Jose's Way - Interview with Jose Maria Olazabal

Seve and Ollie. Ollie and Seve. The greatest partnership in Ryder Cup history. They go together, get on together, like… well, like a house on fire. In terms of temperament, it was Ballesteros who more tended to metaphorical pyromania, even if it was Olazábal, as the reigning Masters champion, who knocked himself out of the 1999 US Open by punching a hole in his hotel room wall, infuriated after a first-round 75. The consequent hand injury ended his participation.

“I'm calmer now,” he says. At 43, of course, he ought to be. “Even though I still get upset when things don't go the way I expect them to, I can take those bad moments better than I used to.”

Things have been going very badly for his Spanish compatriot latterly, even if his health is presently comparatively stable, but it was instructive and inevitable that it was José Maria whom Seve asked to read out a letter at this year's Masters champions' dinner, thanking his peers for their support during his ongoing recovery since surgery for the removal of a brain tumour last October.

“Seve and I speak quite often on the phone,” says Olazábal. “What he did for golf, especially for golf in Europe, was unbelievable. He changed completely the view the rest of the world about European golf. The way he played the game and his charisma, going to the States and winning the Masters – this attracted so many people to get interested in golf. He made it a game that was exciting to watch. And he gave belief to other European golfers that we had the ability to beat anyone.”

If Ballesteros is well enough, he will likely be in St Augustine, Florida, on November 2 when Olazábal will be joining him as a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame. That would be fitting. At an awards ceremony in Spain in late 2007, Olazábal did the honours for Seve. He recorded a video clip saying he was sorry he couldn't be there because he was committed to playing a game with Tiger Woods, then told Tiger in a mock on-screen phone conversation ‘what the hell, I can't let my old chum down', and then appeared from behind the screen to hand over the prize to his great companion of the fairways (OK, quite often they were in the rough).

“It is a thrill for me and I have a lot of respect for the other players who are in there, what they have done for the game of golf,” Olazábal says of his forthcoming induction. “It is truly an honour for me to be part of that group.”

No one could deny that he belongs. Among the tournaments he has won (see table at end) are two Masters titles, achieved either side of an incorrectly diagnosed back problem – the improperly prescribed treatment exacerbated his illness – that first led to his withdrawal from the 1995 Ryder Cup team and by mid-1996 had him crawling around his house on hands and knees, walking being too painful. That he won a golf tournament within 12 months of that low was astonishing. “When I was going though that bad period, the last part of 1995 and throughout most of 1996, I thought I would never play golf again,” he says.

“So to recover and come back pain-free and play well enough to win another major and some other events was fantastic. It is true my health was bad for quite some time but overall I can have no complaints.” Over the past 18 months, he has suffered some recurrence of his problems. “A year ago I was in really bad shape. I'm feeling much better than that but not as good as I want to be. There are still issues with some of the joints. The main problem is that I'm not able to do any exercises. Just stretching; no gym. That means you can't be in the shape you want to be in to compete. Often the tiredness leads to a lack of concentration. I'm hanging on and hanging on but then I let some shots slip in the last few holes. It's a mixture of physical and mental problems. What drugs I take and what treatment I have is something I and my doctors keep under review, and we change things if that's what we feel is needed.”

To maintain a career at the top level of any sport requires enormous self-discipline and mental resilience. I remind Olazábal of an interview I had read in The Guardian a few years ago in which he spoke of another necessary attribute: craziness.

“Yes. You have to be prepared to spend a lot of time on your own, a lot of time away from your friends and family. You have to spend hours practising on the range and the putting green. That is the working part of it. There is also the part of dealing with the fact that golf is a frustrating game. Losing is the biggest part of golf. If you win twice a year, that is exceptional. And losing is wearing. Even if you are one of the top players in the world – maybe except for Tiger – in your whole career, even for the greatest players, you don't win one tournament out of five.

“And it's like that with every part of golf. Even if you have a great round, you think you could have saved a shot here or there. Sometimes you hit good shots that end up in bad places. Sometimes you strike the ball well but you haven't scored well. And you put all this together, week after week, month after month, year after year, and then after a few years of your career – yes, I think in a way you have to be a little bit crazy to be good at it.”

I mention that Ben Hogan once said he only hit one perfect shot a round. “I totally agree with that,” he says immediately.

