Ernie Els, one of the world’s great golfers and a sportsman supposedly as relaxed as he is gifted, looks suitably devoid of stress in his baggy shorts and cool sandals. He cracks the odd joke, says ”mate” a lot and even laughs on cue. But it does not take long to detect something less settled lurking beneath the familiar Els facade of an amiable swinger with the sweetest of games and most laconic of lifestyles.
”I think people have misread me,” he says with a little edge to his otherwise flat Afrikaans accent. ”They think I’m more laid-back than I actually am. You know everybody latched on to my ‘Big Easy’ nickname and I never liked it. I just don’t think it’s true to me.”
Els jerks a thumb in the direction of two members of his management team. ”You ask those guys — they’ll tell you I’m not so easy. It’s nice that other people think I am, but only I really know how I feel on the inside. If I had that ‘easy’ attitude I would not survive long in this game. I’ve put in a lot of work and had some success, but I’ve missed out a lot in the past 10 years. In many ways I’ve tried too hard.”
Frustration now burns through Els. And so it seems appropriate that, rather than preparing for this week’s Open Championship at Hoylake by remembering his 2002 triumph in the same tournament, his memories are more poignant. ”I had a good year in 2004,” he says wistfully of the last time he was free from injury and its psychological aftermath. ”I could’ve won all four majors — well, at least three of them. At the US PGA I was one shot out of the play-off, but the two I should really have won were the Masters and the Open.”
At Troon, Els missed a 3m putt to win the Open and then lost in a play-off to the unheralded American Todd Hamilton. He had, however, been almost flawless in defeat at Augusta a few months earlier when, despite an eagle at the 13th, a birdie on 15 and not a single bogey on the back nine, Els was still beaten at the death by Phil Mickelson — who picked up his first major championship. Mickelson has since gone on to win two more and so equal Els’s trio of major victories.
”In the Masters there wasn’t much more I could have done and Phil still beat me. That really hurt. Hell, I’ve been wanting to win the Masters so long. So that was a big blow to me. It’s not just the case that it takes weeks or months to get over it. I don’t think you ever get over something like that — but you try and move on.”
Els was condemned to a barren five-month stretch last year after his knee was badly damaged in a boating accident immediately after the 2005 Open. He nods vigorously when asked if, while convalescing, he spent a long time thinking that he should have many more majors to his name.
”Absolutely! I definitely should have five or six by now. I loved being at home [in Wentworth] and picking up the kids after school and sleeping in the same bed for months when that’s something I haven’t done for years. But, in terms of my career, it was bad. I became a bit like a bear with a sore head as I walked round the house —
I just wanted to be out there making up for lost opportunities.”
The intensity of Els’s often forgotten ambition is revealed even in an innocent moment when we reflect on our shared past in the grimy backwater town of Germiston, 25km east of Johannesburg. There was never much to do there other than brood and plot a way out of the joint. If you went to the local English school you might have got lucky as a teenager and discovered the NME, movies or an American writer able to suggest a different world far beyond the crushing anonymity of Germiston. At the neighbouring Afrikaans school, meanwhile, sport seemed the only escape.
Rugby was king and the young Ernie was a decent player — and even better at tennis. But his path out of Germiston was soon found in golf. The local course, predictably, was ”not up to much” but down the road, in the even less romantic setting of a bleak suburb called Kempton Park, Els fuelled his outrageous dream.
”I really liked the course at Kempton,” the 36-year-old says, ”and I remember me and Dirk [his brother] playing 45 holes a day. You remember how it was? You’d stand over every putt and say, ‘This one is to win the Masters … this putt is to win the Open …’ That’s how we grew up. I’ve not been back to Germiston for ages — but that’s where the big dream started.”
In boyhood fantasies there is rarely any space to imagine injury or pain. But Els now studies the stitched flesh of his knee. ”That scar’s not so pretty, hey? They went in and drilled holes and basically reconstructed the knee. I never thought it was the end, but when I came back I realised how bad it was. It was really sore and didn’t function like it used to. That’s when I became worried. Trying to protect the knee during the swing, especially the left knee where there’s a bit of torque, I got into bad habits. It affected my swing and my form dipped. But David Leadbetter [his coach] was with me last weekend and that helped. I’ve been seeing some signs that my game is coming back.”
When Els won the 2002 Open he was so thrilled that, for the next year, he took the Claret Jug with him wherever he travelled. ”I never got tired of showing it to people. We had so many parties that I’m amazed it never got chipped. But when I handed it back the next year I had to give it a helluva clean because we had poured so many different drinks inside it.”
Els leans back and, the smile reaching his weary eyes at last, nods in satisfaction and anticipation. ”Me and the family fly back to South Africa next Monday. I don’t know if it’s going to happen but, I’m telling you, if I win the Open then that jug’s coming with us. I’ll know that I’m back for good so we’ll fill it up with a lot of drink and have one hell of a party.”
And then the big man shrugs and laughs again, a little sadly, knowing his words now spring as much from hope as expectation. In his hard new world, after all, life is far from easy. — Â