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To say it’s been an eventful year for golf is putting it mildly.
ParGolf’s editors and contributors look back on a memorable season,
selecting their best and worst moments of a year that threw up a slew of surprises from start to finish
I’ve seen some terrific Masters finishes. Jack Nicklaus’ final nine holes in 1986 was magical, just incredible stuff. As was Nick Faldo’s Sunday demolition of Greg Norman in 1996. Tiger’s win in 1997 was an exultant victory parade, the feting of a new superstar.
But as far as golfing dramas went, the final round of the 2011 US Masters was as breathtaking, nail-biting and insane as they come. You just couldn’t pick a winner.
For the first three rounds, the green jacket looked all but Rory McIlroy’s. But the boy wonder unravelled in spectacular fashion in the final nine holes, dropping six shots in three holes from the 10th. Tiger, playing the unfamiliar role of supporting cast member in the first three days, finally got going in the first nine holes with four birdies and an eagle. So thunderous were the roars that the other players had to step back from their shots. When Woods rolled in his par putt on the ninth hole, he had made up seven shots and was tied for the lead. Alas Woods failed to sustain his momentum and could only par the inward nine.
But Tiger’s heroics set the tone for an astounding back nine. Unfancied Bo Van Pelt eagled both the back nine par-fives to come from nowhere and jump into the mix. Geoff Ogilvy reeled off five straight birdies to leap to 10-under. Adam Scott was playing like a Masters champion-in-waiting and cruised effortlessly to 12-under. Jason Day fired at the pins all day long and birdied 17 and 18 to finish at 12-under too. Former Masters champion Angel Cabrera kept nipping at the leaders’ heels. Luke Donald and KJ Choi were there too. At one point, Scott, Day, Cabrera, Ogilvy and Charl Schwartzel shared the lead. It wasn’t a day you dared blink lest you miss anything.
Eventually, it was Schwartzel who prevailed. The South African birdied four of his last four holes to pip Scott and Day by two strokes. Four under in the last four holes, just like one Mr Nicklaus 25 years earlier. What an extraordinary Masters, one of the best ever.
Highs & Lows – Kevin Na after signing for his 16 on one hole during the Valero Texas Open (above) and celebrating his win in the Justin Timberlake event
I’ve played with some hopeless hackers that have carded numbers on golf holes that looked more like a rugby score. But in all my years, I can’t ever recall any desperate soul having to say to me “Put me down for a 16”. A 12 once, an 11 perhaps a couple of times, a 10 more often than you’d imagine – but 16? Never.
“Put me down for a 16” was unfortunately what Kevin Na had the pride-swallowing ignominy of having to utter to his playing partner in the opening round of the 2011 Valero Texas Open. And he didn’t even lose his ball or find a hazard.
Na’s travails on the par four ninth hole began when he hit his tee shot far right into the woods, which turned out to be unplayable. Playing a third off the tee, he hit his ball pretty much into the same place. Na attempted to chip out this time but the ball hit a tree and struck him on the leg, incurring a one-stroke penalty. And the ball had ended up in an unplayable lie – but the option of returning to the tee was no longer there. The comedy of errors had begun.
He took a drop and had a swipe at the ball. It barely moved. This was followed by a series of swishes at the ball but he only managed to move it sideways or backwards. A couple of left-handed shots and several offbalanced swats ensued. Images of Bill Murray completely losing it and whaling away at the ball in Caddyshack are flashing through my mind. Finally, Na manages to muscle it out into the rough and hit it close to the green with his next shot.
And he hadn’t a clue what he’d shot. Officials had to resort to video replays to establish how many shots he actually took. Turned out his 16 was a PGA Tour record.
But don’t bother hanging any flowers out of the window for Kevin Na just yet. The talented Korean-born American golfer had the last laugh by recently winning the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospital for Children Open at Las Vegas.
“Tiger's split in July with long-time caddie Steve Williams was perhaps inevitable as Tiger took the extended break in the wake of his troubles.”