For example?

“Earlier this year, playing on my home course with friends, I remember hitting one lovely 6-iron that never left the flag stick, into the wind in cold weather. I remember that one.”

What about the highlight shots from his career? “They stick out because of the circumstances in which you hit them. The 5-iron I hit under the trees on the last hole to win in Hong Kong [it finished stiff for a winning birdie]. The [60-foot] putt I made for eagle on the 15th when playing against Tom Lehman in the last round of the 1994 Masters. The 6-iron I hit on the 16th on the last day of the Masters in '99, after Davis Love had chipped in for a birdie, to about three feet from the hole. But those things aren't so much about the shot itself as about the context; the moment in which you hit it.”

On the subject of contending to win a tournament, especially a major championship, Olazábal is intriguingly insightful.

“It can be a very lonely place. The loneliness is a good thing because it means you are in that situation to have the chance to win. But you are on your own. No one else can help. Your caddie can help you in a way but at the end of the day it is how you prepare yourself for that moment and how you react to it. When it comes down to it, there is only you gripping the club. When you take your stance, that is a lonely place. When you are about to hit, that is a very lonely place. That is the loneliest place in golf. There is just you. There is nothing else. Honestly, you are absolutely on your own.” I ask if a putt, because it is the final act of a hole, makes the intensity of that moment even more of a challenge.

“No. For me, it's the same. If you have a 4- iron on the 15th at Augusta National, or a 6- iron on the 16th, and you are in contention, it is the same pressure as having a four-foot putt.”

The last time he was there at Augusta, in that sort of situation on Sunday, was ten years ago. What about his game today? “What game? I don't have a game any more. [He'd had one top-10 in ten starts this year through July.] Seriously, it's not like it should be but considering what I've been going through, am still going through, it's OK. From tee to green I can play pretty well but I have been struggling on the greens. There are some promising signs there [the green shoots of recovery?] but right now my game is not good enough for me to contend in tournaments. It's not very pleasing when you go out to give of your best and you struggle to make the cut, and if you do make the cut you finish in the bottom part of the field. There isn't much fun in that. My whole game needs to be raised.”

He once said that his short game was so good because it had to be: just look at the state of his driving. In this regard things have changed, albeit not massively.

“My driving has always been my Achilles Heel, all my career. My iron play was excellent and my short game very good. That's what got me most of my titles; not the driving. I would say my driving is overall better now, for stretches of time, but it is not consistent enough to be solid for a whole season. Some other players have bad days but mostly those days would be good days for me. “On the other hand, my putting is obviously not as good as it was when I came on tour. For many years it was excellent. I made a lot of putts, a lot of pressure putts, tricky putts, and from all sorts of distances. [Of that birdie putt he holed on the 16th green in the 1999 Masters, he said later that day: “You can't imagine what a three-footer that was – downhill and lightning quick with a left-to-right break. I don't know how the hell I made that putt.”] But I haven't practised as much for the past two or three years, because of my health, but I believe it is still there. I know I have been a good putter and I believe it will show up again.”

That almost whimsical attitude, as if a putting stroke was akin to a stray cat, is perhaps perfect. It is surely the most capricious aspect of the game. I ask him if putting was the one part of golf that however good you were at 20, it's hard to be better at 30?

“I think that's right,” he says. “I don't know if it's the nerves, but certainly when you are younger there is a lack of fear. When you have a difficult putt downhill, you are not thinking about the one coming back. As years go by, you've seen them go past the hole many times, sometimes leaving you a longer putt back than the one you had to start with. I think that might play a part in it.”

For the dual reasons that he's also a Spaniard and that, compared with the rest of his game, his putting stinks, I ask if he thinks Sergio Garcia will ever win a major. I mean, who would have thought, when Garcia was low amateur at the Masters Olazábal won in 1999, we would still be waiting?

“As years go by, you increasingly realise that winning majors is extremely difficult. But I do believe Sergio is going to win one, even though his putting is not at a level normally required to do that. I believe he will have to do something, and he will want to, to improve his putting stroke to make it more consistent. From tee to green he is one of the best, without any question. But he gives away shots to other competitors on the greens, and that is what has stopped him winning a major already. Nothing else. Once he figures that out, he will win majors.”

But what about that bit about how tough it is to get better as you get older?

