Texan Holds ‘Em: Stanford’s HSBC Champions Win Ends 14-year American LPGA drought

Angela Stanford ended a wait of fourteen years and four months for an American victory in a LPGA golf event in Asia when she won a four-player play-off at the HSBC Women’s Champions at Singapore’s Tanah Merah Country Club. Tim Maitland reports.

 Stanford won with a par on the third play-off hole, finally knocking Korean teenager Jenny Shin out of the reckoning after Korea’s world number two Na Yeon Choi and China’s Shanshan Feng had been eliminated in two previous trips up the tough 18^th hole. All four had finished on 10-under-par 278 for the tournament.

SINGAPORE - FEBRUARY 26:  Angela Stanford of the USA with the winners trophy after the final round of the HSBC Women's Champions at the Tanah Merah Country Club on February 26, 2012 in Singapore.  (Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)

Amazingly, the last victory for a US player in the LPGA’s long history of staging tournaments in Asia was Juli Inkster’s win at the Samsung World Championship of Women’s Golf, from an invitational field of sixteen LPGA players, in Seoul, South Korea in October 1997. The 2012 HSBC Women’s Champions was the 39^th event in the region since then.

Of the six Asian events on the LPGA’s 2012 schedule, the last to boast an American champion was the Mizuno Classic in Japan which was won by Betsy King in 1993 when it was known as the Toray Japan Queens Cup. King’s win, at the Lions Country Club in Hyogo, was the last US victory against a larger field, over 18 years ago.

“I’m the first American to win in Singapore. That’s pretty cool!” said the thirty-four-year-old Texan, unaware at the time of how long her compatriots’ drought stretched back.

“It’s funny; sitting at the Pro-Am party (on the Wednesday before the tournament) I was thinking we haven’t had an American win this thing yet. Honestly, I thought, well, I’m an American. Might as well give it a go!”

Stanford, whose last win was in 2009, didn’t do it the easy way; only converting the fourth of the putts she had to win the tournament. The cruelest of those was in regulation play after a violent thunderstorm struck with the final group on the 18^th tee and all their rivals safely in the clubhouse. After a 90-minute delay, play resumed with nineteen-year-old Shin leading Stanford by one shot, but the young Korean found a water hazard off the tee and made double bogey, while Stanford’s first chance for victory went begging when she missed a par putt from around five feet.

Making pars throughout the play-off, Stanford adds her name to a roll of honour that consisted only of players to have been rated the best in the world game, from defending champion Karrie Webb through Ai Miyazato and Jiyai Shin to the winner of the inaugural event in 2008, Lorena Ochoa.

“I feel extremely honoured to be in that group of players and to be the first American to get a win is pretty special. Everybody knows this is one of the premier events on tour and always has the best players,” Stanford said.

For Shin, who won the US Girls Junior Championship as a thirteen-year old in 2006, there was the whole range of emotions.

“It’s a little bit of everything; I’m very excited but I’m very disappointed at the same time. The tee shot on the eighteenth was all from nervousness. In the play-off I wasn’t nervous at all. I was really comfortable in the play-off. I really feel like I can do this again. I’m very surprised about how well I did. I’m happy… kind of: happy-sad. I’m accepting it,” she revealed.

Shin’s wasn’t the only hard luck story. China’s Shanshan Feng fell a fraction short of becoming the first player from her country to win an LPGA event, the third time in her short career that she has had to settle for second place.

Current world number one Yani Tseng of Chinese Taipei, who was Jenny Shin’s main challenger for much of the day, finished one shot back in fifth place. She might have won had her approach shot to the 17^th hole gone in for eagle rather than catching the lip of the hole as it span back, leaving her a birdie putt that she missed.

“I do feel disappointed. I just needed a little more luck. I‘ve been very close for two years. Hopefully next year I won’t be disappointed,” said Tseng, who was aiming for back-to-back wins after her victory at the Honda LPGA Thailand the week before.

Voice your opinion on Twitter @Golf4Beginners and friend on Facebook.

Read about "China Golf Firsts"

SINGAPORE - FEBRUARY 22:  (L to R) In Kyung Kim of Korea, Michelle Wie of the USA, Morgan Pressel of the USA, Yani Tseng of Taiwan, Beatriz Recari of Spain, Melissa Reid of England, Suzann Pettersen of Norway, Se Ri Pak of Korea, Paula Creamer of the USA and Natalie Gulbis of the USA during a Welcome Reception Photo Call at the Raffles Hotel prior to the start of the HSBC Women's Champions at the Tanah Merah Country Club on February 22, 2012 in Singapore, Singapore  (Photo by Scott Halleran/Getty Images)

Posted via email from stacysolomon's posterous

Yani Tseng, Karrie Webb, LPGA greats, plan ahead for HSBC Women's Champions

The HSBC Women’s Champions returns to Singapore in February, with LPGA legend Karrie Webb defending the title as the latest name in a roll of honour that is almost unrivalled in recent years. Tim Maitland talks to the stars of the women’s game to work out why the event has only ever been won by the best of the best.

 

Lorena Ochoa, at her most dominant, finished streets ahead of a returning Annika Sorenstam in 2008. A year later Jiyai Shin lifted the trophy at the start of her “rookie” season (she won three LPGA events as a non-member in 2008, including a Major) as part of a relentless charge that would make her the third number one in the history of the official rankings. In 2010, Ai Miyazato held the same silverware and shortly afterwards held the number one ranking, too. Then came Karrie Webb, who by the age of 25 had already qualified for the World Golf Hall of Fame and who, but for the Rolex Rankings only being introduced in 2006, was a number one in everything but name.

 

Has any other tournament consistently crowned such worthy champions in this time span? It’s a question that prompts plenty of head scratching.

 

“Maybe Kraft is one?” ponders current world number one Yani Tseng of Taiwan.

 

[[posterous-content:pid___1]]Yani Tseng, w/Honda LPGA Thailand trophy

 

“The British Open?” she asks, cracking up laughing because her main motivation for mentioning it is the fact that she’s won it the past two seasons.

 

Of the Majors, the Ricoh Women’s British Open might be the nearest comparison to the HSBC Women’s Champions roll of honour, with Yani winning in 2011 and 2010 while Jiyai claimed it in 2008, but 2009 champion Catriona Matthew might be the first to point out that she doesn’t quite belong in the conversation if we’re talking about the greats in the game. The same applies for Stacey Lewis and Brittany Lincicome, winners of the Kraft Nabisco Championship in 2011 and 2009 respectively, in between wins for Yani (2010) and Lorena (2008). The LPGA Championship also comes close with Cristie Kerr in 2010 and Yani in 2011 and 2008, but 2009 winner Anna Nordqvist hasn’t yet thrust her name into the highest echelon.

 

New to Major status next year, the Evian Masters won by Ai, Jiyai and Ai in the past three years comes close, and another of the Asian Spring Swing – the Honda LPGA Thailand – also belong in the conversation, with Yani, Ai and Lorena its most recent champions.

 

One can talk oneself around in circles debating the argument. The certainty is that in short order the HSBC Women’s Champions has become something special.

 

“It’s one of the best tournaments we ever play!” is Yani’s take.

 

“I think the HSBC event is the biggest LPGA event in Asia!” is Jiyai Shin’s verdict.

 

“It’s great from when we first arrive to when we leave. We get looked after very, very well. We stay in great hotels, there’s great hospitality and we play on a great challenging golf course!” declares Karrie, who has certainly earned the right to talk about greatness.

 

“We’d like it like that every week,” the Queensland legend adds.

 

Yani, like Webb, expands on her statement by citing the overall package of the tournament week, rather than purely the golf.

 

“It’s a good one. They’re all the best players in the world challenging that week. It’s always very tough to win that tournament. You have to play so well to be among the great players, which is fun. It doesn’t matter what your score is; it’s always very enjoyable in Singapore, the hospitality there. And you know I love Singapore; I have so many good friends there. I always look forward to going back. I have so much fun and have so many good friends come,” says Tseng, last year’s double Major champion, seven-time winner and Player of the Year on the LPGA with 11 total wins worldwide.

