Thought for the Day
Meanness doesn’t just happen overnight
So that’s the kind of season it’s going to be
Just over a week ago, when Charl Schwarzel shed four strokes over the last five holes to throw away the South African Open it was a surprise but not a shock. But when a week later Martin Kaymer blows a 10-stroke lead in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship, the tremors are considerable.
This is the man who supposedly doesn’t do emotion. He has won 11 times on the European Tour and on six of those occasions he was the leader after 54 holes. He has two majors to his name, the 2010 US PGA, which he won in a playoff, and last year’s US Open, in which he dominated a world-class field. He won by eight strokes, the type of supremacy that this, the toughest of all four majors, rarely yields.
But for real evidence of his unflappability we need to recall the 2012 Ryder Cup, in which Europe staged that most improbable of comebacks at Medinah. Going into the singles, Martin’s form was so poor that he had only played one fourball, and lost. And then, towards the end of a remarkable, almost unbelievable day of tension and European resurgence, he stood over a six-foot putt that he knew was to retain Samuel Ryder’s trophy. He subsequently said: ‘When I was standing behind the ball and then when I bent down, Bernhard’s miss crossed my mind for half a second. But it didn’t have any influence in a positive or negative way… If you stick to the facts it was the easiest putt you can have despite all the circumstances because it was uphill and an inside the right line. There is no easier putt. We have that putt millions of times and I had to try to forget about the Ryder Cup.’
So he considered, albeit briefly, the second most famous miss in Ryder Cup history, when compatriot Bernhard Langer failed to hole a six footer on the final green at Kiawah Island in 1991, yet still stepped up and drained his own effort.
So fast forward two-and-a-bit years to Abu Dhabi and after rounds of 64, 67 and 65 we settled back to watch a victory procession from the man for whom the words ‘cool’, ‘unflappable’ and ‘laidback’ had, it seemed, been invented. Even Rory McIlroy, the undisputed best player in the world, conceded that the apparently nonchalant German with the reputation of being one of the coolest front-runners in the game, could not be caught. Bookmakers rarely get it wrong but after five holes on Sunday, if you had wagered £1 on Kaymer not winning, you would have netted £500 by the time he walked off the 18th.
Admittedly he had a bit of bad luck on (not surprisingly for those with a superstitious bent), the 13th, when he had to take a penalty drop. But then he hit the most awful chip, flubbing it only half-way to the flag, and that seems to be when not only the wheels but the axle and half the suspension came off. Perhaps the American golfer Al Geiberger summed it up best when he said: ‘A great round of golf is a lot like a terrible round. You drift into a zone, and it is hard to get out of it.’
We amateurs are more than familiar with the sensation of one bad shot following another. We recognise that some days we abandon all hope of doing anything positive and our goal becomes a desire simply to limit the bleeding. But that’s why we’re amateurs.
Almost as big a shame as Kaymer’s collapse is the thought that the beneficiary, young Frenchman Gary Stal, will have some of the gloss taken off his victory by the fact that the story has become who lost and not who won. It does, however, mean that one cliché – that nobody remembers who comes second – will endure because Martin couldn’t even manage that; his last day 75 dropped him to third.
The rest of us just have to accept that when the most unemotional cool dude automaton in world golf folds like a cardboard tent in a gale, nothing can be trusted any more.
News you might have missed
Donald Trump plans to make Turnberry’s famous 9th hole, one of the most iconic par fours in the world (the one with the lighthouse in the background where the tee is built out over the sea), into a par three. The man has no shame.
Quote of the Week
Golf is the only sport I know of where people actually brag about how bad they are
Layne Flack