Forty-one years after winning the final of his three Open Championships, 66-year-old Sir Nick Faldo looks back on his humble beginnings in the game, his playing career, his ‘after-life’ as a course designer, commentator and junior golf supporter, and gives his thoughts on the current state of the professional game
ON BEING A LATE STARTER IN THE GAME…
I didn’t play my first full round of golf until I was 14. I remember watching the Masters in 1971 and saying to my parents that I would like to give golf a go. Mum and Dad bought me a half set of clubs for my birthday, they were called St Andrews, which is quite apposite, and I was instantly hooked. By the time I was 16 I knew that I wanted to be a pro and I left school.
I went with my dad to the Open in 1974 at Lytham and I remember watching players like Jack, Arnie and Lee [Trevino]. I had kind of photographic memory and I watched their swings and went back to the driving range, or the local field as it was, and tried to mimic their swings and all their idiosyncrasies. I would play matches in my head – me versus Jack or Arnie. When I would go out and hit balls, it was like they really were there. They were my imaginary friends.
I was just a working-class kid from Welwyn Garden City. It was the old-fashioned way, you know – the answer is in the dirt, as Ben Hogan once said. I beat golf balls and then went out and competed, learned from successes and failures, and kept bashing away. And that’s how I entertained myself on my own. And that’s why practising was so easy for me. I’ve never been bored with practice, which is pretty amazing given that I’ve probably hit millions of golf balls.
ON WINNING THE OPEN AT ST ANDREWS IN 1990…
It was a great week. I’d won the Masters that year, and I arrived at St Andrews on a mission to win. I was tied for the lead with Greg Norman on 12 under after two rounds. On Saturday I kept the hammer down and shot a 67 and before I knew it i had a five-shot lead. It’s weird feeling dealing with a big lead – just as Brian Harman probably felt
last week – because you want to be aggressive, but you don’t want to doing anything stupid, so it’s a difficult balancing act. I think I was level or 1-under for the final round and won by five, but
it probably wasn’t until the 15th hole on Sunday that I thought I had it in the bag. It was the greatest feeling.
ON BEING THE LAST ENGLISH WINNER OF THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP…
It is surprising that no-one has come along and managed to breakthrough again since 1992, as we’ve certainly had players that were and are more than capable of doing it, but it’s not that easy to put the whole thing together physically and mentally. You’ve just got to have the bottle, and I don’t know how I had it, but I’m delighted I that I did. I saw every shot as a problem-solving challenge, and you have to have the mental strength to keep dealing with it time after time after time, so that you are able to give every shot 100%. Some guys just can’t do that.
ON REBUILDING HIS SWING WHILE AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS POWERS…
I first met David Ledbetter down in South Africa at the end of 1984, and by the summer of ‘85 I’m in America and I couldn’t hit my hat. David was there and I said to him, ‘Alright, let’s get started’. It was a ludicrous decision to make mid-season and I took an awful lot of stick for that, but I beat a lot of golf balls for two years before something flipped and I got the trust back in my swing. So many players have had success and lots of wins and then lost it, but it’s such a difficult thing to get back – we’re walking a knife edge almost every day – so I was very luck in that respect that I got it back.
ON BEING SO SINGLE-MINDED ON THE GOLF COURSE…
It’s not so much that I had to be that way, but it was the only way I knew. I guess I was inspired a little bit by my first sports hero, Bjorn Borg, and it seemed the best way to play this game was to be completely focused and have the same intensity through the week. I wish I was a better entertainer, but I thought the entertainment was the way I played golf. They want us to do a little bit of everything, to play like Arnie, have the diplomacy of Jack, the charisma of Seve and the jokes of Trevino. But it wasn’t going to happen – that wasn’t me.
ON THE PAIN OF LOSING THE 2008 RYDER CUP AS CAPTAIN…
Of course it hurt, it absolutely did. You do your best. You can’t do anything about it from outside the ropes. As a captain you have to deal with things you shouldn’t have to deal with. You have to call four players who aren’t receiving wildcards] It’s ridiculous isn’t it, that’s your opening job. Then you get criticised for that, right off the bat. Every day you have to rest four players and you get criticised for that; well, that’s the rules. You get slated without anyone knowing what’s going on inside the four walls of the team room.
ON THE IMPACT OF MODERN EQUIPMENT ON THE PROFESSIONAL GAME….
Modern equipment makes the game too darn easy for tour pros. The sweet spot on a driver in my day was the size of a pea, not far off. If you hit it with the heel or the toe of a persimmon driver it would go absolutely nowhere. There was a time when only a dozen of us on tour who were great ball strikers. Now there’s only a dozen who aren’t. We got excited when Seve had a go at the 10th green at the Belfry, which. back in the day. was a 240-yard carry. Now we have guys having a go at the green on 400-yard holes. The excitement is still there in the game, but it’s just a different animal.
ON THE PGA TOUR’S DEAL WITH THE SAUDI PIF AND THE IMPACT OF LIV GOLF….
I think when the dust settles, whether it takes six months, a year, or whatever, my goodness, professional golf is going to be in an overall better position financially than we were back in the day, but no-one knows what the overall picture will look like yet.
I would love for the world of golf to come together, but there was some kind of route around the world. South Africa, Australia and Japan all have great tours and they will need to be included in the bigger picture, it can’t just be all about America.
From a purely playing perspective, I feel that they LIV Golf events are meaningless and are not growing the game of golf in quite the way that they say it is. Only half-a-dozen players are really relevant in terms of their status within the game – half of the field I don’t really know, and the rest are there for the very nice money that you still get if you shoot whatever-over-par.
Secondly, nobody’s really interested in the team aspect of it because it doesn’t feel like a team event. They call it a team event, but it’s not because it’s stroke play. You see your mates on the putting green and say, ‘Play well’ and you see them in the scorer’s tent and say, ‘What did you shoot?’ That’s it. A team is out there helping each other, shoulder to shoulder. That’s a true team. They’re not playing with anywhere close to the same passion and atmosphere that you see at the Ryder Cup.
ON HIS MOTIVATION FOR SETTING UP THE FALDO SERIES…
I was playing in America with Ray Floyd’s son back in the late 1990s and asked where he was playing next. He reeled off all these tournaments and I thought, ‘Wow, we need to create more opportunities for young players back in the UK.’ I thought a cool prize was to get the kids out of the dreaded British winter so we took the winners to Orlando in Florida. Originally it was: ‘Where is the next Nick Faldo coming from?’The kids love it and I get a real kick out of that. I go to all the finals. I was with them at Brocket Hall in July when they were all telling me how much they wanted to win to get to the UAE, again to get out of the winter. We have had very young kids travelling the world, providing great experiences for them and I’m very proud of what we have achieved over the last 27 years and looking back at the number of players we’ve brought on. A skinny lad called Rory something being one of them…
ON HANGING UP HIS COMMENTATOR’S MICROPHONE ON THE PGA TOUR…
I just got tired of all the travel. I was on the road for six months of the year. It was a great job, but 40 years of travelling suddenly hits you. I’ve not totally given up commentary work, as I did some work at the Masters, and the Open and I’ll be doing some more at the Ryder Cup. I definitely enjoy those big events, and it helps me stay in touch with the game.
ON HIS WANING POWERS AS A GOLFER…
I was a really good golfer half my lifetime ago. I would love to be able to play how I used to, but it doesn’t last more than three shots. That hurts me, even now, aged 66. I played the other day and was three under after nine. Next time, I was seven over after nine. I’m not interested when I’m clanking shots. You can’t just dust the clubs off and have half a dozen stretches. We travelled hard, played hard. The old golfing batteries are just worn out.