 "High winds & mayhem in the offing")
Tradition. It's not the only thing but it is a very important aspect of golf. Brick by brick, with character and memory as the cement, the edifice builds. At the annual champions dinner preceding the Masters' championship, seven decades of champions are present; there are those aged over 90 years to Jordan Spieth at 22, and many other notables in between. Stories are told; lore is exchanged amidst much jollity and, lest they forget, the younger champions are reminded that there were many greats before them. There are many other artifacts for building tradition such as the Green Jacket, and the highly emotive system of legends being honorary starters to inaugurate the championship.
Twenty deep and for a 100 yards down the first fairway, the adoring fans lined up to see Arnold Palmer (who could not drive because of his age), Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, who count 13 Green Jackets between them, do the Honorary start to the 80th Masters championship. (K P Singh, Gary Player's caddy for the occasion, was dressed in the traditional white livery and green cap of Masters caddies and was all smiles at meeting and being on the tee box with such greats).
Living winners of the Masters (80 years old) and The Open (156 years old) belong to an elite club, to enter which you have to win the event. It is argued that all great championships need these kind of traditions and, were The Open to start a system of honorary starters, five times winner Peter Thomson would be the first honorary starter. That would be good to see!
Sam Terrien, the expert French osteopath now working in Thailand, explains the very great difficulty of a perfect golf swing. There are 13 joints, 69 muscles and varying club head speeds for different kinds of shots that one must master. However, unlike any other ball game, where the player has a split second to react before committing to the shot, here the player has virtually unlimited time to address a perfectly still ball and worry about the interaction of all the joints and muscles, the interplay of terrain and weather, the intricacies of past fears and experiences before he commits to the shot. Too much happens in the mind at this critical point. Professional golfers now employ psychologists to blank their minds out while playing so that no external thoughts can drag them away from the 'zone'. They are taught how thoughts can corrupt the swing to cause minute tensing of muscles that result in unwanted shots. Consider Tiger's hole out from well off the green on the par 3 sixteenth on the final round when he was trailing DiMarco. He carefully "stalked" the shot, walking all around it and even investigating warm and cool patches on the green. Having visualised the shot, once he stood over the ball, he allowed no thought or anxiety to enter his mind. Voila! A perfectly executed chip that checked and caught the slope precisely where he wanted it to, allowing the ball to gently roll up to the cup, hold up tantalisingly for a bit before falling in, to the accompaniment of mighty roars from the gallery; another major, another broken competitor and yet another magnificent demonstration of what's called toughness of the mind...the most important club in the bag!
Lack of this was much in display on Thursday when several of the top 10 players in the world self destructed. Lahiri unnecessarily did himself in with a confidence wrecking triple bogey on the par three 16th instead of being patient as he was till then. They may not make the cut because Friday is going to be worse; more windy and dry and the greens faster and trickier than on Thursday. Letting down your guard on this very difficult course (under windy and dry conditions) hits you hard and saps your concentration for a few holes. This resulted in Jason Day losing five shots in three holes when he was heading to be a joint leader in the Club House, Scott to not get it going at all and Bubba Watson, who thought that the course was his for the taking, stumbling for lack of patience. Spieth showed enormous courage because he used to advantage his early start by playing an unremarkable but workmanlike round that left him comfortably in the lead.
Friday is going to be worse and that puts Phil Mickelson in pole position as a possible winner (even though he is six shots back) because he has more experience than anybody else of playing this course in the toughest conditions, be they dry, wet, hot, humid, a mixture of these, or unlikely benign.
Truly, the first act of this drama has set the stage for an unexpected denouement .
Leave your ego behind (the local caddies say) because this course can and will humiliate you, particularly in adverse playing conditions.
Till tomorrow then, adieu.
Twenty deep and for a 100 yards down the first fairway, the adoring fans lined up to see Arnold Palmer (who could not drive because of his age), Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, who count 13 Green Jackets between them, do the Honorary start to the 80th Masters championship. (K P Singh, Gary Player's caddy for the occasion, was dressed in the traditional white livery and green cap of Masters caddies and was all smiles at meeting and being on the tee box with such greats).
Living winners of the Masters (80 years old) and The Open (156 years old) belong to an elite club, to enter which you have to win the event. It is argued that all great championships need these kind of traditions and, were The Open to start a system of honorary starters, five times winner Peter Thomson would be the first honorary starter. That would be good to see!
Sam Terrien, the expert French osteopath now working in Thailand, explains the very great difficulty of a perfect golf swing. There are 13 joints, 69 muscles and varying club head speeds for different kinds of shots that one must master. However, unlike any other ball game, where the player has a split second to react before committing to the shot, here the player has virtually unlimited time to address a perfectly still ball and worry about the interaction of all the joints and muscles, the interplay of terrain and weather, the intricacies of past fears and experiences before he commits to the shot. Too much happens in the mind at this critical point. Professional golfers now employ psychologists to blank their minds out while playing so that no external thoughts can drag them away from the 'zone'. They are taught how thoughts can corrupt the swing to cause minute tensing of muscles that result in unwanted shots. Consider Tiger's hole out from well off the green on the par 3 sixteenth on the final round when he was trailing DiMarco. He carefully "stalked" the shot, walking all around it and even investigating warm and cool patches on the green. Having visualised the shot, once he stood over the ball, he allowed no thought or anxiety to enter his mind. Voila! A perfectly executed chip that checked and caught the slope precisely where he wanted it to, allowing the ball to gently roll up to the cup, hold up tantalisingly for a bit before falling in, to the accompaniment of mighty roars from the gallery; another major, another broken competitor and yet another magnificent demonstration of what's called toughness of the mind...the most important club in the bag!
Lack of this was much in display on Thursday when several of the top 10 players in the world self destructed. Lahiri unnecessarily did himself in with a confidence wrecking triple bogey on the par three 16th instead of being patient as he was till then. They may not make the cut because Friday is going to be worse; more windy and dry and the greens faster and trickier than on Thursday. Letting down your guard on this very difficult course (under windy and dry conditions) hits you hard and saps your concentration for a few holes. This resulted in Jason Day losing five shots in three holes when he was heading to be a joint leader in the Club House, Scott to not get it going at all and Bubba Watson, who thought that the course was his for the taking, stumbling for lack of patience. Spieth showed enormous courage because he used to advantage his early start by playing an unremarkable but workmanlike round that left him comfortably in the lead.
Friday is going to be worse and that puts Phil Mickelson in pole position as a possible winner (even though he is six shots back) because he has more experience than anybody else of playing this course in the toughest conditions, be they dry, wet, hot, humid, a mixture of these, or unlikely benign.
Truly, the first act of this drama has set the stage for an unexpected denouement .
Leave your ego behind (the local caddies say) because this course can and will humiliate you, particularly in adverse playing conditions.
Till tomorrow then, adieu.