Mathew Goggin, Tasmania’s best-known touring pro, has a new passion project: drawing more golfers to his hometown of Hobart courtesy of two new world-class courses.
The fire has always burned brightly within Mathew Goggin. A self-confessed hard-to-please character on the golf course, he built a more-than-respectable playing career starting from what at the time felt like the relatively isolated outpost of Hobart. Astonishingly, given his overall record, he’s won only one professional tournament on the PGA Tour of Australasia – the 1998 Tour Championship – but far higher glory only just eluded him. A missed short putt in a playoff cost him the 2008 Australian Open before more pain would be felt the next July when, tied for the lead with only a few holes to play, Goggin saw the 138th Open Championship slip from his grasp.
These days, the 48-year-old – whose career-high world ranking was 48 – has pivoted by driving the much-vaunted Seven Mile Beach project on the eastern edge of his home city. With at least two 18-hole layouts set to open plus an enviable practice facility, it is poised to become the next great golf destination in not just Tasmania but all of Australia. Splitting his time between Hobart and his US base of Charlotte in North Carolina, Goggin is a man with his hands full in a different corner of golf but who hasn’t lost the desire to compete on tour.
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Australian Golf Digest: How much time are you spending in Hobart compared to Charlotte?
Mathew Goggin: I was down there for most of last June and July, and I go down probably every six weeks for a couple of weeks and then come back. Now we’re up and running, if I’m there for two weeks, after the first four or five days’ frenzied meetings, you get to the point where it’s like, OK, I’m just getting in the way here. I just let the experts do their thing because they’re working really hard. I’m not necessarily needed on-site, but I need to go down there to keep on top of things.
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Tell me how the idea originated. You’d known about the Seven Mile Beach land for a long time, correct?
I grew up playing nearby at Tasmania Golf Club and Royal Hobart, and through the late ’80s, early ’90s, there were always these rumours, like, “It’s going to be a golf course,” and it would come and go. There was this big development planned called the Island State Resort, which was [going to be] huge. It just took over the whole – we call it The Spit – but it was over the whole spit. That never happened.
Later, once I had my foundation, it was really when Clayts (Mike Clayton) was going to co-design Barnbougle Dunes, we were talking about it and I was always thinking, Why would anyone build a golf course up there? It doesn’t make any sense! There’s this perfect place right next to Hobart. You might want to be near the city… Little did I know how good Barnbougle was going to be.
When we were members at Royal Hobart, we would go down to this off-site takeaway store called The Oasis. The road you come in on before you turn left [towards Seven Mile Beach]? Well, if you go to the end of the road there’s a house, and that was The Oasis. It’s still a house, but there’s no takeaway shop there; it was there to service the park ranger and the beach – because that’s where you go to the beach – but you can imagine it’s wild that this place was there. They did a really good hamburger, and when you’re just kids and you don’t want to go upstairs and you don’t want to change your shoes [in the clubhouse], we’d jump in the car, we’d get a hamburger and come back. We’d mess around in the sand dunes, have a look, and just between ourselves we’d always talk about how, “Wow, wouldn’t it be cool if Royal Hobart was here?” Because Royal Hobart, you couldn’t see the water, the ground is really flat. It’s like, With all these sand dunes around, why would you build Royal Hobart where it is?
Fast-forward, I’ve got my foundation and I was trying to come up with an idea where, if we had somewhere we could train kids in all parts of the golf industry, we could send them on their way. Everyone who had a job there was going to be mentored. We might have 10 kids who had never had anything to do with a golf course, know nothing about it, won’t have had the greatest opportunities in their life, but we’re going to give them an opportunity.
There was Rosny Golf Club, which used to be 18 holes – it got cut back to nine holes – and then the guy who had run it ever since I could remember was retiring, so they were offering a 10-year lease. The guys who ran my foundation at the time said, “This could be perfect. We’ll take over the lease at Rosny Golf Club, we’ll redo the course.” We thought, Wouldn’t it be cool if you could do a really cool little golf course where it’d be fun to play, and then have the foundation run it? Anyway, we ended up not getting the lease. It went to the YMCA who ran the pool across the street, which was interesting in itself, but as it turned out the council always had plans to shut it.
