Exploring golf's lineage of greatness

It all started with Allan Robertson, who was not only the “supreme golfer of his age” but unwittingly created the opportunity for the birth of what we know today as the Open Championship. A year after Robertson's death in 1859, the very first Open was held to try and identify his successor as the best golfer of the day. Willie Park was the first champion.

Over the last century and a half, championship golf has proved remarkably proficient at identifying the greatest players of the game. There have always been matches and exhibitions, tournaments and tours, but it seems there have always been titles that have been the more sought after. The idea works very well. Get everyone together, let them get on with it and let's see if anyone prevails more often than the others. And prevail they have: Young Tom Morris, Harry Vardon and the Great Triumvirate, Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. Championship golf also offers platforms for players to excel whether they are male or female, amateur or professional. A great champion is a great champion, regardless of sex, status or the era in which they played.

Compared to those innocent early days when eight caddies played three loops of the 12-hole Prestwick course in 1860, modern major championships might be bigger (starting fields; spectators, both on site and on global television), better (pay and quality of play), longer (courses and players' drives) and lower (scoring) but when it comes to winning them, has anything actually changed? The qualities that separate the greatest from the merely very good remain the eternal verities. “The first thing is that they win tournaments and they win the big tournaments,” said Ken Brown, the former Ryder Cup player turned commentator. “The mental fortitude you had to have to win, the nerves, the skill, it has always been the same.”

The greatest: by whatever
measure you care to apply Jack Nickalus is the finest
golfer of his and every other generation.Dan Jenkins, the veteran American golf writer, said the greats were the “guys who weren't afraid to win, not afraid to carry the burden. A lot of guys just want to make a good living and not have to be bothered. They had concentration, they had focus, they had competitive spirit, they had heart. The old saying is that the great of heart could play in any era.”

“Look at Gary Player,” said David Leadbetter, the coach. “What did he have over everyone else? Here and here,” pointing at his heart and his head. “It's that inner belief that is the intangible that separates the great from the really good.” None of this, you may have noticed, involves anything to do with actually hitting a golf ball. It is about one player separating themselves from their peers. Leadbetter added: “My feeling is that if you were great in one era you would probably be great in any era. You just happened to be born at that particular time.”

Apparently, the message cannot be repeated often enough. Patty Berg, one of the founders of the LPGA in America, wrote a list of what she believed it took to win. It read:

Believe you have a will to win, not a wish to win. Inspiration. Don't think you really win until you live up to that high thing within you, that makes you do your best, no matter what. Never give up. Desire, dedication and determination. Fighting heart. Strive for perfection. Faith, confidence, courage, spirit and enthusiasm. Self-control and patience. Use your mind, concentration, visualisation. Take defeat and bounce back to victory. Take God with you.

Another of the early stars of women's golf in America was Betsy Rawls. If she had not been a professional golfer she would have been a physicist.

With an analytical mind, she told Liz Kahn, in her history of the LPGA: “Although it is an advantage to be physically strong, it is not a necessity. I never was. Temperament is important. Some people get so nervous they can't play under pressure. You need confidence in your ability to perform, which is not the same as being a self-confident person.

“People who win a lot have a tremendous drive to win and a need to prove themselves to the world. There is a great confidence in one area and a great need in the other to prove you are a worthwhile person. You have the feeling inside that you're very worthwhile, but you need everyone else to know it. Winners take that avenue to prove to the world they are worthwhile, and they can do it through golf. I had a lot of drive and any great player must have an obsession with winning and a need to win.

“It's such an emotional game and golfers react so violently to things that happen on the golf course. Every good player works and works at controlling emotions because you put yourself on the line every time you go out. To great players, your whole world depends on what you shoot, and it's hard to control your reactions unless you don't care.

“Every golfer tries to blame a bad shot on a bad break. Mickey Wright did that, until she finally realised she was responsible for everything that happened on the course. She learned to play one shot at a time and zero in on it, without relating it to the score. When she could do that, she started winning a lot.

“I learned that one bad shot does not mean the whole tournament, and then I learned the knack of not letting disappointment or frustration show, of not expressing anger. I turned negative feelings into determination.