“It is possible to find a way. Look at [Bernhard] Langer.”

How his health issues resolve themselves will affect the pattern of the latter years of Olazábal's career. As for the Ryder Cup, see the adjoining story. As for the rest, he is pragmatic.

“I don't look too far ahead, let's put it that way. I just look a month or so ahead. I am 43. When I started on tour I was 20. I realise that the biggest part of my career is done. Obviously I am trying to stay competitive because there are a few years ahead if things go well. How many? Three, four, five? Who knows? Nobody knows. Jay Haas was competitive at 50. Kenny Perry is and he's approaching 50. If you are lucky enough to have good health and the desire, you can have a few years left. The question is how many. It is sad in a way, but things have to end. We are fortunate in golf, because the longevity can last much longer at the top level than in other sports. And in my case, I think I have managed to achieve some things that are quite big.”

Indeed. He's amassed a fair bit of money, too, although financial concerns have never been his primary concern. Mark McCormack, the founder of IMG, more than once commented that Olazábal was “unusual” in apparently having no interest in haring around the world chasing another hundred grand. For that reason, he has stayed with the same manager, Sergio Gomez, throughout his career. Not that Ollie won't opt for a little ostentation if it seems a good idea – chartering private jets, for instance. Once Seve chided him about this, saying it was an unnecessary extravagance. Nonsense, proclaimed his friend: “I don't want to end up the richest guy in the graveyard.”

Olazábal seemed destined for a tremendous career as soon as he turned professional. That move came on the back of an unprecedented amateur treble – British Boys', Amateur and Youths' titles – between 1983-5 and his first start as a pro was a winning one: he headed the 1985 Tour School at La Manga. In addition to the two Masters titles he won, he lost by just a shot at Augusta to Ian Woosnam in 1991, this despite a last-hole bogey and a quadruple seven on the par-three 6th during the second round, an unwanted record that remains in the books. In 2000, he played the last 54 holes of the 2000 USPGA Championship in four shots less than the winner, Tiger Woods, but an opening 76 had done for him and a 63 on Saturday – he is, prior to this year's USPGA, one of 21 golfers to have shot that score in a major; no one has ever shot 62 – mostly served to help him eventually tie for fourth.

Away from competitive golf, Olazábal's golf course design business continues to thrive.

Within the competitive arena, it has to be doubtful that he will ever perform on the senior tours.

“As I said, I have learned with the problems I have not to look too far ahead. What I know is that I love competition, I love the challenge that golf represents every day, so I will play golf as much as I can. But I don't know what I will be doing when I am 50. I would be sad if the decision to quit competition was forced on me by my health but everything has to come to an end and, again like I said, I feel my career has been a successful one.” Those Hall of Fame voters agreed with that.

Captain in waiting...and waiting...

José Maria Olazábal's name and career have been indelibly linked with the Ryder Cup. It would be a dreadful shame – no, it would be an affront – if he were never to captain the European team. But surely he will one day. Won't he?

Olazábal has played in seven Ryder Cup matches, being on three winning teams plus the side which retained the trophy in the tied match of 1989. His debut was as a member of the first European team to win in America, in 1987; his last (to date) was at the K Club three years ago. In partnership with Seve Ballesteros, he established an extraordinary 11-2-2 record in foursomes and fourball matches between '87-'93.

An examination of his non-playing role takes us from the past, through the present and into the future, some of it tinged with controversy and other parts shrouded in mystery of sorts. He was Nick Faldo's vice-captain at Valhalla last September, from where he had a probably too-close-for-comfort view of the flak Faldo got from the media: for his welcoming speech, for his ‘no, that list was about what sandwiches they all wanted' and for some of his selections – or rather his omission of each of Padraig Harrington, Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood from a session of play.

What Faldo couldn't get knocked for was a decision many had been waiting to crucify him over; the selection of Ian Poulter as one of his two wild cards.

“I would have picked Darren [Clarke], to be honest,” says Olazábal.

“Instead of Poulter or [Paul] Casey?”

“Instead of Poulter. But at the end of the day, Poulter proved he deserved to be on the team. He played very well. He handled that pressure fantastically. I take my hat off to him. I respect enormously what he did that week – he knew he was going to be watched very step of the way, and with that added pressure he delivered extremely well. That says a lot about him.”

