tumbles
GOLF:Andrew Spencer
FOR so many players, the US Open has represented both the pinnacle of a career and the graveyard of future hopes for a second major. It has often been described as the one-off Grand Slam.
Ernie Els broke this mould in convincing fashion at Congressional two weeks ago, winning the prestige title for the second time with as coldly calculated a final round as you are ever likely to see.
He followed this with a back-to-back win in defence of his Buick Classic title, leaving no doubt that the long, almost lazy, swing has been re-honed to gun-sight accuracy and that the putter is again flowing sweet and true.
More importantly though, it put the 27- year-old Els at the top of the world golf rankings, displacing Tiger Woods from the No 1 spot after just two weeks.
The turnaround is perhaps prophetic of what will happen at the highest levels of the professional game for some years to come. For in Els and Woods – six years the junior of the lanky South African – there lies the future of golf, the marketing of the game and the way the public perceives the battle of man over elements and terrain that Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player brought to the world through the miracle of television.
It is then apposite to run a rule over the two sharply contrasting young men, their attitudes and the way they have grown into the game in two very different parts of the world.
By dismembering the intricacies of Augusta National in a record US Masters, Woods added further fuel to the fires of yankee fanaticism that had followed his unprecedented winning of three US Amateur titles and a start to a professional career that encompassed more wins in the opening seven-week burst than many tour professionals earn in a career.
Here was the epitome of the American dream; a kid of Afro-Asian-American Indian roots, the son of a black father who had battled his way to a colonelcy in the US Green Berets, and a Thai mother. A youngster who was unimpressed by the reputations of those who he faced as a rookie; the slightly older face of the six-year-old who cried when he was beaten by the club professional on a par-3 layout.
Woods was there to do what all Americans believe is the only thing to do … to win. He had the prodigious length off the tee and the deft touch and certainty of decision-making to do it too. His record low score for the Masters and all-time biggest winning margin proved it. This, railed the critics, was the end of the game as we knew it. Hardly.
The precocious Tiger had still to learn one thing. Golf produces few winners. Only one man in an average field of 120 to be precise. It produces only a minimum of major title holders. Woods, petulant and testy as he saw Els disappear into the distance at Congressional, was learning a hard lesson. You have to lose as well as you win.
The things that had seemingly come so effortlessly to Woods, the victories, the Masters, the adulation of the teeming galleries and the vast sponsorships almost beyond the comprehension of the average wage earner, suddenly became difficult. The pressure to perform week in, week out – and not just to perform, but to win – abruptly came home and landed on the shoulders of the tyro named Tiger.
Els, blessed with a similar wealth of talent, knows all about those pressures after winning his first major at Oakmont Hills as a 24-year-old. But he is a step ahead of his rival in that he has learnt to lose – most specifically in the current season where he showed only patches of the Els of old.
It is perhaps doing some crystal ball gazing, but not beyond the bounds of belief to say Els will probably have a far easier and more satisfying career than Woods. His nature is echoed in the almost somnolent swing, and easy-going approach to the game that defies the norms of the US Tour, where guts and grit in the grind of target golf and the pursuit of a cheque ahead of all else prevails.
The great differences are in the fact that Woods is a manufactured man, a driven human being who knows little outside the confines of 72 tournament holes, despite what his father Earl believes is a divine mission for his son.
Els has got good at what he does because he has worked at it and yet still enjoys what he is doing. There is the hint of fun every time Els picks up a club. He has the ability to concentrate on what he is doing while he is doing it and yet, when all that is over, seek out some friends and enjoy a beer and a round of social conversation.
Both will win many more tournaments in the years to come. Both will occupy the world’s top ranking at various stages as the vagaries of chance and form come into play.
It promises to be a fascinating study in both massive ability as well as light and shade on a game built on nuances.
ENDS