By Jaime Diaz
In celebration of Golf Digest’s 70th anniversary, we’re revisiting the best literature and journalism we’ve ever published. Each entry includes an introduction that celebrates the author or puts in context the story. 

Tiger Woods’ first appearance in Golf Digest came in 1981, when the phenom was 5 years old, tall as a ball washer and weighed 44 pounds. He was said to be shooting in the 90s on a regulation course and had appeared on network television with Bob Hope. Tiger’s father was described as a retired Army colonel, a McDonnell Douglas contracts administrator and a 3-handicap. “The kid’s not exceptional,” his pro, Rudy Duran, was quoted as saying. “He’s way beyond that.”

Our next encounter was in 1987, when Tiger was 11 and entered the magazine’s first Armchair Architect contest with a drawing of his dream hole—a U-shape, double-dogleg par 5 with an island tee and island green. He didn’t win the contest, but we eventually noticed him racking up junior victories, ranked him America’s third-best junior amateur of 1990, and dispatched senior writer Jaime Diaz to profile Tiger at age 14 in late 1990 for the March 1991 issue (below). His first appearance on a cover of Golf Digest was in November 1994 as a model for an instruction story on power. His second cover was two years later when he turned pro, with the headline, “Is This Kid Superman?” Frank Hannigan writing inside tried to temper the growing fervor: “Tiger Woods is a joy to watch, and he may very well achieve his goal of becoming the best player in the world. But there is a need for perspective. There are a lot of missed putts between desire and fruition.”

Before we get ahead of ourselves, which is hard not to do with Tiger Woods, return with us now to yesterday, when the young man was only 14 and the dream was still new. —Jerry Tarde

For someone named Tiger, the kid didn’t seem very predatory. Seventeen holes with his dad and a sportswriter had produced no blood—in fact, not even a bet. The only thing remotely competitive was the annoying way the old man kept jingling change when the kid got ready to putt.

But Eldrick (Tiger) Woods is used to winning. Finally, on the 18th tee of Coto de Caza, an arduous Southern California test, he can’t resist.

“Play you for some ABC gum,” Tiger says to the sportswriter, who, extremely thankful that his only losses to this point have been four golf balls, vacantly accepts.

Woods rhythmically settles his lithe, 5-foot-11, 138-pound frame over his ball, and with a fluid action that mixes some Davis Love III power with a smooth dollop of Al Geiberger tempo, belts a 270-yard drive down the middle. He follows with a 9-iron to 10 feet and, naturally, makes the putt.

“Where do I find ABC gum?” asks the loser.

“In your mouth,” says Woods, rolling his eyes at the lameness of his victim. “Already Been Chewed.”

As Woods cackles at the schoolboy joke, the sportswriter remembers what he has kept forgetting all afternoon. The supremely talented golfer who has been busting huge 1-irons and sucking back approach shots all day is only 14 years old.

Very simply, Tiger (Please Don’t Call Me Eldrick) Woods of Cypress, Calif., is one of the most precocious lights on the American golf scene. The prodigy has accomplished more at his age than Bobby Jones, Jack Nicklaus and Lanny Wadkins did as wunderkinder, and even more than junior stars like Eddie Pearce and Tracy Phillips, who reached their peaks in high school before fading from the arena. If Woods can maintain the rate of his rise—and “if” must always be emphasized when projecting golfing genius—he could develop into one of the game’s finer players.

“That’s what I want,” Woods says. “I want to be the next dominant player. I want to go to college, turn pro and tear it up on the tour. I want to win more majors than anybody ever has.”

“The game has never seemed hard,” says Woods, who speaks with an unaffected openness about his prowess. “I don’t know why, but I’ve always been good.”

Remarkable words, but Woods has a remarkable history. The son of a black father and Thai mother, he has been a phenomenon since the age of 3, when he shot 48 for nine holes on the regulation-length Navy Golf Club near his home. His prowess got him on “The Mike Douglas Show,” where, still wearing training pants, he competed with Bob Hope in a putting contest. At age 5, Tiger was featured on the TV show, “That’s Incredible!” and was the subject of an article in this magazine (November 1981). At 8, he was the club champion on the 2,156-yard, nine-hole Heartwell Golf Park. In 1981, he won the first of five Optimist Junior World age-group championships. By the time he was 13, he has made five holes-in-one and played an exhibition with Sam Snead.

“The game has never seemed hard,” says Woods, who speaks with an unaffected openness about his prowess. “I don’t know why, but I’ve always been good.”

And getting better. Last year, in the midst of a growth spurt that saw him sprout nearly seven inches and gain 25 pounds, Woods had perhaps the most impressive year a 14-year-old has had since Bobby Jones won the Georgia State Amateur and went to the third round of the U.S. Amateur.

In a three-week period last July, Woods won a local city junior championship, took the 13-14-year-old division title in the World Junior, then grabbed the Big I Insurance Classic in Fort Worth.

Woods’ bid to become the youngest player, and first black, ever to win the USGA Junior Championship fell short when he lost in the semifinals at Lake Merced Country Club in San Francisco. And the week after the Big I, he finished second at the United Van Lines PGA Junior Championship at PGA National. The victor there with a 63 in the last round was that other youthful phenomenon making a big noise, 17-year-old Chris Couch, possibly the youngest player ever to qualify for a PGA Tour event.

Woods tried to get his revenge on his nemesis at the year-ending Orange Bowl in Coral Gables, Fla., Couch’s home turf. Woods was two shots back going into the final round. But on Dec. 30, his 15th birthday, he blew up with a 78 to fall to sixth place, and Couch won. The hotly contested battle for consensus junior player of the year also went to Couch, who moves out of the junior class on his 18thbirthday in 1991, when he begins classes at the University of Florida.

“It was a learning experience,” says Tiger’s father, Earl Woods, who has developed his own brand of “tough love” to help nurture his son’s talents. “We had a debriefing. This is what I learned in Vietnam—you have a debriefing after a battle. He learned that he can’t win everything, even though he may want to. Right now it’s important for him to enjoy. When he’s 17, I fully expect him to win everything. But not now.”

It’s Earl Woods’ passion to manage a balance between Tiger’s enjoyment of the game and his desire to win. A former contracts administrator for McDonnell Douglas, the elder Woods is a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army. In talking about his son, he usually effects the role of pacifist in the warfare of the fairways.

“I’m just there to make sure he keeps things in perspective,” Earl says as he sits in the living room of his suburban home. “Tiger has such a high competitive drive to win and to score, it’s a constant fight for me to get him to go out and just have fun playing a round of golf.”

To prevent the burnout that can attack golf prodigies, Earl and his wife, Kultida, have made sure their son gives as much attention to academics as to golf. Tiger, now a freshman at Western High School, has kept up a 3.5 grade average. He played in a limited schedule of about 30 tournaments in 1990.

Then again, competition is in Tiger Woods’ blood, in large part because of his father. Earl Woods was the first black to play baseball in the Big Eight Conference, at Kansas State. After a shoulder injury, he chose the military over professional baseball. He was drawn to the front lines, and in Vietnam he befriended a Vietnamese soldier nicknamed Tiger.

“That guy was so brave, such a bitch in the field, I decided my next son’s nickname would be Tiger,” Earl says.

That son took to golf with big-game ferocity before he was a year old. At 6 months, Tiger would sit in a high chair and watch his 3-handicap dad hit balls into a net in the garage. At 11 months, he was imitating his father by hitting a tennis ball down the hall with a vacuum-cleaner hose.

It wasn’t long before his father was taking Tiger along on 18-hole rounds at the Navy Club. By age 4, Tiger was carrying his own bag at Heartwell.

“My view is, God gave me a gift, and he trusted me to take care of it,” Earl says.

That means ensuring that his son can take care of himself. He sadly recounts the story of Tiger’s first day of school, where, as the only black student, he was tied to a tree and called names by a group of older children. His son has also felt the specter of racism at some of the country clubs where junior tournaments have been played.

“You can feel it—I call it The Look,” Tiger says. “It makes you uncomfortable, like someone is saying something without saying it. It makes me want to play even better. That’s the way I am. Little things like that motivate me.”

“This isn’t a very nice world sometimes,” Earl says. “I’ve used psychological techniques, things I learned in prisoner interrogations, to toughen Tiger up. It’s to prepare him, not to use as an offensive tactic. I’m not trying to create a little monster.”

On the golf course, the techniques take the form of Earl placing his shadow in his son’s putting line, coughing in the middle of his stroke, or talking annoyingly about the out-of-bounds on the left.

“I tell Tiger, ‘When you are ahead, don’t take it easy, kill them,’ ” his mother says. “ ‘After the finish, then be a sportsman.’ ”

Tiger is used to his father’s testing and even welcomes it. At Coto de Caza, the interplay is comfortable and happy, and Tiger has fun despite some missed putts.

“You can’t get to me, Pop,” he says as Earl jingles change while Tiger is over an approach shot. On the next hole, as the elder Woods prepares for a delicate cut shot over a bunker, Tiger says just loudly enough: “Watch. He always hits these shots fat.” When Earl chunks his shot into the sand, there is a second of silence before the two bust out laughing.

Tiger also has a close relationship with his mother. A friendly, energized woman whose accented English comes in torrents when the subject is her child, Kultida is proud to have spent countless afternoons driving her son to the golf course, then walking and keeping score for Tiger.

Woods was a celebrity by age 5 when he appeared on the “Mike Douglas Show”.

Kultida, who thought up the name Eldrick, keeps a shrine to her son’s career. She still has the shoes she glued spikes to when he was 4, and she has filled four scrapbooks with clippings, landmark scorecards (including the first time he beat his father, in 1982) and every report card he ever brought home. Tiger’s trophies fill the living room, and there are three boxes full in the garage.

Although it is Kultida Woods who has made sure Tiger attends to his homework before golf, she is in her own way every bit as competitive as her husband.

“I tell Tiger, ‘When you are ahead, don’t take it easy, kill them,’ ” she says. “ ‘After the finish, then be a sportsman.’ ”

Tiger has learned well. “I love competition,” he says. “I love to play in tournaments, especially against older kids.”

Though Woods has thrived on a giant-killer mentality, he is also making the difficult adjustment to being the giant. Last year was a psychological minefield for a young man facing his first national tournaments.

Woods, self-deprecating as he is brash, has a vivid memory of the gnawing nervousness he felt the morning of the final round of the Big I. During a dinner at an all-you-can-eat steak house in which he returned to the buffet line as least five times, Woods alternated between mouthfuls of food and youthful hyperbole in an animated retelling of the experience.

“I was in the shower in my hotel room, and I couldn’t pick up the bar of soap,” says Woods, shaking his head and smiling. “I was choking in the shower. And I’m thinking, How am I going to handle this? On the first tee, I’m 100-percent nervous. I was choking so much, I was laughing. My eyes were looking at trees. I couldn’t focus on the fairway. I scraped it around for six holes, then on 7, I choked so hard on this 4-iron. I hit it beyond right.”