I said to Mike, “Well, stuff it. We’re going to build that golf course at Seven Mile Beach.” I went down, had a look, and it just blew me away. Then I started doing as many public documents as I could, looking back through all the reasons, thinking there’s got to be a reason why [it can’t happen]. Zoning? No, it’s zoned passive recreation. It’s permissible, so you just have to go through council, you don’t even have to go through any public debate. There’s no zoning issues holding it back, there must be Aboriginal heritage. No, nothing. It’s been trashed from being farmland and a pine plantation for 100 years or more. There’s got to be some orchid or there’s got to be some geomorphic reason. No, nothing. There’s literally nothing down there – the pine trees killed all native vegetation and even the fauna hates it. The shorebirds have left, all the bandicoots, they’ve all gone, there’s nothing there anymore, so it was really a bit of a puzzle. Then it turned out there’s a huge mining lease on it and that was the main reason, because all the developments that had been applied for or talked about were in the [same space]. Which is interesting in that, when you look at where the sand mine is, there’s good golf land but it pales compared to the area to the east of it.
They hadn’t decided where the sand mine was going, so it was more a matter of timing. They’d made that decision in about 2008. When I was sniffing around, it was set in stone: “Here’s the extraction area, it’s for 25 years.” So then I went to the government and said, “Look, this is what we want to do…”
It was only possible because of Barnbougle Dunes, because I think if Barnbougle Dunes hadn’t been done, people would’ve said, “It’s crazy. Why do you want to do that?” Barnbougle Dunes really opened the government’s eyes to just what golf can do and what successful public golf can do.
From then on, I was able to get a non-exclusive development licence to pursue soil tests and a golf-course development. We pursued it and got the permits.
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Next, you needed investors… Was that easier than the bureaucratic red tape or more difficult?
Instead of just doing something simple, it became quite big and quite complex. It was a big development, but it all hinged on rezoning. We ended up not getting the rezoning through – more to do with the airport and its curfew than anything else – and that led to a lot of the investors who were more interested in doing [another] Barnbougle Dunes to say, “Well, we had a good try, we didn’t get the rezoning. Good effort, guys. Off you go.” But Mike and I were thinking, No, we won’t. We’ve got the golf course. Because while we were doing that process, we made sure we got the golf course through.
We had a permit for the golf course, we had a building design and everything was through; we were just in the process of getting a lease for that. When the investors decided that doing just a golf course wasn’t in their plans – and I was playing on tour, I was really busy – we had four years to start. So it became,
“OK, let’s try to get some new investors,” but I was really focusing on playing. You’re allowed another four-year extension, so four years came by and we talked to a few people. You sign these option agreements, and they go for 12 months and then they don’t do anything, and then you find someone else and for 12 months they don’t do anything. You start getting to the point where it’s, “Well, hang on a minute. We had plenty of time, now we don’t have any time.”
We were 18 months out and I knew there was a lot of stuff that had to happen before we could even start, because the bureaucracy is incredibly slow. It is painful how something you would imagine is quite simple – that would come across someone’s desk and just require their name and a signature to hand it over to the next person – can take literally four or five months. There’s meetings and you go back and forth, and there’s conversations, and then you get the signature on the piece of paper, and nothing material has changed. No material decisions, there’s been no clauses inserted, it’s just, “No, we’re just going to talk about this for five months before you actually get anywhere.”
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That must be so infuriating.
In a lot of respects, that’s how these things get jammed up, they just wait you out until… We’re a good example. Capital doesn’t wait, capital needs a return, capital can’t sit around for six years. It needs to be in and out, and that’s the reality. If it’s taking you years and years to get permits, people aren’t interested. They need something that’s ready to go so they can start seeing a return. That’s really the crippling part of trying to do anything in Tassie, so we were running up against that. One of the other guys who was still involved, we talked about it and said, “We have to make sure we get substantial commencement.”