It probably says quite a lot about Faldo that he played his wild cards so close to his chest that he didn't tell his chief assistant whom he had picked before he announced it to the media.

“No, I didn't know beforehand,” says Olazábal.

The Spaniard was apparently a big hit with the players in the team room, with several of them – for example, Graeme McDowell and Soren Hansen – taking to calling him ‘Captain Ollie'. On the evening before the singles, Olazábal made an impassioned plea to the team about the opportunity they had on the morrow, exhorting them with memories he had from the match at Valderrama in 1997, where he was on a victorious team less than 12 months after he had feared he would never play the game again.

His words presumably didn't fail on deaf ears but they proved insufficient to inspire the outcome he intended. But he understood one thing for sure about being Ryder Cup captain. “I learned that no matter what decisions you take, there are always going to be people who think you've got it wrong. If you lose the match, people will say you made mistakes even if they wouldn't have been critical if you had made those same decisions and won. I don't know if that's fair or not, but it is the way it is.”

The way many people assumed it would be was that Olazábal would be captain at Celtic Manor next year. This is what seems to have happened.

“Were you offered the chance to be the 2010 Ryder Cup captain?” I ask him.

“Yes.”

“Which was when?”

“Early this year.”

“Before the players' meeting in Abu Dhabi in January?”

“Yes.”

“I assume your conversation was with Thomas Bjorn [chairman of the player's committee]?”

“Yes.”

“And you told him that you wanted to make the team as a player?”

“Correct. I also told him that my health condition was not as I would want and if I was to take the captaincy I may not be able to commit to playing many tournaments this year, and so my bond with the players who might make the team would not be as strong as it should be, which I think is important.”

“With hindsight, do you wish you had given Thomas a different answer?”

“No. I had to be honest with myself.”

Candour can have its limits, though, and Olazábal would not confirm the story that he had previously been led to believe he had until the PGA Championship in May to make a decision as to his availability for the 2010 captaincy. Whatever, the game changed quickly. Suddenly, after the Abu Dhabi meeting, it was plain that Colin Montgomerie had emerged from nowhere – well, more accurately, from being a shoo-in for the 2014 captaincy in Scotland to the red-hot favourite for Wales – and an announcement would be made in Dubai a fortnight hence. It seems Monty went into the meeting in Abu Dhabi trumpeting the claims of Sandy Lyle and emerged figuring that since he'd be the same age in 2014 as Faldo had been in Valhalla, and therefore liable to accusations that he was “out of touch” with the current generation, he'd better go for it at the next opportunity.

There was more fanfare to come. Monty told the press in Dubai: “I think it's quite obvious that José Maria will be part of my team at Celtic Manor.” Not to José Maria it wasn't. As of this writing, the only conversation he says he has had with Monty on this topic is to tell him that he'll try to make the team as a player and if that doesn't work maybe they can chat about it later.

“Why does Monty do these things?” I ask him.

“Monty does these things because he's Monty. We know how Monty is. We're not going to change him now. [Pause] But nobody is perfect. We all have our faults. Monty does things his way. That doesn't mean I wouldn't have done it differently. [Chuckles] I would at least have tried to speak to somebody first.”

I remind him that in 2006, Monty had been the only player lined up for the team at the K Club who had criticised Ollie's decision to skip the last points-counting event, which could have cost him his place on the team.

“Yeah, it's because Monty is Monty. That's him. He wants to tee off at No. 1 in the singles. He wants to lead the team. That's how he is.” Latterly, Monty has had Olazábal replaced (by Thomas Bjorn, without discussion) as the continental captain for the Vivendi Trophy, formerly the Seve Trophy, in Paris in September.

Given the way he has been playing lately, few would bet on Olazábal making that 2010 team as a player – himself included. “The way it is right now, I have no chance. But I am confident the level of my game will rise in the months ahead. So I believe I do have a chance – a slim chance, sure – because the Ryder Cup points will not start until September. But we have many young and wonderful players on the Tour, which is great for the future of the Ryder Cup, so for me to make the team will require a huge effort.” And the 2012 captaincy – has he been offered that job? “No.”

“Presumably, health permitting, you would be interested in it?” “Well, it's not up to me. It is up to the committee. I don't want to say anything more about that right now.”

He might not, but there would be plenty of people who would have something to say later should he never get the chance to lead his team.