After recovering to within eight feet of the pin, his panic gave way to a sudden, mysterious calm that champions sometimes admit to.

“I knew I had to make that putt. I told myself, If you make this putt, you win. This is the turning point. And, I just felt myself slow down, like the game was easy again. I knocked it in, and I busted the next drive. And I won.”

Those who have seen Woods in competition are struck by the youngster’s poise even more than his ball-striking ability.

“Tiger’s got an aura about him, that you see in very few kids,” says Chris Haack, assistant executive director of the American Junior Golf Association. “Besides having a great swing, he shows very little emotion on the golf course. He’s got the killer instinct, and he knows how to think his way around the golf course. You just don’t see all those things in juniors, let alone a 14-year-old.”

Chris Couch, who once lost a four-ball match against Woods in the Canon Cup, has plenty of respect for his younger counterpart.

“I was real motivated when I played against Tiger because, no matter how young he is, I could see his ability,” Couch says. “I think he has the best chance to be the best junior in the country this year.”

Tommy Moore, a PGA Tour player who was paired with Woods in the third round of the Big I, was similarly impressed watching Woods shoot a 69 that beat 15 of the 21 pros who played with the juniors.

“This kid has a lot of talent, just a ton,” says Moore, who shot 72 the day he played with Woods. “He’s very long. He has a very clean, simple technique that to me was superior to the other juniors I saw. He’s got an unbelievably soft touch. The only thing about him that was 14 was his appearance.”

But Moore, Golf Digest’s No. 1-ranked junior golfer in 1980, remembers several contemporaries from his youth who never fulfilled their promise.

“You can’t ‘crystal ball’ what you think Tiger can do,” Moore says. “Yes, he’s good enough to play on the Division I college level right now, but is he going to be a great collegiate player? You can’t say that. Is he going to be a great pro? You really can’t say that.

“My advice for Tiger would be, ‘Don’t get caught up in what other people are saying.’ People are going to say, ‘Wow! You shot 63 at 14, imagine what you will shoot when you’re 18!’ But golf doesn’t work like that. Right now, the only thing he should be concerned with is enjoying his success and trying to keep improving every day. Because the enjoyment tends to lessen, and the improvements get harder and harder.”

The hardening of Tiger Woods is well underway, but on the outside, he’s still a teenager with an impish humour and a soft side that can melt even his tough old man. Earl Woods’ voice get shaky when he remembers how his son reacted to losing, 3 to 2, to Dennis Hillman at the USGA Junior.

“We got in the car, and Tiger stayed quiet for a little while,” Earl says. “Then he reached over, hugged me and said, ‘Pop, I love you.’ That made the whole thing worthwhile for me. I’m very proud that Tiger is a better person than he is a golfer.”

The feeling seems to be mutual. “Earl is the coolest guy I know,” Tiger says. “He doesn’t live through me, which is what some parents do. He might watch me play, but I don’t think about him on the golf course. I just think about me. It’s all me.”

Woods knows it’s a selfish game, but he is not full of himself. He is constantly evaluating his weaknesses. Last year, he began an exercise program he learned in this magazine (“Winter Exercise for a Spring Payoff,” January 1990), and by December was up to 138 pounds, and 40 yards longer off the tee. He seems more interested in his few losses than his many victories, instinctively knowing that the lessons he takes from failures will ultimately be his most valuable. He has a vivid memory of how humble he felt while Couch was making seven birdies in the first 13 holes at the PGA.

“I was playing awesome, but I was getting wasted,” Tiger says. “I hate to lose, but in golf everybody loses because it’s so hard mentally. Sometimes you get so nervous. I like the feeling of trying my hardest under pressure, it’s when I play my best. But it’s so intense, it’s hard to describe. It feels like a lion is tearing at my heart.”

It’s the sensation that makes some prodigies disappear. But so far, it’s only caused the one called Tiger to live up to his name.

The post Tiger at age 14 appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Jaime Diaz
Photos by Erin Patrice O’Brien
This is a new series on the 70th anniversary of Golf Digest commemorating the best literature we’ve ever published. Each entry includes an introduction that celebrates the author or puts in context the story. 

Jaime Diaz is one of the sport’s deep thinkers, whether writing features for Golf Digest, which he has done since 1989, or doing commentary on Golf Channel, his full-time gig now. He has a knack for observation and historical perspective that’s simply better than any of his contemporaries’. Jaime can dissect the mechanics of a tour pro’s swing as easily as he analyzes the closing holes of a tournament or explains the parental relationship that forged the character of a major champion. And he does it all with the empathy of a poet engaged in his own human struggle for golf’s tough love.

There was no better writer for explaining Seve Ballesteros, especially at the end of Seve’s life, when genius faced reality. I asked Jaime recently what he remembered about this piece that appeared in July 2010, and he replied: “For all of Seve’s triumphs, it seemed I wrote about him most during times of loss: his crushing defeat at the 1986 Masters, the free fall of his game in the ’90s, the poignancy of his last Open Championship, at Hoylake in 2006. Occasions when he was exposed and fragile. But contrary to his reputation for combativeness, he had handled such moments with honesty that struck me as noble.

“When photographer Erin Patrice O’Brien and I visited Seve in April 2010, he was fragile in life—physically and emotionally. Yet on a day when his nephew Ivan would warn us that his uncle’s energy was particularly low, Seve’s effort—fierce but discreet—was touching. During our interview, though it caused him tears more than once, he went to deep places and got the words right. The brain operations had left him a bit unsteady on his feet, but he insisted on guiding us through several rooms in his elegant home, lingering on a nautical motif that was a tribute to his late father, Baldomero, a local rowing champion. When his face inevitably began to betray a heavy fatigue, he stood with a determined smile to complete a rushed but successful photo session.

“Throughout, while Seve spoke positively about his recovery, it was impossible to ignore the spectre of ultimate loss. Two months later, he would follow the recommendations of his doctors and cancel his trip to participate in the four-hole Champions Challenge before the Open at St. Andrews, a decision I learned he came to regret until his death at 54 in May 2011. My lasting memory is that on the last day I ever saw him, more than ever, Seve was noble.” —Jerry Tarde

Seve Ballesteros’ home in Pedrena, Spain, is built on a promontory above the beach whereas a boy he hit pebbles with a wood-shafted 3-iron, and it’s only a few hundred yards from the converted farmhouse where he was born. It’s a three-story medley of tasteful masonry, earth-toned stucco and dark wood, understated in every way. Except one.

A silhouette in weathered bronze of the golfer reacting to his winning putt at the 1984 Open Championship at St. Andrews is mounted on the front door.

The depiction is often referred to by Ballesteros’ inner circle as El Momento, and he calls it “the greatest moment of my career.” It serves as his business logo, appearing on all manner of products, and Ballesteros even has it tattooed on his left forearm. But after the cruel blows he has endured the past several years, it has become a haunting symbol of a pinnacle too brief and too long past.

The combination of magic and misfortune is why Ballesteros’ anticipated return to the Old Course at this year’s British Open will prompt the warmest display of mass public affection any golfer has ever received. Engaged in a battle with brain cancer, Ballesteros says he will play in the four-hole Open Champions’ Challenge the day before the tournament starts. Given his illness, his standing as the most beloved European golfer ever among British fans and that the first tee at the Old Course is the game’s most iconic stage, the announcement of his name and his opening tee shot will be golf’s version of Muhammad Ali lighting the Olympic torch at the 1996 Summer Games.

Like Ali, Ballesteros, 53, has been physically diminished. Doctors discovered a malignant tumour the size of two golf balls above his right temple after he fainted at the Madrid airport on Oct. 5, 2008. Over 11 days, he would undergo three complicated surgeries totalling more than 20 hours to remove as much of the tumour as possible. After 22 days in intensive care and 72 days in the hospital, Ballesteros emerged with an unsettling diagonal scar where the main incision had been made. Once back home, he embarked on 12 treatments of chemotherapy, followed by two months of radiation late last year.

Although still too fatigued in late April from the after effects of the radiation to play golf, Ballesteros agreed to allow Golf Digest to come to Spain to discuss his recovery and his life. We met in the foyer of his home, and although his torso has lost some of its sturdiness and his features some of their expressiveness, his innate charisma still allows him to cut a noble figure.

“Hola,” he says, his voice unchanged. “Many years since you’ve been here.”

It was a reference to a visit I made in 1990, when after initially annoying Ballesteros by appearing unannounced at the Royal Golf Club of Pedrena, he graciously agreed to an impromptu interview. “This house wasn’t built yet. A lot of things are different.”

Seve in 1984

It was indeed a whole other time. When Ballesteros won at St. Andrews he was 27 years old, and it was his fourth major championship, putting him on an early trajectory no player other than Tiger Woods has equalled since.

In Ballesteros’ victory at the Old Course, he had taken the top spot in the game from Tom Watson, who had succeeded Jack Nicklaus. Ballesteros seemed well on his way to establishing his own era.

He had wondrous tools, combining the physical talents of power, shotmaking ability and a genius short game with the mental strengths of ultra-fierce competitiveness and a keen “golfing mind.”

But what made Ballesteros truly special was an ability to connect with spectators. Part of it was his gift for improvising some of the most improbable recovery shots in the history of the game. “He was to the short game what Hogan was to ball-striking,” says Hank Haney. Another element was the pure passion with which Seve performed. That was never more evident than in his ultimate “moment” on the final green in 1984. When the 15-foot birdie putt barely crawled into the high side of the hole, Ballesteros began a series of right-hand thrusts into the sky that also served as salutes to the cheering multitudes packed in the grandstands and straining to watch from the balconies of the Auld Grey Toon.

“I loved the expressive way he played, like Arnold Palmer,” says Ben Crenshaw. “When he did well, he showed it in a beautiful, proud way. When he failed, he did it with so much heart that people would feel for him. When he won at St. Andrews, that’s one of the great reactions in the history of the game.”

Somehow, the moment didn’t prove to be a springboard. Ballesteros won only one more major, the 1988 British Open, finishing with three Opens and two Masters. At first gradually, and then very quickly as the condition of his lower back deteriorated, he lost the length and especially accuracy in his long game. Even as his wedge play and putting remained in the all-time category, he didn’t have enough game to get in contention with any regularity, and he won his final official tournament in 1995. He played on for another mostly desultory dozen years, and although he ended up with more than 90 professional victories around the world, a record 50 on the European tour and almost single-handedly elevated the Ryder Cup into one of golf’s premier events, his career leaves the feeling of loss.

It’s a sensation that pervades his current life on a few levels and is palpable in his large house, where he lives alone. Ballesteros and Carmen, his wife of 16 years, divorced in 2004. Their three children — Javier, 19; Miguel, 17; and Carmen, 15 — live in Madrid with their mother and visit Ballesteros regularly, but he admits the place he once called “my paradise” contains too many echoes for a sole occupant.