Substantial commencement is a key part of the whole process, because once you have substantial commencement, the permit stands basically forever. You then have time to finish it off. But substantial commencement and material commencement are very opaque terms because the council can’t give you guidance. They can’t tell you, “This is substantial commencement.”
Then COVID hit, so I’m right in the middle of this and with my conversations, I knew that building the golf holes wasn’t even considered material commencement, because you could just let them grow over and disappear. It was like, “Well, what do I need to do?” Then we ran into this incredibly bureaucratic thing where we had an approved building, we had a permit for it, but Mineral Resources Tasmania put in an objection so we couldn’t get a start-works permit. We had the [overall] permit, we had the lease, we had the golf development and we go to start the golf development. To start the golf development, you now need a form that just says “start works” and someone to sign it – you can’t start until you get it. They refused, because somebody at Mineral Resources Tasmania had decided our building was too close to the sand mine.
Now, there’s no planning stopping it from being there, it’s not a sensitive-use, it can be right up against the boundary, there’s absolutely nothing [wrong], but they just decided that. We were saying, “Well, we’ve got to build the foundation, we’ve got to do something.” It’s not like you can make these things happen next week; it takes months of planning and engineering. At that point it’s just, “No, we won’t give you a start-works permit for anything until you address where the building is.” We’re like, “What do we do? You’re not letting us start so we can’t move it. What do I do?”
Fortunately for us, the entrance road formed part of the development. It wasn’t like there was a road already there and we were just piggybacking off that – it was a track. We then put in three kilometres’ worth of road 10 metres wide, table drains, cleared it, all ready for asphalt. It wasn’t free, either. It met the monetary substantial commencement and the material commencement [requirements]. Because it was on a set of plans, it was very easy for them to get substantial commencement. That was a huge relief because we finished the road that December and our permit was up in January.
There’s probably a book in there or a how-to guide.
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Absolutely. How did you arrive at how you want to run the course?
It was always going to be a public golf course. I love having an awesome golf course and having it for anyone who wants to play – I don’t really like the hedge gates [of a private club]. I understand as a member how nice it is to have your place, and you’re not going to be queuing on the tee for 30 minutes or take six hours to play a round, but I really love the idea of a Barnbougle but cheap, public-access golf. Being on public land and being on crown land, I also think that’s really important to have non-golfers enjoy.
There’s nothing better than sitting on the back of the green at the 18th at the Old Course. You just sit there and people are just wandering around, it’s 6 or 7 at night, people are free to roam, and it’s such a beautiful place to be – to just to sit there and be. People love being in nature, and sometimes just sitting out on the golf course when there’s no golf going on, it’s an amazing place. I’m hoping that Seven Mile Beach will be that for people as well, and they can come down and enjoy it when they’re done at the beach. Yeah, you can play awesome golf, but it’ll also be a nice environment just to walk through or ride your horse.
That was a no-brainer, and as far as setting green fees, you look at the success Richard [Sattler’s] having [at Barnbougle] and you’re like, “Well, I could just copy what Richard does – 140 bucks a round? OK, it’s 140 bucks a round.” That’s how I came to that conclusion. There was no, “Hmmm, maybe I’ll get into my Excel spreadsheet and work this out.” It was, “That seems to be a good number.”
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How about course architects, Clayton, DeVries & Pont. You first told Mike Clayton about the site years ago, so was it a logical fit that it would be his design company, or were there tenders to sift through?
No, I’m not a huge fan of: “Let’s do a design competition.” These are professionals who are experts, why waste their time? I know that’s part of the industry, but I feel like you pick someone who you can see doing a great job, and then you just trust your instinct and go with it, as opposed to having all these ideas. Obviously I’ve known Clayts a long time, so I asked him to come down and have a look.