 

Jiyai meanwhile backs up her description of the event being Asia’s best with the following explanation: “All the events are very important, but it feels like a really big tournament.  It’s a beautiful course and a nice city. The tournament is early in the season, and when you win it feels like a good start and it gives you confidence at the beginning of the season, too.”

 

Roll of Honour

 

The first sign that something unusual was happening in Singapore was, perhaps, when Ai Miyazato declared eight months after her 2010 win that it was “an honour” to have added her name to a list of winners that had only two others on it. At the time she was speaking as the reigning world number one.

 

Karrie Webb is the youngest member of an exclusive club of five other legends to have won the LPGA’s Career Grand Slam of Majors, joining Louise Suggs (1957), Mickey Wright (1962), Pat Bradley (1986), Juli Inkster (1999) and Annika Sorenstam (2003). Yet the Aussie is unswerving when asked whether joining the HSBC Women’s Champions roll of honour registered with her.

 

“Definitely!” says the Aussie.

 

“It’s a quality field there. Anytime you win with that sort of field – you can win an event another time of the year and not every one of those players is there – when you win with that quality of field: I held off Yani at the end and since then she has completely dominated the tour. She’s done it for two years, really, but I take a lot of pride in that.”

 

What’s interesting is it’s hard to put a tag on the Singapore winners, beyond the fact that they have all been at the very top of the women’s game. As Jiyai Shin explains, it doesn’t seem to be the style of the player, more just the ability to play at a world-class level for four demanding days.

 

“Ai and me, we’re a pretty similar game type. Karrie plays quite safely and Lorena plays aggressively, so we’re all a little different. The LPGA Tour has a lot of long hitters and the course is pretty long, but you need consistency. It’s got really narrow fairways, lots of bunkers, pretty tough greens: it’s a good course for consistent players,” Shin says of the highly regarded Tanah Merah Country Club’s Garden Golf Course.

 

[[posterous-content:pid___0]]credit: Tanah Merah Garden Golf Course

The runners-up over the years also defy a stereotype as golfers, but do have a common trait. Chie Arimura, who fought Webb all the way last year, is described by caddies on the Japan tour as mentally tougher than any other player out there. Cristie Kerr, runner-up to Ai in 2010, happily calls herself as “a scrapper, a mudder and a grinder”. Annika needs no introduction, while Katherine Hull, pipped by Shin in 2009, thrives in a battle.

 

“I agree, they’re tough players,” says Shin.

 

“They’re all good players. They all hit good iron shots and have good control over their second shots. They really focus only on their own game.”

 

What’s Luck Got to Do with It?

 

While the tournament doesn’t seem to favour any particular aspect of the game – despite the length of Tanah Merah, it certainly can’t be described as a long hitter’s haven – there is a consensus that it does bring out the best from the best.

 

“I think so. You have to have good skill and a good mentality to win the tournament. You can’t be lucky and win that tournament; you have to play good for four whole days,” says Tseng.

 

Her statement, that there will never be a lucky winner, is greeted with all-round agreement.

 

“That’s true. The golf course is difficult enough; it’s like a Major tournament,” Miyazato concurs.

 

“I agree. If you miss a shot, your next shot is a tough shot,” says Shin.

 

“We play great golf courses around the world, but on some holes you can miss a shot and it’ll come back and you can escape. When you miss a shot a Tanah Merah you lose a shot, so we have to hit good shots all the time. For me, it’s fun!”

 

England’s Karen Stupples, who won the 2004 Women’s British Open at Sunningdale by starting her final round with an eagle and albatross in successive holes, is another to wholly back Yani’s point of view.

 

“That’s absolutely right. It’s about quality shots. You can’t get away with having a lucky bounce and banking it onto the green, because if you miss the green the chances are it’s going to bounce into some trouble. Kicking off a mound and bouncing onto the green doesn’t happen there. She’s right. You’ve got to hit good drives, good shots and you’ve got to golf your ball; that’s the bottom line,” declares the 38-year-old from Kent.

 

Further proof to support the argument comes from the fact that every winner of the HSBC Women’s Champions has had multiple wins in the season of their Singapore triumph. Karrie doubled up in her next outing to take the RR Donnelley LPGA Founders Cup. In 2010, Ai had four other LPGA wins and a domestic Major at the Japan Women’s Open. Jiyai claimed two other titles and the Rolex Rookie of the Year award as well as a win on the Japan LPGA, while Lorena went wild in 2008, winning seven events in total, including a Major at the Kraft Nabisco Championship during a spell of four wins in four successive weeks.

 

Not a Game of Perfect

 

That’s not to say all the winners have played perfectly. Jiyai Shin was one over par after two rounds in 2009 when she headed to the range and found a fix: it worked. The next morning she started her third round with almost no-one watching her, but by the time she had completed back-to-back rounds off 66 she had everyone’s undivided attention.

 

Karrie Webb’s win was based on one part of her game working brilliantly and that perhaps helped her believe in the rest.

 

“It was one of those events where my short game was probably the best weeks I’ve had, especially in the last five or six years. My ball striking I wouldn’t say was my best, but under the gun, even when it was a little erratic, I hit some great shots and trusted myself. I hadn’t won on the LPGA for a couple of years and I think I always felt I had to be at my best to win; I took away from that week that I didn’t have to be 110 per cent to win. I just need to find a way to get it in the hole,” she says, echoing what Karen Stupples means when she uses the phrase “golf your ball”.

 

In contrast, Ai Miyazato killed the course with consistency in 2010, carding three 69s in her four rounds.

 

“I’d won the first event in Thailand, so I felt good about my game at that time. I just tried to make simple plays; trying to hit the fairway and trying to hit the greens. That golf course is always in good shape, but the greens are really difficult. You need to make sure you know where you’re going to hit your second shot. You need to be really smart on the golf course. I played really well. My putting was really good all week. I always remember the 16th, the short par four: I made eagle hitting driver to a back pin, getting on the front and making the putt. I played really good the whole week, really solid,” Ai said.

 

The Japanese star has little doubt as to the stand-out winning performance of the four.

 

“Lorena shot 17 under or something?” she asks.

 

It was actually 20 under par.

 

“That’s ridiculous!” she declares.

 

“I think shooting 10 under par on that golf course is really good. I played with her when she won the tournament and she was playing totally different golf. It looked so easy. Annika finished second, but Lorena was so solid and Annika couldn’t touch her!” Ai adds.

 

That win becomes even more impressive when one considers the context. Lorena had risen to number one in April 2007 when Annika was struggling with ruptured and bulging discs in her neck. By the start of 2008 Annika had announced her return to fitness and not just verbally; she won the SBS Open in Hawaii and 10 days later, with Lorena opening her season in Singapore, it was on! Annika beat the rest of the field, but was a massive 11 shots behind Lorena’s winning total.

 

A Chess Match

 

So what is it about Tanah Merah’s Garden Course that tests the best in women’s golf? It starts with the fiendish mind of Phil Jacobs and his 2004 redesign. The end result is a course where the current world number one says you have to think several shots ahead and there is hardly a shot out there that allows you to relax.

 

“Maybe for tap-in putts! All the other shots you have to think in a different way and you have to think about what your strategy is, because it might cost you when you get to your second shot or third shot. You’re always thinking ahead about what you’re going to do. It’s a really fun course to play,” says Yani.

 

“You play all the 14 clubs in your bag. Even though you’re using all 14 clubs, you still have to hit a lot of different shots. There are different winds; all the challenges make you think and make you think you’re enjoying the tournament and having fun with the challenges of the course. It doesn’t feel stressful. You have to have the challenge and some stress, but that’s why it’s so much fun.”

 

For Karen Stupples, one of the things that stands out is the number of times you find yourself with nowhere to make a ‘good’ mistake.

