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The Martin Vousden Column
May 18 2012 Posted in Golf News, Martin Vousden by GoKartThought for the Day:
If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to put up with the rain
We need to talk about Kevin
Those of you who watched Kevin Na’s extraordinary performance at the Players’ Championship will probably have one of two possible reactions – acute annoyance towards someone who needs to buck up, or deep sympathy for a soul in torment because he has developed a pre-shot routine that takes longer to complete than a Colin Montgomerie press conference. I find myself leaning towards the sympathetic end of the spectrum. For those who didn’t see him, a quick recap. At its worst, his routine consists of seven waggles (you can’t stop yourself from counting them), a full swing in which the clubhead swishes over the ball, a step back, step forward and re-address the ball (while the caddy moves in behind to check the player’s alignment), several more waggles and then the swing itself which, more often than not, sends the ball straight down the fairway. Watching all of this is like being allowed into an experimental psychiatric facility, where bizarre behaviour is encouraged in order to study it and hopefully find a cure. It is reminiscent of Sergio Garcia a few years ago when he gripped and re-gripped his club to such an extent that you feared he would develop a repetitive strain injury. Not surprisingly but with enormous disappointment I noticed that the reaction of some in the gallery was as wantonly cruel as it had been to Garcia. In his case they counted out loud as the number of re-grips escalated. With Na, they simply shouted things like ‘Hit the ball’ while he was still halfway through his tormented drill. Is this kind of malicious delight in someone else’s (more…)
Martin Vousden – lefties rule!
May 11 2012 Posted in Golf News, Martin Vousden by GoKartThought for the Day
Money isn’t everything – but it does make sure your children stay in touch
There’ll be another along in a minute
Left-handed major winners are like the apocryphal London buses – you wait ages for one to appear and then a whole bunch turn up together. We had to be patient for 103 years before anointing the first left-handed winner of a major championship, when Bob Charles took the 1963 Open, over a century after the first major championship was held in 1860. And for we golf writers with a limited memory and even more limited originality, he was always referred to as ‘the only left-handed major winner in history.’ Certain bits of information attach themselves to certain players and we’re never allowed to forget them because lazy scribes find the words flowing from their fingers unbidden, and once they’re on the page or computer screen it’s too late to take them back because we get paid by the word. Robert Lee, the Sky TV golf presenter once made the mistake, during an interview early in his career, of mentioning that when he was out for a social evening he liked to dance. For the remainder of his days as a touring pro golfer he was ‘disco-dancing Robert Lee.’ Similarly, Costantino Rocca would always remain ‘the man who beat Tiger Woods in Ryder Cup singles,’ and Nick Faldo would be forever labelled ‘miserable git.’
After Bob Charles’ breakthrough we had to wait a further 40 years before he was joined by a second lefty – Mike Weir who took the 2003 Masters. But then just 12 months later, Phil Mickelson won the first of his four majors and now Bubba Watson is (more…)
Add a comment TweetMartin on the Masters aftermath
Apr 18 2012 Posted in Golf News, Martin Vousden by GoKartThought for the Day:
Frustration is trying to find your glasses without your glasses
After the Lord Mayor’s Show
I always feel just a little sympathy for the golfers who win the week immediately after a Major, especially if it’s a Masters as dramatic as the one just taken by Blubber Watson. We’re still on a high from watching that magnificent golf course and the superb final round it so often produces. And most of the top names in the game don’t play in the immediate aftermath of a major because it takes so much out of them and they know in advance that they will be either celebrating victory or, more likely, licking their wounds. Yet despite the fact that the field for the Maybank Malaysian Open was not quite, how can we put this, stellar, big respect is owing to Louis Oosthuizen. The man with, in my mind at least, the perfect swing and a putting stroke to match, shrugged off the disappointment of missing out on a green jacket in a playoff by strolling to victory. Having travelled over 12,000 miles in just over two weeks, crossing 12 time zones in the process and having to play 26 holes on the final day, he nevertheless shot four sub-70 rounds to win by three. I don’t know what his fitness regime is but perhaps we all need to try it.
Let’s hear it for the big guy
Talking of fitness, one man who doesn’t have a permanent place in the mobile gym that’s an essential component of all tours nowadays is Carl Pettersson, the burly Swedish-born golfer who’s now a naturalised American. Like Ooosthuizen, the big fella cruised the final round, in his case to take the RBC Heritage title by five strokes over Zach Johnson. Pettersson couldn’t beat a fat man in a (more…)
Martin Vousden in Masters mode.