There’s a bit of history there; it goes back to when my grandfather died and Mike said some very kind things about him on the range at The Vines just afterwards. I was pretty devastated and he said a lot of nice things, and he didn’t need to. He knew me through my mum and knew my grandfather, but he was a winner on the European Tour [and I was] not someone to worry about – some 20-year-old kid who’d just turned pro. Through my playing career he’d always been supportive in the way Clayts is.
I had never met Mike DeVries, but I’d obviously been to Cape Wickham and was impressed with that, but I hadn’t seen any of his work in Michigan. I was familiar with it and heard people talk about it, but the big appeal there was that Mike is on the tools. He still loves being on the ’dozer and he still loves shaping. He’s been down there for 12 months, so there’s been a real commitment on his side. He said, “If a golf course has a $100,000 budget, we do what we can. I’m not here to do a $20, $30, $40 million golf course; I’m used to working on projects that have tight budgets.” That was really the ethos that was important with Barnbougle Dunes – it wasn’t lavish. They didn’t waste money. I really like everything about Richard’s approach and how he built that golf course, so I’ve tried to emulate it in a lot of ways.
When Mike did his routing, we talked about it and we spent a week looking around, and obviously Clayts and I had different versions of the routings and holes that we liked and the things we’d like to see, and then we didn’t tell DeVries anything. We were very quiet. We just let him do his thing, and after five days he’d come up with the routing.
It was much more condensed, it had a really good switchback in the middle, a loop that changed the orientation of the holes along the beach, which I think is important – to be able to have every hole going on that linear along the beach. To be able to switch the directions condensed the site, too. Comparing the two is probably not fair either way, but it took up probably half the area of the original one that Clayts and co. had done six years earlier.
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What’s the likely timeline for the sister course, Five Mile Beach?
You’ve heard the battle it is to get one course up. It’s important that everyone has now seen the first course and what we’re doing, because I think it makes it real – it’s not just something on a piece of paper where it’s like, “Well, this is all pie in the sky and they’ll never do it.” Now I can take members of the public or the government or local councils and say, “Look, this is it,” and then they get it. You can’t get it sitting in an office.
You have to go through that process, but Clarence City Council are pretty good now – they have these statutory limitations… They have to hear it within a certain amount of time, because these things would drag on and not get in front of council. Once they get going, it might be 28 days they have to put it on the agenda. So I’m hoping by April/May we’ll have some good news.
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The space on that peninsula of land suggests there’s room for four or five courses. Is that a possibility?
Clayts is always saying, “Oh, it’s three, four courses, five courses.” I think it depends on if there was a business case and a social case for it. Possibly there’s room for at least another short-course experience, or I would eventually like to see all those pine trees gone and that whole place revegetated and let natural vegetation take over. Under our lease we have a lot more land, and a lot of it is because Mike’s condensed the routing. It opened the possibility of a course right next to it on the beach.
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Peek ahead five years – what’s the ultimate scenario for the project?
Thirty-six holes, some villa accommodation and a really good standalone restaurant. You want to have a reason for people to come from Hobart and eat there – that would be really cool. You can cater for golfers during the day, but then during the winter you stop playing at 4 o’clock, so it’d be awesome if there were some really cool food options there. If you could do Barnbougle in the south, I’d be really happy.
Beyond that, if there were other golf experiences, plus a really nice trail network, revegetation, all the pine trees removed. A lot of that revegetation and erosion mitigation on Five Mile is starting to kick in and that’s starting to be a really nice environment. That showcases the positive effect golf courses can have, versus the uninformed [opinions] most people have.
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It’s such an education process, isn’t it? Explaining why ripping out trees can actually be good for a site. Because it doesn’t look that way to the average person, does it?
No. I mean, it’s a no-brainer down there because they were an introduced weed, radiata pines. They’re a production plant for framing houses; there’s no reason to plant them apart from that. They served their purpose; they had pine plantations down there for 40 years and it’s time for that area to be returned to what it was.
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That’s probably a good moment to change tack a little. What advantages and disadvantages did you encounter as an up-and-coming golfer in Tasmania, compared to somebody on the mainland?
