know they are loved. My husband and I have made a stable home for them. They’ve grown up on golf courses. It wasn’t easy but the kids never complained. They still don’t. Every year I ask them what they think I should do and they say, “Keep playing”.’
Laura Davies has been playing almost as long as Juli Inkster, and has kept on winning. In 2010 she won five times and almost won the order of merit on the Ladies European Tour for an eighth time. She won in New Zealand and India, two rare places where she had not won before. Her 77th career win came in New Delhi in typically adventurous circumstances. Her clubs did not arrive on the same plane and only turned up on the morning of the first round. She dashed to the airport, got back moments before her tee-time and, without having played a practice round, she scored a 65. She won every year bar one between 1985 and 2010. ‘I love to play and I love to win,’ she said.
But, as might be suggested by a golfer who has books to her name entitled Carefree Golf and Naturally…, it is Davies’s uncomplicated approach to the game that is truly thrilling. She gives the ball an almighty thump. ‘When Laura hits the ball, the earth shakes,’ one player said. ‘An inveterate gambler,’ wrote Liz Kahn, ‘she always takes chances and this penchant for taking risks, combined with her power, which allows her to attempt shots no other player would dare, creates an awesome sight on a golf course.’ Her US Open win caused a sensation, as did Catherine Lacoste’s. After a particularly risky blast to a blind par-five green in the playoff, JoAnne Carner asked: ‘Why on earth would you have tried that?’ Davies replied simply: ‘No brains.’
Yet she learned by osmosis from watching the likes of Seve Ballesteros. When the Solheim Cup started in 1990, the US were massively stronger but two years later at Dalmahoy it was Davies who led Europe to a huge upset. Her captain, Mickey Walker, said: ‘Laura was simply willing the Solheim Cup victory. She has an incredible influence and power over the players, it’s as though she is God. She doesn’t realise it and they don’t either. Laura is Laura, unique in every sense, as a talent, as a person, in whatever she has done.’ In the mid-1990s she was the best woman player in the world and has always travelled the globe. In 1994 she topped the US money list and also won in Europe, Japan, Asia and Australia. She may well be the most influential woman golfer in growing the game around the world.
An interest in fast cars, gambling and sport were all part of growing up with her brother Tony. ‘We were always competitive with each other. We had bets on everything we did. I wouldn’t have a putt without a bet on it. Even at Trivial Pursuits we would play for a fiver. I’ll always want to win because I’m so competitive. That will never change. The day I don’t care, I’ll give up.’ She cares about gaining the required LPGA points for membership of the World Golf Hall of Fame but that misses the point: she should be in anyway for her global achievements.
When it comes to influential victories in the US Women’s Open by overseas players, those by Catherine Lacoste and Laura Davies are high on the list. Liselotte Neumann, of Sweden, won the year after Davies and led the way for Annika Sörenstam, a three-time champion. But in 1998 Se Ri Pak, a 20-year-old rookie, won at Blackwolf Run in Wisconsin. She was not only the youngest ever winner but also the first champion from South Korea. Pak had already won the LPGA Championship a few weeks earlier in a stunning wire-to-wire performance. At the Open, Pak hooked her drive into water on the last hole and had to wade in to play a remarkable recovery and get into a playoff with amateur Jenny Chuasiriporn, which Pak won at the 20th hole. Only Juli Inkster had previously won two majors in her rookie season and, coming from a country just becoming aware of golf, Pak’s triumphs made her a star in her homeland. When she returned home at the end of the season she was awarded one of the country’s highest honours, but such was the attention that she collapsed with exhaustion and spent four days in hospital.
Over the next decade the face of the women’s game changed forever. An extraordinary explosion of South Korean players made their way to America, and many of them described being allowed to stay up in the middle of the night to watch Pak win in 1998. Birdie Kim, Inbee Park, Eun-Hee Ji, So Yeon Ryu and Na Yeon Choi all won the US Open, Grace Park and Sun-Young Yoo the Nabisco Championship and Jeong Jang and Jiyai Shin the British Open. ‘I’ve given them the confidence to come out here,’ Pak said. ‘I think of them like my sisters.’ More South Koreans have won tour events but so far none has become a multiple major champion other than Pak, the youngest ever, at the age of 27, to be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
While until recently the development of male golfers in Korea was delayed by national service, young girls were exposed not just to the game but also to a relentless work ethic. Pak’s father had Se Ri running up and down the staircases of their 15-storey apartment building at 5.30 in the morning to build leg strength, and sometimes took her to a cemetery in the middle of the night ‘to develop courage and nerve,’ he said. ‘I wanted to teach her that to win in golf, she first had to win the battle within herself.’