PARTIAL PARALYSIS

After our greeting, he leads me into his spacious living room, with large windows opening to views of the Bay of Santander. His gait has lost its smoothness, and he explains that because of damage from the tumour, he has suffered partial paralysis on his left side. “I don’t have very good balance because my left leg has lost some feeling,” he says. “My left hand is worse. When I have something in the hand, the keys or a glass of water, I don’t know if I have it or not. Some of it might come back a little bit, but not like before.” During our conversation, several times his left arm slides off its resting place on his knee, causing him to reflexively pick it up with his right hand and put it back in position.

Ballesteros has also lost about 75 per cent of the vision in his left eye. Because I unthinkingly sit on his left, he has to fully turn to look at me, which he does. His eyes seem to open wider than I remember, and he holds eye contact longer.

Seve Ballesteros

Ballesteros says that for the moment he has lost some of the energy he exhibited after being inspired by Watson’s Open performance last year at Turnberry. Along with the radiation, the cold and rainy winter and spring in northern Spain have kept him from wanting to spend a lot of time outside. “But I’m getting stronger again,” he says. “The doctors who saved me, they say that in my treatment I am on the 15th hole. I’m looking forward to finishing this round.”

His metaphor leads into questions about the kind of golf he can play after his surgery. Ballesteros still enjoys playing and practising, and he contends he can still hit some good shots, though he’s perhaps 50 yards shorter off the tee, and because of his balance problems on his left side he often finishes in the Gary Player “walk-through” style. Beginning in May 2009, Ballesteros began hitting balls on the range nearly every day, as well as playing occasional nine-hole rounds at Royal Pedrena, where he caddied and which lies in the valley below his house.

“It felt different, very weird,” he says of the sensation of first hitting the ball again. “But as soon as I practice a few, the rhythm comes back. And I played last summer, very well. I can hit the ball. I can hit long shots, long irons, medium irons. My short game is pretty good, and I can putt. But aiming and judging distance is a handicap now. Of course, I miss that I lost a little bit of skill, you know. But golf is very good therapy.”

He gestures out the window to the nine-hole pitch-and-putt course he installed on his 17-acre property after the surgery. Though no hole is longer than 75 yards, he designed it with wickedly tiny greens that cozy up to streams and ponds and drop off to punish the smallest error. “It’s very difficult, yes,” he says. “Well, if you make it easy, it’s no challenge. I make it for me, and for my friends. If they shoot three or four under, there is nothing to talk about after. The record is one under par. By me.”

This last remark is delivered with a familiar jauntiness, but it is not accompanied by the smile or laughter that used to come so naturally. I realize that Ballesteros is now less expressive, a condition not unusual for people who are recovering from major brain surgery. At the same time, overflowing emotion is also a normal aftermath, and when I ask Ballesteros specifically about returning to St. Andrews, his voice thickens and he averts his gaze.

“Yes, I think, well…” As he grimaces and tears come, he covers his eyes with his right hand and waits through soft sobs. “It’s all right,” he says. “It will go away.”

He wipes his eyes and gathers himself before continuing. “My goal was to compete in the championship, but I cannot,” he says. “But I think I have the obligation to go and play the four holes. Because of what St. Andrews means. To me and to people. Because of all the British people have done in the past for me. They want to see me, and I have to go out there for them.”

His presenting the situation as a burden makes me think of his close friend Vicente Fernandez telling me that toward the end of Ballesteros’ career, Seve had confided to him, “I cannot handle the pressure from the people, from the players, from the press. I don’t want to act rude to the people, but that’s my feeling. I get to the first tee, I’m shaking.”

But when I ask Ballesteros if he will feel nervous about his game in the four-hole exhibition, he says, “No, there is nothing left to prove.” Asked if he is looking forward to being personally fulfilled by the experience, he again breaks into tears, finally saying, “Emotionally it will be…very strong. As you can see. Sorry.”

But even as he excuses himself for breaking down, Ballesteros seems almost relieved to be able to offer a less-guarded version of himself. He knows that since his illness his life has become more of an open book than it ever was as a player, when he fiercely guarded his privacy and was often cryptic in his interviews. He also realizes that he has become an inspiration to many. “It’s good to let go, because I have so much emotions,” he says. “Because it is so much inside, for a long time, it’s good to let it out. I am a very sensitive person. A lot of people think I’m very hard, you know. But you see the sensitive part now. Very sensitive. Very human.”

‘I DON’T WANT THIS ANYMORE’

That he kept his emotions under wraps for so long makes his later years more painful to consider. For a time, it seemed he was holding on to stay in shape for a successful run on the Champions Tour when he turned 50. But after playing only one event, in Alabama in May 2007, and shooting 78-81-73 to finish tied for last, he abruptly went back to Spain.

“Part of it was I felt homesick in America, similar to how I felt in the early ‘80s,” he explains. “I thought, If I couldn’t do it then, why do it now? That was part of it. But something inside just told me, I don’t want this anymore. It was time.”

Seve’s stairs

Two months later, at the Open at Carnoustie, he announced his retirement from competition. But though he often seemed disconsolate in the last years of his playing career, the medical crisis that engulfed Ballesteros 15 months later snapped him back into fighting mode. Ivan Ballesteros, who assists his uncle in his public life, says that Seve’s first words after emerging from the first marathon surgery, spoken in a dream state, were “Yo siempre gano.” (“I always win.”)

That spirit no doubt rubs hard against some of the significant compromises Ballesteros has had to make in his daily life. Because of his vision problems, he can no longer drive a car. In March, the golf cart he was driving went off a small embankment to his left, causing him to fall out of the cart and hit his head on the ground. He stayed under hospital observation for four days before doctors released him. Nor can Ballesteros ride a bicycle, which as a fan of competitive cycling he enjoyed as his primary source of strenuous exercise. Other than golf, his recreation is limited to walking on the beach, gardening and mild calisthenics.

Ballesteros can depend on his three older brothers. Manuel and Vicente live nearby in Pedrena, and the oldest brother, Baldomero, lives 10 miles away in Santander. Again, tears flow when Ballesteros is asked how his family has reacted to his illness.

“My brothers, my children, I see how much they care about me,” he says. “They all respond very good, very good.”

He mentions the champions and greats who have called him. “Palmer, Nicklaus, Gary Player — I don’t want to count, because I will forget many. Whenever someone calls, it helps. Arnold Palmer sent me a dog,” he says, almost chuckling. “In a picture. His dog, called Mulligan. Because the doctors saved my life, they say now I use my mulligan. So Palmer’s picture says, ‘Here’s a Mulligan for you.’ “

And to ease his loneliness a bit, Ballesteros recently acquired a Labrador puppy. After watching Phil Mickelson’s victory at Augusta in April, Seve named the newcomer Phil.

Since retirement, Ballesteros has become more interested in his legacy. He says his proudest achievement is making golf more popular in Spain. He is also committed financially and conceptually to two Ryder Cup-style professional events. The former Seve Trophy — now called the Vivendi Trophy with Seve Ballesteros — matches teams from Great Britain & Ireland and Europe. Ballesteros says the matches provide valuable preparation for Europe’s best in the next year’s Ryder Cup. Ballesteros sees the Royal Trophy — a competition between pros from the Asian and Japan tours against a European team — as an engine to expand and strengthen Asian golf, much as the Ryder Cup did for Europe. Last year he started the Seve Ballesteros Foundation, dedicated to brain-tumour research. Its blue wristbands emulate Lance Armstrong’s “Livestrong” yellow bands. “I admire Lance,” says Ballesteros, a close friend of five-time Tour de France winner Miguel Indurain. “It would be wonderful if I could motivate people as he has.”

It’s when Ballesteros talks about his illness that he is least emotional.

“Through all this, I’ve never been afraid of dying,” he says. “I was more afraid of how I was to face the future. Because maybe I couldn’t manage myself. But I feel much better about that now. I don’t feel sorry for myself, no. You’ve got to be strong in life, because it is not fair. You just have to think, This is what I have. I have no other choice. Take it or leave it. So I take it.”

The unfairness has also struck his compatriot, Jose Maria Olazabal, who at 44 is in a battle for his career against a mysterious recurrence of rheumatism. Olazabal, who lives near San Sebastian, visited Ballesteros in the hospital and continues to do so in Pedrena. Asked about his friend, Ballesteros’ voice grows husky again.

“I call him three days ago, to see how he’s doing, and I tell him to be strong, to be patient, that the bonus will come,” Ballesteros says. Asked for Olazabal’s reply, Seve struggles. “Well…he says he and I were both tough competitors. And that we never give up. And he says that we are going… to win.”

Ballesteros shakes his head after the tears stop. “I have more feeling for other people now,” he says. “Because a lot of people help me. Not only my family and friends, but a lot of people from all over the world. They don’t have anything with me. But they send me notes. And give me calls. And bring me things. That was like, Hey, wake up, you know. If people love you and they hug you, now is your time to do the same. Something like that.”

He asks about Ken Green, who once angered Ballesteros over a crucial ruling on the final nine of the 1989 Masters, and he wants to know how Green is recovering from a terrible RV accident: “I hope he is better.” And Ballesteros expresses empathy for Tiger Woods: “You know, when you win special tournaments and you become a superstar, the first thing you lose is your freedom. That’s big. That’s hard. It’s hard for others to understand. But, you know, you have to pardon people. Otherwise, you will never be free.”

The anger that for so long fueled him seems to have dissipated. As recently as his 2007 autobiography, Seve (translated to English by Peter Bush), Ballesteros took shots at just about every institution of authority in his life — including Royal Pedrena, the Royal Spanish Golf Federation and the European and PGA tours — all for various slights. He also defended himself against accusations of gamesmanship and called rumours that infidelity broke up his marriage “vicious,” writing, “neither Carmen nor myself had any affairs while our marriage lasted.” But now he emphasizes gratitude more than grudges. “I’ve had a tremendous life,” he says. “Tremendous things happen to me over the years. When you win the Masters or the British Open or the World Match Play, the following week, you know, the feeling inside is so good. So I’ve had that kind of peace. The peace I am finding now, it’s not about competition. It’s different.”

Weathervane

The questions that seemed so unanswerable during most of Ballesteros’ playing career he now solves with quick answers. He attempts to put an end to all the speculation about how he helped derail his prime by experimenting with too many swing theories and teachers, asserting that all the problems he had with his swing can be traced to a lower-back injury he suffered while boxing with a friend at 14.

“The back was the only reason my game and my golf swing would deteriorate progressively,” he says. “The only reason. To change the swing is not that hard if you have talent, but you have to be very good physically. I wasn’t. I couldn’t do it. With the driver especially, the back was more involved, and there was more pain.” Sounding more like Hogan, he adds, “There is no secret in golf that a teacher can give you. You have your own way, your own vision and your own feeling. If you practice constantly, that’s the secret.”