No advantages, all disadvantages. There was no coaching, no golf courses, no place to practise, no access to good information. The advantages I had were purely to me, and that was that I had a mother who was an amazing golfer, I had a family who were all good footballers and understood what it took to be good at sport – the work ethic required. I have a family that love golf, so I was always able to go down and play golf; they would always take me to golf. It wasn’t: “Find your own way down there,” If I was 14, 15 and needed a ride after school, I got a ride. I got there, I practised ’til dark and got taken home.
Peter Toogood was a member at my club, one of the great Australian amateurs, a fantastic mentor and very giving of his time. He saw I had a little bit of ability, and that was that. I was just lucky enough that Ross [Herbert] was setting up the Australian Institute of Sport [golf program], and I went to a Rothman’s camp with a few other players, and that’s what put me in front of Ross and that’s what got me in the AIS. Then I wasn’t at a disadvantage. I had a bit of an advantage over kids who weren’t there – or I had an advantage over the type of kids who might not take advantage of that opportunity or take it seriously.
I was able to play great golf courses whenever I wanted to, I could practise as hard as I wanted, hit as many range balls as I wanted, whatever. It was all just there. I took advantage of that, but that has probably gotten worse, to be honest – but that’s the inspiration in a lot of the things around Seven Mile Beach and the practice facility there. It’s like, Where would I have just loved to have been all day as a kid? That’s why we’re working really hard to say: if you’re under 18 and you want to become an elite-level player and practise all day, just come down. We’ll look after you.
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Was there any pressure of expectation given how successful your mum, Lindy, had been in the amateur ranks?
No, because she was an amateur. To a fault, I’ve been way too hard on myself and the expectations I’ve put on myself are way higher than anyone else. I know it’s a bit of a cliché, but that’s often because it’s the truth, and that was me to a T. I had way bigger aspirations than just winning the Tassie Amateur.
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What are the strongest misconceptions the rest of Australia has about Tasmania?
That the weather is bad. It’s dry and the weather is pretty amazing. There are not too many days you can’t play golf. Yeah, there are some crap days, but I think we just got discovered.
Growing up there was a lot of: “Oh, backwards, two-headed Tasmanian,” and all that sort of stuff. You had this real self-doubt when you went to the mainland – like, “They’re better than us because they’re from Victoria,” which makes no sense at all. Then you get over there and you start playing and you beat some of them, and then by the end of the week it’s like, “OK, they’re not actually better than us. If you’re good, you’re good.” That still exists for a lot of it; all the kids I see or talk to, they have that same sort of feeling, as Tasmania is a little lacking in talent – just because we don’t have the sheer volume. It’s just a percentage game.
Since the GFC, there’s been a boom in tourism and a sort of ‘MONA-fication’, if you like, where all the promises we made about offering top-class food, top-class experiences and boutique hotels… We’d say that, but then people would get off a ship or they’d come down and it wasn’t there. The “Taste of Tasmania” used to be hilariously bad. It was: how many different fish and chip shops can have a booth? It was a great concept, but it was nothing compared to what it is now. I really think MONA (the Museum of Old and New Art) brought people down who had an expectation that we weren’t meeting, and I think it drove locals or inspired locals to meet those expectations.
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Where’s your playing career sitting? You turn 50 in June next year…
I want to keep playing. I feel like I lost quite a few years. I was lucky when I didn’t have an injury, and then when I did, I had two years of injury and divorce, and it all just fell apart mentally. That was pretty difficult, and you feel like you had three or four years just stolen from you, where you’re still young enough but obviously physically not in great shape. I feel like I lost those years from in the middle where I could’ve done something with them. But because I haven’t played many tournaments, I’m really excited to go and play tournaments. I’m not getting to the stage where I’m burnt out, I’m sick of missing my card. I still have status, I’m still playing 10 tournaments, but I’m not playing any good.
