Thought for the Day
Always remember that you’re unique. Just like everyone else
Robotic perfection
If you should ever see Martin Kaymer naked from the waist up and inspect the small of his back, you will find a tiny flap of synthetic skin. Lift it and the micro-processors that control this golfing automaton will be revealed. At least that’s my belief because I can think of no other explanation for this golfing cyborg’s remarkable performances of late. Just a month ago he won his first major, an enormous milestone in the career of any golfer and such is its significance that almost all debut winners go into hibernation for several months, or even years, after that breakthrough. If you want proof I offer the names of Trevor Immelman and Zach Johnson (The Masters), Lucas Glover and Michael Campbell (US Open), Ben Curtis, Todd Hamilton and Stewart Cink (The Open) and Rich Beem, Shaun Micheel and YE Yang (US PGA). For all of them the shock of achieving the ambition usually reserved for the select few who stand above all others of their generation is so great that their careers go into temporary, and often terminal, decline and that one moment of triumph becomes a landmark by which they are forever judged, and usually found to be wanting. It is only the truly exceptional who win their debut major and then carry on winning and yet this is what Kaymer has done. He took two weeks off after lifting the Sam Wannamaker trophy and on his return to competition promptly won again, at the KLM Open. And during that apparent stroll to victory, if you watched him hole a putt on the last day, from whatever distance, you would have no idea if it was for birdie, bogey or par. Only three years ago, in 2007, Kaymer was the European Tour’s rookie of the year. The following season, in his very first event of 2008, he scored his maiden win, at the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship. He followed that with another victory, this time at the BMW International Open and sealed a place in the world’s top-50. In 2009 he won back-to-back tournaments before breaking some toes in a go-karting accident which ensured a two-month break but this year he won the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship again, took that US PGA title and is now comfortably and rightly settled as number five in the world. Did I mention that he’s only 25-years-old?
And all of this has been achieved while wearing the facial expression of a man completing his income tax returns. Kaymer’s predecessor is Bernhard Langer, the only other German to win a major, and although Bernhard has a great poker face he also has a sly humour that’s never too far from the surface. Martin looks as if he doesn’t know what sentiment or sensation is, and that for him an emotional outburst would consist of a wry smile, or slightly raised eyebrow.
We can only hope that whoever built him, somewhere in a laboratory deep in the Black Forest, doesn’t let his batteries run down.
Pucker up
Johnny Miller, one of my favourite golfers of all time, once said that every golf course should have a hole that puckers your rear end. I believe that principle should be extended to the idea that every golf season should have a few tournaments that pucker your rear end – thankfully we do, and we’re now at rear end pucker time. The Majors have all been decided (and isn’t it depressing that we have to wait seven months until the next one?) and the two biggest Tours in the world are reaching their respective conclusions. It is only right and natural, therefore that most eyes turn towards the top of the respective leaderboards to see who is going to finish the year with bragging rights but my attention tends to focus on the other end of the money list, where the golfers fighting desperately to keep their respective cards are engaged in a no-holds barred, knock ‘em down and stamp all over their bleeding bodies fight for survival. It’s like watching one of those natural world documentaries where a couple of strong lionesses leap on the back of a wildebeest and invite it to supper. The participants of these casually cruel season finales are all desperate, of course, to avoid the horrors of the Marquis De Sade inspired, Tour implemented torture chamber known as the qualifying school.
Some simply cannot cope with the knowledge that what they do over the next few weeks will not only decide their immediate future but may well influence the rest of their professional lives. Some will lose their automatic Tour playing privileges and perhaps never get them back, while others will retain their playing rights and use the experience to kick on to greater success. Congratulations, then to Jose Manuel Lara, who shot a final round 64 to get into a playoff with David Lynn for the Austrian Open, which included holing a 20-footer on the final green with more break in it than the Shane Warne delivery that famously bowled Mike Gatting all those years ago. He rounded it off with a rock-solid par on the first extra hole for his first victory in four years, and only his second ever. The inspiration for his win came from a fourth place at last week’s KLM Open, and it came not a moment too soon, after nine consecutive missed cuts.
Way to go Jose Manuel.
Quote of the Week
If profanity had an influence on the flight of the ball, the game of golf would be played far better than it is.
Horace G Hutchinson