Magical moment – Matteo Manessero en route to winning the 2011 Maybank Malaysian Open
I have long hung up my competitive spikes and driving gloves. No, not golf. Athletics and rallying actually, but I still find myself empathising a little more with the player than the gallery. Week in and out, they really play their hearts out. Kevin Na’s 16-shot blow up on a par four and also posting his first ever PGA Tour win in 2011 illustrates the point in a nutshell. So I will call my best and worst of 2011 from the player perspective.
2011 has been the ‘best’ for many a year in terms of the depth of potential winners. On any given week a new, unexpected or different face was apt to win. There was Charl Schwartzel who won at the Masters. Rory Mcllroy’s emphatic rebuttal by winning at the US Open. They were then, of course, outplayed by Manassero in the Maybank Malaysian Open.
Amazingly, Rory said in an interview that he was perhaps slightly disappointed by his level of achievement thus far. Surely it was merely indicative of the fierce drive to perfection that the truly great possess. The best, irrespective of gender, all have it. This fierce perfectionist and competitive focus was perhaps best illustrated in depth in the thrilling 2011 Solheim Cup. Any golfer who was not on the edge of his or her seat is not human.
Locally, Danny Chia played his way into contention for much of the CIMB Asia Pacific Classic at The Mines. Any pro that “peaked” or had the rub of the green on a particular week, was likely to win. Darren Clarke lifting the Claret Jug? He had been ranked No. 111 before the Open win. In 2011, player seeding, betting odds and crystal balls were of little consequence. You really could not count anyone out of the equation too early. That’s the way it should be.
On the ‘worst’ for 2011, from a competitor’s point of view, the World Golf Ranking’s 56th-ranked player must be very disappointed indeed. Should you be able to get through the multiple layers of security, just ask the player.
As of October 30, 2011, 56th on the WGR was Tiger Woods. What does that mean in real terms? Well, among other things, any player ranked below 50 does not get an automatic entry into the Masters, the Open Championship and the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. Previous champions may get invitations, but you get the idea. Past champions Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus have in their own way said that if one just turns up with no chance of winning, one should consider quitting altogether. Obviously these two past greats felt that just making up the numbers saddled them with its own peculiar brand of indignity.
Adding to the considerable distractions, Tiger’s split in July with long-time caddie Steve Williams was perhaps inevitable as Tiger took the extended break in the wake of his troubles. Williams, however, took exception to the timing of the split and expressed disappointment in a statement on his website. In August, Williams’ new boss, Adam Scott, won the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and Tiger finished 37th. It worked out to be a richer payday for the ex-caddie than the ex-boss. Ten percent of the winner’s purse would see Williams pocket US$140,000 and 37th place paid Tiger US$58,500.
Many saw Williams’ post victory statement, “This is the best week of my career so far”, as adding insult to injury. Sure, everyone loves a winner and it might have been said in the heat of the moment, but Williams’ comment was not only brash, it was also particularly illtimed. The less said about Williams’ xenophobic comment in Shanghai, the better. It was, and is, totally indefensible.
On so many levels, stuff happening to, around and by Tiger’s own hand in 2011 was just not cool.
The Asian Tour honorary member is certainly my pick for the Best of 2011. While he has lost out in the race to become Asia’s first male Major winner to countryman Y.E. Yang, K.J. Choi took the next best accolade by bagging the Players Championship in May.
The Players is often regarded as the unofficial fifth Major of the world due to the strength of the field that it attracts annually to the TPC Sawgrass which is one of the toughest tests in the game. The former powerlifter, the Asian Tour’s first graduate to hit it big on the PGA Tour, has never performed well in the Players but during his magical week, he was at ease with his game and prevailed in a play-off over David Toms.
“For me to shoot under par every day on this course this week, it’s like a miracle, to be honest with you,” Choi said.
While winning is everything in the game, Choi showed he has a big heart as well as he donated US$200,000 towards tornado relief in the United States from his winnings.