I feel pretty excited to try to play again. I want to see what level I can get to and see whether I can play some senior golf, or even play the Vic Open and try to play as many Australian tour events, some of the smaller ones. Because you can’t not play and expect to turn up and be the same guy, as [the rest of the players on tour are] just as talented as they were 20 years ago, and they’re playing 30 events a year and you’re playing one or two. Like, you’re having a bit of a laugh. I want to get back, try to play as many times as I can. I’m healthy now and don’t have any wrist injuries, don’t have any back issues, so that’s all positive. It’s just getting the opportunity to play and getting back at it, really.
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You’ve won nine times professionally plus the Australian Amateur. How do you assess your playing career?
I look back and just see a lot of missed opportunities. You don’t really reflect on it and think, Oh, I’m content, I feel good about that. I don’t think anybody does. It’s very easy to fall into that trap of when you look back and you’re wondering, Was it just a big waste of time, because I didn’t achieve what I wanted to achieve? Then you have to think of where you came from and who came before and who came after, and no one’s come close. Obviously you’re not in a breeding ground for elite professional golfers, and there’s a lot of luck involved.
It can just come down to moments, thoughts, a decision here can change the trajectory of your whole career. So certainly I was proud to be a top-50 player in the world and play on tour, but I still feel like there were a lot of opportunities that didn’t go my way, and opportunities I didn’t take advantage of.
I do think about it. There are definitely way more successful versions of it if you run the simulation 100 times. There are worse versions and better versions.
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Five of your pro wins came on what is now called the Korn Ferry Tour in the US (tied for seventh all-time). How hard is life on that circuit compared to the PGA Tour?
Ten times harder because you make a tenth of the money [laughs]. Or more now. Fifty times harder?
It’s funny – to begin with when I first came over, it was 1999, 2000 and you didn’t play for much money, but it was cheap to play. You could drive every week, they had 30 events and it was enough to where you could make a bit of money as opposed to the version it was, say, five or six years ago or 10 years ago, which was probably the worst version of it, where they had the bare minimum number of tournaments. I think they had 20 under their contract and they had four of these playoff events. You played in Mexico, Panama, two in Colombia, Brazil, Chile and two in Canada. So you played about eight tournaments outside the US, it’s not cheap travel and hardly anyone’s making any money.
That was hard work, and I was lucky enough that when I was, say, in 2011 or ’12 when I went back on the tour, I’d just come off five years on tour, and I go back out and I get my [PGA Tour] card straight away. But if I’m some kid turning pro in 2012, and I go down and play five international tournaments and I’m spending two or three grand a week, I make a couple of cuts and get a couple of thousand dollars, and now I’m starting with a $12,000 credit card hit by the time I get back… You see good players disappear. There’s so much more involved, and talent’s the entry fee. There are tonnes of good players, but there are so many things that go into whether guys have a successful career that have nothing to do with their ability to play golf. And it’s just copping that. Then you don’t have the money, and you’ve got to quit for a while to go and get a job.
The steps they’ve taken recently… all praise Phil Mickelson. He’s the reason. Twenty years before that it was Tiger, and 20 years further on it’s all praise Phil Mickelson, because there’s a realisation that if you’re going to force people to play that tour, and it’s the only way you get on the PGA Tour, you can’t have guys not able to afford to pay a caddie. You can’t have caddies not turning up to a tournament in San Francisco because they’re just losing money.
It’s nice to see the reinvestment. They’ve always tried to say, “It’s the second-best tour in the world, and you get all these world ranking points,” but it’s laughable the way they’ve treated the guys. Where it is really laughable is the support. You can’t caddie [on the Korn Ferry Tour]. The caddies, half of them were homeless because you have to be employed to have a house, and the caddies had no health insurance, no nothing. It was disgusting.
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That’s a great insight. I didn’t have a LIV Golf question for you, but I guess you’ve already answered which side of the fence you sit on?
