GOLF:Jon Swift
NICK PRICE has gone winless for 14 months. It is not the first time that he has gone through a barren spell as a professional golfer.
But Price’s eventual elevation to the ranks of the major winners and the world’s No 1 spot were as much a token of his ability to accept that not every week carries a winner’s cheque as it was his innate ability and belief in his own talents.
Price showed both these attributes in losing by a shot to Vijay Singh in the South African Open at Glendower; he both accepted the vagaries that the game tends to throw at the unsuspecting, and displayed a refusal to lie down and accept second as the easy way out.
It is interesting, at this juncture, to raise several points with regard to Price and his second place behind the elegant Fijian over the narrow fairways and subtly cruel greens of Glendower.
Price has been struggling with his putting for some time, proving yet again the old Bobby Locke adage that you drive for show and putt for dough.
“I have not been picking the line quite right,” he said during the Open. “I feel I’m striking the ball well, but if you’re not getting the feel of the line, the pace also becomes a problem. And putting is all about line and pace.”
This failure of what seem well-struck putts to drop was one of the major factors between victory in a tournament Price has always wanted to win and not yet succeeded at, and finishing second behind Singh.
The Zimbabwean’s opening round 72 gave Singh, who turned in rounds of 69-66-66-69, the vital edge. If Price could have got the putter moving on the first day for a sub-70 the way he did during the last three rounds, where he carded returns of 66-65-68, he could arguably have beaten Singh by two shots.
But it is on such imponderables that the fickle fortunes of the game of golf invariably hinge, and there can be nothing taken away from the way Singh swept to the title.
It could be argued that fate went his way though. This was shown -and perhaps in the most telling manner – on the short 15th, where Price’s tee shot found the water and he played superbly to make a one-over four. Singh was bunkered but made his three with the sort of disdainful aplomb that typifies his play and makes watching him such a pleasure.
It is also this confidence from trouble that makes Singh a champion, and was expressed most forcibly by his chip-in on the 17th in the first round that led to the two-shot advantage at 15-under the Fijian carried into the final round.
Singh misses this week’s second leg of the three-tournament European Tour segment of the circuit, the Dimension Data Pro-am at Sun City. Price is there with a putter that is starting to run hot again. This, more than any other aspect, offers Price the gateway to the rejuvenation of his winning abilities. It was over the same Gary Player Country Club layout that he recorded that staggering 24-under victory in the Million Dollar challenge four years ago.
In that tournament, Price could do no wrong, fighting back from the wayward shot and holing just about anything that came his way.
Against a top-flight field of European Tour entrants and the best of the South Africans, winning again at Sun City will be just the tonic Price needs. And, incidentally, break the long drought for a man used to the taste of victory.