BIGGEST REGRET: 1986 MASTERS

Asked about his regrets, he deadpans, “Second shot on 15 at Augusta — I make 6.” In that fateful last round in 1986, Ballesteros was leading before dunking a fat 4-iron shot into the pond and ultimately losing to Nicklaus, and Seve doesn’t disagree with those who have opined that it was there where his career lost momentum. “I lose the finishing punch,” he says.

Ballesteros says the reason the disappointment and diminished confidence lingered was because he had failed to win for the memory of his father, who had died of lung cancer the month before at 67.

Baldomero Ballesteros Sr. was a local champion oarsman, with the same long arms and strong will as his youngest son. Seve felt a kinship with the man who had most helped him feel special, and he took great joy in showing his appreciation.

“My father was a fighter, and he would never give up,” Ballesteros says. “We were pretty close. He always encouraged me. I loved to take him with me in jets or limousines and let him drink whiskey and share my success. He would say, ‘Oh, Seve, this is the life!’ After he died, the hardest thing was when I was winning tournaments I used to call home and he…wasn’t there.”

Now, Ballesteros has a date with the Old Course. After his initial bout with emotion, he is expansive.

“The first time I played it, I didn’t like it,” he says. “I thought it was ugly. But the first time I played it with a little bit of breeze, I loved it. It’s an incredible place, and an incredible course. But there must be a little bit of wind. That’s when you have the challenge. Then you play all the clubs and all the shots you have in the bag.”

He played well in 1978, leading by two strokes until he hit into the hotel and took a double-bogey 6 on the 17th in the second round, finishing the tournament T-17. In 1984, during practice rounds, his friend Fernandez encouraged Ballesteros to take the club a bit more on the inside to counteract a tendency to let his right elbow wander too far from his body. “Chino give me a little tip on my swing,” he says, “and I stick to that and each day played better and better.”

He started the final round two shots behind Watson and Ian Baker-Finch, who were paired in the last group.

“Watson was the best player in the world at that moment,” Ballesteros says, “and he was trying to tie the record of Harry Vardon: six British Opens. He was under a lot of pressure also. We were not close, but champions in the same category never are close. You never see both go outside for dinner. Never. That’s not because it is personal. The competition carries on, not just on the golf course, but off the golf course also. It was that way for me and Watson.”

In the last round, “I played very steady,” Ballesteros recalls. “I didn’t do anything spectacular, but I played very steady and very solid, especially on the back nine. I birdied 14, then a fantastic par on 17, where I put my 6-iron on the middle of the green from the rough on the left side. That second shot was like a tunnel, you know.”

On the 18th, Ballesteros hit a conservative 3-wood off the tee and then a wedge into the green.

“The putt, breaking six inches, I hit it well,” he says. “As the ball was approaching the hole, I was more and more hoping, and it dropped in. I think with my interior energy, I put it inside myself. I think so. That was the greatest moment of my career.”

He has been back to the hallowed ground to play three British Opens since then, but never with so much anticipation. When Bobby Jones returned to St. Andrews for the last time in 1958, he was suffering from a crippling disease of the spinal cord. After Jones was honoured during the Freedom of the City and Royal Burgh of St. Andrew ceremony, a filled auditorium began singing an old Scottish song, “Will Ye No’ Come Back Again?”

“It had all the strange, wild, emotional force of the skirl of a bagpipe,” wrote Herbert Warren Wind. “Hardly a word was said as the people filed from the hall, and for many minutes afterwards it was impossible for anyone to speak.”

When asked what he will feel when he is announced on the first tee, it is Ballesteros — his face scrunching but his gaze steady — who cannot speak.

He doesn’t have to. It will definitely be a moment.

The post Seve’s Story appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Jaime Diaz
What more is there to say about Tiger Woods in anticipation of his return to competition this week at the Hero World Challenge? Not much, although it’s worth it to remind ourselves of a foundational premise: Tiger Woods is a golfing genius.

Beyond the “you know it when you see it” yardstick, genius is a difficult thing to measure. As Walter Isaacson, the culture’s leading chronicler of the phenomena, wrote last week in Time Magazine, genius goes beyond simply being really smart. It helps a lot when someone is demonstrably the best in the world at something, and perhaps the best of all time. Isaacson, who has written best-selling biographies of Ben Franklin, Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci, offered two definitional tenets: “The ability to apply imagination to almost any situation” and “to think like an artist and a scientist.”

Woods possessed those tools. He was naturally analytical, described by his father as “systems oriented,” who as a teenager became consumed by the mechanics of the golf swing. But all through his best years, he retained a powerful, childlike gift for visualizing his shot and where he wanted his ball to go. In 2007, he described for Golf Digest the process he developed as a grade schooler when playing in the late evenings with his father.

“Even to this day, when I’m out there struggling and I don’t have my best stuff at all, I’ll go back to, ‘You know what, Daddy, I’m going to put the ball right there. Right there. I’m going to put that little 2-iron right there, Daddy. No problem. I got it.’ Boom, I put it right there …”

And the proof would be in shots like his miraculous hole out from left of Augusta’s 16th green in the final round of the 2005 Masters. When asked to define his greatest weapon, Woods would say, “my creative mind.”

Related: Will Tiger’s body let him down again?

History now indicates, and Tiger might even someday admit, that over time, the artist lost ground to the scientist. As he put himself through several swing changes in the belief it would make him better, the power of his imagination dimmed.

There are indications that as he has recovered from the spinal-fusion surgery he underwent in April, Woods has attempted to reclaim the artist. Ultra patient in his rehab, he reports that he is free of pain. His arrest for driving under the influence in May was embarrassing, but the aftermath might have led to steps that got him more comfortable in his own skin. He put himself on display at the Presidents Cup in late September, and soon after put his swing on display on several videos, exhibiting an action that appears simple and flowing. After a very long time—next year will mark a decade since Woods’ last major victory—there’s a tempting sense the stars are working back toward something resembling alignment.

The question is, can the genius be reawakened, or is it even still there? Golf genius might be the longest-lived variety among professional sportsman, but sports genius is still short-lived compared to non-athletic kinds. At 40, Franklin, Jobs, Einstein and even da Vinci were just entering their primes. Woods, who turns 42 next month, won the Tiger Slam at 25.

Stan Badz/Getty Images

Moreover, just by attempting a sports comeback, Woods is fighting the percentages. Boxers comeback the most, but other than George Foreman, have the saddest success rate. In other sports, for every triumphant return like those of Andre Agassi, Greg LeMond or Tommy John, there are 10 like Bjorn Borg’s that end depressingly.

Even golf, for all its ebbs and flows over long careers, has produced relatively few successful comebacks after long absences from the game. Ben Hogan’s return to win the 1950 U.S. Open after a near fatal car accident is anything but a template. Woods’ own at last year’s Hero World after a 16-month absence offered initial promise but flamed out quickly.

Woods comebacks since his scandal in 2009 have been particularly hard to read, an ever-changing mystery stew of injury, shame, swing changes, short-game issues and even possible drug addiction. Only Woods knows the toll. The percentage guess is that he’s been through too much physically and mentally and has missed too much golf to return to something close to his former station. But the genius argument introduces an X factor that won’t go away.

It’s why fellow tour players, more than the population at large, still give Woods the benefit of the doubt and frankly root for him. Rickie Fowler, who has practiced with Woods at Medalist in Jupiter, recently commented on how far Tiger was hitting his driver. And Brad Faxon, after playing with Woods, President Trump and Dustin Johnson last week, told Golfweek that Woods “looked effortless, he looked free, he had some power.”

And then there is the collective assessment from the very highest level, players who themselves were and remain golf geniuses. I talked to five of them recently for an upcoming story in Golf Digest—Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Nick Faldo and Johnny Miller. All retired from competition, all multiple major winners, all studiously close Tiger watchers, all acutely aware of the miracles that true greatness makes possible. As the current shorthand says, “game recognize game.”

While the topic of the conversations went beyond how Tiger will do in his return, they all expressed a measured optimism. “Tiger probably won’t be able to swing exactly the way he wants to,” Nicklaus said. “But I think he’ll be able to adjust.”

Stan Badz

Tellingly, all five pulled off climatic late career triumphs after long fallow periods—with Trevino and Miller coming back from injury and out of the television booth—that had led to widespread opinion that each was basically done.

But Nicklaus won his 18th major at the 1986 Masters at age 46, Player his ninth with a closing 64 at the 1978 Masters at age 42, Trevino his sixth at the 1984 PGA Championship at age 44, Faldo his sixth at the 1996 Masters at 38. Although it wasn’t a major, Miller’s victory in 1994 at Pebble Beach at age 46 was the most astounding.

To use Nicklaus’ euphemism, they all “adjusted.”

Miller has long said that most great players have two primes. The first, during which the bulk of the career record is typically built, is founded in sheer talent. The second is shorter and less productive, but for the player himself, more satisfying because it requires overcoming the inevitable doubt that comes with age and experience. And it provides a genius the ultimate opportunity to capitalize on his gift of imagination. In his final victory at Pebble, Miller fought off a serious case of the putting yips down the stretch by alternately putting with his eyes closed, or making believe he was one of his four sons as a 10-year-old.

As they spoke of Woods, what all five Hall of Famers expressed was a sincere wish that a pain-free Tiger will be able to again activate his own imagination, finally get out of his own way and once again fully trust his genius. And let what took him so incredibly far take him, unimpeded, as far as it will.

The post For Tiger Woods to (finally) have a successful return to golf, he must … appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Woods has been making comebacks – from injuries and personal difficulties – since 2008. None have been as successful as that first one, returning from knee surgery to win the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, and most haven’t worked out very well. So it’s reasonable not to expect much when Woods plays in the Hero World Challenge in three weeks. Since he had a first microdiscectomy (the removal of part of a spinal disc to alleviate nerve pain) in March 2014, very little has gone right.

The previous comeback at the same time last year ended up looking very much like it might be his final one. After a 16-month absence from competition forced by two more procedures on the disc in late 2015, Woods showed up at the Hero, made a surprising number of birdies (24, along with six double bogeys) and, though he beat only two players, got good reviews. He seemed to be moving more fluidly, and he set an ambitious playing schedule going forward. But hopes were dashed almost immediately when he badly missed the cut at Torrey Pines and in early February withdrew in Dubai with back spasms. He hasn’t competed since.

It furthered the cynical view that Woods is only playing – or showing off his swing – to retain his endorsement deals. Some thought Woods’ priority is orchestrating a graceful end to his career as a warrior brought down by injuries, rather than from self-inflicted mental wounds stemming from Thanksgiving 2009. That narrative gained more fuel when Woods announced on April 20 that he had just undergone the most extensive surgery of his life – a fusion of the lowest spinal vertebrae (L-5) with the first vertebrae of the sacrum (S-1).

Stan Badz
Tiger Woods smiles as he waits to play the 14th hole on the north course during the Pro-Am round for the 2017 Farmers Insurance Open.