 

“There are some holes you play and you think ‘where is the out?’ and there is no out. Typically a golf hole has an out – one side or another that is favourable to a miss. There are some holes where there is nowhere to miss it. That’s a bit brutal! It’s like the 17th at Sawgrass; there’s no get out! There’s a tiny little bridge, but that’s it. You’ve got to bring it!” says the Englishwoman.

 

“There are some holes that are incredibly challenging, like 10. Last year, 1 and 10 were incredibly tough holes. You’re going in there with four irons; there are not too many courses that we go into with four irons with elevated greens and bunkers or water.”

 

For Jiyai, the enjoyment comes from the way Tanah Merah tests everything you’ve got.

 

“It’s a really strong course for the women: long distance, tight golf course, firm greens. So we need really good ball control with every club. We need the whole skills. It’s pretty tough because the greens are mostly elevated above the fairway, so if you miss, the ball is going a long way,” she explains, adding that her duel with Katherine Hull in the final round three years ago shows how slim the margin is for error.

 

“Katherine and me, she made only one mistake, but it made a big difference. She played good and could have made a lower score, but if you make one mistake it can lose you a lot of strokes, easily. You have to focus each and every shot. Number 18 is pretty tough. If you lead by one shot, you can easily lose one or two there. You have to really focus. It’s easy to make bogey or double-bogey. So nobody knows before the finish.”

 

Sheer Willpower

 

All those factors demand a level of resolve that Na Yeon Choi, currently the highest rated Korean in the official rankings, believes plays into the hands of the women at the top of the global game.

 

“We have to have really good course management on that course. The top players never give up and always do their best until the last hole on Sunday, and the top players get better results because of that,” adds the winner of the 2010 LPGA Official Money List.

 

In a nutshell, it’s a course that demands you get into the designer’s head and understand the questions he’s posing. In Phil Jacobs own words, he does everything from test the golfer’s self-discipline to “constantly have that question in a player’s mind: ‘If I’m going to miss it, where should I miss it?’” And in the case of the hardest holes, he tests their game to breaking point.

 

“It asks you to miss in the right places and to be aggressive when you can be, and I think I did a good job of that,” says Webb of last year’s victory.

 

“When I missed greens, I missed in places where I could get up and down. With my putting that week, I didn’t give myself 12 or 13 unbelievably great birdie opportunities each day. I gave myself six or seven and probably made five of them. I just took advantage of the opportunities I had. It was just about getting the ball in the hole.”

 

Webb reckons that all the factors – a great course, a great field enjoying their entire week at the time of year, when everyone is raring to go – is what has combined to produce the almost unparalleled list of victors… that with the more unusual challenge of the holes that run along the side of Changi Airport.

 

“I think with the quality of the field, you’re bound to get a good winner and it’s the start of the year, so it’s whoever is ready to go straight out of the blocks. It’s whoever is ready mentally to overcome those things and to overcome not making that birdie on the first day, and the heat and the wind and the planes, and all of that,” she explains

 

Stupples, however, feels the final preparations for the tournament – the speeding up of the greens, the growing in of the rough and the other adjustments made to take something a weekend warrior can survive, and morph it into a monster – play a big part, together with the fact that the most successful players make more minor adjustments during the winter break.

 

“They set it up particularly well. It’s a tough, quality golf course, particularly that early in the season. You’ve got to be ready to play and typically you’ll find that the quality players will always be ready to go. That’s what you’re finding there,” she explains.

 

“They’re ready for it. They’ve had a very good season the year before, so they’re coming off good finishes, so the confidence is already pretty high. They’ve done a little bit of maintenance work over the winter, but they haven’t had to do swing overhauls or any of that crap. They’re ready to go. They’re primed. All they have to do is go and play a quality golf course, which is what it is. You have to hit good shot after good shot after good shot, make good putt after good putt. That’s what the course does for you and that’s why you get the winners you do there.”

 

Digging the Vibe

 

Another of the factors seems to be the feeling of the whole week. To understand that, one has to remember just how many weeks of the year these players spend on the road and, especially for the internationals, how much time they’re away from their real homes. It’s also worth bearing in mind just how hard women golfers have had to fight over the years to establish their tour and to be taken seriously in a sport where, in certain parts of the world, to this day women golfers aren’t always welcomed.

 

So when Singaporeans throw open their arms and the red carpet is both literally and metaphorically rolled out, it’s universally appreciated.

 

“I love the tournament atmosphere, too. It’s very special for everything. Very organized and the people are very nice. Because the tournament atmosphere is so good, that’s why everyone is playing so good,” says Ai, referring as much to what is available away from the golf course as to what they get on it.

 

“The hotel is really nice and you can go shopping or do whatever you like. That’s really special as well. That tournament is almost too good!” she exclaims.

 

“It is a terrific event. Every which way, it’s top class!” says Stupples, who appreciates some of the “home” comforts all the more having gambled her house, furniture and car to move to the States in a bid to make it on the LPGA at the start of her career.

 

“I love Singapore! I feel very comfortable in Singapore. With my British background, how could you not feel comfortable in Singapore? The sockets are UK sockets. There’s a kettle in the room and you can make a cup of tea… even if the weather is a little warmer. You’ve got Raffles just across the road and Marks & Spencers! It feels very comfortable. I love Marks & Spencers! I’m old now, what can I say?”

 

The answer to Stupples rhetorical question is ‘lots’. We leave her as she enters into a charming monologue about all the reasons why she would be the perfect person for the British retailer to sponsor.

 

Who’s Next?

 

If you start asking who is most likely to be the next to add their name to the prestigious list, one shouldn’t overlook the chances of the event producing its first back-to-back champion. Karrie Webb has an unusually strong record going back as the title-holder, despite the fact that conventional wisdom suggests it is one of the harder things to do in golf.

 

“I’ve always enjoyed it. I obviously played the best there last year. I always feel it gives me an advantage: it gives me good vibes going into the event. I enjoy it,” says Webb, whose CV backs her up.

 

Among the Aussie’s multitude of triumphs are repeat wins at the US Women’s Open title in 2000 and 2001, as well as The Office Depot tournament in Florida, Washington State’s Safeco Classic and at two very differently named editions of an event at Murrells Inlet in South Carolina.  At the Australian Ladies Masters in her native Queensland, she monopolized the trophy from 1998 to 2001, and more recently won the MFS Women’s Australian Open title in 2007 and 2008.

 

Given that an HSBC Women’s Champions victory has more often than not been the early signal as to who the year’s dominant player will be, Na Yeon Choi might be a contender after a year of constant English lessons. The difference it has made to this engaging, but previously shy and nervous 24-year-old is heart-warming. With her multiple wins in 2009 and 2010 and the fact that last year she was close to Yani’s levels in making the top 10 in over half of her events in 2011, the more outgoing Na Yeon could be set for a career year, simply because her new-found language skills have made her life less stressful. 

 

“I wasn’t scared, but I think I was uncomfortable. If I was walking through the clubhouse and someone was smiling at me, I would worry about what they were about to say to me. I didn’t have the confidence with my English and that was why I seemed uncomfortable with maybe the LPGA players and with all the fans. I’m a lot more comfortable with American people or with Asian people who are speaking English. I have fans on facebook from Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand; I like it! It’s made me a better player I think, a more confident player!” she reveals.

 

The most logical choice, however, is the most confident player of all: Yani Tseng.

 

Third behind Webb and Arimura last year, Yani has turned into a winning machine. She now understands that to add the HSBC Women’s Champions to her rapidly increasing list of titles she has to find a balance between the self-styled “Birdie Machine” approach that helped her become the youngest player ever, male or female, to win five Majors and being more selective about when she attacks.

 

“Being more patient is better, playing smart. Some of the holes are sometimes really hard to make birdie. You can still be aggressive, but sometimes you have to play smart, too,” she says.

 

“I’m getting closer and closer. I was pretty close last year! I played well and did my best. Everyone wants to win, but it’s not like I’m playing bad. This year I have a chance, because I know the course better, better than the last four years. I know how the strategy is on the golf course and how to play on the golf course. I’m looking forward to playing this year, because it’s a fun course and it’s a very good challenge.”