I didn't give up or feel sorry for myself. When people over-react, it's a reflection of not being able to accept a mistake in themselves. For a lot of people, it is not in their script to win, it doesn't fit their self-image. I saw myself as a winner, but why that comes about I don't know.”

Peter Thomson summed this all up in one word.

“The super players,” he said, “have one vital quality: calmness.” John Jacobs confirmed this of the five-time open champion. “I played a lot with Peter and I can tell you the best club in his bag was his temperament, no doubt about it,” Jacobs said. “He was like Jack Nicklaus in that on the last few holes of a major championship, with a chance to win, he'd be the calmest person on the course.” or, as it says on the T-shirt: “Keep calm and carry on.”

of course, the game has evolved in many ways over the decades. Courses are prepared in better condition, especially at the elite level, and clubs and balls are much the better engineered. There is also better coaching, not just in the art of hitting the ball but concerning fitness, diet and mental discipline. And then there is the money with vast riches awaiting today's champions. most of these advances have made it easier to attain higher standards. But there are also more players capable of reaching those lofty heights.

Think not of the money that the stars earn, and best not if it seems obscene. Instead, it is important to understand how it has filtered down to the lower ranks. Brown said: “In my time, about 20 people made a reasonable living but if you weren't in the top-50 for a couple of years, you were gone. Didn't matter what potential you had, you could not afford to carry on. Whereas now, you pick someone on the european Tour, say No 200, they are making enough money to keep going, to give themselves time for the ability to come through. Before they would have been long gone, now they can hang on for that big payday.”

No other player in the history
of the sport elicited the mystique that surrounded Ben Hogan.There have always been advances in the technology of the game. A century ago there were exactly the same mutterings about the game getting easier as there are today. But the effect of equipment over the last two decades has been profound and we are perhaps only about to see quite how profound it has been – as new players come through who have grown up with it as opposed to those so far who had to adapt to it. Denis Pugh, the coach whose clients have included Colin Montgomerie and the Molinari brothers, said: “When I was 19 I holed in one at the Irish Open and the ball was mounted. I was looking at it in my mum's cupboard the other day and thought: ‘Did we really play with this rubbish?'

It looked like a horrible piece of tat. We had golf clubs which were persimmon-headed which look tiny now. But it was golf, it was what we knew at the time.” The difference now is startlingly. With today's genuinely athletic players, there is only one game in town.

“The modern equipment has made it a power game,” Pugh. “If you ask what three skills you need, it would be power, power and power. Then you need to be able to chip and putt, but if you can putt, the chipping is not so important. If you can hit the ball 350 yards off the tee, you don't miss many greens with a wedge. So chipping becomes less of a skill you require and if you can putt, or rather if you don't miss putts, you tend to see a low score going on the card.

“It is frightening how far Bubba Watson hits it, and he is doing it with a slidey fade. God knows how far he could hit a turnover hook. But he is not the only one. Look at Dustin Johnson and Nick Watney, as well. These are very impressive athletes playing golf. That is the massive change that Tiger made. He made it so that athletes now play golf. Without any disregard to any of the former champions, you would not say they were too athletic. Now it is very rare to get someone on the range who is not athletic. In fact, he stands out, whereas it was always Gary Player who stood out. He was the only one who looked fit.”

According to Pugh, his job is to give his players “the keys to the Ferrari but you need a Ferrari, you need a top car to win any race. Ultimately it's the player that is driving the car. I joke with my players to bring the Ferrari back without a scratch on it. It rarely happens.” While players are perfecting their skills better than ever, Brown feels the game is less interesting because fewer skills are required. “To my mind it is a shame that golf has been so detoxed of everything,” he said. “Today the fairways are always pristine and the greens perfect but actually that is not what golf is all about – it was about getting from that tee to that hole. Now, if it was scruffy all the way then it was the same for everybody. It's not about fairness.

“It's the same golf but completely different. Today you hit it down this little chute, you've got to hit it that way, the lies are soft, the bunkers are absolutely perfect, the greens are like billiard tables, every club feels the same. If one club breaks you just get another one and it's exactly the same – in my day if you found a driver you liked, you had to make it last a lifetime because you were not going to find one that felt the same, played the same. You had to be a lot more adaptable back then.