Pak admitted to burn-out but recovered by taking control of her own life, which is perhaps why her most treasured honour is being voted by her fellow players as winner of the 2006 Heather Farr Award, which recognises a ‘player who, through her hard work, dedication and love of the game of golf, has demonstrated determination, perseverance and spirit in fulfilling her goals’. ‘Of all of my success for nine years, this award is the most important and biggest, maybe for the rest of my life,’ she said.
Just where does Karrie Webb come from? The easy answer is Ayr, in the remote north of Queensland around 1,000 miles from Brisbane. Where her golf comes from is another question. ‘Sometimes I don’t understand why I am sitting here,’ Webb said, clutching the US Open trophy in 2000. ‘I think I was given a gift to play golf and to be mentally strong. You know, I don’t see a sports psychologist. I’ve somehow just known what to do.’
The first time she played in a competition she won the ‘Encouragement Award’ but was too young to realise that meant she had come last. ‘Ayr is both hot and sweaty and a long way from anywhere,’ wrote David Davies. ‘The town has a population of 8,600 and most of them are involved either in the production of sugar cane or providing services for it. Webb’s parents owned a toy and gift shop, right next door to the newsagents.’ The son of the owners of the newsagents, Kelvin Haller, used to study all the golf magazines and, since the local golf club did not have a professional, Haller became Webb’s coach. An accident led to Haller becoming a quadriplegic and confined to a wheelchair but he was still able to coach Webb, via email or on her annual visit back to Ayr.
Haller said: ‘When I look back, I see her determination and her will to win and I think she is gifted in that way. I knew she was good but I didn’t really have any idea. None of us did. It’s a small town. When Karrie played in that first British Open, and – bang! – she won it, I guess we all started to catch on.’ It was a victory that got everyone’s attention, even if her first two British titles do not count as official LPGA majors. Her prime years were 1999 to 2002, when she won six majors, including five out of eight.
Peter Thomson rated Webb the best golfer in the world, man or woman, with a swing that was better than that of Tiger Woods. She had the ability to hit high iron shots that landed softly and with spin that was perfectly controlled. Meg Mallon, herself a double US Open champion, said: ‘Sometimes when a player makes it look as easy as she does, it’s hard to appreciate how good she is. She’s one of the best ball-strikers ever on our tour.’
Webb was the youngest to earn a career grand slam and the first to earn a super slam when she won at Turnberry in 2002, when the British Open was designated a major after the demise of the du Maurier Classic. So swiftly did Webb earn the required number of points to enter the LPGA and World Golf Hall of Fame that she had to wait five years to complete the ten-season minimum. ‘It seems like I’ve waited a long time for this, but looking back I can’t believe how fast everything has gone and how much I’ve been able to accomplish.’
For the first half-decade of the new millennium the only player who could keep up with Tiger Woods’s majors tally was Annika Sörenstam. Many were the bantering texts between them on the subject. When she won a third US Open in 2006, they both had ten, although Tiger would then pull ahead again. Although the Swede would soon lose her world No 1 tag to Lorena Ochoa, she was still a dominant figure in the game when she retired at the end of the 2008 season at the age of 38 to start a family. Or ‘stepped away’, as she put it, from competition. Now she has two children, an academy and a business under the ANNIKA brand.
At a time when world-class women players were emerging all around the globe, Sörenstam led the way. Back-to-back US Opens in the mid-1990s marked her arrival but it was in the noughties when she really got going after coming to terms with life in the spotlight. She has always been shy. As a junior, Sörenstam was known to three-putt the last hole to avoid winning and having to speak publicly. When a coach decided that both the winner and the runner-up should make speeches, Sörenstam decided winning was better after all.
Pia Nilsson, the Swedish national coach, found a willing pupil in Sörenstam for her vision of scoring a 54, not limiting yourself, thinking you can birdie every hole. In 2001 at Moon Valley, Sörenstam got close. She was 12 under for 13 holes and scored the LPGA’s first 59. By now a practice and fitness regime meant she had added power but she was always a meticulously accurate player: tidy house, tidy mind, tidy golfer.
In 2003 she became the first woman since Babe Zaharias (an exact opposite personality type) to play on the men’s tour at Colonial. It created huge interest and the course, tight and not long, suited her game but she did not have the best putting week as she missed the cut by four strokes. The word went out that she could not putt under pressure, something that a score of 59, 72 LPGA wins (second only to Kathy Whitworth and Mickey Wright) and 89 worldwide victories somewhat disproves. She said: ‘This is way over my head. I’m going back to my tour where I belong.’ Two months later she won the British Open at Lytham, the one major on European soil and the one she wanted. She said then: ‘I believe I have become a better player since playing at the Colonial. There were times today when I felt the pressure and then I thought it was not as bad as at the Colonial.’