 

 

Voice your opinion on Twitter @Golf4Beginners and friend on Facebook

 

 

Posted via email from stacysolomon's posterous

WGC-HSBC Champions Golf: Try to win and you won't?

The last global tournament of the stroke play season will see an unprecedented number of newcomers rewarded for their wins with a place at the WGC-HSBC Champions. There’s also a good chance that, for the first time in golf history, the season will end with all the Major titles and WGC trophies in the hands of first-time winners!

Tim Maitland, in Part 2, reports:
WGC-HSBC Champions Preview: The Weird Art of Winning, Part 1

Why should learning to win matter? If you look at golf in an abstract sense, it’s an unusual sport in as much as nothing your opponents do impacts on your own score; so, in theory, the player who hits the ball best, makes the fewest mistakes and putts the ball most efficiently should win.

In reality, winning seems to have very little to do with technique; a suggestion supported by the fact that all the conversations on the subject, no-one talks about the nuts and bolts of their swings. Stop any of the world-class field at the WGC-HSBC Champions and they will, however, discuss at length what goes on in the grey matter between the ears and how the body reacts to that.

“It’s one of those things where you almost black out,” says 25-year-old Keegan Bradley, who as a rookie on the PGA Tour this year won the HP Byron Nelson Championship in Texas and then went on to become only the third player ever to claim a Major at his first attempt, when he beat Jason Dufner in a play-off at the 2011 PGA Championship.

“I don’t remember some of the shots and that’s a huge part of it; you’re just so into it. It’s a pretty intense experience. It’s a feeling that only people in sports can experience; it’s just intense!”

Even players who seem to take to winning the way ducks take to water reveal that at the highest level there is little that can prepare you for the feeling of being in contention.

Eighteen-year-old Italian wunderkind Matteo Manassero, who in 2009 at the age of 16 became the youngest-ever winner of the (British) Amateur Championship and was the youngest-ever winner on the European Tour when he claimed the 2010 Castello Masters Costa Azahar at 17 years and 188 days, struggles to describe the sensations of challenging to win a professional event.

“It’s strange. You can’t really explain it. It’s tense; you’ve got a lot of nerves. You start thinking about good things you’ve done in your life, for example as an amateur, and it might help. Having the experience from the British Amateur really helped. Once I got into contention the first time in Castillon and even when I won it was really, really tense and I didn’t know what to think.  Adrenaline makes you react a little bit differently. I don’t know what the secret is. I’m not sure there is a secret. Sometimes it goes your way and sometimes it doesn’t. There’s not much you can do to force it; there’s not much you can do to make it happen,” explains the teenager from the province of Verona, who qualified for Shanghai when he won the co-sanctioned Maybank Malaysian Open in April.

Equally it seems it’s hard to even know how you’re going to react, as Bradley said after beating Dufner in the three-hole shootout to claim his maiden Major.

“I kept thinking about the playoff that I won at the Byron Nelson, and the same thing happened to me in that; as soon as I realized I was going into a playoff, I completely calmed down. And I got to the tee on 16…it was the most calm I'd been probably all week. I don't know the reason why or what it was, but I was completely calm, and I absolutely striped it down that hole, which was fun. That hole, the playoff and in regulation…that hole, I'll never forget it the rest of my life. It was so exciting!” he declared.

Given how unpredictable the sensations and reactions to being in a winning position are, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, in the absence of the Tiger Woods of old, the tournament golf landscape is somewhat confusing at the moment.

“I think if you took thirty percent of that kind of experience out of any sport or that kind of top-level know-how from the C-suite of any business or work place anywhere in the world it would have to create some kind of void. It’s experience of success and there’s some truth to the saying that success breeds success,” says HSBC Group Head of Sponsorship, Giles Morgan.

“It’s fascinating trying to work out who will work out how to win next and asking yourself out of those first-time winners, which ones will emerge as a regular champion. It’s been pointed out that the last time there was this kind of unpredictability in golf was when Arnold Palmer and Gary Player emerged as Major champions; there has to be someone out there now who is about to do the same,” he added.

Try to Win and You Won’t

Any hacker or weekend warrior will know recognize the irony of a sport where the more you try the worse it can get; we’ve all started a round badly, played steadily worse, becoming increasingly frustrated until, just when we’re ready to give up, we finally smack one off the middle of the club. Another of the qualifiers for the HSBC Champions coming off a first win on the PGA Tour has done exactly that, except for him, it wasn’t one round… it was his whole career.

“I think there’s something to that. People had been telling me for years ‘You’re trying too hard! You’re just trying too hard! You’re trying too hard!’ I always thought, how can you try too hard? It doesn’t make any sense,” says Harrison Frazar, who set a PGA Tour record for the longest quest for victory when he claimed the FedEx St. Jude Classic in Memphis in his 355^th start.

The turning point for the now 40-year-old Texan was when, after starting the season by missing the cuts in six of his first eight events, he decided it was time to give up.

Immediately, the results came as he tied for 14^th at the Byron Nelson and then won the next time out.

“In my mind it was over. Everybody was on board; family, friends… everybody knew it. Friends were even trying to talk me out of playing. They saw me at home, the way I was, and they said ‘This is crazy. We like you too much. We can’t see you tear yourself up anymore. It’s time to be done. We know you like golf, we know you love golf, but c’mon!’ It was somebody under the influence… of golf!” Frazar says.

 “I had just given up on trying to force results. It was time. I went to the Nelson with the idea that I’m just going to lay these things out for me so I can walk off the course at the end of the day and pat myself on the back. You just quit trying. You quit trying to micromanage every little thing that’s happening. I just said ‘I’m going to stand up, pick my lines and just hit it and see what happens’.”

The rewards for Frazar almost throwing the towel in have been fairly obvious. Having played in only four Majors over the previous eight years, this season he’s played in three. He’d never even made the rarified limited-field world of the WGC events: The HSBC Champions will be his second of the year.

Naturally, there are few examples as extreme as Frazar’s, but Hunter Mahan will attest to how fickle winning golf tournaments can be. In 2010 he claimed both the PGA Tour’s Waste Management Phoenix Open and his maiden WGC victory at the Bridgestone Invitational. For many, a Major win in 2011 seemed a logical progression.

“I can tell you, playing on the (PGA) Tour I've learned not to have expectations about how you play.  Last year was funny; I didn't really play very consistent but I had two wins.  And this year I've been much more consistent and had a bunch of top 10s, but haven't had any wins, so it's kind of strange,” he said when he returned to the Firestone Country Club to defend his WGC crown.

 “Whenever you watch great players play, they never look like they're trying to win; they're just trying to play the game correctly and hit the right shots at the right time and do all the right things that are going to enable you to win. When you're playing pretty consistent and you're close like I had been the first part of the year, my expectation was to win and get up there and just kind of do it. And this game is too hard to force it. You've got to keep working and keep learning and just kind of let it happen.  You trust everything, you trust your game, it will happen.”

Psychobabble

It’s because of these emotional contradictions that so many golfers reach out to sports psychologists to try and find a framework that allows them to perform to their potential in pressure situations. Thus the game is full of players who talk, in different ways, of staying process oriented rather than results focused. Webb Simpson, a multiple winner on the PGA Tour in 2011, is one example.

“The goal that I set out to accomplish is to be one of the best players in the world, if not the best. But, I don't set result-oriented goals for myself. I just try to get up every day and do the most I can to improve my game. I want to expect that I can play with the guys who are the best players in the world. Fortunately right now things are going well for me, but I know this is a fickle game and I know there's ups and downs and I'm sure I'll have a time where it's not going near as well, and it won't be as easy. But just all I really try to do is keep improving,” the 26-year-old from North Carolina said.

Despite his miraculous season, Keegan Bradley still managed to have a mini-crisis of his own the week before winning the PGA Championship, when he found himself in contention at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. His final round 74 left him seeking advice from Dr. Bob Rotella, one of America’s leading sports psychologists, coach Jim McLean, and fellow pros Phil Mickelson and Camilo Villegas. The wisdom he got wasn’t rocket science, but clearly worked.

