Who is Steven Bowditch?
March 6, 2005
Those outside Australia who venture deep into the recesses of their sports pages may have recently come across the name Steven Bowditch (as in the tie and not the end of a boat).
He is a twenty-one year old from the Queensland, the state that produced Greg Norman and just as the Shark did way back in 1976, Bowditch won his first significant tournament, The Jacobs Creek Open in Adelaide at the end of February.
Norman crashed into the consciousness of the Australian golf fan when he blew a field away that included most of our heroes including Bruce's, Crampton and Devlin, David Graham and some of the younger generation of Australian stars including Jack Newton and Bob Shearer.
Bowditch had first come to our attention as a seventeen-year-old in the 2000 Australian Open when he finished seventh and played well enough to earn a final day pairing with Norman at Kingston Heath. Although the kid shot 75 he beat his hero by a shot on a difficult windy day — mastered only by the winner Aaron Baddeley who was barely more then a boy himself.
Photo: © Getty Images |
Steven Bowditch has enjoyed being on top of the Australian golf world. |
|
It was an unlikely introduction to the Australian golfing public because Kingston Heath, the second best course in the country, is a small, intricate, strategic golf course. It seemed unsuited to a schoolboy used to the wide open courses of his home state.
In Queensland the weather is warm all year. The courses are wider and so long as you hit crooked enough and far enough to get across to the next fairway, big misses are not penalized the way they are on the tournament courses of the Melbourne sandbelt.
It spawned Bowditch who plays a simple game. "I just hit it as hard as I can," he says.
Without a college system to graduate to from high school there was little choice a year later but to turn professional. Bowditch duly debuted at a small event in Melbourne. He was going to win until he flew a six iron over the 17th green into the bush and made a triple bogey. It cost him an exemption that summer and reduced him to lots of Monday qualifiers.
A visit to a local clubmaker the following day revealed his amateur (in the true sense of the word) set of clubs had a six iron that was only a degree away from his five. It was an early and expensive lesson.
Photo: © Darrin Brayback/Getty Images |
Young Steven as a 17-year-old amateur at Kingston Heath. |
|
He would learn a few more in the next couple of seasons. He went to the Challenge Tour in Europe (The equivalent of the Nationwide Tour) but that is basically a year long tour school. With little prize money and played by an Australian so far from home it was a costly exercise.
Bowditch played decently but not well enough to retain his card. After missing his tour card at the end of year Tour School he headed home reliant on the generosity of a couple of benefactors.
By the middle of 2004 he had tapped out his meager financial resources and he threw his clubs with some disgust into the proverbial corner, giving the game away for a three months.
Some will write about him almost giving the game away forever but he was never going to do that.
He had nowhere else to go; golf is his life and his passion although onthe course he looks to be about the most nonchalant player out there.
Just after the middle of last year, with encouragement from his girlfriend, they packed up an old car with clubs and a tent and headed to the top of Australia to pick up the Queensland pro-am tour.
Photo: © Harry How/Getty Images |
|
Bowditch's only major so far is a 77-76 and missed cut at Royal St. George's in 2003. |
|
The tour is a six-month long affair made up of one and two day events that were critical to the early financial survival of players like Ian Baker- Finch, Wayne Grady, Peter Senior, Stuart Appleby and a couple of generations earlier, David Graham.
The tour has been known for years as the Troppo Tour. In part the name is a reference to the tropical weather of Northern Australia and in part a commentary on the state of the players brains after six months grinding on little country golf courses. Typically the pro is paired with three amateur partners hoping to outdrive you at least once and earn bragging rights in the bar that night.
Not too many ever outdrove Bowditch though — not even Norman who smashed one down the long seventh during their day at Kingston Heath. The most intimidating man in Australian golf looked over and gave him the see if you can get after that stare. Bowditch loaded up and got him by an easy thirty yards and earned a little early respect.
On the Troppo Tour Bowditch and his girlfriend couldn't afford rooms so they pitched their tent at each stop. His talent saw him start to grind his way off the bottom of the golfing ladder.
