27 Jul A missed opportunity

It haunts me to this day that I turned down a game with Bernhard Langer. At the time when he arrived at the European club that I was teaching at, he was a young player around 17 or 18. He was invited to play by a member who in turn asked me if I had time to join them — I declined, as I had a full teaching book for that day.

I remember thinking that he was not that good anyway!

I can say that I tied with him for first place in a Pro-Am once (losing on a count back) but that is of little mental comfort to me now if our bank balances were to be compared. History taunts me with this terrible misjudgment but taught me not to ever judge a young golfer’s potential in an offhand manner again. Bernhard prevailed because he never gave up believing in himself when others did, when his putting was pathetic there were many a nasty snide comment that he had to endure.

Yet with hours and hours of practice he worked out how to get the ball in the hole better than most. We all witnessed the exhibition match that Martin Kaymer and Rory recently put on for us — yet this didn’t just happen like magic! — there are easily forgotten month’s (year’s) of beating ball’s alone on the range, where a good player is only holding onto the slender strand of self belief that they can actually do it. The cold reality is that only a few gifted individuals eventually succeed in ‘doing it’ under extreme pressure.

Out of Bounds: I’m going to try and finish the gravestone quotes obviously left by old golfer’s who refused to leave this world without leaving a final smile: “Well This Sucks”, “Here lies an Atheist golfer-all dressed on and no place to go”, “I Knew This Would Happen”, “Golfer Jim Migg Would Like You To Dig”, “Can I have a mulligan?”. And lastly, MT Box.

REMARK: This article was originally published by the Bangkok Post on the 27th of July 2014