Apr 04 2012 Posted in Golf News, Martin Vousden by GoKartThought for the Day:
99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name
Praise the lord and pass the ammunition
If the glorious spring weather we have been enjoying hasn’t got you excited about the new golf season, then surely the prospect of this year’s Masters will get your heart beating faster than a Duracell bunny in a state of sexual anticipation. Partly this is because it’s the first major of the year after an eight-month drought and partly it’s the magnificence of the Augusta National golf course, with which we have become so familiar over the years. The people who run it may have a not very endearing history as racist good ‘ole boys, albeit very rich ones, but they do know how to run a golf tournament. And it has to be said, despite our natural affection for and loyalty to The Open, visually The Masters is the most sumptuous of the majors, especially if you only get to see it on television.
In the run-up to this year’s event, much attention has rightly been focused on Tiger’s victory in the Bay Hill International, and we have been reminded that each of the four previous times that a green jacket has been draped around his broad shoulders, it followed an earlier win on the US Tour – two of which were also at Bay Hill. But even more impressive than his victory at Arnold Palmer’s invitational was the manner in which it was achieved. He led the field in greens in regulation (57 out of 72), was 12-under for the par fives, drove much straighter and seemed to have confidence in his putter once again. And when he did miss a green, which wasn’t too often (at one stage over the weekend he gave himself 38 consecutive putts for birdie, albeit several of them were from a distance), he was equal first in getting up and down. It was very impressive but, (more…)
Add a comment TweetMartin Vousden on Ernie.
Mar 27 2012 Posted in Golf News, Martin Vousden by GoKartThought for the Day:
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something
Els bells
In all the excitement of Luke Donald’s playoff win in the Transitions Championship, and in the process going back to world number one, there was nevertheless a sad aspect to it all and that was the sight of Ernie Els. He is, without question, the greatest golfer called Ernie to have ever played the game but like so many before him, and a few of his contemporaries, he has discovered that age for a Tour pro does not bring wisdom but an unreliable putting stroke. The swing is still that beautifully fluid concoction reminiscent of pouring syrup over ice cream, and it still propels the ball a considerable distance, usually in the right direction. As a result, on the 16th hole he was leading the tournament at 14-under par but missed a four-foot birdie putt. He then bogied the 17th and on the last missed another four-footer – this one badly pulled.
Ernie needed the win to get into the world’s top-50 and with it gain automatic exemption for the Masters, and his chances to make the field at Augusta National are fast diminishing. During a brief post-round interview he looked as if he’d just been mugged at gunpoint and was barely able to answer the two (rather asinine) questions he was asked, but at least the interviewer had the sense to recognise that Ernie’s brain (more…)
Add a comment TweetTiger shows his teeth, but not in the smiley sort of way. Martin Vousden on the Honda.
Mar 08 2012 Posted in Golf News, Martin Vousden by GoKartThought for the Day:
If you lend someone £20 and never see them again, it was probably a wise investment
Something stirs
Whenever we look forward to a dramatic season in which the world’s best will slug it out against each other, particularly in the majors, we are invariably left disappointed. So it is with a certain sense of resigned fatalism that I nevertheless wonder if 2012 could be one of those rare, stellar years that will not only bring excitement and drama for the moment, but establish the template for several years to come.
Rory McIlroy has just won the Honda Classic and in the process become the world ranked number one player – and it wasn’t unexpected. So far in Europe he has played six events, only once finished outside the top-10 (and that was 11th), won once and been runner-up twice. Right now his average game will see him in contention and if he plays to his potential, he wins. He currently heads the European Tour’s Race to Dubai and is fourth in the US Tour’s FedEx Cup rankings, after only two events in America.
But to add a little more spice to that already sumptuous menu, in that Honda Classic he was chased hard by joint runner-up Tiger Woods, who fired a best-of-the week 62 on the last day, his lowest round for three years and one which lifted him from 17th place overnight. Almost as impressive was the 63 from Lee Westwood, that vaulted him into fourth. And sitting at home, no doubt watching with interest, was Phil Mickelson, whose last two events have produced a win and a second place. Rarely have we seen so many of the world’s best golfers playing to such an exalted level at the same time. All we need to put the final garnish on top is for Luke Donald to wake from his (more…)
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