“They are all a lot of clichés, but it was not getting into the result of winning this trophy or making a birdie or what it would mean to me. It was important to me to win Rookie of the Year, and that's something that was hurting me out there: thinking about it,” Bradley explained after his triumph.

“Phil and Camilo gave me some advice that only players can. Phil just told me to stay more patient out there. The major thing I tried to do (during the PGA Championship) was under-react to everything whether it was a good thing or a terrible thing. That was [what] the key was, to under-react. And if you watch Phil play, he gets excited but he never gets too down on himself, and that was the key.”

Everyone is searching for similar keys, even Stuart Appleby, a nine-time winner on the PGA Tour who makes the field by virtue of his 2010 JB Were Australian Masters victory. He describes how his ears pricked up when he heard a question about winning asked to two of the greats of the game during this year’s Memorial Tournament.

“They had Faldo and Nicklaus in the commentary booth and the commentator asked ‘When things weren’t quite turning out right, what did you do?’ I was ready for this amazing answer and Jack Nicklaus says ’You’ve just got to suck it up. You’ve just got to suck it up.’!” Appleby exclaims.

“Now, what that means to each person is down to your own interpretation, but what he was saying is you just have to slap yourself on the face and get going and get playing!”

Clearly that’s what Rory McIlroy did in between blowing up in the final round of this year’s Masters and turning a similar third-round lead at the US Open into one of the most stunning victories. Equally, at the PGA Championship, Bradley did the same to himself when he triple-bogeyed the 15^th in the final round.

“I didn't want it to define my tournament and I just kept telling myself to just pretend like nothing happened and go out there and hit this fairway. That's what I kept telling myself walking to the tee was just hit this fairway. And it was the best shot I hit all week. I absolutely striped it right down the middle,” Bradley told the media after his historic win.

Had Bradley stayed focused on his mistake that day, done what many of us would do and spent the rest of his round berating himself, his maiden Major win would never have come. It sounds easy to do on paper, but, as Allenby points out, the reality of golf is it’s a sport that loves to help you beat yourself up.

“That’s the tough part of the game, because the game, if you use a boxing analogy, is always trying to work you over, and put you in a corner of the ring and punch you…  

“And punch you hard!

“And it’s a bigger opponent than you!

“What you spend your whole career doing is trying to keep out of the corner, keep light on your feet, keep energetic, keep enthusiastic and not get down… but it’s so easy to get manhandled into the corner. I think the great champions never got into the corner for very long,” the 40-year-old Aussie concludes.

A Matter of Experience 

So as the world’s top golfers gear up for the WGC-HSBC Champions – the last global gathering of the great and good in 2011 — with few of the proven winners seeming to be in winning form, how have the first-time winners got ahead of the pack? It’s interesting that many of them have some sort of life or golf experience that lessened the enormity of the task they succeeded at.

None of those stories is more heart-breaking than that of the Open Champion Darren Clarke.  The Northern Irishman was a regular winner and a contender in the Majors until his wife Heather was diagnosed with breast cancer for the first time in 2001. She was diagnosed with a recurrence in 2004 and succumbed to her illness in 2006. Six weeks after her death, her husband resumed his golf career at the Ryder Cup. He readily admitted that having gone through that experience, winning the Open at Royal St. George this year wasn’t nearly as difficult as it might have been.

“It's not possible to compare, but I think the emotions and everything that I went through walking towards that first tee at The K Club in 2006, getting onto the first tee and making contact with the golf ball and managing to look up and see that it was thankfully going down the middle of the fairway, I will never forget anything more difficult on the golf course than I did that morning, and to this day, I still haven't faced anything as difficult as that. That in itself made Royal St. Georges an awful lot easier for me because I will never face anything as tough as what that was,” the 43-year-old said after lifting the claret jug.

Clarke also mentions the weather on the Saturday of the tournament. In the fiendishly difficult conditions that earn seaside links golf its reputation, it was so wet and windy that Tom Watson’s two-over-par round actually moved him up the leader board. Clarke was one-under for the day and the outright leader.

“I think confidence is everything in victory. You need to have the self belief that you can hit the shot when you need to hit the shot or make the four‑footer when you need to make the four‑footer.  You need to have that confidence, and I think I gained an awful lot of confidence from the way that I played on the Saturday.  That stood me in great stead for Sunday because to me Saturday was a tougher day than what Sunday was, and I had bit the ball as good as I could, so it carried on into Sunday,” he explained.

Keegan Bradley has a similar tale to tell of his maiden PGA Tour victory at the Byron Nelson in Irving, Texas, where the winds were so strong the final round was described as “a survival test”.   

“It was really brutal weather so I think I was focusing on not making double (bogey) on every hole. That helped a lot. I also had a great caddie in “Pepsi” – Steve Hale – that helped me. Caddies are such a big part of winning – people don’t realise. He’d won before and he helped me stay calm.”

Making triple bogey going into the closing stretch at the PGA Championship also forced Bradley to focus, this time on chasing down Jason Dufner: “For me it was easier because I knew I had to make some birdies,” he said.

Among the first-time WGC winners lining up for the HSBC Champions there are similar kinds of stories. Australia’s Adam Scott got the biggest win of his career at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational with Tiger’s longtime caddie Steve Williams on his bag and admitted his presence contributed to him playing “like a bulldog” to win: “It's almost like I need to show him I've got it in me, because a lot of people question it,” he said afterwards.

Then there’s the defending champion Francesco Molinari who resisted consistent pressure from newly-crowned world number one Lee Westwood to win the “Duel on the Bund” at last year’s WGC-HSBC Champions. Would he have been so steadfast without having gone through the madness in the mud at the Celtic Manor Ryder Cup just five weeks before?

“There’s so much pressure that week; you can’t do anything to take pressure off yourself. You just have to live with it and play with it. After a while you get used to playing with all the tension. It’s just a great feeling for a sportsman to be playing in an environment like that. It’s a lot of tension and a lot of pressure but at the same time it’s also a lot of fun because you don’t play for money, you don’t play for world ranking points… you just play for winning and the team. It should be less pressure, but when you see all the people supporting you and you see all your teammates trying hard it is a lot of pressure on your shoulders,” Molinari says of his Ryder Cup experience.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

For each player, however, the details of the combination that proves to be the key that unlocks those wins is subtly, sometimes infuriatingly, different.

“It’s difficult to do because so many people start to think of the people behind them trying to catch them and so many people try to save their score. It’s very difficult because we should be able to play the same golf on the 1^st hole of a tournament as we do on the 72^nd,” says 28-year-old Spaniard Alvaro Quiros, who has won once in every European Tour season since 2007, including some of the highest ranking events on the Tour, such as this year’s Dubai Desert Classic. 

“I have to learn, but in a different way. I should try to give myself more chances. I’m too ambitious. Too hard to myself sometimes and this, probably, makes me miss more shots than I should. Everybody has to go through a process. I’ve been improving. I used to be even more aggressive. I used to be even more impassioned. Little by little golf puts you in your proper place. If you’re able to improve with the shots God gives you I think you can improve a lot and this is what is happening to you.”

And what has Quiros learned in attempting to win more often and win bigger?

“Try to keep myself in the present. Try to keep doing the same that I was doing. Don’t try to accelerate the end of the competition,” he says.

As Harrison Frazar can vouch, finding the specific answer can take a long time… in his case almost a whole lifetime in golf.

“I did think ’Thankfully I’ve figured it now. At least now I’ve figured it out!’ So I’m 40 years old, but who cares? At least I can go and do it now. I could have retired and never figured it out, so I’m thankful for that,” he laughs.

When the cards finally fall on the table, when the penny finally drops, you’d be forgiven for thinking that winning again would come more naturally. Webb Simpson certainly thought so after claiming his maiden victory at this August’s Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina, but he quickly discovered that wasn’t the case when he followed up with a victory at the September’s Deutsche Bank Championship; the second event of the FedEx Cup play-offs.

