September 2010
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in shooting 18-under par to win the his first US
Masters by 12. His win was so emphatic, his display
so flawless, it prompted Augusta officials to make
significant changes to the revered layout in a bid to
‘Tiger proof’ the course and to prevent more of the
same taking place in the years to come.
I’ve also been inside the ropes and up close and
personal, watching on as others could do no wrong,
hitting every shot, stroking every putt, as if they
were playing against a video game programmed
at beginner’s level.
I was in the group immediately behind Paul Gow
at Castle Hill in 2000, looking on in awe when he
shot a 12-under par 60 in the first round of the
Canon Challenge. I thought he was having a good
day, but 60 was something else.
I saw almost every shot of Mike Har wood’s 61 at
Concord en-route to him beating Greg Norman to
win the Australian PGA Championship and played
alongside Andrew Bonhomme in Singapore when
my Queensland mate shot a remarkable 63 on
grainy, bumpy greens at the Jurong Country Club
in the Singapore PGA in 1996. I couldn’t hole one
that day; he couldn’t miss.
They were rounds that you never forget, etched in
the memory for the ease in which they were achieved
and the mental and physical control those guys
had over their golf games on those particular days.
But to the irritation of every golfer to ever swing
a club, finding that ‘zone’, while a constant source
of frustration, is also what keeps us all going. You
practice, persevere, plot the perfect game plan and
figure the time is right, then wait, before waiting
some more. Sometimes it comes unexpectedly, but
more commonly it never turns up at all.
On rare occasions I’ve managed to slip into a
similar place myself, with a couple of my most
special and memorable days coming when I least
expected it.
Playing a Thursday club competition at New
Brighton, during a period when I was playing
just once a week, it all started out as just a pretty
good day. Four-under par after eight, a bogey
on the 18th hole, my ninth for the day, saw me
turn in 33. A good start but nothing worthy of
any headlines.
Then for whatever reason the stars aligned
and I found ‘it’. Where I found ‘it’ and where ‘it’
went after that I’ll never know, but for the next
nine holes golf became the easiest game I’d ever
played. I went on to make six more birdies and an
eagle, shooting eight-under par 28, for a score of
61, 11-under. The question as to why and where
it came from still remains unanswered. The
12-footer I holed on the last green, a downhill,
side hill, left-to-right slider, was one of the hardest
puts you’ll face, yet at the time, on that day, it
was the easiest putt I had ever had.
My scorecard once-upon-a-time adorned
the wall of the New Brighton clubhouse, which
didn’t help much because every time I strolled
past it I wondered why I couldn’t get to where I
was that day, ever again.
The other round which sticks in my head was
a couple of years later, at the Goulburn Pro-am.
I’d never set eyes on the course before, the wind
was blowing a bit making the course a decent
A solid short game helped Paul Goydos to record his own magical 59 at the John Deere Classic this year
challenge, while the greens had some undulation
to them and were rolling at a slippery pace.
Again the hard shots seemed easy, somehow
I just knew I would pull off whatever I was
attempting and when I added up my score it
said 62, 9-under par. It happened almost with
me as merely a passenger. Second place that
day was five, maybe six shots behind my score
emphasising what had taken place was something
out of the ordinary.
Now I’m not highlighting those rounds in an
attempt to convince Inside Golf readers that I
was a half-decent player, I am recounting those
two days as examples of perhaps the only two
rounds, in 35 years of golf, where I found that
special place where I could do no wrong.
I’ve shot low rounds, both at New Brighton and
at a variety of tournaments around the world, but
never was the game as easy as it was on those two
occasions. You have times when something is
outstanding, perhaps the driver, or the putting,
maybe the chipping and bunker play, days when
the breaks go your way and the ball bounces back
into the fairway, just clears a hazard or stops far
enough from that tree to enable a clear shot at
the green, but you can count on one hand — I
can count on two fingers — the days when it all
happened all at once.
So while Stuart Appleby managed to get there
in West Virginia, showing us again exactly
what is possible, golfers and sports psychs alike
still scratch their heads and contemplate why
finding that indestructible zone, the bubble in
which all golfers want to play, is such a difficult
place to find.
But that ongoing quest to reach our own
personal ‘zone’ is what keeps us going. It’s what
we hate about the game of golf and what we love
all at the same time.;
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