No, it’s not about being on a side of the fence; I just think some of the obvious things that you just couldn’t bring up got brought up. Stuff like: I played 300-something tour events. Half of them I’m there Monday to Friday. I’m doing sponsor commitments, I’m doing a pro-am, and then at the end of the week I’m going into my pocket for $4,000 or $5,000, just for the privilege to be out there. Yet that week I worked for the tour. There’s no other sport in the world that does that.
It was nice that those sorts of things came to light. I don’t necessarily agree with all the things the tour has done – the PIP is just laughable – but small wins, you’re going to take them. I guess because I was never on that side of it, I have a better appreciation of the little guy, because I spent a lot of time being the little guy.
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Which stung more: your playoff loss at the 2008 Australian Open or the 2009 Open Championship at Turnberry where you were tied for the lead with only a few holes to play?
Turnberry, obviously, but they’re both right up there. The worst thing about Turnberry is that I wake up sometimes and I’ve dreamt that I won, and I actually feel like I’ve won. Then you realise that didn’t happen and it’s just the most deflating thing, because you’re a Major champion forever. It’s just next level, isn’t it?
I was feeling good during the [final] day, I didn’t feel overwhelmed. Starting off it was pretty stressful, but then once I relaxed and got into the round I felt really comfortable, and that’s just where – as I said – it’s a few moments here and there and it changes your life, and that was one of those circumstances.
Everything about that week was really good. We had a perfect little house to rent. I was staying with my manager and my caddie and a couple of other guys. We just had a great week, all week. I’d played in a few Majors and I was starting to play well and had a lot more confidence. I was trying to put those puzzle pieces together. How do you learn to relax in a big tournament? How do you relax and just play? That was the big focus.
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You shot 66 in the first round, which put you right in the mix. You spent four days hovering around the lead.
Yeah, I don’t think I was ever any more than one behind. Friday was brutal – one of those squalls came in and it was just a matter of survival and I was off late – and Saturday I played really well. I think [Tom] Watson might have holed one at the last to take the lead, so I started the last day one back.
The interesting thing about that was, you’re super-nervous, you’re going through all your routines at the range. It’s just another round, but the nervous energy is obviously at 100, but there’s always a point – no matter how nervous you get – where you hope it’s just going to become golf again. I played well through until the bogeys I made late. I didn’t feel like I did much wrong. You have those moments when you feel really in control of yourself, where all of a sudden, your moment’s not too big and you feel in control of the tournament. Not a, You’re going to win, but you just feel in control of your emotions and how you’re playing.
It wasn’t until the 18th tee where I actually thought, Well you’re not going to win this. Then you become a bit of a spectator. All day playing with Tom, you’re competitive, you’re just playing another round. You don’t think of him as anything extra, you’re not looking at his age.
For me, it was a massive disappointment and I’m sure that for Watson it was a huge disappointment as well. When you talk about it, everyone is all, “That must have been amazing.” Well, yeah, but it’s also something you think about for the rest of your life. If that last 30 minutes had been any different for me, my life would have changed. It has a bittersweet memory.
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Was the 2008 Memorial Tournament your best chance to win on the PGA Tour? (Goggin led by three after 54 holes, but shot 74 to share second.)
That was a good chance. There was a tournament at Frys, too, where I birdied the last four holes to be just behind the two guys finishing. I was tied for the lead with one and one behind the other guy, and it had come to the last. One guy’s made a meal of the hole and he’s got a 15-footer for par, and the other guy’s got a 20-footer for birdie, and I’m standing there going, OK, playoff. Here we go. But he made the putt.
The other one was the 2006 Western Open when I played in the last group. I came to the last hole, I was one behind Trevor Immelman and in the middle of the fairway. He was on the front-right corner of the green, and you’d three-putt his putt more than 50 percent of the time. And he made it.
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How does the next chapter in the Mathew Goggin story read?
I don’t know. Get through these golf-course developments, and then I’m pretty happy as far as that stuff goes. It’s been a very cool experience, and if they’re as good as I hope they’re going to be, to have helped bring potentially two more Top 100 public golf courses for everyone to enjoy in Australia is a lot more lasting than winning some Champions Tour events.