After the admittedly stop-gap measures of the microdiscectomies, the “anterior interbody lumbar fusion” was an all-or-nothing play in terms of future competitive golf. When the healing process goes well, the material that has been inserted into an area opened up between the vertebrae adheres and hardens, ending the cycle of disc fragments or hardened spinal fluid wreaking havoc with nerves. The goal is the end of spasms or shooting pains, and since it is an area where there is virtually no rotation, there should be little if any loss of range of motion. It gives Woods a chance to take a clear-minded, healthy and pain-free cut at the once ball again.

Woods carried out his rehab cautiously and slowly. As late as the Presidents Cup in early October, where he served as an assistant captain, he gave no indication when he would be able to swing a club. But a week later, doctors cleared him to practice, and Woods over the next few weeks released videos of himself first chipping, then hitting an iron, a driver and even a “stinger” with a long iron. By most expert accounts, the swing looked good. Last Monday, the 1,180th-ranked player in the world announced he would be playing in the Bahamas.

Even for those who had grown bored with Woods’ on-again, off-again pattern, the situation is irresistibly intriguing. Woods will be 42 on Dec. 30, but his body remains trim and strong. It may be nearly a decade since he won his 14th major, but it remains hard to accept that there isn’t at least some great golf inside of him.

When in public, Woods seems to be carrying himself more lightly. At the Presidents Cup, he interacted easily with the team and engaged in a memorable hug with Phil Mickelson. Some of his tweets have been humorous. Last week he devoted more than an hour to a podcast hosted by UConn women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma (a good friend of Woods’ caddie, Joe LaCava). When it came to his game, he couldn’t suppress his enthusiasm. “I can’t believe how far I’m hitting the golf ball.”

Woods didn’t discuss the elephant in the room, his arrest in May for suspicion of driving under the influence, but the aftereffects could be a net positive. Certainly video of his sobriety tests were embarrassing, and Woods had to appear in court last month to plead guilty to a reduced charge of reckless driving. But after 23-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps, who turned his own life around after a DUI arrest, told the New York Times he considered Woods’ mistake “a massive scream for help,” the incident began to be widely considered as an opportunity for Woods to take stock.

“Some people might want to say that Tiger just had a bad night, but there were five different drugs in his system that night,” says Hank Haney, who was Woods’ coach for six years until 2010. “He had to address that, and it looks like he has.”

Rob Carr
Captain’s assistant Tiger Woods of the U.S. Team and Erica Herman look on during Saturday four-ball matches of the 2017 Presidents Cup.

Woods is keeping that area of his life private, but he’s been glad to share that he’s currently pain free. “It was instant nerve relief,” he said five weeks after the fusion surgery. “I haven’t felt this good in years.” Woods has made similar post-injury claims before, when subsequent events proved that he had obviously indeed been hurt. But his words hold more water this time, supported by recent accounts from three former major championship winners.

Two-time U.S. Open winner Retief Goosen in 2012, at age 43, had disc replacement on two vertebrae higher than the location of Woods’ procedure, in a place where the spine undergoes more rotational stress during the golf swing.

“At that point, I couldn’t have played golf again without the surgery,” says Goosen, whose last victory came in 2009. “It was successful. I have zero back pain. I haven’t lost any range of motion or any speed and don’t have any trouble hitting the ball.”

Since the surgery, Goosen hasn’t had much success, managing only seven top-10s on the PGA Tour, with a best of T-2 at Puerto Rico last year. But he doesn’t blame the surgery.

“My short game and putting aren’t as good, but that’s unrelated to my back,” said the 48-year-old South African. “I don’t see any reason Tiger wouldn’t have a similar experience as far as his swing.”

Two more aged Hall of Famers—Lee Trevino, 77, and Lanny Wadkins, 67 —both have had a long history with back problems. Both described excruciating pain that was completely alleviated in their most recent back surgeries that were similar to Woods’.

Wadkins in 2008 had double spinal fusion on higher vertebrae than those Woods was operated on. “It was immediate improvement,” he said. “Just a little soreness, and then making sure I did no twisting for three months. But because the pain had gone away, I couldn’t wait to do the rehab. I became the go-in-early-and-stay-late guy. Within five months, I was hitting drivers, which is the easiest club to hit post surgery. The short irons force you to bend over a little more and stay in your spine angle.

“I really lost very little, if anything. Unfortunately, I did it at a time when my competitive career was basically over. Maybe a little rotation, but that goes as we get thicker anyway. Tiger is in so much better shape, he may rotate just as much.”

Wadkins expects more good and possibly great golf from Woods. “I really feel that pain-free, Tiger has a good chance,” he said. “For all he’s been through, he’s still got a lot going in his favor. Frankly, it’s amazing to me how many people almost seem like they want him to be done. Why would you want him gone? All he does if he comes back and plays is make our game better. Can you imagine if Tiger could come back and play at a really high level? Where he can win tournaments competing with these kids today? It would be some of the most exciting stuff we’ve ever seen.”

Trevino, the winner of six majors and 29 PGA Tour titles, along with 29 more on the then-Senior Tour, has battle-tested knowledge. Trevino’s back went bad in 1975 after he was hit by lightning at the Western Open. He had a disc removed the next year, and with diminished swing speed but plenty of guile won the Vardon Trophy in 1980, and memorably, the 1984 PGA at age 44. He stayed mostly healthy for his prodigious senior run. But in 2003 his back flared up so severely that he thought he might never play even recreational golf again.

“I was dead on my back for three months,” Trevino said. Desperate, he traveled to Germany to have space-making steel rollers, called “X-Stops,” implanted in his spine.

“I came out of that surgery painless, which was an unbelievable feeling,” remembers Trevino. “We flew home, I did my rest and rehab, and pretty soon I felt so good I went absolutely crazy hitting balls and playing. I mean, I couldn’t swing hard enough at it. I was just so happy. I just wish that had happened when I was 44 instead of 64.”

Trevino believes that Woods will have a similar experience. “My prediction, he’ll come back in a blaze of glory,” Trevino says. “He’s not too old, far from it. If he gets fixed, when he comes back to hitting and feels no pain, he’s going to be so happy, that he may be more dangerous than he was before.”

Trevino doesn’t discount the possibility that Woods’ fusion won’t work. “Hey, if they couldn’t fix him, then it is over,” he said. “You can only chase a rainbow so many times. But I’d say there is a good chance they fixed him. Then watch out. Anybody who says he isn’t still hungry is crazy. Listen, the few times that I’ve seen him, all he wants to do is bury people. He wants to bury the golfers. That doesn’t stop. He’s got more killer instinct than anybody I have ever seen.”

It’s a view of Woods more common among players than other observers, and generally more strongly held the better the player. Such kindred spirits can most identify with the deep fulfillment the game can provide to a player touched with a special gift. And how it becomes clear with age that no other activity in life outside of family will ever match that fulfillment.

Chris Condon
Tiger Woods falls to the ground in pain after hitting his second shot on the 13th hole during the final round of The Barclays in 2013.

Former Open champion Ian Baker-Finch sensed happiness in Woods when he recently saw him playing with friends at Medalist C.C. in Jupiter, Fla. “I think Tiger must love the game as much as the game loves him, or he wouldn’t continue to play,” he said. “If his back allows him to practice, he will do everything he possibly can to come back to play. Because he is Tiger and so mentally capable, I believe that if he’s healthy, he will figure it out. His competitive spirit also gives him a desire to find out where he stacks up among the other players.”

It’s what Haney, a close observer of Woods and hard grader in his assessment of his former charge, perceived when he went out on a limb to publicly proclaim that Woods would definitely begin his comeback at the Hero.

“I knew he was going to play, because what else was he going to do?” Haney said glibly, before elaborating. “Every athlete in the history of sports, when they get hurt, in their minds they circle a date when they can come back. He’s now missed enough golf. For a time, he might not have missed golf that much. But that was basically a drug addict that didn’t miss golf. A clean and sober Tiger misses golf.”

Haney is impressed with what he saw in the short videos that Woods released, and made these points.

–“For the first time since 2010, it looks like a swing he can play with. I know what he can play with and what he can’t play with. And I feel he can play with that swing.”

–“The main thing is that he is not getting the club behind him on the downswing, which causes his two-way miss. It’s what he has to do to keep his driver in play.”

–“He’s showing the stinger shot again. I don’t know why he ever stopped using that, but it was one of his great weapons.”

–“As far as swing speed, I think he knows he has sufficient speed to play well or he wouldn’t be trying to play.”

–“The short game is still an unknown issue. But if he’s telling people he’s having chipping contests in his backyard with Rickie Fowler and Justin Thomas, it’s because he was not afraid to embarrass himself. Before he was not chipping in public. If he had had trouble in his backyard, that would have gotten out.”

–“So much is said about the young guys being so good. But this is Tiger Woods, who did and maybe can do things they haven’t. At the Presidents Cup, he really saw those guys up close, and it probably helped his confidence.”

Not that Woods won’t have psychological hurdles when he again puts his game on display. For all the talk of the soft landing at the Hero – on a forgiving course he knows well, in a relaxed event with an 18-man field – there will still be plenty of pressure on Woods. Scrutiny will be high as ever for the player whose historical greatness means his competitive game will never escape judgment. He also admitted to Auriemma that despite assurances that the fusion is solid, he’ll have to get over a fear of hurting himself when making hard swings. “Still in the back of my mind I remember making those swings and ending up on the ground,” he said.

But the most astute judges – his fellow players – are the least surprised when the game produces the miraculous, and know firsthand that Woods is probably golf’s all-time leader in miracles.

“A lot of guys have won majors in their 40s. It’s there, it’s a fact,” Ernie Els told CBSSports.com. “If myself, Phil, Vijay, Darren Clarke…if we can do it, he certainly can do it.”

On Auriemma’s podcast, Woods also alluded to how his two young children, Sam and Charlie, “always tell me that I’m the YouTube golfer…They don’t really know me as the golfer. They know me as the guy who’s injured.”

If Woods can somehow stop being that guy, there will be nothing more intriguing in all of sport than the golfer to emerge.

The post Tiger Woods’ latest comeback comes with more than a small dose of optimism appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Jaime Diaz

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Today marks Fred Ridley’s first official day as chairman of Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters tournament. He is the seventh man to occupy the post, and follows Billy Payne, arguably the most dynamic and consequential chairman since the original one, Clifford Roberts. With a measured, understated personal style that befits his long career as an attorney, it’s easy to assume Ridley will never quite emerge from under Payne’s shadow.

But the 65-year-old Floridian, whose full head of hair and smooth features makes him look a decade younger, should not be underestimated. He went from a player who could not crack the University of Florida’s starting lineup to beating college stars and future PGA Tour winners Curtis Strange, Andy Bean and Keith Fergus on his way to winning the 1975 U.S. Amateur. Shrewdly maneuvering very much under the radar, he rose through the USGA’s executive committee to become the organization’s president in the mid-2000s. At the prominent law firm of Foley and Lardner, where he operates out of the Tampa office, Ridley is the national chair of its real-estate practice. Whether the public has noticed or not, he’s spent a long and knowing time in the arena.

