Old Marsh Golf Club Archives - Golf Digest Middle East

How Justin Leonard and Brad Faxon put together the Bahamas Strong Pro-Am to assist Hurricane Dorian victims

Golf Digest Middle East — Tue, 24 Sep 2019 23:59:48 +0000

Locals push shopping carts past debris in the “Mudd” neighbourhood in Marsh Harbor, Great Abaco, on September 7, 2019, in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian. The historically powerful storm left at least 43 people dead with officials fearing a “significantly” higher toll. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP/ Getty Images).

By Brian Wacker
It has been more than three weeks since the Bahamas were ravaged by Hurricane Dorian, the Category 5 storm with wind gusts as high as 220 mph that levelled Great Abaco, Grand Bahama and elsewhere in the archipelago. The road to recovery has been an arduous one, laden with bureaucratic red tape and the inherent challenges that follow a catastrophic disaster.

Golf and the courses on the islands are low on the priority list, but the game has a deep connection in that part of the world with the Bahamas a popular destination for everyone from the casual fan to PGA Tour player. Which is why those in the golf community are trying to do what they can to get the people there, several hundred of whom work at Baker’s Bay, The Abaco Club and other courses, back on their feet.

On Oct. 8, Brad Faxon and Justin Leonard will co-host a pro-am at Old Marsh Golf Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. Among those already committed to play are Justin Thomas, Jack Nicklaus, Jessica Korda, Ernie Els, Greg Norman, Lucas Glover, Billy Horschel, Jaye Greene, Corey Conners, Brett Quigley, Marina Alex and Charl Schwartzel. Funds raised will go directly toward relief efforts.

“They need everything,” Faxon said. “There’s no fuel, no place to stay. People need necessities like food, water and underwear because this is going to take months.”

How the fundraiser came to be in the first place speaks to the connection between Floridians and the Bahamas.

A well-connected Ponte Vedra Beach woman named Beth Warren, a neighbour of PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan though she doesn’t know him, was on a group text of other like women who had frequented the Bahamas on countless vacations and wanted to help. Her family’s home just outside the gates of Baker’s Bay on Great Guana Cay was destroyed in the storm but that was secondary. There were more pressing needs amid the chaos for the people she’d gotten to know over the years.

Another of the women who was on the text chain: Leonard’s wife Amanda. The idea percolated from there, with her husband reaching out to Faxon as well as PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh, and the pro-am was born.

“We made friends with so many of the Bahamians that it was truly our second home,” said Warren, who isn’t a golfer but had spent more than a decade visiting Great Abaco, often spending weeks at a time there with her four children. “Our souls were there. That was the happy place.”

Warren’s efforts have extended beyond just flying a plane full of supplies there, too. In the wake of the disaster, she says she has fielded calls from dozens of people whose lives have been interrupted or destroyed and has put them up in homes or flown them to Miami, where they could stay with relatives or in a hotel.

But it will be months if not years before there is any level of normalcy, particularly in Marsh Harbour on Great Abaco, where shantytowns were flattened and countless buildings reduced to rubble. The death toll is currently at 52 but that is expected to rise significantly with more than 1,300 people still registered as missing with the Bahamas government.

“There’s so much they need before they can even think about rebuilding,” Warren said. “There is a lot of need and a lot of confusion down there.”

In the meantime, every little bit of goodwill helps.

For more on the Bahamas Strong Pro-Am and how to donate, click here.

The post How Justin Leonard and Brad Faxon put together the Bahamas Strong Pro-Am to assist Hurricane Dorian victims appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

The best way out of a slump could be by way of a mirror

Golf Digest Middle East — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 04:38:58 +0000

As Jordan Spieth looks to regain his lost form, players who’ve experienced similar slumps say the road back starts with brutal honesty.

By John Feinstein
Greg Norman still remembers the day vividly. It was September 1992, and he hadn’t won a golf tournament in more than two years. He had changed swing coaches, fiddled with his mechanics and tried to convince himself he was on the verge of a breakthrough. He was in his car, driving to Old Marsh Golf Club in Palm Beach for a practice session.