"I told somebody that I feel like next time I was in contention it'll be a lot easier than Greensboro, and it wasn't that way at all. It was just as hard. The shots and the putts were just as hard. I think it helped just calm me down a little, but it was like I had never won a golf tournament before.  I thought winning the second time would be easier," Simpson declared after his second win.

Simpson could have gained that wisdom by asking someone eight years his junior. Like Rory McIlroy, Matteo Manassero is one of the more precocious winners in professional golf, yet he doesn’t even hesitate when asked if it gets any simpler.

“No! Once you’ve won ten times maybe it becomes easier, but when you’ve one once or twice you feel the pressure for your third or fourth!” 

Follow and voice your opinions on Twitter @Golf4Beginners and friend us on Facebook

Posted via email from stacysolomon's posterous

WGC-HSBC Champions Preview: The Weird Art of Winning, Part 1

The last global tournament of the stroke play season will see an unprecedented number of newcomers rewarded for their wins with a place at the WGC-HSBC Champions. There’s also a good chance that, for the first time in golf history, the season will end with all the Major titles and WGC trophies in the hands of first-time winners. Tim Maitland reports.

As the world’s best golfers descend on Shanghai for the WGC-HSBC Champions, the world of golf has never been so wide open.

photo credit: GolfCentralDaily.com

 

At the moment all of the big trophies have pride of place in their winner’s display cabinets, because none have won at such lofty levels before. The PGA Championship and US Open Championship belong to relative youngsters in 25-year-old Keegan Bradley and 22-year-old Rory McIlroy. The Masters belongs to Charl Schwartzel, 27, making first-time Open Champion Darren Clarke look like a grizzled veteran at 43. 

This year’s WGCs belong to a group of thirty-somethings – England’s world number one Luke Donald (WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship), American Nick Watney (WGC-Cadillac Championship) and Australia’s Adam Scott (WGC-Bridgestone Invitational) – while 28-year-old Italian Francesco Molinari returns to Shanghai to defend the WGC-HSBC Champions.

Thirteen different players have won the last thirteen Majors and only three of them (Mickelson, Cabrera and Harrington) have won Majors before. The last nine World Golf Championships events have also been won by nine different winners; a spell unprecedented since the stable of elite tournaments was introduced in 1999.

There have been six different winners of the last six European Tour Orders of Merit (more recently the Race to Dubai). Compare that to the period between 2005 and 1993 when Colin Montgomerie (eight times), Ernie Els (twice), Retief Goosen (twice), and Lee Westwood (once) shared thirteen titles.

It’s the same on the PGA Tour, where democracy reigns after the duopoly of Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh who were the only players to lead the PGA Tour money list at season’s end or record the most wins between 2009 and 1999. The PGA Player of the Year award and the Jack Nicklaus Trophy (The PGA Tour Player of the Year), with the exception of Padraig Harrington claiming both in 2008, also belonged to Woods or Singh.

This season there have been twelve first-time winners during PGA Tour regular season and an almost unprecedented parade of rookie winners. Compared to the stability of previous years, even the FedEx Cup and Tour Championship winner Bill Haas – a two-time PGA Tour winner in 2010 – could be described as coming from relative obscurity.

The reason would seem to be obvious: the decline of Tiger Woods. Arguably the greatest golfer ever (although some will deny him that claim unless he rebounds and overtakes Jack Nicklaus’s record of eighteen Major triumphs), Woods was so dominant that through to the end of 2009 he’d won almost thirty per cent of his starts on the PGA Tour.

If you combine his two hottest periods, from 1999 to 2002 and from 2005 to 2008, he claimed thirteen of the twenty-seven Majors he played.  Up until the end of 2009, he triumphed in sixteen of the twenty-nine WGC events in which he competed.

What we’re seeing now, with Tiger so far down the rankings and so far removed from his last big victory that he hasn’t qualified to play in China, is not just young talent, but several generations of golfers figuring out how to win.

 

Part two in Tim Maitland's article coming soon: Why should learning to win matter?

 

 

Voice your opinion on Twitter @Golf4Beginners and friend us on Facebook.

 

Posted via email from stacysolomon's posterous

Uribe Boosts South American Golf with HSBC Brasil Cup Win

With five years to go before Brazil hosts a golf's return to the Olympics, Colombia’s Mariajo Uribe gave the women’s game in South America a significant boost by winning the HSBC LPGA Brasil Cup in Rio de Janeiro. Tim Maitland reports.

Mariajo Uribe, Winner of 2011 HSBC Brasil Cup



The twenty-one-year-old from Bucaramanga gained her first victory as a professional shooting a 9-under-par 135 for the US$720,000 two-round event at the Itanhanga Golf Club in the Barra de Tijuca district of Rio. Uribe, the 2007 U.S. Women’s Amateur champion, won by a stroke from Australian Lindsey Wright who narrowly missed a seven-foot breaking putt to force a play-off.


“It’ll make a huge impact on South American golf, especially women’s golf. With the Olympics coming up we need a lot of representatives from South America, so I think it’s a big deal,” said Uribe, who enjoyed enormous local support during her six-under-par final round.


“That’s how Latin people are: It’s not only because I’m Colombian. If you play with passion and if you’re emotional on the course they support you, " Uribe confessed. "The Brazilian fans reacted to me as if I were one of their own.”


Uribe added that even though the tournament is not considered an official LPGA event win and the prize money doesn’t count on the tour’s money list, it is playing a significant role in a country that, despite its population of 200 million, only has 25,000 golfers.


“A lot of the kids I saw last year are training more because they met me and they have someone closer to relate with. I think my win is going to create a huge buzz,” Mariajo said.


The President of the South American Golf Federation (the Federacion Sudamericana de Golf) and of the Brazilian Golf Confederation (the Confederacao Brasileira de Golfe), Rachid Orra said Uribe’s victory was as significant to the region as Jhonattan Vegas’ victory at the Bob Hope Classic in January; even though Vegas’ win has single-handedly changed Venezuela president Hugo Chavez’s attitude to the sport.


“Symbolically it’s the same thing because it’s a girl that has beaten some of the best players in the world!” declared Orra.


“It’ll be all over the newspapers in Brazil that South America has one girl, and others, that can compete equally with some of the best players. It’s a great thing that one girl from South America has beaten some of the best players in the world. It’s very important for us. It’s an example for the young girls that want to play golf to see one girl from Colombia, a country like Brazil, can win a very important tournament. We are very happy. The coming of the HSBC LPGA Brasil Cup was a very important step for us, taken three years ago. This is another one. Both are very, very, very important,” he explained.


Uribe’s victory is South America’s first at the LPGA level since Paraguay’s Julieta Granada scooped the million dollar jackpot at the ADT Championship in November 2006. The last Colombian win was Marisa Baena’s 2005 triumph as a complete outsider in the HSBC Women’s World Match Play Championship in 2005.


“Golf in Brazil and in the region is at such an embryonic stage that every step in the right direction, every little thing that gains attention and increases the interest to a broader audience, is of enormous importance,” said David Kotheimer, Deputy CEO and Vice Presidente of tournament sponsors HSBC Bank Brasil.


“The sport has been so energised here by its introduction to the Olympics and the prospect of its return in the 2016 Rio Games, but a ‘local’ win at the HSBC Brasil Cup will still play a substantial part in fanning those flames even more. This event really can be a catalyst, just as the WGC-HSBC Champions has been a catalyst for growth in China. That was the strategy behind investing here just as we have in Asia,” he added.


Relatively forgotten in the excitement was the performance of the thirty-one-year-old Wright, who was overjoyed at getting back into contention for a title for the first time since she finished runner-up at the LPGA Championship, one of the women’s Majors, in 2009.


“To finish second and to have a chance of winning was awesome; just for my confidence. I felt really pleased because I went for every shot. On the last hole I went for it, pulled off the shot and nearly holed the putt. I was happy to be in that position; really happy to get the nerves and that “Yeah! This is great!” feeling… and I haven’t had that feeling in a long time,” Wright said.