And in the one moment before Payne chose him as his Augusta successor that Ridley was unwittingly thrust into the world’s spotlight—the tangled Tiger Woods rules controversy at the 2013 Masters—he acquitted himself admirably when a misstep could have damaged his chances for the chairmanship.

To review, a resurgent Woods was on the verge of leading the tournament late in the second round when his third shot on the par-5 15th caromed off the bottom of the flagstick and into the water. Likely stunned by his misfortune, Woods took a drop that a television viewer informed an official had been about two yards behind the divot hole made by his third shot. If true, it meant Woods had not dropped as near to his original location as possible and was thus due a two-stroke penalty for “playing from the wrong place.”

When Ridley, in his role as chairman of the competition committee, was told about the situation, however, he deemed after reviewing the video that Woods’ drop had been close enough to the original spot not to incur a penalty. Yet that decision was called into question after Woods signed his scorecard and then, in a television interview, said that he had intentionally dropped two yards behind his original spot, thus incriminating himself. With Woods standing to be disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard, Masters officials the next morning invoked rule 33-7, which states that “a penalty of disqualification may in exceptional cases be waived, modified or imposed if the Committee considers such action warranted.”

It was thus determined that because the committee had not discussed the alleged violation with Woods before he signed his scorecard, he was absolved from disqualification but given a two-stroke penalty—changing his score on the 15th from a bogey 6 to a triple-bogey 8—before his third round.

As the golf rulings often can be, the outcome was confusing, leaving many to wonder why Woods hadn’t been disqualified. It fell to Ridley to explain it all to the assembled media. Rather than rely on arcane language, he did so with clarity, patience and an honest admittance of his own fallibility—much like a relatable and above all believable witness before a jury in a complicated civil trial.

At the press conference, Ridley said that because he had initially “in my best judgment,” thought Woods had complied with the rule, “I chose—it was my decision … that I was not going to go down and tell Tiger that we had considered this and it wasn’t a violation.” But when asked if in retrospect he wished he had spoken to Woods before he signed his card, Ridley candidly answered, “There’s not a day that goes by that there are not some things I wish I would have done differently.”

David Cannon/Getty Images Ridley handled himself well as he addressed the media during the Woods’ ruling in 2013.

Last week, in the elegant but homey chairman’s office at Augusta National that Payne made the headquarters of arguably the most powerful position in golf, Ridley reflected on that moment. “That press conference was not difficult at all,” Ridley said in his sonorous, faintly Southern voice. “I knew exactly what had happened, what we’d done, and what the result was. And while you can always do things better, in the end we got to the right result, we did the right thing. And so, and I’ve told Billy this, I was not nervous when I walked into that press conference. My thought was to state what happened, explain why you did what you did. That’s all you can do.”

Presumably, it’s the approach Ridley will bring to his new role. And while Ridley has high praise for Roberts and his good friend Payne, his beacon would seem to be Bobby Jones, a boyhood hero who he followed in remaining an amateur golfer (Ridley is the last U.S. Amateur champion not to turn pro) and into a career in the law.

“I did read a fair amount about Jones,” said Ridley, who got started in the game playing with his father, a school district administrator, at public courses in Lakeland and Winter Haven. “Clearly, he remains the greatest amateur of all time. But the thing that really struck me and was an influence on me was his integrity, the sportsmanship he showed, just his character. And even though he’s been gone from competition for a long time, for a young and avid golfer, that was a pretty good example. And as a member of this club for the 17 years, I’ve gotten to know him and his persona better. The letters that he wrote about this place, and in general, were so eloquent and profound.”

Related: Billy Payne’s lasting legacy as Augusta National chairman

• • •

Ridley went into a more measured mode when asked about possible changes in Augusta National’s future. Top of mind is the famed 13th hole, where land purchased last year from the adjoining Augusta Country Club opens up many alternatives, among them lengthening the currently 510-yard par 5, revered by many for its nuanced and dramatic second shot but which in recent years has increasingly been reached with a drive and mid- and even short irons.

“No decisions have been made to do anything with the 13th hole,” said Ridley, while hinting that more length will be in the offing. “It really goes back to the underlying philosophy of the challenge that the golf course should present. Jones had a great quote about the 13th hole, that the second shot should entail ‘a momentous decision whether or not to try for the green.’ That says it all. So we are looking at opportunities there.”

And what about the issue of the increasing distance professional golfers are achieving and what it’s doing to classic courses? Does Ridley plan to oversee more lengthening of the course similar to what Hootie Johnson initiated while chairman in the early 2000s? Or perhaps even look into the development of a special “rolled back” ball for the tournament?

“[The ball] is an idea Mr. Johnson introduced,” Ridley said, “and I guess I would say that I hope that is not something that we would ever have to do. But I will say that we are committed to do whatever is necessary to preserve the integrity of the Augusta National golf course. Don’t know exactly where the line is, but it’s something that we are certainly watching. I wouldn’t take anything off the table.”

Scott Halleran
Former Augusta National chairman Billy Payne and Ridley look over the 18th green during a practice round prior to the start of the 2016 Masters.

Ridley said he will not continue as chairman of the competition committee and will soon appoint his replacement. Asked whether coming from a competitive playing background might make him a chairman more attuned to the wishes of Masters competitors—particularly in their wishes for changes to the golf course—Ridley was vague but not dismissive. “I think it will be helpful,” he said. “As we look into the future, and we continue to try to honor the philosophy of Jones and [Alister] MacKenzie when they built the golf course, I hope that my background will be a positive.”

• • •

As the only chairman to have ever played in the Masters (he missed the cut in three straight years beginning in 1976), Ridley can still shoot some low numbers in the 20 or so rounds he plays at the club each year. His best score from what he calls “the old Masters tees” is 67, with three 66s from the members tees. From the current Masters tees, he says he’s never broken 75. (On Augusta’s Par 3 course, his best is a 22 shot last year.) He has birdied all the par 4s, eagled all the par 5s, and has one hole in one, on the 16th, playing with two of his daughters (he and his wife, Betsy, have three).

In what is probably a practiced response, Ridley has no regrets about not ever turning pro. “None,” he said. “I knew I wasn’t going to be a professional golfer when I was a teenager. If someone said, Fred, you would have won $50 million as a professional, my answer is the same. There’s no amount of money that could replace the life I’ve had.”

He looks at his victory the U.S. Amateur at the Country Club of Virginia as a magical week to be eternally thankful for rather than a prompt for “what if”.

“I knew I was going back to law school after playing golf that fall,” Ridley said. “So I went to the tournament with this incredible peace of mind. Like This is great, I’m just going to have a good time. And I never looked past the match I was playing. It was all in the moment.”

Though it will probably prove impossible, he seems to be trying to take a similar approach to the chairmanship. And while fully acknowledging that there is only one Billy Payne, Ridley carries a quiet but well-earned confidence about what he can bring.

Augusta National Jack Nicklaus and Ridley stride down the 14th fairway during the 1976 Masters.

“Billy has leadership qualities that are probably the best I’ve ever witnessed in my life,” Ridley said. “He understands the immense power of relationships. I always felt that I had a good understanding myself through my law practice, but I understand it better from watching Billy and his accomplishments over the last 11 years. He just has that ability to make people want to do better at everything they do. And to me that’s the definition of great leadership.

“Billy was guided by the principle and the mandate that goes back to Mr. Roberts and Mr. Jones, which is the idea of constant improvement. It’s a driving principle that permeates our culture. I look at it as an honor to follow Billy Payne. But if I am true to those same principles, there’s not going to be a shortage of opportunities for me to leave this position even stronger than when I took it. That’s kind of where my focus is.”

The post Fred Ridley takes the <br> lead at Augusta National appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Jaime Diaz
PINEHURST, N.C. — Is it possible that in the big picture—or at least in a present that needs adjustments—golf is better smaller? That was the feeling I got earlier this week at The Cradle, the newly opened nine-hole par-3 course at Pinehurst Resort, which, along with an adjacent and also new 75,000-square-foot practice putting green, comprises a kind of small-ball paradise.

The overall staging of The Cradle—so named because it sits on the site of the golf mecca’s original (1898) course—is pretty perfect. Its gently rolling 10 acres, designed by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner to replicate the sandy, love-grass-accented look of the famed No. 2 course, complete with dramatically undulating greens, is set directly outside the main clubhouse and veranda. With the holes averaging 87 yards (the longest is 127 yards and the shortest 58), most golfers will only need a few clubs in a carry bag.

Not only are the shots short, so is the time required to play them, usually less than an hour for a foursome. The all-day rate of $50 is also proportionately modest. In this era of power and par 5s nearly as long as The Cradle’s 789 yards, small can be beautiful.

Of course, championship golf has to be big—in its footprint and in providing holes muscular enough to sufficiently challenge the players who hit the ball so much longer than ever.

But even at the top levels of the game, there are signs of a new appreciation for the more artful strokes. Jordan Spieth has shown how superior wedge play can overcome bigger hitters, while the improvement of PGA Tour Player of the Year Justin Thomas and current World No. 1 Dustin Johnson can in large measure be attributed to their focusing on their proficiency near and on the green. There’s no denying that the little shots count the same as the big ones, and on firm and fast major championship setups, sometimes more.

With so many regulation 18-hole courses struggling to connect with a customer base in economic and cultural flux, par 3s means faster, cheaper and friendlier.

Accordingly, the short par 3 has been getting more attention. As it always is when the Open Championship is at Royal Troon, the 123-yard “Postage Stamp” was a star in 2016 for its genius setting and design. And at the recent Walker Cup, the 15th hole at Los Angeles C.C. North was daringly shortened to 78 yards and drew praise for its shot making challenge.

Why are these holes almost as much fun to spectate as they are to play? Because there is a purity of technique, athleticism and skill over a short distance that touring pros exhibit with the wedges. For all the talk of power, the game is still foremost about ball control. That’s never more evident than with the precision required with the most lofted irons. The crispness of the sound, the flushness of contact, the fizzing of the flight, the penetrating (not ballooning) trajectory (what Paul Azinger, one of the best wedge players ever, calls “integrity”), makes up a medley that, to me, defines a pro’s gift better than any other part of the game. In Azinger’s case, it was the foundational skill, as his instructor, the late John Redman, believed a golfer who could execute a proper pitch shot by definition possessed the essentials of a sound swing.

David Cannon/R&A
On Saturday at the Walker Cup, LA North’s par-3 15th played a mere 78 yards, but remained a challenge.

You could make the argument that playing short par 3s builds more competency for the recreational golfer trying to improve than blasting away with the longer clubs. All the more because pitch-and-putts give him or her a better opportunity to go out and play. With so many regulation 18-hole courses struggling to connect with a customer base in economic and cultural flux, par 3s means faster, cheaper and friendlier.

