Inside Golf - September 2010

42
September 2010

www.insidegolf.com.auFEATURE...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Rob Willis THE Z ONE FINDING

IT is elusive, but when a golfer gets there, boy is it fun.

Commonly referred to as being in the ‘zone’ — but call it what you will — it is those days when the putts all fall and the ball comes off the centre of the clubface and actually flies in the same direction you are aiming. All golfers live for the moment, dream of such days, and then can’t quite figure out why it doesn’t happen like that all the time.

For the professional it might mean shooting well under par; for the club golfer it’s the round when you easily negotiate the holes you normally struggle with, throw in the odd birdie and enjoy a day when for some reason golf doesn’t seem to be that hard at all.

Stuart Appleby, who hasn’t had many of those types of days for quite some time, recently had one when he shot a last round 59 to win the Greenbrier Classic on the US PGA Tour. Someone who over the past couple of years has endured probably the toughest period of his professional career, Appleby, who had struggled to see the light shining at the end of the tunnel, was suddenly blinded by the glare.

“We spend so much time trying to have rounds like today,” Appleby said. “Forget whether it’s a

50 something, you’re just trying to have rounds
where you’re scaring the hole. And when you
do and they drop, it’s a pleasant feeling. You just
never seem to get enough of them.”
His playing partner, American Jimmy Walker,
was also suitably impressed with Appleby’s
performance.

“It was cool watching him do that. I’ve never
played with anybody that shot that low. He made
everything. It was really cool to watch,” Walker
said. “We were talking down the last hole, and
I told my caddie, no chance he misses it. He’s in
the zone today.”
Incredibly, Appleby’s 11-under par score of
59, capped off with the 12-foot birdie putt on
the 18th green which Walker had no doubt was
going in, is just the fifth round under 60 in US
PGA Tour history, following in the footsteps of
Al Geiberger, Chip Beck, David Duval and Paul
Goydos, who shot 59 earlier this year. No player
has ever achieved the feat on the European Tour,
nor in an Australasian Tour event.

Appleby’s round was the perfect example, in sports psychologist speak, of a golfer keeping out of his own way and just letting it all unfold. In some sort of surreal ‘zone’, Appleby almost stood back and watched himself in action as the iron shots riffled at the pins and the putts rolled into the hole. Not becoming overly excited, not

Apples is all business as another putt drops en route to his magical 59

getting ahead of himself, he just let it happen and the result was something amazing.

“I felt relaxed today. I walked a bit slower than I normally do. I’m a pacey sort of person. Not in playing, the golf sense, but from an energy point of view. I slowed myself down and yeah, it was pretty comfortable,” Appleby said of his remarkable round.

We’ve seen it before, the elite professional in control when nothing gets in his or her way. Tiger did it at the 2000 US Open, but he did it on four consecutive days in recording a remarkable 15- shot victory around the Pebble Beach course.

A couple of years earlier we again witnessed similar scenario when Tiger decimated the field and rendered the Augusta course helpless

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