Voice your opinion on Twitter @Golf4Beginners

Read more LPGA golf blogs on Golf for Beginners

Posted via email from stacysolomon's posterous

 

Golf opportunity of Olympic proportions

The LPGA is preparing for the most-important unofficial, small-field, two-round golf tournament anywhere in the world. The HSBC LPGA Brasil Cup is just one ingredient in the recipe that can make the sport’s return to the Olympics a success. Tim Maitland reports.

A 27-player, two-day tournament is not normally associated with the start of something big in the wide world of golf, but the HSBC LPGA Brasil Cup could be the veritable small acorn from which a giant oak tree grows.

Prize money of just US $720,000 might not seem much, but the event is the closest thing to a fully-fledged global tournament in the nation that will provide the stage for golf’s re-entry into the Olympics in 2016. As America’s leading female golfer Cristie Kerr put it when she committed to making her first trip into South America, the Olympics is “the biggest single opportunity that women’s golf has ever had.”

Kerr really didn’t need to add “women”; golf itself has never had such a great opportunity, but to make the most of it the sport has to realise what the opportunity is and how its own strengths and weaknesses may impact on its ability to capitalise.

“I would have thought [the Olympics was] about ‘how would you feel about four days in Brazil?’ It has nothing to do with four days in Brazil, and it has everything to do with four years pre-Brazil!” LPGA Commissioner Mike Whan says, capturing the Olympic opportunity in a nutshell.

Perhaps because, unlike almost any other sport, the players effectively “own” most of the biggest events around the world, the focus has initially been on what the Olympic tournament itself might be like and what impact that might have.

Europe’s top-ranked woman golfer Suzann Pettersen was part of golf’s final presentation to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Copenhagen when her sport won the vote to get back into the Olympic movement in October 2009. She’s maintained her commitment to the cause by joining Kerr as one of the highest-ranked players ever to tee it up at Rio’s Itanhanga Golf Club.

Her exclamation that “we’re on a mission!”, translated rather pleasingly into Portuguese as “temos uma missao!", summed things up quite nicely, but naturally enough, her prime focus is on her part of the business; putting on a show in 2016.

“I think it’s important to get everybody on board: all the players need to be on board. I think you have 90 per cent – the majority – with you. You need the last ten percent going in the right direction, so we’ll get the best golfers competing in 2016. I think the concept is there. What else can you ask for?” enquires Pettersen, or Tutta, as she’s affectionately known in Norway.

“Competing in the Olympics, you have the sportsmanship, the values, the ethics; there’s nothing better in sport. For me it’s a dream come true. I grew up in Norway and it’s always been the biggest thing for me, to take part and compete will be fantastic.”

Next Stop Rio

From the viewpoint of a player who will be at or near her peak in five years’ time, Pettersen is correct: getting the golf tournament right at Rio 2016 is essential. Like their fellow newcomers Rugby Sevens, the sport is back in the Olympics for two games, but has only one chance to prove its worth to the Olympic movement before the IOC convenes to decide whether or not to retain either sport or to vote them “off the island”.

One chance is hard enough to take; harder still when you’re asked to do it in a nation and a region that is not a stronghold for either sport.

The current status of tournament golf in Brazil is a far cry from the 70s or 80s when Gary Player, Ray Floyd, Jerry Pate and Hale Irwin had their names etched on the Aberto do Brasil or Brazil Open trophy. It’s not even quite up to the level of 2000, when the celebrations of Pedro Alvaras Cabral’s “discovery” of the country in 1500 led the European Tour to include the Brazil Rio de Janeiro 500 Years Open and Brazil Sao Paolo 500 Years Open in successive weeks on their schedule.  

(Trivia fans might like to note that Padraig Harrington finished runner-up to England’s Roger Chapman in the former – at the same Itanhanga Golf Club – and won the latter ahead of America’s Gerry Norquist, who would become a fixture and eventually a senior vice-president on the Asian Tour. Completists would need to note that the Sao Paulo event survived a further year and to memorise Darren Fichardt).

 The Aberto do Brasil, now also sponsored by the world’s local bank, remains the country’s most prestigious men’s tournament, with the 57^th edition in December 2010 won by Paraguay’s Marco Ruiz.

Additionally Brazil hasn’t featured as a venue for the Tour de las Americas in recent years and their players appear only slightly more frequently in the regional tour’s tournaments.

That there is a shortage of opportunities for Brazil’s professionals can be inferred from the fact that their names appear sporadically scattered around the world, although in most cases it owes as much to nomadic childhoods or a shared connection with countries with a stronger golf tradition.

In terms of tournament wins, in the professional era Brazil’s greatest triumph might be Jaime Gonzalez winning the European Tour’s 1984 St Mellion Timeshare TPC in Cornwall, but Jaime’s father Mario – winner of the 1947 Spanish Open as an amateur and a two-time Argentine Open champion – is the one frequently described as Brazil’s golfing “great”. Most other notable Brazilian players have those mixed roots.

Angela Park, who has Korean parents but holds dual US and Brazilian citizenship after moving to the States at the age of eight, won the LPGA Rookie of the Year award in 2007, but faded dramatically after her second season. Adilson da Silva, Brazilian born but raised in South Africa, has had a successful career on the Sunshine Tour winning seven times there. Likewise Maria Priscila Iida, a Brazilian-Japanese and a dominant amateur winning both Rio and Sao Paolo city and state titles repeatedly, appeared briefly on the LPGA’s Futures Tour in 2004 and more recently on the Japan LPGA and even the Ladies Asian Golf Tour.

Alexandra Rocha had bounced between the European and Asian Tours before becoming the first Brazilian to earn playing rights on the PGA Tour this year, but he hasn’t yet come close to matching the attention-grabbing performances that could do for Brazilian golf what Jhonattan Vegas’s 2011 Bob Hope Classic win has accomplished for the sport in Venezuela.

Building on the foundations

Even though the numbers of regular golfers in Brazil have grown from 6,000 in 2000 to 25,000 currently, that number seems to have stabilised in the past five years. The number of courses has increased nearly 25% in those 10 years up to 110, but more encouragingly  another 30 are under construction and there is a sea-change to more accessibility. Previously members-only clubs are said to be opening their doors to visitors and there is an increase in the proportion of “semi-public” and daily-fee paying courses.

Still, one could argue, with some justification, that the greatest exposure the sport has enjoyed in recent times was when the national football team chose to base themselves at a golf resort during the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. So, golf, and perhaps especially women’s golf, needs to make the most of the toehold they have.

“Exactly right! We’d like to, from an early stage, showcase golf to that market,” Whan declares.

“At the same time we’d like to showcase that golf course, that city, that environment to the golfing population before we get there in 2016. One of the things we’d like to do, if we can figure out a way of turning the Brazil event into an official event, is not only show the golf tournament but show what else is going on. If [they] build a new course for the Olympics, [let’s] show the building of the venue, because we want to engage our fans into 2016, too.”

One senses that the world’s local bank would like the same thing, but as HSBC Group Head of Sponsorship Giles Morgan points out, they will have to do the due diligence of ensuring that such an expansion would give a return on such an investment in the world’s biggest little event.

“It’s hugely important. We talk about championing golf worldwide and, if you look at all of our investments worldwide, the one continent where we haven’t been overexposed to in golf is South America and South America hasn’t been overexposed to golf,” says Morgan.

“This year is important to us with the HSBC LPGA Brasil Cup because we need to get a gauge of what the market is; what is the opportunity? It is fantastic for us to be hosting a professional golf tournament in the city hosting the Olympics where golf is first going to be played. As a starter for 10, it’s a great place to start, but this year is when we really look at what the opportunity is for golf, in the same way that four years ago we went into Singapore with the HSBC Women’s Champions to see what the opportunity was for women’s golf, and in the same way we did for China with the HSBC Champions in 2005. In those cases it’s mushroomed. I don’t think Brazil is going to be quite the same. There’s a fanaticism for golf in Asia and I don’t think it’s an exact parallel.”