A clinical, rather than emotional, golfer, she was nevertheless at her best in the Solheim Cup, especially helping Europe to victory at Barsebäck in Sweden in 2003. At the 2000 match at Loch Lomond, she gave a locker-room speech of such fire and passion that it was said to have been instrumental in beating the Americans.
When Tiger Woods emerged as the best golfer of his generation, he played golf with an intensity, relentlessness and determination to win rarely seen in combination with such calmness, clear thinking and clinical application to the game. Arnold Palmer said: ‘Tiger’s biggest strength is that he can play Jack Nicklaus’s style, waiting for his chances, and he can play in my style, attacking all the time. That’s some combination.’ Nicklaus said: ‘When he gets ahead, I think he is superior to me. I never spread-eagled the field.’
Three successive US Juniors and three successive US Amateurs were merely historical footnotes before he won his first major as a professional, the 1997 Masters, by 12 strokes. It changed golf, although the effect on the leading players’ bank balances may have been greater than his influence on the racial profile of the game. But it was the first globally viewed golfing miracle. The next was even more sublime. In the summer of 2000 he played the best golf anyone has ever played. He won the US Open by 15 strokes and the Open Championship by eight. He never three-putted at Pebble Beach and he never visited a bunker on the Old Course. At Pebble he was 12 under, then a record score, but no one else was better than three over. One of the runners-up, Ernie Els, said: ‘He is a phenomenon, but anything I say is an understatement. We’re not playing in the same ballpark right now.’
Woods won the USPGA and then the 2001 Masters, not the first-ever calendar-year grand slam but he said: ‘I’ve got all four trophies sitting on my coffee table.’ Other standout performances were the 2006 Open, two months after the death of his father, with a breathtaking display of controlled mid- and long-iron shots on a baked Hoylake, and the incredible 2008 US Open at Torrey Pines with a broken leg and against doctors’ orders.
Since then, his attempt to break Nicklaus’s record of 18 professional major titles has stalled at 14. Injury has meant four operations on his left knee and another lengthy period out of action in 2011. There was also scandal and divorce, all unfolding after a car crash outside his home on the night after Thanksgiving 2009, amid reports he had a mistress – it soon turned out he had many more besides.
Perhaps his greatest achievement is yet to come as he tries to rehabilitate his body, his game and his reputation. Somewhere along the way, the thing that got lost was his passion for the game itself. It was obvious at first, with all those extravagant fist-pumps after a chip-in or a monster putt holed. However, a major problem was that his style and personality did not translate to the team environment of the Ryder Cup. He was always a man apart. It was different for him, he thought, and we were instructed to believe this. It was once said ‘his meanness, his pettiness, his cheapness’ were vital to the package of this supreme champion. Nothing unique in that. But what a rise, what a fall, what next?
If Tiger Woods barely blinked between being US Amateur champion and winning his first professional major, it was a 14-year wait for Phil Mickelson. He had long been the new Bear apparent but as his near-misses mounted up, so Tiger was almost haunting him with major after major, eight of them, often at Lefty’s expense, before Mickelson won the Masters in 2004. Three years earlier, at the USPGA after losing to David Toms, Mickelson had despaired: ‘The frustration is not because I’m trying to win a major. I’m trying to win a bunch of them.’ Once Woods arrived, it was a currency that appreciated rapidly. Mickelson beat Ernie Els, another to suffer at Tiger’s hands, in a thrilling contest at Augusta and then did indeed go on to collect a ‘bunch of them’.
He had said: ‘I don’t feel pressed for time. Hogan only started winning majors at the age of 34. I just want to give myself the best chance at each one.’ Mickelson was 33 when he claimed his first green jacket. Whether he always gave himself the best chance of winning a major is debatable. Perhaps no one since Seve Ballesteros drove the ball so poorly and had such a magical short game. There was never any question about his natural talent – learning the game by standing next to his father and producing a mirror image, playing on a par-three course from the age of six, winning as an amateur on the PGA Tour – but doubts remained as to whether he could temper his natural aggression long enough to avoid disaster. Yes, he could, it turned out, but not at a US Open, where he has been a runner-up five times. He should have won at Winged Foot in 2006, but then so should Colin Montgomerie. Monty lost it with his second shot, Mickelson, as ever, with a drive that was last seen enjoying corporate hospitality.