“I can still see it,” he said, smiling at the memory earlier this month. “It was a pretty day, and I had the top down. It was just me. I had been playing like completes— for a long time. I looked up at the sky and said to myself What is this about? Is something wrong physically? No. So why am I going to the golf course right now? Am I just going to beat myself up when I get there, just pound golf balls without knowing what I’m doing and then make excuses when I don’t play well next week?

“I was finally honest with myself that day. There was nothing physically wrong with me. There was no one to blame for the condition of my game but me. I had to focus on every shot—every shot. I had the best range session of my life that day. Two hours. I hit every shot with precision.

“A week later, I won the Canadian Open.”

Norman said he didn’t navigate his way out of a slump in the early 90s until he came clean with himself. (Fairfax Media Archives)

Almost every golfer who has had success—not just Hall-of-Famers like Norman—has had to figure a way out of slumps along the way during his career.

“It’s all relative of course,” said Stewart Cink. “Everyone knows that Jordan Spieth isn’t playing well right now—for Jordan Spieth. He’s dropped to what, 20th in the world [actually 25th]. Most guys would kill to be ranked that high. But he’s been No. 1, he’s won three majors, so when he goes this long [since the 2017 British Open] without a win, everyone agrees he’s not playing anywhere close to his best golf.”

Spieth won two majors and five tournaments in 2015—the year he turned 22—and was ranked No. 1 in the world. A year later, he won twice more and finished second in the Masters, losing what had been a five-shot lead on the back nine. In 2017, he won his third major—the Open Championship at Birkdale. At that moment, he was ranked No. 2 in the world.

He hasn’t won since and missed the Tour Championship last year for the first time in his pro career. As he prepares to play in this week’s Players Championship, this season, so far, has been worse: his BEST finish in seven starts is a T-35 in San Diego. In Los Angeles, he started with a seven-under-par 64 on Thursday and finished with a 10-over-par 81 on Sunday.

There isn’t anyone on the tour who doesn’t think Spieth will figure it out again, sooner or later. “His problem is he played so well coming out that the expectations for him are completely over the top,” said Adam Scott—also a former No. 1. “It’s his fault because he played so well coming out. It was like watching a junior who hasn’t learned to get nervous yet.” He smiled. “Of course, he pretty much WAS a junior.”

“The key is to not be too hard on yourself,” said Webb Simpson, who went more than four years without a win before his victory at last year’s Players. “You need to step back and remind yourself that you’re good at golf, that you’ve played it well and you can play it well again

“We all go through it, and I think what you find out is you’re never as far away as you think.”

Cink would agree with that. His game began to fall off not long after his greatest moment—his victory at Turnberry in the 2009 Open Championship. He still played solidly in 2010, but by 2012 had dropped out of the top 100 in the world rankings.

“I think it’s complacency,” he said. “It isn’t anything you notice right away because it isn’t blatant. I don’t think I stopped working hard—spending time on the range, working out—all of that. It was mental. Maybe getting just a little bit lazy in my focus on the range, or occasionally letting my mind wander on a shot or two in a round. Gradually, that adds up. Not right away, but you wake up one morning and realize you aren’t playing well and you wonder why.”

Cink rededicated himself to golf using his wife’s battle with cancer as inspiration. (Sam Greenwood)

Cink said it was his wife Lisa’s battle with breast cancer that snapped his mind back to attention. “You know how people shave their heads to show support for someone with cancer who they love?” he said, smiling. “Well, I couldn’t do that.” He pointed at his follicle-challenged head.

“So, instead I just decided if Lisa could go all in the way she did fighting cancer, then I could go all in on my golf game. Be focused. Don’t be satisfied. No excuses and no whining.”

Cink finished 147th on the FedEx Cup points list in 2016—the year Lisa was diagnosed. A year later he jumped to 53rd and he was 73rd last year.