Five-time Open champion
Peter Thomson shared with Nicklaus the ability to remain calm‘down the stretch’ in a
major championship.“So the courses are very predictable, the requirements are very predictable and it is an easier thing to hone four things than it is to hone 50 things. There are fewer skills to be good at – still just as skilful – but there were more things to be skilful at when balls didn't fly straight, you had to play from all sorts of lies, the greens were nothing like they are today. I think if you look through the eras, as golf has become more popular, there are more people with a chance to become good but the elite few…

I'm sure we would have said, let's go and watch Young Tom Morris play, good grief, look how far it hits it. Just like with Tiger. But behind Young Tom there were probably only ten players who could give him a game. Behind Tiger woods now there are 1,000 players, maybe more, they might not beat him but they could give him a game.”

So far the history of the game suggests there will always be players who dominate at any particular time. Leadbetter thinks that might change in the future. “I don't think anyone is going to dominate the way Tiger has,” he said. “There is the depth we have now and the fact that young players are getting younger and younger. They have access to great instruction these days and if you look at the likes of Matteo Manassero, he is a role model for other young players. You see kids in the far east who have Tour player fundamentals at 12. It's amazing. You cannot believe the technique these kids have. If they grow up with that technique, how good are they going to be when they are 18 or 20?”

“The standard has got a lot better, a lot quicker,” confirmed Colin Montgomerie. Padraig Harrington can also see the trend but pointed out that a good technique is not the only requirement. “You can go to college in the US and find 20 kids who hit the ball better than Tiger woods or anyone else at the top of the game. But they will not necessarily make great professional golfers. Tiger had a great ability to hit the golf ball but it was his will, his drive and his want that created what he has. Of these 20 kids, maybe one will have that and make it out on tour.

“But over time if all the players get stronger and technically better, eventually you are going to have 100 players and out of them maybe five of them are going to have the will and the want. The standards are going up and that dilutes the ability of anyone to truly dominate. Maybe that is the biggest issue for Rory McIlroy or anyone else trying to match Nicklaus's 18 majors, that there will be more players capable of winning majors going forward.” McIlroy had just won the US Open in succession to fellow Ulsterman Graeme McDowell. Harrington added: “In Ireland now they are talking about the best juniors they have ever had. You think, hang on a second, look at what has just come through. But they say, no, these kids are really good.”

“Christ,” Monty interjected, “Northern Ireland will have the US Open forever.”

In 2011 the winner of the Masters, the first major of the season, was the South African Charl Schwartzel. He birdied the last four holes at augusta National, something no one had ever done before. “Pressure is something you learn how to deal with,” he said. “You have to force yourself to stay in the present. It is difficult around here with so many people and so many roars. And you've got to breathe. Sometimes you forget to breathe.” Schwartzel was taught the game by his father from the age of four. “He told me from the word go the right grip, the right stance, rhythm, posture, balance. They are the five key things that we always work on. Whenever something goes wrong, it will be one of those five things that has gone haywire.”

Schwartzel has done well to stick to his five fundamentals. It was Hogan who wrote the seminal book on instruction, Five lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf. Hogan said the golf swing was so complex because there were “nine jillion things to learn”.

For the first half of his career, he was a nothing special. If anyone worked out how to become a great player, it was him. Later on, he became one of the best ever. He “dug it out of the dirt” but he also took a vital decision to concentrate on a few key aspects, exactly what Brown was saying earlier. “What lay behind my new confidence after 1946 was that I stopped trying to do a great many difficult things perfectly because it had become clear in my mind that this ambitious over thoroughness was neither possible nor advisable or even necessary. All you needed to groove were the fundamental movements – and there aren't so many of them.”

It takes a special ability to practise a limited number of things are the necessary duration without getting bored. That duration is apparently 10,000 hours, or around ten years, according to theories popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers and Matthew Syed in Bounce: How Champions are Made. “I used to do that as a warm up,” said Sir Nick Faldo, a modern version of Hogan and immediately warming to the subject. “I probably went past that with every club. We all totally agree with that, that work ethic. You go and belt balls and you keep grinding.