In 2007, Mickelson employed Butch Harmon as his coach. Harmon turned first Greg Norman and then, for that spell at the turn of the millennium, Woods into the longest, straightest drivers in the game. It has not quite worked with Mickelson but it is an intriguing relationship, as Lefty has with his short game specialist, Dave Pelz, a former NASA scientist. Harmon said: ‘He is even more talented than I thought and I knew he was exceptionally talented going into this.’
There is no sound on earth quite as loud as a New York gallery’s support for Mickelson. The goofy smile might have been grating for British viewers earlier in his career but there is genuine love for Mickelson amongst American golf fans, while even at the height of his powers there was only respect for Woods. There was no more heart-warming sight than Mickelson being embraced at the 18th green at the 2010 Masters by his wife Amy, who a year earlier was diagnosed with breast cancer, as had Mickelson’s mother almost simultaneously. He has always been a family man first, golfer second.
David Duval removed his cap and his wraparound sunglasses, collected the claret jug and smiled, and gave a fine winner’s speech at the 2001 Open. Everything had changed. The real David Duval had stepped forward, we thought. We were wrong, for Duval was only just about to discover his real self. What we knew up until then was a fine golfer who had shot a 59 to win a tournament, won the 1999 Players Championship and dethroned Tiger Woods as the best player in the world. He had come so close to winning a number of majors.
Other facts included the death of his brother Brent from aplastic anaemia, that the child David had donated bone marrow and blamed himself for Brent’s death, and that his parents had divorced amid the grief. He was said to be a ‘boy who loved to golf alone in a fog. It was as if the sky was colluding with him, lowering a grey curtain between him and the world.’ He was a reader, too thoughtful to give pat press answers. He was overweight, then a fitness freak. He could not win, with 11 top-threes before his first victory; then could not stop winning, 11 times in two years.
He had finally won his major. But of that night, John Hawkins wrote: ‘What struck me was the utter lack of joy exhibited by anyone in the travelling party, particularly the latest owner of the claret jug. You would have sworn Duval finished tied for 35th.’ One more win followed in Japan later in the year but his game was already suffering from repeated back, neck and wrist injuries. He also experienced what he called an ‘existential moment’. ‘When you work so hard,’ he recalled, ‘and have had so many near misses and then win, and you didn’t play that well, it’s like, “Are you kidding? Are you really gonna do this to me?” It’s not like I played bad, but of the tournaments I won, that’s the one I played the worst in.’
A long-term relationship ended, his game and ambitions in tatters. He said: ‘When you’re a successful athlete in our society, not only are you not allowed to play poorly, you’re not really allowed to be human. I’m 32 years old. You start seeking things in your life, putting together the missing pieces. Just like anybody does.’
Duval met a woman in Denver, moved there, got married, became a stepfather of three and then a father of two more. His golf has yet to find the old consistency yet he finds far more pleasure in it. He almost won the US Open in 2009, ranked 882nd in the world. ‘If it wasn’t for Susie and these kids, I would have stopped playing golf a few years ago. They taught me what I am is not what I do; they showed me I don’t have to be golf. But golf is still so ingrained in my psyche, it takes a conscious effort for me to separate “David” from “golf”.’
Retief Goosen was the man to stop Tiger Woods’s winning streak in 2001. Tiger held all four majors but had to give back the US Open without contending. The finish was ugly. Goosen, Mark Brooks and Stewart Cink all three-putted the last green. Goosen missed from two feet for the title. Johnny Miller on television called it ‘the worst three-putt in the history of golf’. British golf writer David Davies wrote: ‘It was possibly the most calamitous loss of nerve ever seen in a major championship. Never was a shorter, easier putt for a major title missed.’ But, thanks to his perseverance and the help of a sports psychologist, Jos Vanstiphout, Goosen came back the next day to beat Brooks, the 1996 USPGA champion, in an 18-hole playoff.
His putting could occasionally be wayward but not at Shinnecock Hills in 2004. The greens were so firm and fast they were almost unplayable but Goosen produced one of the greatest displays ever seen on the greens. He single-putted 12 times in the final round to beat Phil Mickelson, who had the whole of New York supporting him. Goosen joined Ernie Els as a double champion. He two-putted at the last and tipped his cap. ‘It was a small relief. It was more we’ve done it this time on a Sunday and don’t have to come back on Monday. I’m not really somebody that jumps up and down, as we know, but on the inside I was just, like, so happy.’
