‘Some days you don’t have it, and some days you do’. So goes the popular refrain in golf: one that most of us are guilty of quoting to justify a lousy round. You know who you are, and you know exactly how it goes: starting off with a bad shot, or a stroke of bad luck, the round snowballs into an agonising drag around the course that seems interminable.
At times like these, after amply demonstrating your lack of interest and commitment to the game to your partners, you sulk through the remainder of the ill-fated round. The dark mood persists until you’ve downed a few at the 19th hole. Happens all the time to me; missing an easy putt, for example, almost always affects my temperament on the next hole, and adversely affects my play until I can put it out of my mind. Usually, I can’t.
One definition of a professional is someone who can perform what’s required of him, to the best of his abilities, when he doesn’t feel like it, and golf is no exception. The top pros work on their mental game more than they work on their golf swing, and the most successful players in the history of the game—from Jack Nicklaus to Tiger Woods— have displayed mastery over both. From hitting the shot required when the moment demands it—as Jack demonstrated in his famous last-nine charge at the 1986 Masters Tournament, or in Tiger’s case, ‘willing the ball into the hole,’ great players conquer nerves, and negativity, ‘better than most’.
Last week’s Player’s Championship, yet again, provided the most exciting finish of any tournament on the PGA Tour schedule. Just what is it about the Player’s? Billed as an ‘unofficial Major’, the event, played at the TPC Sawgrass, has an enviable highlights-roll of down-to-the-wire finales. Certainly, the iconic island green on the par-3, 17th hole, plays a big role in the high drama that the dying stages of the tournament always seem to produce. It doesn’t matter if you’re leading, or not, whether you’re feeling confident, or struggling: an island green strikes fear into the heart—especially when the tournament is on the line. At the Player’s, the 17th hole serves as a barometer of both: a player’s states of mind, and play.
Rory Mc Ilroy showed just how much he’s matured as a player with his steely play over the final nine holes of the event last week. Rory, who famously had a meltdown at Augusta a few years back, showed ominous signs nerves when he hit an easy putt completely off-line on the 14th hole on the final day. The Ulsterman who will turn 30 in just over a month has definitively entered what he calls the ‘second phase’ of his career. He sealed the deal with gutsy birdies on the 15th and 16th holes, staying dry on the 17th hole, and closing out with a never-in-doubt par on the last.
That this year’s Player’s Championship will be remembered not for Rory’s stellar finish but, rather, Jim Furyk’s remarkable run on Sunday, is a fitting postscript for the veteran’s steely play on Sunday. Starting the final day way down the field, Furyk stitched together a birdie-par birdie finish for a stunning 67 to take the clubhouse lead; he ended up one shot shy of Rory’s 16-under total. Especially fascinating were the different strategies and shots employed by 48-year-old Furyk, versus players like Rory, or Jon Rahm who’s half Furyk’s age. Like Furyk’s bold precision play showed, you’ve got to play your game.
Tellingly, both players did not drop a shot on the 17th hole. Disaster of the week belonged to none other than Tiger Woods, who hit consecutive balls into the water for a four-over-par quadruple 7 on the hole that effectively ended his charge on the second day.
In a rare admission from a pro, Vijay Singh put it well when asked by Golf Digest magazine what he thought of that hole. “I think it’s a great hole. I mean, it’s not a difficult hole if you go out there on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday and just play it. You know, come tournament day, for some reason that green just shrinks. It only seems six foot square near the hole, and the rest of it feels like it’s all water. … I think it’s just atmosphere and I think we just get nervous on the 17th hole, simple as that,” said the ‘Big Fijian.’
Tiger’s score was the worst for any player in the field this year but still two shy of Angel Cabrera’s 9 in 2005, and the all-time record of a nine-over 12 by Bob Tway in 2005 is probably going to stand for all time.
For Rory, this win couldn’t have come at a better time. With the Masters Tournament right around the corner, he’s won against golf’s hardest field, on a course that puts very similar demands on a player as Augusta National. If he wins there, Rory would achieve a career grand slam as a 30-year-old. That’s
just astonishing.
-A golfer, Meraj Shah also writes about the game