“Target practice is all well and
good, and you might have a
badge to say you are a good
marksman. But that doesn’t
necessarily mean you’ll be a
good guerrilla fighter. You have to have the ability to
survive, not to let the feat of
success overwhelm you.”
– Peter Thomson“It was quite funny, if you took a seven-iron and just practice with a seven-iron all day long, it is quite interesting. I used to do that occasionally, or hit a seven-iron all morning. At the end of it, the seven iron was just an extension of you. You hit so many balls that the face would start going concave and it really did feel part of you. It was like, I've made this thing fit me because I've hit so many darn balls I've worn the centre of the face out. And you really did feel better. I remember doing that because, jeepers, you were so confident, talk about feeling the cover of a ball by the time you had done all that. It was a really fun little thing to do. That's the difference now, I can't feel the blooming golf ball. I don't practice one percent like I used to and I hit shots now and I don't know if they are good bad or indifferent, other than by seeing the distance. I don't feel it like I used to. I could literally feel the cover of the golf ball and the grip fitted your hand because you had worn it a bit and you knew exactly where the flex of the shaft was. Yeah, interesting, I agree with that totally.”

But that was not all Faldo did. As Syed points out, there is no point in just doing the same thing over and over if you are going to switch off mentally, which is why we do not become expert at things we do absent-mindedly every day. To become an expert, the practice must be purposeful. It could be that golf is a skill, or series of skills, that is ideally suited to offering such opportunities – just count up the number of greats who grew up on or next door to a golf course and those who were always trying match a superior player or merely an elder brother.

Faldo explained: “I did two things which I didn't know then but psychologists would say now were vital. One was where I would go and watch players at the Open on the practice range. I'd spot their little idiosyncrasies and then come back and I'd play me versus Jack and Arnold or gary, or me and one of them against Miller and Weiskopf. And I'd swing like they did, stand up tall like Weiskopf, tuck my knee in like gary, I'd even try and mimic Hogan. Even though I hadn't seen him play, I'd seen pictures, so I'd try that elbow to- elbow swing, or again I hadn't seen Sam Snead as a kid but I'd try and practice his tempo, so how good is that. There are zero negatives in that. I was just Johnny Miller or Jack. That was incredibly powerful, it was competitive, doing all the right things. “The other thing was dear old Welwyn garden City. We had nothing like the modern hazards so I had to go up a hole and think, ok, there is out of bounds on the left, or there is water in front of the green. When I first came to America water still scared me because you don't see it as much in Europe. For a while, you really had to get over that. In Europe, you could miss a green by 30-40 yards and if you were a good chipper you could still get up and down. But in the States, plonk, you are in the water, you are dropping out and taking a double bogey when you are just two yards off the side of the green. It came as a real shock. That visualisation is what all the great players have had. You have to be able to see the shot, feel it and commit to it.”

Any driving range at a professional tournament is littered with players that hit the ball well, almost identically. There is more to it. “Target practice is all well and good, and you might have a badge to say that you are a good marksman,” said Thomson, who was more likely to solve a swing problem in an armchair than on the range, “but that doesn't necessarily mean you'll be a good guerrilla fighter. You have to have the ability to compete, to survive, not to let the fear of success overwhelm you.”

getting the balance right between practising too much, and too little, is the constant dilemma. Montgomerie, famously, does little compared to Harrington, but both are always wondering if they have done enough. “I've had 29 second places and most were caused by practising too hard earlier in the week,” Harrington said. “I was so concerned with not playing well on Thursday and not making the cut. But Sunday matters three times as much as Thursday. Even on a Saturday night if I was in contention I'd be practising hard. I might play better on Sunday but I would score worse because I'd be making mental mistakes. Monty won so often on a Sunday because he was fresh. He had not been practising all week.

“There are some players who spend all their time practising and keep missing cuts. They take it easy one week and win the tournament and say they have found the way to do it, but the next week they are back on the range. It's just their nature. They cannot keep away. For my first ten years on tour, I was always practising for something in the future. I opened and closed more ranges than anyone on tour. It got ridiculous. There was one time in Malaysia, I'd just arrived and it was steaming hot. The hotel was on the course but I was the only player on the range, all the others were by the pool, looking at the Irish idiot. It took it out of me and that's why I got injuries. You have to find the right balance. My nature is to do too much and I'm always fighting that.”