Succeeding at US Open golf has always required a special temperament. Goosen has it but the way he got it is not something to try at home. Playing with friends at Pietersburg a few days before his 16th birthday, the group was caught by a sudden thunderstorm. A lightning bolt hit a nearby tree with such ferocity that Goosen was knocked unconscious, his clothes were burnt away and his rubber shoes melted. He only remembers waking up in hospital ‘feeling sore and covered in skin burns. There is nothing left of it now but at the time I was a bit of a mess.’ There were related health issues for a time and his mother, Annie, believes the accident left him more introverted than he had been before. He remains softly spoken and accident prone, once crashing while skiing in Switzerland but only discovering some weeks later that his arm was broken.
Goosen has an alternative explanation for keeping his golfing temperament under control. ‘I haven’t always been calm on the course. I’ve been known to lose it and break the odd club. In fact, just before I turned pro I remember breaking three clubs in nine holes. But it got expensive when my dad said I had to pay for the new shafts.’ He also credits his English wife Tracy with helping him to conquer his negative thoughts, while he described the wedding in 2001 as one of the most nerve-racking moments of his life. The US Open a couple of months later may not have felt such an ordeal after all.
In recent years, there has occasionally been the hint of the odd smile returning to the face of Sergio Garcia. This is very good news indeed. The sullen, and at times surly, Sergio is not how he should be remembered. No, it was his infectious enthusiasm that was so attractive. The image remains of the 19-year-old rookie chasing Tiger Woods home at the 1999 USPGA, literally so after a shot from behind a tree at Medinah’s 16th, skipping up the fairway and cresting the brow of a hill to see the end result. He stormed into the thick of several Ryder Cups with seemingly endless energy. Over time, that energy has seeped away. Was it the major near misses, the putts refusing to drop or simply being unlucky in love?
The son of a professional, Garcia has never been orthodox. There is the loop at the top of the backswing, the waggling and re-gripping. But he hits the ball as purely as anyone ever has done. At Carnoustie in 2007, he led for three days but then the putts dried up. He missed chances on the 72nd and the 76th holes that seemed certain to drop but Padraig Harrington took the title. ‘It seems I have no room for error. I am playing against more than just the field,’ Garcia said darkly. A year later he lost the USPGA in another close contest with the Irishman. ‘He’s an incredible talent and probably the best ball-striker in the game,’ Harrington said. ‘He’s young and he’s going to win a major, he’s going to win majors. It’s going to happen. The more he believes that the quicker it will happen.’
By the end of 2008 he was the Players champion and the world number two. Two years later he was smashing up the face of a bunker – previously having spat into the cup of a hole after three-putting among other misdemeanours – and announced he was taking a two-month break. ‘I need to miss the game a bit,’ he said. He turned up as a vice-captain at the Ryder Cup but was never in with a chance of playing.
Spain, Europe and golf’s next big thing was nowhere. He said: ‘For almost as long as I can remember, everyone’s been saying, “When are you going to win a major?” The truth is that whatever people might think, it’s not something that has ever kept me awake at night.’ He was a good kid, El Niño, if prone to over-exuberance, arrogance even. ‘Seve Ballesteros has more than once publicly rued the loss of his childhood years to golf, and Sergio, who started playing in professional events at 14 years of age, has clearly been tangling with similar emotions,’ wrote Lewine Mair. Now in his early 30s he is looking for more from life. As much a family man as his friend Rafa Nadal, Garcia is at heart a good guy. His golf may just need patience.
Padraig Harrington has one of the most original minds in golf. No one, perhaps not even himself, is sure what he is going to come up with next. Here is a golfer who did all his accountancy exams, seemed to be heading for a comfortable if unspectacular golfing career, then suddenly won three major championships, then decided to change his swing again. He once said to the press: ‘It is your job to have expectations of me. It is my job not to let that affect the expectations I have of myself.’
His father, who died in 2005, was a police officer in the Gardaí and helped build a course at Stackstown, south of Dublin. The young Harrington, whose father, uncle and two brothers were all single-figure handicappers, spent much of his youth playing there. ‘I would have settled for being a journeyman when I turned professional but I started so well that I always had the focus to improve and see how good I could become,’ he said.
He worked and worked, often for days on end, with Bob Torrance, the coach and father of Sam, at Largs. He won occasionally, came second far more often (29 times and counting) but then in 2007 he won the Irish Open, his ‘fifth major’. His first Open win at Carnoustie followed, amid the mayhem of twice going in the Barry Burn at the 18th for a double bogey but still beating Sergio Garcia in the playoff. ‘I proved before that I am capable of making things difficult for myself,’ he said. His obsession with practising included smashing drivers into a beanbag late at night even after winning the Irish PGA in 2008. He injured his wrist and his defence of the claret jug, just days away, was in doubt. He hardly practised at Birkdale but prevailed brilliantly on the Sunday. A month later he became the first European who was not a naturalised American to win the USPGA, again beating Garcia at Oakland Hills.