Even at prestigious private clubs, a par 3 is often the most popular course with the members. The par 3 at Augusta National, built in 1958, has always been a big hit, and in the last 20 years more clubs like the Olympic Club, Hamilton Farms, Sand Valley and Colorado Golf Club have added well-designed and maintained par 3s.

RELATED: The clash between modern tour pros and modern course architects

The Cradle follows a trend of alternative course openings in 2017, with the new Jordan Spieth-backed six-hole course at the University of Texas, Tom Doak’s 12-hole par 3 at Ballyneal, and Dan Hixson nine-hole pitch-and-putt at Silvies Valley Ranch.

You may note a bias toward par 3s in my commentary. Like a lot of guys my age, my first rounds were on scruffy short courses, in my case the Fleming Nine at Harding Park and Golden Gate G.C., both in San Francisco, both enduring jewels from the city’s golfing heyday.

I’ve also seen a big appetite for pitch-and-putts overseas. They can be found in a bunch of little towns in Ireland, usually teeming with an informally dressed crowd whose members tend to nonchalantly pull off very useful bump and runs. And when the Open was held at Muirfield in 2013, the so-called children’s course next to the west course at North Berwick was a big hit with visiting American pros and their families.

Courtesy of Pinehurst Resort
The Cradle’s nine holes average 87 yards with the longest hole playing 127 yards.

Accordingly, the short par 3 has been getting more attention. As it always is when the Open Championship is at Royal Troon, the 123-yard “Postage Stamp” was a star in 2016 for its genius setting and design. And at the recent Walker Cup, the 15th hole at Los Angeles C.C. North was daringly shortened to 78 yards and drew praise for its shot making challenge.

Why are these holes almost as much fun to spectate as they are to play? Because there is a purity of technique, athleticism and skill over a short distance that touring pros exhibit with the wedges. For all the talk of power, the game is still foremost about ball control. That’s never more evident than with the precision required with the most lofted irons. The crispness of the sound, the flushness of contact, the fizzing of the flight, the penetrating (not ballooning) trajectory (what Paul Azinger, one of the best wedge players ever, calls “integrity”), makes up a medley that, to me, defines a pro’s gift better than any other part of the game. In Azinger’s case, it was the foundational skill, as his instructor, the late John Redman, believed a golfer who could execute a proper pitch shot by definition possessed the essentials of a sound swing.

To me, a good par-3 course works on many levels besides just the price and the pace. A little funkiness in design and even conditioning is a plus, as the capriciousness invites improvisation. The mood should be informal and promote a hint of relaxed raucousness.

Sure, the American hunger for optimization has started a trend toward par 3s for the golfer who has everything. Such courses can be pricey, too penal to avoid slow play, and over spectacular topography that isn’t ideal for walking. There have been a few such creations.

But done right, a high end par 3 can become destination golf. And several at major resorts have pulled off that “you’ve got to play the par 3” allure. The 13-hole Preserve at Bandon Dunes by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw is thrilling. So is the short course at the Colorado G.C. by the same team.

The Cradle has immediately joined this club, and may even jump to head of the class. Hanse and Wagner have found a delicate balance between playability for the beginner to average golfer, with difficulty that will challenge and delight the better player. There are no water hazards or unplayable areas, and on most holes the tee shot can be bounced in. But getting the ball close means landing the ball precisely and with some spin, and getting up and down from off the green requires a bit of delicacy. Junior golfers who go round and round The Cradle (it’s free for kids 17 or under when accompanied by an adult) will develop a nuanced feel for the scoring part of the game. As for the kind of single-digit sticks that flock to Pinehurst, teams of them will fill the course in the shadowy early evening, perhaps a cocktail in hand, but also fueled by an obsession to conquer a first-class golfing challenge.

“I was trying to find the fun,” said Hanse, who shaped both The Cradle and the new putting green, named Thistle Dhu and inspired by the humpy undulations of the vast Himalayas putting course at St. Andrews, which it exceeds in size but not in cost [it’s free]. “All of it is right out the front door, so it sets a tone of the game truly being enjoyed. I want to hear some yell, for great shots, crazy bounces, holes in one. I want people sitting outside the clubhouse to kind of bask in this great scene. I hope it just reinforces that true golf spirit that is such a part of Pinehurst.”

And which beautifully small courses like The Cradle will spread.

The post The long view on golf’s new fascination with short courses appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

As a short hitter, the 33-year-old South Carolinian is not a good match for Quail Hollow’s daunting combination of wet fairways and firm greens. He has not played particularly well lately. And he doesn’t have a strong record in the majors.

Indeed, Kisner hasn’t shown the kind of tee-to-green proficiency required to handle the game’s most demanding setups. In 11 previous major championship starts, he’s missed three cuts, and his best finish is T-12. He’s now made it to major weekends eight times in a row, but his best finish in that stretch was T-18.

“Yeah, I’ve been upset with how I’ve played in the majors so far in my career,” Kisner said on Friday after his second-straight four-under-par 67. “I feel like I have the game to compete in majors, but tons of 30th- to 40th- and 50th-place finishes. [Improving that] has kind of been our goal for the year.”

But after a T-43 at the Masters, T-58 at Erin Hills and T-54 at Royal Birkdale, Kisner intensified his sessions with the instructor who began transforming his game in 2013, John Tillery. Last week the duo found a new way to look at an old problem.

As a result, Kisner has elevated his long game to perhaps the highest point of his career. At the PGA, he ranks first in greens in regulation at 83.3 percent and seventh in driving accuracy at 75 percent. With the punishing Bermuda rough making short in the fairway better than long in the rough, Kisner’s 291.5-yard driving-distance average, which ranks 92nd in the field, is long enough. “I’m really fired up about the way I’m hitting the golf ball,” he said.

For good reason. “I never was a good ball-striker,” Kisner said of the seven years he spent on the mini tours and the Web.com Tour before finally earning his PGA Tour card. “When I came out here and saw how other guys hit it and I was like, I’ve got no chance the way I’m hitting it.”

So Kisner began to work with Tillery, the director of instruction at Cuscowilla Golf Club in Eatonton, Ga. “He told me, ‘Just get me to hit it better, because I think I can win out there,’ ” remembers Tillery, who also works with William McGirt and Roberto Castro. “I loved hearing that. It told me a lot about his belief in himself. Because from where he was, it was a stretch.”

What Tillery saw was a “sloppy” swing that was too narrow going back and lacked enough hip-rotation going forward, creating an in-to-out downswing that lacked power and bred inconsistency. In stages, he got Kisner to load more weight into his right side on the backswing, which facilitated a more efficient and powerful down-the-line-and-around release on the forward swing.

In 2015, Kisner made a quantum leap, reaching a sudden-death playoff at the Players, and six months later winning his first PGA Tour event at Sea Island. Swing overhauls by tour pros are risky, with a good argument that more players get worse than get better. But under Tillery, Kisner’s swing rebuild ranks with Matt Kuchar’s as one of the most successful in recent history.

Streeter Lecka/Getty Images

Still, Kisner found that he’d relapsed this year, and needed a rigorous refresher course that Tillery called “Rocky-like” to raise up his game. “Part of my job is to find a different way to say the same thing,” said the instructor. “We tried some new drills, and some new words clicked, and Kis discovered a feeling in his right foot that got a good result, one that helped him release his chest toward the target. So his thought this week is right foot—chest.”

As well as he is hitting the ball, Kisner has been even more free-flowing on Quail Hollow’s diabolical greens, which are stimping at 14 with plenty of undulation. Because his inlaws live in Charlotte, as well as his 93-year-old grandmother, Kisner has played the course often, and likes the Champion Ultradwarf Bermudagrass greens better than the bent-grass surfaces they replaced, in part because they new ones are similar to those of his home course, Palmetto Golf Club, in Aiken, S.C.

“I feel real comfortable on the reads on the greens, and my speed’s been great,” he said. “That’s a lot of confidence right there.”

Kisner’s strategy going forward? Despite his relative lack of firepower, and the overall high scoring at Quail Hollow, the word he favored was “attack.”

“Being able to attack when you can is my big deal in majors,” Kisner said, “and you’ve got to be comfortable putting those three-, four- and five-footers for pars on the holes that you can attack.” Alluding to the record 18-hole rounds shot in the U.S. Open and the Open Championship, he added, “You’ve got to realize that guys are making birdies, and the whole mindset of pars are good is kind of out the window.”

Tillery chuckled when he heard the word attack. “That’s Kis, he’s got that ‘watch this’ confidence,” he said. “But he’s done a good job of tempering that and hitting 30 feet away from a risky pin with a 7-iron. He used to be not so good at that. But he’s really gaining on the stuff it takes win majors.”

At Quail Hollow, Kisner’s halfway there.

The post PGA Championship 2017: A rebuilt swing has Kevin Kisner ready for his major moment appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

First and foremost, very difficult. Despite a lot of rain. Despite the PGA generally being considered the easiest setup among the four majors. Despite a history of good scoring at the PGA Tour’s Wells Fargo Championship.

But to begin with, this isn’t the same course. Since a completion last summer of the club’s “Master Plan,” it’s got new playing surfaces. Champion Ultradwarf Bermudagrass has replaced bent grass on the greens, making them both firmer and faster, especially with SubAir systems sucking out any extra moisture. Although no official Stimpmeter reading has been announced, players estimated that the greens were rolling close to 14.

The original rye grass rough is now Bermuda, which is thicker and tougher to control the ball from, especially in the summer growing season. The bunker sand has also been changed out, with the same bright-white quartz-based sand used at the Masters. Indeed, under the leadership of President Johnny Harris, Quail Hollow has taken on Augusta-like aspects and ambitions.

There are also three new holes, each among the toughest on the course. Jim Furyk calls the 524-yard par-4 1st hole the toughest opener in golf, simply because he believes it should be a par 5. The shallow and extremely undulating green on the 184-yard fourth hole gave the players fits and elicited complaints, while the 449-yard fifth was more accepted but still contributed to a start that set many players back on their heels. On Thursday, those three holes played a combined 157 over par.

Then there is the part of the old course that was always hard – the final three holes, known as the The Green Mile. Water is prominent on the 504-yard par-4 16th, the 223-yard par-3 17th, and all along the left side of the 494-yard par-4 18th. Double bogey is a distinct possibility on all three.

Mike Ehrmann

The sum total of the above is why “defensive” has been the byword of the week when it comes to describing the overall challenge. “Yes, you need to be defensive on these greens,” said Jordan Spieth, arguably the world’s greatest putter, after a first round, one-over 72 in which he bemoaned not holing anything and thrice taking three from the edge. “You have to.”

At the moment, it’s looking like Phil Mickelson, who opened with 79, was close with his early call last year upon learning about the nature of the redo: “Can you imagine this golf course with severe rough, where you have to play very defensive?” he said. “I think over par would end up winning it.”