Currently, European golf is on a high, just as it had been in the 1980s and 90s with the likes of Ballesteros, Faldo, Langer, Lyle, Woosnam and Olazabal. “We had all those great role models,” said Harrington. “That is one of the biggest reasons why we are good now.” Each of them pushing each other, is another factor. Martin Kaymer said after Rory McIlroy won the US Open: “Watching Rory made me want to practice more. It's inspirational. If you see somebody playing as well as Rory you want to go out and become a better player.” Europeans being inspired by Europeans, whether past or present, is one thing. Woods, arriving in the era of global television, inspired youngsters not just in America but all around the world. McIlroy is just one example of the many to come.

This shift away from America being the overwhelmingly dominant force in golf is only set to continue. Ironically, the sheer depth of talent in America may count against the development of its young players, according to Harrington. “I think the European Tour and the tours around the world outside America give their players a better opportunity to learn how to play the game,” he explained. “You only have to look at Rory. He might have lost 15 events where he has been in contention over the last few years. But a good young player in the States might have only had three or four opportunities of being in contention in that time.

“Winning is a good habit but you don't learn much. You learn a lot when you lose. Sitting in your hotel room at 10 o'clock at night when you have thrown away a tournament is not a nice experience, going over what you did wrong in your head. You get more opportunities to get in contention, to get that experience, to learn how to become the player you are. I had to learn those lessons time and again. “European golf is much better at taking its best players and demanding more of them all the time. At a tournament like Abu Dhabi there might be ten marquee names. When you arrive, there is a giant poster of you by the entrance, they are looking for you to perform and you had better deliver. There is nowhere to hide. You have deliver by making the cut and getting into contention. In the States it can be very easy. If you miss the cut, you are gone, away, no one to trouble you. If you are in Abu Dhabi, the sponsors, press, everyone, are asking, ‘what went wrong?'

“The European Tour creates an atmosphere where you have to perform week-in, week-out. Whereas in the States, there is an atmosphere that it is a race, let's go, play unbelievably this week, don't worry about next week. The first nine holes in the States feel like a sprint. If you are not four under par, it's not your week. In Europe it is more of a marathon. That is why Monty won so often in Europe. He would work his way up to the top of the leaderboard and then everyone else was worried about him. In the States, no one cared about his name, it was just a mad dash. It will go the same way in Asia. A few people will come through who are in contention regularly and then winning a lot and then they'll come to Europe and discover winning there is a similar feeling and then they'll be ready to win majors.”

There could be no better example of learning from a crushing disappointment than McIlroy after the 2011 Masters, where he led by four going into the last round but imploded from the 10th and finished with an 80. The image of the kid slumped over his driver on the 13th tee, virtually in tears, looked set to haunt him forever.

Harrington said: “What I said to Rory was that the Monday after the Masters he was a better player than the Monday before the Masters. There are very few times in his career when he will genuinely learn to be a better player. The Masters was one of those occasions. So as a player I rated Rory higher the Monday after than the Monday before because, one, he lapped the field for most of the tournament which is a great talent to have, and, two, he is starting to learn how to win – by losing, obviously, but that's how you learn how to win.”

At the US Open at Congressional, McIlroy lapped the field for the entire championship. He won by eight strokes. Only on eight occasions in 151 years has someone won a major by more and those someone's included Woods and Young Tom, twice each. His total of 268 was four lower than the previous US Open record, held by Woods and Nicklaus, among others. No one, ever, had previously got past 12 under par in a US Open. He finished at 16 under but had got to 17 under. He was the youngest winner of the US Open since Jones in 1923.

These are no mere statistical niceties. Great players are defined by playing against other great players, and measured against the records of those greats that have gone before. This provides the context that is essential for evaluating the achievements of a player.

Who they were playing against, who they beat, who they lost to, it all matters. When retelling the tales of The 100 Greatest Ever Golfers it became apparent that a broadly chronological approach, setting each player in his or her own era, provided this context and meant that their stories built into a history of championship golf itself, from Allan Robertson right through to the present day.