At Carnoustie Harrington became only the second Irishman to win the Open, after Fred Daly 60 years earlier, and the first European to win a major in the new century. He was the first of a new wave of European stars to break through and those that have followed have attributed their success to his. ‘Michael Campbell winning the US Open was a big help to me because I knew him and knew his game. It was easier to visualise myself winning a major after he did,’ Harrington explained. ‘Other major champions like Els, Goosen and Woods, I would have put on a pedestal. They were unbelievable players and it felt like they never hit a bad shot. It was always, if you play your best, you might beat Tiger. But the guys that know me, have played with me, know my game, know I hit good shots, I hit bad shots, I work hard, they know they can beat me. And if they can beat me, they can win a major, too.’
Lorena Ochoa was not quite as young as Catherine Lacoste when she retired from golf. In fact she was the same age as Bobby Jones, 28, but the effect was the same as with the Frenchwoman – a bright star had shone luminously and was then gone. For three years Ochoa was the best woman golfer on the planet, seamlessly following on from Annika Sörenstam. But then in April 2010, she suddenly announced she was retiring from the sport. She had married a Mexican airline executive the year before and at the start of the new season found her motivation lacking. She had dreamed of retiring as the world No 1 and that wish was fulfilled. She said: ‘I want to dedicate to my family the time I have taken from them all these years.’
Ochoa was Mexico’s first golfing star, learning the game as she grew up in Guadalajara from local professional Rafael Alarcon, who played for Mexico in the old Dunhill Cup. Ochoa was successful on the American college circuit and soon won on the LPGA tour. In 2006 the victories started mounting up and the following year she dethroned Sörenstam. Clearly the outstanding player in the game, only one thing had eluded her – a major. It was a talking point when she arrived at St. Andrews for the first professional major championship for women on the Old Course. ‘I think my family and the media worry more than me,’ Ochoa said. She added: ‘Here we are, we need to stand on the first tee with a big smile, appreciate it and enjoy every step and every moment.’ Her victory was never in doubt, her triumphant parade at the 18th matching anything from Tiger Woods and the men.
‘This was my time,’ she said. ‘It’s a blessing the whole week. I wanted to win the tournament so badly and I worked so hard. I had the picture in my mind of me lifting the trophy but I always thought very clearly. I just said to myself, “I am ready”. It has been a long wait for a major but now I can see it was for a reason. This is the most special tournament I’ve ever played.’ Ochoa won the next major, the Kraft Nabisco in 2008, but they are the only two among her 27 victories in six years.
In almost two-thirds of her tournaments she finished in the top ten but what was memorable was that she was a happy golfer. She started every press interview with a beaming smile and the words: ‘Hello, everyone.’ It should not be noteworthy but somehow it is. She always visited the staff behind the scenes at tournaments, since many were of Mexican descent. Many a breakfast she had in the greenkeepers’ hut. ‘She did more than regularly win golf tournaments,’ said Mike Whan, the LPGA commissioner. ‘She fully embraced her role as global ambassador for the sport, raising its stature not only in her beloved home country but around the world.’
After the sudden retirement of Lorena Ochoa, a number of players became the world number one according to the rankings, but sooner than anyone had imagined another player came along to dominate women’s golf. At the age of 22 Yani Tseng was the youngest ever player, male or female, to win five major championships. Only Young Tom Morris had been younger in winning four majors, a mark Tseng reached in 2011 at the LPGA Championship where her margin of victory was ten strokes. A month later she successfully defended her title at the Ricoh Women’s British Open at Carnoustie. It was the first time the women’s tournament had been competed for on the famous links where Cotton, Hogan, Player and Watson were also champions. ‘There are so many great players making history on this course,’ she said. ‘It is my honour to be a part of it.’
Having won four of the last eight majors, Tseng’s dominance was already taking on historical proportions and there is much speculation about what she may ultimately achieve. ‘At this rate, with her talent level, and after a couple more major wins, the conversation will shift to Patty Berg and her record 15 LPGA majors,’ wrote Ron Sirak in Golf World. ‘Hey, if Yani can knock Young Tom out of the record book, why not Old Patty?’