“While winning the Players Championship was a defining point in my life, there were those who were going through their low point. I want the victims of the tornadoes to know that their misfortunes will not be ignored,” he said after collecting his eighth PGA Tour title.
Another defining moment for Choi was when he initiated the launch of his own tournament, the CJ Invitational, on the Asian Tour this year. “I want to give something back to the game, hence the tournament,” said the Korean star.
While he took a hands-on approach in the tournament, and even staked the ropes on the golf course to ensure that spectators had the best viewing opportunity, he was ungracious to the players as he won the tournament by two strokes.
What did he do with his top prize of US$118,875? He donated it all to his foundation which will support the local communities near the Haesley Nine Bridges Golf Club which hosted the tournament. Choi is a big man with a big heart indeed.
Caddie Steve Williams was unceremoniously dumped by former World No. 1 Tiger Woods when the American made his comeback from injury. While Williams had reportedly earned over US$12 million through multiple victories including 13 of the 14 Major championships won by Woods during their 12-year partnership, he still held a grudge against his former boss despite being enriched.
Adam Scott, often referred to as the ‘White Tiger’ in the past, offered Williams his bag and the new partnership yielded instant results. At the World Golf Championships- Bridgestone Invitational, Scott stormed to a stylish four-stroke victory over current World No. 1 Luke Donald with Woods finishing a distant tied 37th.
However, Scott’s first WGC title was overshadowed somewhat when Williams stole centrestage by declaring on a greenside interview that it was “the best win of my career.” For sure, it was a poorly attempted barb at Woods which told of the Kiwi’s lack of class.
In the past, Williams has often been accused of being over-bearing and outright rude – he even grabbed a spectator’s camera once and threw it into the pond when the fan snapped on Woods’ backswing. He once called Phil Mickelson a ‘prick’ but the worst was to come at the WGC-HSBC Champions in Shanghai.
The work of a caddie has often been described as to “show up, keep up and shut up” although the modern-day bagman plays a much bigger role these days with their input on club and shot selection. But Williams simply didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut.
At a caddies’ awards night in Shanghai, which is a light-hearted and fun-filled occasion, Williams was awarded the Celebration of the Year award for his triumph with Scott. When asked why he celebrated the way he did, he shocked guests with a racially disparaging comment when he said, “It was my aim to shove it up the black a******.”
The maelstrom that ensued was naturally fast and furious as the appalling comment made global headlines but it ended a week later when Woods accepted Williams’ apology and said he was not a racist. The damage was already done.
“If anyone was an expert at making statements, Long John Daly would still make all of them look like novices.”
The first expression in my mind when I saw the footage was “What the hell was he trying to prove”?
I mean, if anyone was an expert at making statements, Long John Daly would still make all of them look like novices. Apparently, he’s had to learn the hard way that he’s lost the long to his game by knocking seven balls into the water at the 11th hole during the first round of the Emirates Australian Open; reacting in anger to an automatic two-stroke penalty for hitting the wrong ball from a bunker in the previous hole.
Grabbing his son and storming out of the tourney, his closing statement was that he had run out of balls. If he was hoping to generate some thunder Down Under, he was certainly heard.
Word has it that his antics have cost him an invite to the Australian Open forever and rightly so.
If you ask me which of the “Big Four” winners of 2011 were the most deserving, I’d have to say Darren Clarke.
More than winning in style, Darren’s career represents the desperate struggles of the average Joe pining for that one break that would alter destiny. Bringing into fruition the prize that seemed to move further out of reach with time, and at what some might consider the sunset of his career, his win delivers hope to all struggling journeymen that one day, they might just unfold that golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.
I had a chance meeting with Darren when he was conducting a clinic at the Maybank Malaysian Open a couple of years back. I dare declare that I would not hesitate to knock back a couple pints of Guinness in tribute to his conquest over adversity.
It could not have happened to a lovelier bloke.
Life is good – Garcia is back in the winner's circle and has a stunner of a girlfriend in Nicole Horrex
There cannot be a true golf fan with a discernible pulse and a love of the game who could fail to have been uplifted by the return, not once, but twice, to the winner’s circle this season, of Spaniard Sergio García.
