young guns
GOLF: Jon Henderson
AGE may be the opponent that eventually beats even the greatest champions, but in Nick Faldo’s case you suspect that it will have to go to the fifth hole of a playoff and then be made to sink a “gimme” put from five centimetres.
Based on the 80 major championships between 1976 and 1995, Faldo, at 38, is already six years past the average age for winning one. But as he demonstrated at Augusta recently, he can do as much damage to statistics as he can to a game as accomplished as that possessed by the 41-year-old Greg Norman.
Of the eight players who, since 1976, have won a major title at an older age than Faldo is now, Jack Nicklaus has done so three times, including claiming the Masters title at 46 (two years short of the oldest age for winning a major), and Ray Floyd twice. Gary Player, Lee Trevino, Larry Nelson, Hale Irwin, Tom Kite and Ben Crenshaw are the others.
“If you look at those names, they’re the cream,” said Alex Hay, the teaching guru and BBC commentator who was at Augusta. “There are no ‘flash’ winners such as John Daly who came from nowhere to win the 1991 US PGA. These are all guys with the nerve to bite back even when they’re getting on in years. It’s the nerve, or edge, if you like, that goes first, and that means the putting.
“It’s nothing to do with power. Being able to get the ball in the hole from two metres is what deserts you as you grow older. Any fool can hit the ball two metres, but once you lose your nerve – the back of your left hand stops going forward and you get the twitch – you’re in trouble. Tom Watson is probably the best example of someone who has lost his nerve with the putter. It was all the press wanted to talk to him about after he missed the cut in Augusta.
“At the moment, Faldo shows no sign of losing it. Norman may have been the best player at Augusta, but he fell when his nerve went. Faldo is nerveless. Each time he has won the Masters he has finished with a sub-70 round and that tells you something about him.”
If there is an age-related flaw in Faldo’s game, Hay believes it is to do with body mobility, although the player has not helped this by putting on 8kg during a typically daunting winter training programme. “Like Nicklaus, Faldo is thick-set, strong in the torso and there is a suggestion that his swing is shortening off which is why he and his coach have been working on freer movement. It’s not easy though,. I watched him in practice in Augusta and his swing was free and full, but it tightened up again on the course. There is a danger in this, although it is not nearly as bad as loss of nerve.
“The fact is Faldo is a special case. I see him getting better and better, and I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next five or six years he doubles his tally of majors. He still has a large store of them in him.”
John Jacobs, another of the game’s great teachers and thinkers, believes that if Faldo does go on to win many more majors – a prospect he certainly does not dismiss, but one he is less sure about than Hay – it will be because of his temperament, which he regards as possibly less perishable than any he has known. “To succeed in golf,” says Jacobs, “you need temperament one, technique two and physical strength three – in that order.” He stresses the force of Faldo’s temperament by saying that in his case it is “number one, one, one”.
Jacobs gets cross at the suggestion that Norman “choked” in the final round. “Greg Norman is a very tough character,” said Jacobs, “and I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t win another major. But what you saw was an even better temperament than Norman’s.
“Augusta is a very unforgiving course. Half a club out and you’re in trouble. Norman was unfortunate to drop a shot at the first, while Faldo played a perfect round from the start. His technique and club selection were faultless. So were his two great strengths: his short game and his temperament.”
Bernard Gallacher and Peter Oosterhuis know at first hand the pressures of the modern game, and appreciate the scale of Faldo’s achievement as he approaches his fortieth year (he’ll be 39 on July 18, the opening day of the British Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St Annes). Gallacher, three times Faldo’s Ryder Cup captain, admits to being surprised that he came through as strongly as he did at Augusta, having suspected that failure of nerve which Hay identifies as the key to forfeiting the ability to win might have set in.
From his own experience, Gallacher describes the condition as “a medical problem for which there is no known cure”, but he believes Faldo provided enough evidence at Augusta to suggest he had postponed that affliction’s onset: “He’s obviously feeling very positive at the moment and you certainly can’t rule out his winning majors.”
Oosterhuis, who partnered Faldo to a famous six-and-five win over Andy Bean and Tom Kite in the 1979 Ryder Cup, sees Faldo’s commitment as the salient characteristic in his enduring success story: “After one or two major victories, it is easy to lose the motivation. But Faldo has retained the desire to practise and to maintain his physical condition. So long as he keeps it he’ll keep on winning.”