Australian cricket superstar Travis Head on the art of making and breaking 100, and being completely bowled over by LIV Golf Adelaide crowds.
I always grew up swinging golf clubs. Probably the first thing I had as a kid was a golf club, even before a cricket bat. As all little kids do, you smack the ball – it’s a stationary thing – so you learn it pretty quickly. I remember smacking golf balls around and sneaking on golf courses and playing and mucking around with my mates growing up.
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We used to play at Sandy Creek Golf Course a fair bit, growing up in Gawler. It was something, as a group, all of us used to do. Then, of course, getting into the profession that I’m in lends itself to playing a fair bit in our time off. When I was first contracted and playing in my earlier years, we had a fair bit of time off and, being single at the time, I found myself with some downtime. So a few of us joined up at a golf course and played a fair bit. Golf is a great way to stay active and keep busy.
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I’ve never had a proper golf lesson. I’ve received little playing lessons along the way, but I’ve never taken a lesson from a PGA pro. I’ve been fortunate to play with some pretty cool people along the way that have given me a few tips here and there, but I’ve never worried too much about my golf game, to be honest. I think I got to a 7 or 8-handicap at one stage when I was playing heaps. But since then, I’ve sat around the 12 mark for a while, and I barely play to that. I use golf more as an outlet, socially. I’m more than happy to roll around with half a set of clubs and just take the odds or evens around and just wear a little GPS watch and not worry too much about where it’s going or what it’s doing.
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What’s better: making a hundred or breaking 100? I’d have to say making 100, even though breaking 100 on the course is nice – I still find it tough to do sometimes! For me, though, cricket’s magical milestone is hard to beat. But I’d rather take more than 100 shots over 18 holes and still knock off my mate if I can – and ‘chirp’ him.
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There are some good golfers among the Australian Test team. All the ‘quicks’ are pretty good. Mitchell Starc is very good. Josh Hazlewood rates his work. The skipper Pat Cummins is surprisingly very good. He’s probably the biggest improver of late. The coaching staff – guys like Andrew McDonald and Dan Vettori – are very, very keen golfers and are exceptionally good and exceptionally fast as well, which is what we like. So, it’s always fun playing with those blokes. I think pretty much everyone bar Alex Carey and Cameron Green play a lot.
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I’m a big fan of LIV Golf and love that is has found a place in my home city of Adelaide. I think it’s a great concept, but I’ll be on tour overseas and won’t be around for this year’s event so I’m a bit flat about that. When you talk about golf in Australia now, you talk about LIV Golf, and then you coincide that with Adelaide, so I think they’ve done an exceptional job to get it to where it is so quickly. I think what Adelaide brings around that time of the year and what it offers off the course has played no small role in that. I was lucky enough to be at the first one and it was just an incredible few days of entertainment.
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There’s no hiding on the tee, regardless of how big a crowd you’ve played in front of before as a professional sportsperson. I remember playing in the first LIV Golf Adelaide pro-am and I couldn’t get the ball off the ground for about six holes in a row. I wasn’t even going to play because I had just got married a few days beforehand and had put the golf clubs away in readiness for our honeymoon before, at last minute, I decided to stay in Adelaide and jump back into it. I had a few mates come and watch me and it was just a very daunting experience, especially when Ian Poulter joined us on the 10th tee. It was officially the most nervous experience of my life. Rocking up on the 10th tee with another couple of thousand watching us wasn’t ideal.
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I didn’t know how to take “Poults” at first. I had just finished playing with Anirban Lahiri for the first nine holes and he was loving talking cricket, being a cricket-loving Indian. I still contact him a fair bit. He and Aussie Wade Ormsby share messages with me, and we go back and forth on golf and cricket. They’ve linked me up with some amazing people overseas. So, talking cricket with Anirban got us into the swing of things on that first morning, and when we got to the 10th tee we were joined by Poulter. I had no idea what his interests were, but I knew he’d played Royal Adelaide a few days before, so I broke the ice with that – being lucky enough to be a member there myself. Turns out he’s a motorsport fan and we had a few similarities. I could relax a bit more. I was just about to go to London, so we talked a bit about travel and London and a bit of motorsport for him and he asked me a bit about cricket. He’s not big on his cricket, which was actually great as it took my mind off it.
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I’ll take 100,000 on the MCG every day of the week over a crowd around the tee. I don’t find a packed MCG on Boxing Day intimidating at all. But that LIV Golf pro-am – I’m really glad I did it, but I don’t know how many more I’ve got left in me.