‘You look at Yani and you never think there will be another Mickey Wright or another Annika Sörenstam or Lorena and all of a sudden Yani comes along,’ said Juli Inkster. ‘Yani has Lorena’s power, she can bomb the ball. She’s got a lot of passion for the game. She wants to be the best. She wants to get better. So she could be here for a while. If she stays healthy, she could probably break a lot of Annika’s records.’
Sörenstam won ten majors but did not gain her fifth until the age of 32. Always Tseng’s idol, the Swede became a mentor to the Taiwanese player after Tseng bought Sörenstam’s old house at Lake Nona in Orlando at the start of 2010. The house featured a huge trophy case. ‘I looked at the empty case and I know I have to work hard to fill it up with trophies,’ Tseng said. She took a bottle of wine and, admitting to being tongue-tied, went round the corner to Sörenstam’s new abode. ‘She picked my brains on becoming the best player,’ Sörenstam said. ‘She wants to learn but already her mental capacity may be as strong as her long game.’
A fine pool player – she says it helps with her putting – Tseng is the daughter of a club professional father and a caddie mother, and learned the game aged six by mimicking her parents’ swings. Her father taught her to hit the ball hard. Harnessing that power came later but her fitness adviser, Andrea Doddato, says she has ‘never seen a female athlete with so much upper-body explosive power’. Her medicine ball throws can leave the catcher reeling, just like her opponents on the course.
There was a time when Lee Westwood could not stop winning. From 1996 to 2000 the son of a maths teacher from Worksop won 14 times in Europe and eight times worldwide, including the States. In 2000 he dethroned Colin Montgomerie as the European number one. ‘I’ve always been able to keep my cool and win tournaments when I’ve got into contention,’ he said. ‘That’s more about what’s in your stomach and your heart really, rather than about technique.’
But then came a slump so severe he fell from fourth in the world to 266th. Suddenly, his game was gone and he won only twice (both within weeks) in seven years. He got out of the slump only after taking a ‘ruthless and honest’ look at himself and his career. He began a disciplined fitness programme – Gary Player had said years before that he needed to, and now he did. Westwood also returned to his coach Peter Cowen.
Consistency was now the hallmark of Westwood’s game, and in 2009 he became the European number one for the second time. Wins were not plentiful but he was always the player to beat. If anything, his long game was so good that his putting suffered by comparison. There was an inevitability about Westwood being the man who would overtake Tiger Woods as the world number one, and it occurred in late October 2010. Andrew ‘Chubby’ Chandler, his manager, pointed to a few weeks earlier, saying: ‘You only had to look at the Ryder Cup, where he walked around Celtic Manor like he owned the place: “I am Lee Westwood and I am the best player here.”’
In eight Ryder Cups, Westwood has only missed two sessions of play and proved a vital part of Europe’s recent successes, particularly when partnering his friend Darren Clarke in the 2006 match at the K Club. Yet, while Clarke finally won his major championship at the 2011 Open, Westwood entered 2013 with his account still blank. In a run of 12 majors, he was third four times and second twice, but Phil Mickelson brilliantly snatched away the 2010 Masters and a three-putt on the last green denied him a chance of a playoff for the 2009 Open. Turnberry may be his biggest regret. ‘I came very close to winning what for me is the biggest tournament, the most important tournament in the world,’ he said.
Married to Ryder Cup colleague Andrew Coltart’s sister, Laurae, with two children, Westwood was never tempted to leave his home town of Worksop until late in 2012. He and the family moved to Florida to give him all-year-round fine practice conditions and the now forty-something a chance to crack America before it is too late. A wry humour and self-deprecation have made him a Twitter hit. When he got a call to say he was the world number one he was shopping for ‘a pair of rubber gloves and mashed potatoes’. A week later an air stewardess complimented his tan and asked what he had been up to. ‘Playing a bit of golf,’ he said. ‘Are you any good?’ she asked. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I’m the best in the world.’
It was while helping to celebrate Rory McIlroy’s US Open victory that Darren Clarke was told to ‘pull my finger out’. Clarke said he was not jealous, just very proud of McIlroy, whom he has mentored for a decade, and Graeme McDowell, the 2010 US Open champion. Yet within weeks of McIlroy’s triumph, Clarke had his own, lifting the claret jug at Sandwich.
There was never any doubt about Clarke’s talent, only about how much of his potential would be fulfilled. A handshake with Andrew ‘Chubby’ Chandler, in a manner reminiscent of Arnold Palmer and Mark McCormack, led to Chandler setting up a management company to look after Clarke when he turned professional. Soon the wins came. He almost shot Europe’s first 59, he beat Tiger Woods head-to-head in the final of the 2000 WGC Accenture Matchplay and he became the first player other than Tiger to win two World Golf Championships. He spent as he earned, enjoying the luxuries of fast cars and fine cigars.
