Another good Australian player, Geoff Ogilvy
February 26, 2006

For a country with a small population, Australia has produced a number of fine players in recent times who have altered the course of professional in their own country by taking their talents to the American tour.

Earlier generations had been shielded away from the land of Nicklaus and Palmer by older, more experienced heads who saw the rest of the world as a place where one could make a nice living and that America was too tough a nut to crack. "They are too good for us" was a not uncommon attitude. And, after all, they had MacGregor drivers, FootJoy shoes and all the Titleist's they could use. What hope did we have with Hot Dot's, PGF clubs, Niblick shoes and an unreasonable reverence of all things American?

Photo: © Mark Dadswell/Getty Images Wayne Grady won twice in America with the big one being the 1990 PGA Championship.

Wayne Grady, the 1990 US PGA champion, was a catalyst for an altering of attitudes because he was the first player stubborn enough to go to The United States with a game only he, and few others, believed in.

Earlier, Bruce Crampton, Bruce Devlin, David Graham and later Bob Shearer, Greg Norman and Jack Newton had taken their considerable talents to America but Grady's game had none of the obvious attributes of his more famous countrymen. He drove about as far as Greg hit a two iron and he was never one to fire irons, as Crampton did, at a distant caddy who barely moved for hours at a time as our original "iron-man" followed his Hogan like regime on the practice fairway. There was none of Newton's bullish strength although there was more than a hint of Graham's breathtaking will to succeed against all the odds.

Grady won at Westchester in the middle of 1989 and only as few weeks later, lost a British Open playoff at Troon. He did, however, earn an unlikely reprieve from his Open nightmare the following summer when he beat Fred Couples in the PGA at Shoal Creek .

Grady himself, would admit he was far from the most talented of players but he was a grinder with self-belief and a work ethic and he proved to a couple of teachers in Melbourne that Australia could produce more than the odd golfer capable of competing in America.

Dale Lynch and Steven Bann, contemporaries of Grady as juniors and fringe Australian tour players, were employed by the state institute of sport in Melbourne and their earliest pupils were Robert Allenby and Stuart Appleby

"It was simply a matter of giving them the skills" said Lynch. "I couldn't see any reason why we couldn't produce players capable of competing in America."

Men like Lynch, Bann and Gary Edwin, who worked with Rod Pampling and Peter Lonard, were failed players desperate to stay in the game. (Edwin changed his surname from Player early in his career for obvious reasons with the final straw coming at a local pro-am when he introduced himself to his amateur partners. "Yer sure, and I'm Jimmy Demaret, that's Sam Snead and the little guy over there is Ben Hogan").

Their frustration led them to teaching and the inevitable questions of why they had failed on the course. All three reasoned it came down to technique and they were determined to send the next generation of Australian golfers out in to the world with golf swings that would support ambitions.

Richard Green, Steve Allan and Aaron Baddeley followed Allenby and Appleby and with them came a prodigious talent, Geoff Ogilvy.

Photo: © Mark Dadswell/Getty Images Geoff Ogilvy may be surprising the golf world with his success in the Accenture Match Play Championship while others that know him say they aren't that surprised.

Ogilvy had dominated his era of schoolboy and junior golf in Melbourne and, at 17, was good enough to take the lead into the final day of The Victorian Open, an event with every famous name in Australian golf on the trophy. He didn't win but everyone noticed his powerful shots and his fiery ambition. Some called it bad temper, others accused him of impatience and those who knew him reasoned he was a smart enough kid to sooner or later realize, composure and equanimity were important parts of the perfect temperament.

Ironically a fellow member of Ogilvy's home club (Victoria, on the famed Melbourne sandbelt) is Peter Thomson who aside from winning a handful British Open's, perfected the aura of nonchalance Ogilvy so struggled with as a young man. He is getting better at stoically coping with his own mistakes but it remains one of the final links in the chain.

Ogilvy turned pro as a twenty-one year old and earned a card in Europe almost immediately. He spent a couple of good, but winless, seasons in Europe, a time that cemented an admiration for the talents of Colin Montgomerie. "He was awesome, the best player over there and he showed me a lot without telling me anything." He moved smoothly from Europe to America, easily making his way through the tour school of 2000.