But, and this a big but, Morgan is the first to point out that laying some foundations in Rio and producing a successful Olympic tournament, while essential, is about prolonging the Olympic opportunity. The opportunity itself is something completely different!

“The point of the Olympics for sports like tennis, football and golf – already hugely established sports in their own right that have their own world cups, top events or majors – is that it can broaden the base appeal to more countries. It’s very exciting and I hope both sports realise that’s what the opportunity is; it’s about development.

“That’s the opportunity for golf; now you’ll get funding from governments in all sorts of new countries saying ‘we’ve seen how Korea, for instance, can play golf. We can play golf, we can invest in that and we can medal’. That’s what’s exciting for both the sport of golf and rugby. They mustn’t look at their heartland, they must look beyond the heartland,” insists Morgan, who as well as managing the bank’s golf sponsorship portfolio also made them the first umbrella sponsor’s of rugby’s global Sevens tournaments: the HSBC World Sevens Series.

This is a point that may not have sunk in to the golf world completely. Certainly Mike Whan is brave enough to admit it was lost to him when golf successfully presented its case to the IOC two years ago.

“I wasn’t around for the vote and ‘should we go pros?’ [playing in the Olympics]. I don’t think I would have voted for it back then. I would have been naïve, back in the voting days. I would have said ‘c’mon we’re already worldwide and we already showcase the best players in the world’; I would have missed the extra excitement. I believe the Olympics is going to have a fundamental impact on the growth of the game. What I’ve seen as [LPGA] commissioner over the past year is what golf in the Olympics really means,” Whan confesses.

“The level of interest and support, and the excitement, is happening in individual countries – countries where it happens around Olympic sports, but doesn’t happen around non-Olympic sports. I was at the China Golf Association back in October and to see the training facilities that they’re building and the commitment to finding young athletes to become Olympic athletes from a golf perspective and what it’s meaning for women’s golf throughout Asia and throughout the world… I would have missed all that.  It’ll impact Canada and the US and Europe, too; everyone’s going to want to keep up, that’s what happens in great sports whether it’s swimming, track or golf. It’s going to give a different plateau.”

As Morgan says, the impact is felt most immediately where an established sport will notice it least. Pettersen, for instance, says she’s noticed an immediate difference back in Norway.

“Once golf was taken in there’s obviously a lot of money involved and the distribution down from it. The [golf] federation can now start to build a team and do the stuff they want to do for the young players to have them ready for 2016,” says Pettersen.

“Money is one thing, but also wherever you go in the world you’ll find a golf course and you’ll find people playing golf; so I think it’s good exposure for golf.”

Investment x Interest = Growth

The combination of increased investment and added interest has the potential, as Whan quickly points out, to create a snowballing effect.

“After each Games, you get some profit sharing back into your sport and when we go to the Olympics and are able to reinvest monies in the different countries that participate, it becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy where the Olympics made it important, and participating in the Olympics enables you to continue to fuel the growth,” says the LPGA commissioner.

However, to maximise the opportunity, golf does need to fully realise and fully adapt to the fact that its historical structure might work against it in making the most of the Olympic opportunity.

The rules, heritage and traditions of golf have been jointly governed by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews (until 2004 when The R&A was created to take over the role of “engaging in and supporting activities… for the benefit of the game”) and the United States Golf Association (USGA). 

Why is this an issue? Well, for instance, the new Executive Director of the USGA, Mike Davis, was recently quoted as saying “one of the things that has never been in the USGA’s mission is growing the game. We have never directly attempted to grow the game.”

Meanwhile the global remit, in big picture terms, has until very recently been in the hands of one single member’s golf club. True, the R&A in its new guise distributes GBP5 million annually from the profits from the Open Championship, but half is spent in the UK and Ireland.

The structure of the professional game could also be regarded as a weakness when it comes to making the most of the Olympics. The tours are, generally speaking, rival businesses run for their “shareholders”, the players. The International Federation of PGA Tours only formed in 1996 when the European Tour, Japan Golf Tour Organization, PGA TOUR, PGA Tour of Australasia and Sunshine Tour finally got around the same table.  

It was only with the push to join the Olympic movement that it truly opened its doors to become fully inclusive, admitting women’s golf for the first time as the Canadian Tour and the Tour de las Americas were elevated from associate member status, and full membership was offered to the China Golf Association, Korea Professional Golf Tour, Professional Golf Tour of India, LPGA, Ladies European Tour, Australian Ladies Professional Golf Tour, Japan LPGA, Korean LPGA; and the Ladies Asian Golf Tour.

“Now you have to set up an Olympic structure; governing bodies for each of the countries that are going to develop and find the talent. Just creating governing bodies for golf, that’s one simple step but the Olympics takes you down that path. Then the governing bodies start coming together to ask ‘how are we going to develop programmes that not only grow the game but also develop superstars?’” says Whan, correctly identifying the process as a positive for the sport.

95% of jackpot is national

The reason that all of this matters is that the Olympics and the money that comes directly from being in the Olympics is not the big opportunity. The money that will be injected into the sport for playing their part in Rio 2016 will be small change compared to the investment that is really out there to be capitalised on.

Badminton, when it was fighting to retain its Olympic status prior to the 2004 games, did an audit of its member associations. While the TV money from the Athens Olympics would bring in around US$6 million over the next four years, the investment from National Olympic Committees and Governments was worth US$110 million over the same period.

In other words, 95% of the benefit from being in the Olympics comes from funding at local and national levels!

While Rugby Sevens may appear to have the bigger challenge in making a successful first impression in Rio – in TV terms it seems unlikely to beat golf – it is certainly better equipped to take advantage of Olympic status. It has one governing body, The International Rugby Board (founded in 1886), that sits over regional and national rugby unions in a far more conventional structure. It’s in the middle of its second long-term strategic plan (The Mission: Growing the Global Rugby Family), central to which is maximising the benefits of Olympic participation.

None of this is intended as criticism of golf, but the IRB’s structure gives it a global overview and development role that golf is going to have to work hard to catch up with.

Put simply, at IRB’s Dublin headquarters, Mark Egan, their Head of Development, can reel off a head-spinning array of numbers and details of where and how Sevens Rugby is growing exponentially all over the world even before the Olympic coffers are fully opened. More importantly he heads a department whose role it is to make sure those chances are taken advantage of. Does golf have someone who could match him? Probably not.

The Good News

Fortunately, as long as golf puts on the right kind of show in 2016, and survives the vote and stay in the Olympics, there will be plenty of time to catch up.

“The good news is that on this one we’re completely linked on objective. All of us agree that we want to put on the best world showcase of the sport as we can AND make sure that that showcase turns into future growth. Like anything, it starts if you’re on the same page to begin with and the good news is we’re on the same page,” Whan declares.

So, while designers like Jack Nicklaus and Annika Sorenstam, Greg Norman, Robert Trent Jones Jr., and Lorena Ochoa, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Nick Faldo and Seve Ballesteros are jostling for position to design the course that will host the historic return of golf to the Olympics, the HSBC LPGA Brasil Cup, regardless of how small it may be now, is the one cornerstone on which the golf world can build the foundation for it to be a success.

“I can tell you, if you’re looking for a corporate sponsor today, you’d look long and hard to find one better than HSBC. Not only are they a sophisticated, multicultural business – they really understand global events like nobody understands global events – they also have a passion for the game. It’s really important for them to not only bring a global event but also understand and respect the local culture. They really do embrace what’s going on locally and make sure we show that market a global experience, but we probably learned more about making sure we understood what was happening in a local market from sponsors like them,” Whan says, before casting his mind forward to what the medal presentation might be like in five years time.

“I remember Michael Jordan said one time that he didn’t expect standing up there with a gold medal to hit him the way it did. For some of our players, too, you might go down to Brazil to play four rounds of golf and you might stand on the podium and realise that it was bigger than a round of golf,” he says.

Photo Credits: Getty Images,  Golfblogger.uk

Voice your opinion on Twitter at Golf4Beginners

Read Golf for Beginners blogs

Posted via email from stacysolomon's posterous