But in 2006 his wife Heather died from breast cancer. In emotional scenes at the Ryder Cup at the K Club, Clarke played brilliantly. Of his opening tee shot, which went right down the middle, he said: ‘Pressure shots come no bigger. There will never be a harder shot or hole for me. If I am ever lucky enough to have a chance of winning a major or a really big title again, it won’t compare.’
It took five years for Clarke to have a chance to prove it. In the meantime he had moved his sons, Tyrone and Conor, back to Northern Ireland, become engaged and spent the previous winter playing Royal Portrush with friends. Out in all weathers, they would have a ‘couple of pints before and several more after’. Playing superb links golf, tacking his away around Royal St. George’s in often blustery weather, Clarke achieved his dream. Helped by not one, but two, sports psychologists, Clarke remained calm as never before.
He said: ‘In terms of what’s going through my heart, there’s obviously somebody who is watching down from up above there and I know she would be very proud of me. She’d probably be saying “told you so”. But I think she’d be more proud of my two boys and them at home watching more than anything else. It’s been a long journey.’
At the age of 42, he admitted appreciating the victory more than he might have done earlier in his career and that there would be no personal treats this time. ‘I’ve been there and done that all before, haven’t I?’ he said. ‘To get my name on this thing,’ he added, gesturing at the claret jug, ‘and being able to show it to my boys, means more than anything.’ Just before the Open, Clarke’s boys were looking at Fred Daly’s Open medal from 1947 in the Portrush clubhouse. ‘Your dad hasn’t got his hands on one of them, yet,’ they were told by an assistant professional. He has now, and it rests beside that of Daly.
Snap judgements cannot always be trusted, but all those experts who took one look at Rory McIlroy swinging a club and predicted he would win a major championship were proved right at the 2011 US Open.
McIlroy’s swing is the talk of the practice range. ‘It is one of the most graceful swings,’ said Padraig Harrington. ‘It is very coordinated. The more coordinated a swing, the slower it looks yet Rory manages to get so much clubhead speed. It’s the sound of the strike. He hits the ball beautifully.’ Colin Montgomerie added: ‘He has a natural ability. Seve looked empty without a golf club in his hands. Ernie looks better with a golf club in his hands. Rory is the same now. Real, natural, God-given talent.’ ‘He’s like a BMW,’ said Graeme McDowell, ‘the ultimate driving machine.’
McIlroy’s achievements had been mounting up: a 61 in competition at Royal Portrush as a teenager; the silver medal as leading amateur at the 2007 Open; only two events required for him to earn a European Tour card; almost the youngest player since Seve Ballesteros to win the European order of merit in 2009, but for Lee Westwood; a closing 62 for his first win in the States in 2010; and a Ryder Cup debut the same year, where he admitted his earlier suggestion that the match was ‘only an exhibition’ had been wide of the mark.
At the Masters in 2011, McIlroy led for 63 holes and then imploded on the back nine at Augusta. Suddenly, he went from looking like the next golfing great to a heart-broken kid. Many worried if he possessed the killer instinct. McIlroy dismissed it as a one-off, worked on his putting and went to Congressional with a renewed strut. Four days later he had won by eight strokes with a record score and never looked like losing. The American gallery roared their approval. Jack Nicklaus liked his ‘moxie’, while Harrington predicted McIlroy would be the player to challenge Nicklaus’s 18 majors. McIlroy’s reply was a modest ‘Paddy, Paddy, Paddy,’ and a shake of the head.
Everyone was wowed. John Huggan wrote in Scotland on Sunday: ‘Like all true greats, McIlroy has an innate ability to make an endlessly complicated and difficult game appear simple. With a club in his hands, he is Torvill and Dean on the ice, he is Frank Sinatra at the microphone and he is Lionel Messi with a ball at his feet. He has the potential to raise a mere sport to art form.’
McIlroy did it again in 2012, not just winning his second major championship but doing so by eight strokes again at the USPGA Championship. He won four times in America and also the season-ending Tour Championship in Dubai on the European Tour. He followed Luke Donald in winning the money lists on both sides of the Atlantic and ended the year as the undisputed world No 1. He had proved he can beat the best by a distance, by holding onto a narrow advantage in tricky conditions and by making a late charge. It has not always gone smoothly: he changed clubs at the start of 2013 for many millions but he lost form, and in one event he walked off the course due to a painful wisdom tooth. He is not yet the finished article, but as with Palmer, Seve and Tiger, it is a mistake ever to take your eyes off him.
