I have had my fair share of head-scratching moments while playing competitive amateur golf. When I say competitive amateur golf, I’m talking about USGA qualifiers and State Amateurs, not some club championship or cup series in Lake County. I’ve seen really good golfers, paired in a foursome, hit second off the the tee, pick up their bag and start to head down the fairway before the others in their grouping can tee off. I’ve seen the other end of the spectrum where all three golfers teed off and yet the fourth golfer doesn’t hit his tee shot because he’s convinced that he has already played his shot. Talk about being in the zone or, better yet, being in the state of confusion. The overriding theme to this is that some golfers at the highest levels can be incredibly self-absorbed while playing the game, sometimes to the point of detriment.
Last week we began our review of Shane Ryan’s new book Slaying the Tiger (Ballantine $29). Ryan followed the PGA Tour for an entire season, watching Bubba Watson win his second Masters, Martin Kaymer win his second major at the U.S. Open, and Rory McIlroy add two more majors to his career total of four. While Ryan reports on the exploits of those gifted linksters on the PGA Tour, he also evaluates what makes some of the top golfers tick, oftentimes haphazardly, with an incredible dose of self-centeredness. Patrick Reed and Victor Dubuisson were two such tour stars who were probably marked down in preschool for their inability to get along with others, including their parents. Yet as we’ll learn this week, Reed and Dubuisson are not alone in the tour’s world of the self-absorbed.
Ryan found two-time Masters champion Bubba Watson to be a most difficult pairing for a number of his fellow competitors. Watson is a chronic complainer who hates the golf course, hates the weather, hates his tee time and seems to hate being there. He has had the same faithful caddie for a number of years and yet is good for several blowups every season where he blames his looper for club selections, yardages and the like. An alumnus of the University of Georgia golf team, Bubba is highly disliked by his fellow Bulldogs. There were even stories of Bubba disrupting the weekly tour Bible study groups that are held among tour pros.
Recently, Bubba was quoted as saying that should he ever reach the No. 1 ranking in the world of golf, he would retire on the spot. A highly talented and most creative striker of the golf ball, it appears as if Bubba plays golf at the highest level because of the financial rewards it affords him and not because of some childlike love for the game. Bubba reminds me of some of the second-tier golfers from the 1960s and 1970s such as Frank Beard, Bert Yancey and Tom Weiskopf who were talented yet tortured by the game.
Keegan Bradley won the PGA Championship as a 20-something in a colorful playoff over Jason Dufner. His aunt, Pat Bradley, is a member of the LPGA Hall of Fame. His dad was a club professional and he grew up around the game from childhood onward. Yet for all his successes and riches, Ryan reports that Keegan has a massive chip on his shoulder. He seems to be chronically upset about some slight, real or perceived. He feels he was disregarded as a junior golfer because he came from Vermont. He is upset because his only real valid college scholarship offer was from St. John’s. He remains upset that he never received All-American recognition. He is upset about the belly putter rule. He has a tendency to take digs at Dufner for losing to him in the PGA. Bradley appears to be one big unhappy person. If the adjustment away from the belly putter doesn’t take hold this year, Bradley won’t have to worry about all these slights. He’ll be off the PGA Tour and never heard from again.
Matt Every burst on the golf scene by winning the Golf Channel’s Big Break in 2006. He was a fringe member of the tour for the next few years. Then he got busted for smoking marijuana with a handful of tour caddies in a hotel meeting room and got booted off the tour for a six-month period of time for his transgression. Yet Ryan felt that Every was one of the more open golfers on tour from the standpoint of his individual interviews. Every took ownership for his stupid decision making. He acknowledged he prefers to hang out with the caddies rather than with his fellow pros or the corporate types who show up at their local tour event. Ryan contended he was the most open and direct of the tour regulars he followed that year. Of course, the last two seasons have been good ones for Every in that he won the Arnold Palmer Invitational in 2014 and then repeated the feat again last year.
Derek Ernst is that story that is all too familiar on the PGA Tour. Born in Woodland and raised in Clovis, Ernst played collegiately at UNLV. He was a top amateur five years ago, coming in second in the U.S. Publinks in 2011 and playing on the Palmer Cup team in 2012. He got through Q School and was a full-fledged member of the tour in 2013. His rookie season started off poorly with missed cuts. Then he had an out-of-nowhere moment and won the Wells Fargo Championship in North Carolina on a bad weather weekend in 2013. Suddenly he was a golfer of note, a winner on the PGA Tour. Yet, it may turn out that he was merely one of golf’s one-hit wonders. Since the win at the Wells Fargo, he has floundered on tour. His nickname among his fellow pros is “The Fluke.” He is currently ranked 157th on tour and 570th in the world rankings.
Yet Ernst is considered a nice guy. He is frustrated by the current status of his game, but he is highly regarded for being pleasant to tour officials, volunteers, caddies and the fans. Like Keegan Bradley, his time on golf’s big stage may be limited in the future, but he will probably walk away from it all a whole lot happier.
There are many other profiles throughout Ryan’s book. He describes Jordan Spieth as authentic, thinks Rickie Fowler’s working class upbringing has helped make him one of the all-time nice guys on tour, finds Fed Ex Cup champ Billy Horschel to be overwhelmingly hyperactive and, sad to say, feels that the gifted Dustin Johnson may be the most talented golfer on tour as well as one of the least focused. There are a lot of characters out there on tour and it appears as if there are a lot of different ways to be successful.
We’re at that time of the year when the weather isn’t all that conducive for golf. Avid fans of the game will find Shane Ryan’s Slaying the Tiger to be an interesting read about the personalities on the PGA Tour during these dog days of January in Northern California.