In the mould of the game's dominant players, he drives the ball unimaginable distances and enjoys the same driving inaccuracy statistic as the best five or six players in the world by also failing to find a place amongst the hundred most accurate hitters on the tour. No matter. Until the game or the tour does something about the golf ball and the courses, driving inaccurately, so long as you are close to the green is of no concern for a modern day athlete armed with an arsenal of lofted woods and pitching clubs.

Photo: © Doug Benc/Getty Images Geoff Ogilvy broke into the winners circle with his Chrysler Tucson title but it wasn't enough to get him a invite to the Masters.

Ironically, Ogilvy is one mature enough and thoughtful enough to understand the seriousness of the equipment problem and not simply see it through the conflicted eyes of a player.

"It had to be a better game when Dan Pohl was leading the driving stats with 274 yards. Annika hits it 270 now. It's a joke. The regulatory inaction demonstrates sheer contempt for the legacy of the great designers ­ as well as making the game less interesting to play".

Statistically, however, he was the number one player on the tour in 2004 despite it being the first of four seasons he hadn't improved his place on the money list.

He made over a million dollars but that in itself is another meaningless number in the days when a tie for fourth knocks Ben Hogan down another spot on the career money list.

Of his statistical rank, he said at the time "either the stats are rubbish or I'm an idiot".

As for the money he says with admirable and perhaps uncommon perspective, "It's crazy, I made more money last year than my parents made in their whole lives and they had good jobs."

Not once since 1980 had a player led the all- around numbers (a combination of driving length and accuracy, greens hit, sand play, putting, birdies and eagles) and failed to make the top 15 on the money list. Ogilvy was 61st and he determined to make 2005 a year to finally make a move toward the players at the top of the game.

He knew he had the shots. He had watched Woods at close range in the competition. Tiger has played with Ogilvy a few times on Sundays and the Melbourne man had felt neither out of his depth, nor uncomfortable. Indeed, he had enjoyed the extra attention the pairing inevitably bought. And, he only had to look along the range to see men without his physical talent, forty places above him on the money list or the World Rankings.

He only had to listen to Lynch and others who kept reminding him he wasn"t a miserable choker because he hadn't won anything.

Not even in Australia had Ogilvy won a professional event. He had his chances and blew them and more than once it was on the par five holes he should have destroyed with his length. It happened on the 17th at Royal Queensland in the 2001 Australian PGA when he made a six with an iron in his hand and a few weeks later he repeated the cardinal error on the 12th hole at The Grand in the Australian Open.

They were frustrating mistakes and as his final round unfolded at Tucson this year and with his best chance to finally silence the skeptics he made his almost mandatory six at the back nine par five. The only good news was he could easily have made seven after he drove his first ball out of bounds.

In the end, he survived an outrageous putt by Kevin Na on the first extra hole to continue the playoff and Ogilvy made an unlikely one of his own on the next hole to finally win and finally leave for the airport on Sunday night without feeling another chance had slipped through his fingers.

It is tiring to keep hearing the "why haven't you won questions" and things like "this guy should win four times a year" as friend, Gary McCord declared on television last year.

His follow-up effort to the Tucson win was at The Honda Classic a fortnight later, where he was up to his, six at the back nine par five, trick again. He took the lead to the 55th tee and was right in the tournament with only nine to play despite Padraig Harrington and Vijay Singh, far behind at the beginning of the day, playing blinding rounds. At the twelfth he had a long iron to the green but missed the target then misjudged a chip and there was the killer six. He made a meal of the long seventeenth as well, making five after driving far down the fairway and then he drove straight into a sand- filled divot at the finisher and, needing three to tie, made the clumsiest of sixes.

Ogilvy is a seriously talented player but there is no shortage of them in America or anywhere else. Like Retief Goosen, he is probably one player the masses will discover after a stunning result, without realizing there were years when those close to the game wondered why it was taking longer than it might have.

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