That’s U.S. Open type talk, and this year the PGA is more U.S. Open than the U.S. Open was at Erin Hills. Indeed, Quail Hollow could very well end up the year’s toughest scoring major, with the Masters’ winning total of nine-under par setting the bar. Earlier this week, Mickelson predicted that six under will win.

It’s a bit of a surprise, in a bucolic setting in the Carolina pines that has always been a player-friendly environment, both in the way Harris has made sure it’s one of the best in hospitality, and in immaculate conditions. Double-digit under par has been the rule since the Wells Fargo began in 2003, with the tournament record being 21-under 267.

That’s not going to happen, not with the new rough and green surfaces. Yes, the wet fairways will offer more effective width and less fear off the tee. U.S. Open champion Brooks Koepka, who took the teeth out of Erin Hills with long and accurate driving on wider than normal fairways, calls Quail Hollow a “bomber’s paradise.” After the first round, the legitimate bombers joining Koepka in the top 20 within three of the lead were world No. 1 Dustin Johnson, No. 2 Hideki Matsuyama, and No. 7 Jason Day, along with less-formidable names Grayson Murray, Gary Woodland and Tony Finau.

It looks like a bomber who expects to win at Quail Hollow will have to be relatively straight. The expected rain might help, but the punishing rough will produce a lot of missed greens and long approach putts. With the greens so treacherous, scrambling for par will be difficult, and three putts from distance will be common. Perhaps more than expected at Quail Hollow, the tried and true major championship formula of “fairways and greens” looks likes it will hold the edge over “bomb and gouge.”

The post PGA Championship 2017: Why Quail Hollow is shaping up to be the year’s toughest test appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

By Jaime Diaz
At the 99th PGA Championship, Jordan Spieth for the first time will be playing for one of the transcendent prizes in golf: the career Grand Slam. Of course, the 24-year-old is quick to deny he’s thinking that way. Spieth insists his focus will be on simply winning the PGA, which, since his victory last month at the Open Championship, is now the only one of the four professional majors he hasn’t won. “I mean this,” he intoned last week at Firestone in explaining his mindset. “It’s just a major.”

Then again, Spieth, who because of his back-nine heroics at Royal Birkdale is occupying the same kind of attention in the golf public consciousness as he did when he won the first two majors in 2015, is floating on a cloud of confidence and well being. “Free rolling,” as his caddie, Michael Greller puts it. It’s the approximate state that three of the five greats who achieved the career Grand Slam were in the year they captured the final leg, given that Ben Hogan in 1953 and Tiger Woods in 2000 each won three major championships, while in 1966 Jack Nicklaus won two.

So while Spieth may insist that because he expects to play in “30” future PGAs, if he doesn’t win at Quail Hollow, “it’s not going to be a big-time bummer whatsoever because I know I have plenty of opportunities,” there’s a chance he may never have a freer roll. And for the record, the last three winners of the Grand Slam—Gary Player, Nicklaus and Woods—all completed the feat in their 20s. For that matter, golf’s first Grand Slammer, Gene Sarazen, won his first two majors at age 20, sooner even than Spieth. In the journey to the career Grand Slam, the time to take advantage of a head start is always now.

If all this sounds a bit over-caffeinated, it’s because career Grand Slams in golf are special. They are more rare than in tennis, where eight men (the latest Novak Djokavic) have done it. But more importantly, it can be sad to see great players fall one major short. Counting Spieth, 12 players have achieved three legs without getting the fourth. And those for whom valiant attempts at the final have been thwarted by bad luck or multiplying tension or both—especially Sam Snead with the U.S. Open, and Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson with the PGA—have ended up on a slightly lower tier of the pantheon. It looks like that has happened to Phil Mickelson in his quest for a U.S. Open, and that there is an increasing possibility of this happening to Rory McIlroy at Augusta National.

RELATED: Golf Digest Podcast—Spieth’s pursuit of the career Grand Slam compared to Tiger

Not that the career Grand Slam is a perfect measure of greatness. Walter Hagen, who won 11 major championships, didn’t have a real shot at what evolved into the Grand Slam because the Masters wasn’t even played until he was well past his prime. And what of Bobby Jones’ “original” Grand Slam in 1930, winning the U.S. Open and Amateur and their British counterparts in one year, which has never been replicated by any golfer over an entire career? That feat, or the still unattained the calendar professional Grand Slam, or even the Tiger Slam of 2000-’01, would all have to be more exalted than the career Grand Slam.

Then there’s overcoming the pressure of finally capturing the last leg, which builds the more years that go by. Even Spieth was attuned to this challenge, conceding that he would have to be careful not to make the PGA an obsession. “The con,” he said of being just one major away from the career Grand Slam, “and what makes it more difficult than just saying it’s another major, is that it’s one a year now instead of four a year that that focuses on, if that’s what the focus is.”

Clearly, getting the final leg is a validator. It means meeting the moment, demonstrating the rare ability to bring out your best golf when it means the most, when the pressure is highest, when the battle is hardest. It takes greatness.

That said, not all career Grand Slams were created equal. Here’s how I would rank them, counting down from least to most significant:

5. Gene Sarazen 

E. Bacon/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

Though he will always be a giant figure with seven major championships, Sarazen is golf’s greatest beneficiary of retroactive history. Not only did he win the 1935 Masters by getting into a playoff on the wings of holing a 4-wood from 235 yards on the 15th hole on Sunday, but the Masters was far from being considered a major championship, probably not reaching that status until Ben Hogan and Snead played off in 1954. There was no pressure on Sarazen because he didn’t even know he was making history.

RELATED: Spieth not finding any negatives in career Grand Slam bid

4. Gary Player 

Bill Stahl Jr./Pictorial Parade/Getty Images

Indisputably the game’s greatest international golfer, with nine majors included among his 159 victories worldwide, Player was ruthlessly efficient in clicking off the four majors in six-year period that ended with his victory at the 1965 U.S. Open at Bellerive, in the only time he would win that championship. It’s quite possible that no one ever wanted the achievement more.  “I was aware of the Grand Slam in 1953 because Hogan was my hero in golf,” Player said by phone last week, “and I knew when he won at Carnoustie he had the four.”

The prize was in his head when he won his first major at the 1959 Open Championship, and soon he became determined to beat rivals Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus to the mark. Though he hadn’t won a major since the 1962 PGA, he was primed at Bellerive. “I was squatting with 325 pounds, the fittest I ever was in my life,” Player said. He was going to a church in St. Louis every day and praying for courage. He wore the same black shirt every day, washing in the sink of his hotel room each night. When he got to the course, he devoted a few minutes to standing before the scoreboard, which had past winners’ names, and envisioned his own. “I saw Gary Player, winner, 1965, and Gary Player winner of the Grand Slam, ” he said. “I don’t know if any golfer ever, ever, was as focused as I was that week on winning.”

And if Player had lost the playoff to Kel Nagel, does he think he might have suffered the same frustrating fate in the U.S. Open as Snead? “Oh, no. I would have won it, absolutely no doubt,” he said. Of such minds are career Grand Slam winners made.

3. Jack Nicklaus 

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The man who would go on to win the equivalent of three career Grand Slams achieved his first one as a forgone conclusion, he was clearly so good. But even Nicklaus confesses an early setback in 1963 at Lytham, where he bogeyed the final two holes to lose by one, created a crisis of confidence in his ability to win the Open Championship. With three legs of the Slam completed, he finished second at St. Andrews in 1964, and still wondered if his high ball flight would always hold him back on the windy linksland.

He seemed to find the key at Muirfield in 1966, but with a three-stroke lead with seven to play, he three-putted from seven feet, missing a 15-inch putt. “I experienced one of the most severe mental jolts I’ve ever suffered on a golf course,” Nicklaus confessed in his autobiography. “Jittery is not a strong enough word to describe my feelings.” He bogeyed two of the next three holes, but then, as Spieth did at Birkdale, found a way at the 11th hour to go from negative to positive and eeked out a one-stroke win.

Realizing he had won the Slam, Nicklaus was overcome at the trophy presentation. He wrote: “Being about to receive something that even I, never much of a self-doubter, had genuinely doubted would ever be mine, was extremely emotional.” From that point, the Open Championship became the major where Nicklaus most consistently contended.

2. Ben Hogan 

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True, the professional Grand Slam hadn’t yet become a thing when Hogan won his fourth leg at Carnoustie in 1953 at age 40. In fact, Hogan, who hadn’t won the first of his nine majors until he was 34, wasn’t thinking career Grand Slam when he made his first trip to the Open Championship. He had gone because friends had urged him to “for the good of the game,” and for “the challenge.” Once there, he became engaged with a monastic purpose that entranced the Scots, keeping legs battered by his car accident functioning through long, soaking baths, mastering the nuances of the small British ball and stoically executing with near perfection. His victory remains perhaps golf’s supreme example of a one-shot, do-or-die, all-or-nothing, surgical strike that culminated in a glorious mission accomplished. It earned Hogan a ticker-tape parade when he returned to the U.S., and turned out to be his final major-championship victory.

1. Tiger Woods 

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Until further notice, his is the most brilliantly dominating career Grand Slam. Its Himalayan peaks remain prominent on golf’s landscape: the 1997 Masters (by 12 strokes), the 2000 U.S. Open (by 15 strokes) and the 2000 Open Championship (by eight strokes). But it was the 1999 PGA at Medinah where Woods’ seemingly inevitable ascendance could have been stalled, and the tricky, seven-foot, left-to-right par putt he made on the 71st hole to maintain a one-stroke lead over Sergio Garcia may go down as the most important putt of Woods’ career. Any pain Woods suffered in his few close loses in majors for the first 12 years of his career was negligible, but losing at Medinah probably would have left a mark. With appropriate theater, Woods closed out his first Grand Slam with a triumphant march up the 18th at St. Andrews.

If Spieth can claim a fourth leg at Quail Hollow, where would his Grand Slam rank?  Third best, behind Woods and Hogan.

Spieth, as the sixth holder, would be the youngest, by eight months. He’s been more stalwart than opportunist, having led or been tied for the lead in 15 of the 70 major championship rounds he has played. But other than his first major win, a wire-to wire job at the 2015 Masters, Spieth’s victories have been tight ones in which, for all his magic with the short game and putter, his tee-to-green play has lacked the majesty of Woods or Nicklaus or Hogan. He’s also lost the lead late at two Masters, leaving more scar tissue at an early age than Woods, Nicklaus or Player experienced.

Then again, Spieth’s combination of passionate competitiveness and personal charm is reminiscent of Jones, and engenders a similar degree of public devotion. If he could close out the Slam in Charlotte, his resultant popularity would lift golf and his persona into Jones/Palmer/Woods territory.

It would also install him firmly on the game’s throne at an early age. Nicklaus and especially Woods showed such a position can be a self-perpetuating mental edge. As good as being No. 1 in the world is, it’s better—through an early career Grand Slam—to have proved you’re the best when it matters most.

RELATED: The history of Grand Slam pursuits

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