Written off by many – even perhaps himself – as a busted flush, there had been a dark demeanour of despair around the 30-year-old former World No. 2, affairs of the heart and distinctly dodgy putting being blamed for a slide down the world rankings faster than his seemingly effortless rise to the upper echelons of golf a decade ago.
The Spaniard had even doubted his own ability to dig deep enough to make it back to the top of a game that needs him firing on all cylinders like never before; but, to coin one of sport’s all time clichés, ‘form is temporary, but class is permanen ‘verboten’, golf’s marquee names living a parallel life ‘in the zone’ where the lights are on but seemingly nobody is home.
Now let there be no doubt, World No. 1 Luke Donald, aka ‘Plod’, is a gifted golfer and a very nice man, same for his compatriot Lee Westwood; but would they put bums on seats, help a declining sport attract new audiences? Probably not.
Now let there be no doubt, World No. 1 Luke Donald, aka ‘Plod’, is a gifted golfer and a very nice man, same for his compatriot Lee Westwood; but would they put bums on seats, help a declining sport attract new audiences? Probably not. Talking of Kaymer, he is more Teutonic efficiency than the Spanish style, Irish vim and vigour and Italian pizzazz of those in whose hands golf’s future is invested – García, McIlroy, Manassero.
Looking through the Official World Golf Ranking in the dying embers of a 2011 season that has, for this observer at least, flattered to deceive, Sergio’s reinstatement to the top 20 is a rare beacon of hope amidst a drab, dull cast of characters.
Of course, there are no contractual obligations to combine ability with attitude, craft with charisma, but to see Sergio smile and succeed once more is worth more than victories in the ‘Classic-this’ and ‘Mastersthat’. My new year’s wish would be for the sensational Spaniard to get that monkey off his back by winning a maiden Major in 2012.
There is that old saying, so derided by the Pussy Protection League, that ‘there is more than one way to skin a cat’.
But the world of golf, with competing snouts stuck in the commercial trough, takes the skinning of cats to an altogether and unimaginable new level.
Even as the world wobbles on the rim of a recession, it seems some sponsors still have decidedly deeper pockets than they have commercial nous, whilst players, particularly in this silly season, remain willing to perform like jesters to the corporate court – in the words of a certain South African sage, “at the end of the year you’ve got the wheelbarrow out!”
Two recent events in China, the modern-day Klondyke in global golf’s gold rush, are the antitheses of that marvellous maxim of show business, ‘to leave the audience wanting more’.
Billed as ‘an extraordinary 18-hole, par 72, golfing odyssey throughout China where the distance from the first tee to the 18th green is over 3,500 km’ and hyped as ‘golf’s version of an Amazing Race around China’, the US$10 million Shui-On Land China Golf Challenge saw the ‘Fab Four’ of Liang, McIlroy, Westwood and Poulter playing ‘the sport’s most innovative’ event.
Seven days, seven cities in what World No. 2 McIlroy claims was “as much about exploring China as competing, and I’ve got some good travel companions in Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and Liang Wen-chong.”
To be brutally blunt, the Shui-On Land China Golf Challenge was a ‘beano’, a ‘jolly’, a ‘jape’, a ‘frolic’ which did nothing for golf, or the golfers who were persuaded to take part by several wheelbarrows full of lovely lucre, or indeed the China Golf Association under whose auspices this staggering tour of triviality was supposedly sanctioned.
Then there was the US$5 million, 30-man Shanghai Masters ahead of a WGC-HSBC Champions event already in need of a boost. Master McIlroy picked up the US$2 million first prize and, it is said, a simple sweetener just to play of half that amount – adding hugely to his new Santander Private Clients account but not one single world ranking point towards his avowed aspiration of top spot.