Photo: © Tony Feder/Getty Images |
|
Bowditch has been known to go after the ball. |
|
He won six one dayers. Then just before the big summer tournaments began he won the four day Queensland Open. It had a $15,000 prize and a trophy with the names of Von Nida, Nagle, Devlin, Marsh, Norman, Graham, Appleby and Baker-Finch etched into the base.
A month later with all our best players except Adam Scott and Norman in attendance Bowditch almost won the Australian Open.
Peter Lonard holed a more than unlikely chip from over the back of the 17th green at The Australian club and beat Appleby by a shot with Bowditch another one behind. He made a lot of money that afternoon.
A week later he finished a shot behind Greg Chalmers, Richard Green and David MacKenzie in the Australian Masters. Not many noticed but he was finally making significant progress.
Still, he had a big problem, one faced by many others.
Once the tour in Australia finished at the end of February he had nowhere to play. He had missed the cut at the Asian Tour School in early January and a year begging for invitations beckoned.
That is where managers truly earn their money, it is a desperate time and those of average talent rarely escape the grind. It is men like Graham and the legend of his survival that drives subsequent generations on. But in truth Graham, Grady and Baker-Finch, Appleby and Senior are the exceptions.
That all changed for Bowditch at Royal Adelaide, an Alister MacKenzie classic and one of the best five or six courses in the country.
The tour in Australia co-sanctions four events, the Heineken Classic and the New Zealand Open with the European Tour and the Jacobs Creek Open and the New Zealand PGA with the American Nationwide Tour.
Bowditch could not have picked a better tournament to win than the Jacobs Creek Open. The strength of the home currency means the million dollar purse equates to almost eight hundred thousand American dollars and makes it the biggest purse on the Nationwide tour.
Photo: © Tony Lewis/Getty Images |
|
Bowditch wasn't ever challenged in the final round on his way to the Jacob's Creek title. |
|
The amount of the prize all but guarantee the winner a card on the PGA Tour the following year.
The Heineken earns a European card as does the New Zealand Open but Europe is not for Bowditch. He tried it and didn't like it.
For a man like Craig Parry the Australian Open is the one event he would dearly love to win. But he is not bothered about having a tour to play. For a Bowditch, our Open would earn little in terms of overseas exemptions and that places it well below The Jacobs Creek for a rookie with no where to play.
He started strongly at the Jacobs Creek Open at Royal Adelaide. He began with a pair of brilliant 67's and held onto his half-way, five shot lead all weekend.
Seven ahead with nine to go he bogeyed the 10th and 12th holes then hit a huge hook into the left trees at the 13th. A reckless hack barely improved his position and with disaster looming he made a 25 footer for a bogey.
The tournament was all but over and he finished it with a brilliant short iron into the middle of the tiny, upturned, par three, sixteenth green.
The very next week in New Zealand he took the opening round lead for the third week in a row, shooting 64 at the Clearwater resort. He ploughed his way to a Saturday 76 with a back nine 42 seemingly ruining his chance.
He teed up on Sunday, "really feeling like I wanted to play" and tore into the course. At the long par four eighth he flew a drive 330 yards over the water and pitched close for a birdie.
It was insanity but by the end of the day he had attracted a huge crowd desperate to see the phenomenon.
Photo: © Dean Treml/Getty Images |
Bowditch has a bigger claim to fame than just his long ball. |
|
He birdied half the holes for a 63 then waited for Peter O'Malley to come in 90 minutes later. On the last hole O'Malley missed a putt from barely more than a foot leading to a playoff between the veteran O'Malley and the young Bowditch.
Eventually, the older man with a reputation for unerring accuracy and horrific putting made a birdie at the fourth playoff hole. Still Bowditch had earned over two hundred thousand American dollars in a fortnight and guaranteed 2005 can be a year of preparation for the 2006 PGA Tour.
Norman's great ability was to shoot round after round in the sixties, many of which were closer to the middle than the high end. Bowditch played 13 out of 28 rounds under seventy this summer on some of our most difficult courses and he was the player of the season.
In a world of conservative, logical, conformist pros, Bowditch will stand out as one who eschews caution and plays to shoot the absolute lowest score he can.
This summer there were very few days when he flew too close to the sun and his reward is almost unimaginable to a man sleeping under the stars only a few months ago.
Back to top