“I always go back to basics,” said Kevin Streelman, who has been on tour for 12 years after failing to get through Q School five straight times. “The first thing you do is tell yourself you can work harder—no matter how hard you think you’re working. The second thing you do is remind yourself what you’ve worked on in the past that worked. You don’t just work to work, you work smart.”

He smiled. “Every time I flunked Q School, I was on the range hitting balls the next day. I just knew I had to keep working until I got good enough that there was no way I wasn’t going to get through. I finally did it on the sixth try.”

The struggling golfer’s lament is always, “I’m close.” Or, “I’m playing well, just not making putts.” Spieth’s secret when he was the best player in the world was that his putter always covered up for any other hiccups in his game. In 2015, Spieth was ninth in strokes-gained/putting, and a year later he was second. This year, he is 116th and all his other stats are down.

“For those first four years, it felt as if Jordan never missed a putt,” Scott said. “If he hit a bad shot, it didn’t bother him because he knew his putter would bail him out. Now, clearly, he doesn’t feel like that. When you start to lose confidence in the thing you do best, it almost always ends up affecting you through the bag.”

Scott believes there are two kinds of slump—the “mini-slump” and the “major-slump”—and they require very different approaches.

“If it’s a mini-slump, you usually just have to go through a checklist of the things you’re doing and see where the problem is,” Scott said. “Don’t panic because most of the time, it isn’t that hard. The major-slump is different. You have to be willing to drill deep, to go to your core, strip yourself down as a player and as a person. Sometimes when you do that you’re going to find things you really don’t want to find. The game can be so tough mentally, which is why it can be difficult to dig yourself out of a major slump.”

Billy Horschel, who in 2018 had his best year since winning the FedExCup in 2014, agrees with Scott. “In the end, you have to be brutally honest with yourself,” he said. “Be willing to take criticism, first and foremost from yourself but also from your team. But after you do that you have to remind yourself that you love golf. I LOVE golf. Sometimes, I forget to enjoy it. I felt really good going to Hawaii this year. I’d worked on some things I knew needed work on in the fall, and I’d played pretty well. But then a couple of things went wrong on Maui, and I got mad. I started snapping at people. I really wasn’t happy with myself—my golf or my behaviour.

“When I went to San Diego a couple of weeks later, I told myself to just enjoy playing golf. If I hit a bad shot, accept it, go find it and hit it again. Probably not a coincidence that I played much better.”

Brooks Koepka, who bounced back from a serious wrist injury last year to win two majors, dips into his memory bank. “I’ve been struggling with my putter lately,” he said this past week. “So, I remind myself that I’ve made some clutch putts in my career. I kind of shut my eyes and remember some of the putts I’ve made in majors the last couple years and I say, ‘See, you CAN do it. Now, do it again.’

“If I’m not hitting the ball well, I just go back to my foundation. I check my setup, my alignment. It’s almost always something simple. If I’m set up correctly and aligned correctly, then I know before I swing the club I’ve got a chance to hit the ball well. I tell myself, ‘You’ve been doing this for 20 years. There’s no reason you can’t do it well again.’ If I feel that way, chances are I will hit it well.”

He smiled. “Sounds simple. Easier said than done sometimes.”

That’s one thing players—even the best players—have to constantly remind themselves about: Golf is hard. It’s never as simple as they try to make it sound.

“You have to be patient with yourself,” Justin Thomas said. “You can say, ‘OK, I’m going to try this; OK, don’t be quite so aggressive; OK, make the game as simple and easy as you can.’ That doesn’t mean it’s going to work right away. You have to tell yourself good things are going to happen and then wait for them to happen. You can’t push them to happen, you have to let them happen.”

The bottom line? As with anything else, acceptance is half the battle.

“At some point, you have to stop letting yourself off the hook,” Norman said. “You have to look in the mirror and say, ‘Right now, your golf isn’t any good. YOU aren’t any good.’ Then, figure out how to fix it. You can’t get better until you admit that, at that moment, you just aren’t any good. Once you do that, you have a chance to be good again.”

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