Sometimes the penny drops when you aren’t expecting it.
Still coming to terms with the chronic back injury curtailing my already limited golf schedule, a rare trip away in May to host the King of Barnbougle tournament provided me with my greatest-ever playing lesson.
Ever since my father handed me a golf club for the very first time, I’ve been guilty of trying to hit the cover off the ball. I was like that when I played off 30 and I didn’t change a thing off scratch. Over the ensuing decades, my grip-it-and-rip-it mindset never wained. Unfortunately, my body now has. Inflammation and stress fractures of the lower spine have rendered my swing speed a health hazard, and I can no longer move the club like I want to, not without crippling consequences. Time waits for no man, as they say.
The problem was I had committed to playing the entire weekend in Tasmania with our King of Barnbougle competition winner Fred McNulty, a 68-year-old 6-marker who, incidentally, looked and swung just like Tom Watson. In a desperate bid to see out the three-day event and not let “Mr Watson” down, I decided to swing slow and steady – at 70 percent of my usual output, to be exact. I figured it would complement my warchest of anti-inflammatories and help fight the Bass Strait breezes. Low and behold, I hit more fairways that weekend than I have for entire seasons prior. To my complete shock, I wasn’t giving up significant distance by backing off, either. Crucially, my back was holding up to the rigours of my newfound swing.
“Why haven’t you always been swinging like this?” Fred asked.
I didn’t have an answer. I mean, it wasn’t rocket science. Jack Nicklaus said as much about Rory McIIroy while commentating at this year’s Memorial Tournament. After Rory made a final-round bogey with a lob wedge in hand from about 100 metres, Nicklaus quipped: “Maybe he needs to throttle back. He hits it so hard.”
For the entire weekend, as I addressed the ball, Fred would gently remind me: “Remember, partner… 70 percent.” And sure enough, another fairway hit, another green in regulation (we won’t talk about the putting!).
I honestly can’t recall playing a more enjoyable weekend of golf. It was a lightbulb moment and got me thinking about what our greatest-ever players would do today with the benefit of hindsight. So, I reached out to a few.
“My lightbulb moment was when I made my putting stroke a mini golf swing,” recalls former world No.1 Greg Norman, who won his second Open Championship 30 years ago this month. “My stroke opens on the takeaway, comes back to square at impact or closing. It’s very simple and repeats throughout every swing you make – drive, iron, chip and putt.” Makes sense.
Jan Stephenson, who right now is facing her toughest challenge ever [see page 66], came to a career-defining realisation many moons ago.
“My lightbulb moment was when I decided to no longer press, but play more defensively,” Stephenson recalls. “I went for it too much, assuming my opponents wouldn’t stumble. Had I stayed patient and not gone for it all the time, I would have won many more tournaments.”
Two-time PGA Tour winner Brett Ogle, as only he can do, took a lighter approach to his eureka moment. “Hitting a tree and fracturing my kneecap on the 71st hole of the 1990 Australian Open,” he laughs. “It taught me to not try to hit so close to the f—ing tree in front but to look high from then on! They’re supposedly 90 percent air up high, right?”
All jokes aside, that’s the beauty of this great game, right? It’s never too late to learn from your mistakes. Because, as sure as your backside faces south, you’re going to keep making them.
As the great Ben Hogan preached, “This is a game of misses. The guy who misses the best is going to win.”
Forget about trophies – I’m winning by missing better than I ever have.
Have you had a lightbulb moment on the golf course? Share your key learnings with me at [email protected]