‘Player power’ is a term too often used in 21st century sport, and, for every entrepreneur with a few million to offset against tax, there are avaricious and supposedly ambitious golfers with a wheelbarrow to fill, broadcasters with long dark winter schedules to fill, governing bodies offered a seven-figure sanctioning fee, rapacious representatives skimming their 20%. But is it good for golf?
With the Majors the pinnacle for players, WGC events, co-sanctioned this and tri-sanctioned that, a questionable re-entry to the Olympic ‘family’ afoot, these bean-feasts disguise the fact that golf is a sport, and a glorious one at that. It is part of the entertainment industry, but its integrity, probity, history and heritage risk being tarnished by continual slicing and dicing, which – contrary to the showbiz adage – leaves everyone, from players to fans, pleading for less, not more.
Highs & Lows – McIlroy's disaster at The Masters (above) and redemption at the US Open
It’s not often that you actually feel the pain of a sportsman when he or she suffers a meltdown. John McEnroe’s loss to Ivan Lendl in the 1984 French Open final after being two sets to love up and looking in total control springs to mind, as does Greg Norman’s gut-wrenching final day collapse at Augusta National in 1996 to turn his six-stroke lead into a five-shot loss to Nick Faldo.
Cue Rory McIlroy in this year’s Masters. Golf’s great young hope had a four-shot lead going into the last round and media and fans alike were gleefully waiting to put the young golfer from Holywood, Northern Ireland on the proverbial pedestal as the game’s next Tiger. What happened around the turn on Sunday took everyone by surprise and had me cringing in my seat.
With the chasing pack – which included wolves like Tiger Woods, Adam Scott and eventual winner Charl Schwartzel – nipping at his heels. McIlroy had a nervous front nine but still enjoyed a one-stroke lead at the turn. Then came one of the most calamitous string of holes for a tournament leader since Norman in ’96.
At the long par four 10th, McIlroy duck hooked his drive way left into the pine trees between two cabins and then sent an ambitious fairway wood well left again. He tried to pitch out but struck a tree, finally getting on the green in five shots for a triple bogey. A three-putt bogey at 11 was followed by an inexplicable four-putt at the par three 12th after finding the green with a 9-iron. A hooked drive into Rae’s Creek at Hole 13 left McIlroy doubled over in anguish and, although he did save par, the dream run at Augusta National had turned into a nightmare at Amen Corner in the space of four holes.
Of course, McIlroy turned the season on its head with his runaway win in the US Open, but one wonders if the ghosts of Augusta 2011 will continue to haunt him each time he tees up in the Masters.
I actually tuned in to the final day ‘live’ coverage of the 2011 Solheim Cup matches by chance while channel-flipping at home. I had not planned to watch the matches as it was getting late and I had an early start the next day, but since I was already on the channel I thought I’d just catch a bit of the action and turn in early.
Big mistake. It was about halfway through the final day singles and, for the best part of the next three hours or so, I barely moved from my seat except to answer nature’s persistent call. It was one of the most seesawing and nail-biting battles I have ever seen in team matchplay and made me an even bigger fan of the format than I already was – and trust me, I’ve been a huge fan for a long time.
For me, the best match was between the two legends, Juli Inkster and Laura Davies. It was enthralling watching the two heavyweights (figuratively speaking of course!) go head to head at Killeen Castle in Dublin. The golf wasn’t pretty at times but the tension and drama was absolutely riveting. All-square was, at the end, a just result.
What a performance it was from Suzann Pettersen! Three clutch birdies from the pumpedup Swede in the last three holes turned a one-down deficit against an equally pumped-up Michelle Wie into a one-up win. Pettersen’s comeback swung the tide and changed the mood for Alison Nicholas’ European side, who at one stage seemed destined to let an early advantage slip and waste the free point Karen Stupples received from the injured Cristie Kerr.
Catherine Hedwall came from two down with two to play to scramble a halve against American rookie Ryann O’Toole, leaving Azahara Munoz needing just a tie with Angela Stanford to secure a first European win since 2003. When Munoz birdied the 17th to take an unbeatable onehole lead into the last hole, the European celebrations began – what celebrations they were and rightly so!
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