2008 Magazine Bonus: Getting it back

The fairway on the first hole at the Old Course at St. Andrews is as wide as an East Coast toll road. The 18th fairway adjoins it to the left, and between the two there is a yawning expanse of approximately 200 yards from side to side.

That wasn’t enough room for Ian Baker-Finch. On his opening shot of the 1995 British Open, with playing partner Arnold Palmer and Arnie’s Army watching him, he snap-hooked his drive out of bounds. He went on to shoot 77, followed it with a 76 and missed the cut by five shots.

The 1991 British Open winner couldn’t find a fairway, suffered from putting yips and had no joy for the game he had played since he was a teenager. He had made one cut in three years, and at the 1997 British Open he shot a 92, withdrew and retired from professional golf shortly thereafter.

David Duval was the No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Rankings in 1999 after he won the Players Championship. Duval and Tiger Woods battled for that honor for most of the summer until Woods won the PGA Championship and began his stranglehold on the ranking.

Duval won the British Open in 2001 and then watched his game slide into oblivion. He free-fell from No. 1 in the rankings to out of the top 500. Personal problems and injuries contributed to poor play, and golf’s Greta Garbo disappeared from tournaments for a few years only to come back to the game happier and more inspired to play well again.

These are only two examples. The stories of players watching their games abandon them are numerous and painful.

The question remains, though: when it happens, what can be done about it?

When the game leaves a player, that player will do just about anything to get it back. It is a helpless feeling that can be all-consuming and will test a golfer far more than any 6-foot sliding putt to save par. There are several factors in a collapse, and how golfers face those will determine their survival in the game.

“It happens to every one of us — you stand on the range and aren’t sure you can hit the ball,” says Shaun Micheel. “If you still have that desire to play and compete, you’ll find a way to score.”

The process, however, can be painful to watch.

“The main thing is when you lose your focus is figuring out what you have to do to play your best,” says Lee Janzen. “It’s so easy to get focused on what you are doing wrong, and you are going to keep doing it wrong because that is all you are thinking about. If you ask yourself why this is happening, it will probably keep happening because you are obsessing about it.”

Noted instructor David Leadbetter has worked with golfers in all phases — those in their prime and those who are struggling.

“The problem is this game is basically as Bobby Jones said — the toughest six inches in golf is between your ears,” Leadbetter says. “A lot of times there is a lot of other issues behind the scenes that really are probably creating the problem. It could be something at home in their personal lives, or an injury. There are a number of factors that go into what causes a slump.”

In Brent Geiberger’s case, it was vertigo. The disease has bothered the two-time PGA Tour winner, and he hasn’t had a top 10 finish since February 2005. As a result, he has lost his tour card.

“You always have those demons you are fighting,” Geiberger says. “Sometimes it’s the little things that get you up and get you playing well again. Sometimes you are pressing too hard, and you get in that rut and it is hard to get out of it. You really have to take a step back. Sometimes you are just beating balls and beating balls instead of hitting shots.”

When Nick Faldo came to the 1996 Masters, he wasn’t sure he was going to make the cut, much less contend for his third green jacket.

Faldo’s swing was not where he wanted it, and he had missed the cut at the Players Championship two weeks before. When he arrived at Augusta he was planning to beat golf balls on the practice range, but Leadbetter had another plan. Leadbetter had him pretend he was playing the golf course from the driving range, simulating each shot he would hit as if he were on the course.

“Obviously his forte was his technique, and he was delving into his technique, and he kept saying, ‘Something’s not right, something’s not right here,’” Leadbetter says. “The week of the tournament we took a whole different approach. What we did is he played the golf course on the practice tee. Tuesday, Wednesday, he didn’t hit balls apart from hitting a few pitch shots to warm up. So we played the first hole, the second hole, the third hole, he got his yardages out and went through it.”

Instead of beating balls, Faldo took the quality-over-quantity approach, and it paid off with a final-round 67 that allowed him to erase a six-stroke deficit and defeat a collapsing Greg Norman by five shots.

“What it did for him it got his belief system going,” Leadbetter says. “As the week went on you could really see his confidence rise. He went from the beginning of the week where he really had no chance to a player as the week went on felt more comfortable and more confident.”

That wasn’t the only unconventional method Leadbetter used with his prize pupil. On another occasion, when Faldo's confidence was really low, Leadbetter had him play a round from the forward tees so he would score and build his confidence.

“There are all sorts of tricks we as coaches use,” Leadbetter says. “It boils down to, a player feels they can shoot a number, shoot a score.”

Steve Stricker knew he had good golf left in him, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Sticker had three victories on the PGA Tour, but hadn’t won since 2001 and was contemplating retirement.

At the end of 2005, Stricker went back to his home in Madison, Wis., for the offseason and began to work.

Ben Hogan used to say that the secret was in the dirt, but in Stricker's case it was also in a three-sided heated trailer. There, in the dead of a Midwestern winter, Stricker turned on the heater and banged range balls out into the snow, trying to regain his form.

Somewhere in that chill, something clicked and Stricker began to regain his game. He still had to rely on sponsor's exemptions, but unlike the previous years, the results started to show.

Four tournaments into the 2006 season, he finished third at the Shell Houston Open. Two months later he finished sixth at the U.S. Open. The week after he tied for second at the Booz Allen Classic and secured his card for the following year.

Last year, Stricker won a tournament and contended with Tiger Woods for the FedExCup. He ended the year fourth on both the money list and in the Official Golf World Rankings.

“For me it's been a constant uphill battle the last four or five years,” Stricker says. “Yeah, those doubts always came into my mind, but that's just the nature of the game, it's the nature of what we do. You have to keep plugging through it, and the easy thing would be just to quit and not work at it and probably do something else for a living. But this is what I want to do and I continue to work at it. No secrets, just enjoying myself a lot more out here.”

Keeping that perspective is vital, according to Jason Gore.

“Sometimes you just have to realize that golf is just not that important,” Gore says. “Out here we start to believe this is what makes or breaks us as a person. That’s sometimes the hardest part; you are playing bad and you think you are not as good as you once were. There are other things more important.”

One reminder of that is on Gore’s golf bag. It is a plastic, framed bag tag, and inside of it is a picture of his 3-year-old son, Jaxon. It is in a prominent place and rarely out of Gore’s sight.

“Golf isn’t what makes me, this is just what I do and the bag tag reminds me of that.” Gore says. “In the whole grand scheme of things, this is such a small part of my life.”

That can be difficult for professionals, because for many golf is all they know.

“I have been playing golf since I was 9 years old and most of that competitive,” Micheel says. “It’s just difficult, it took me a long time to find how to turn that switch off and get away from it when I am at home.”

But by doing that, Micheel believes he has found the secret to lengthening his career.

“If you are out here that long and you don’t have any struggles, that is pretty impressive,” Micheel says. “At some point you have to look yourself in the mirror and say is this something I want to do. Do I really want to push through the problems I am having and keep going? A lot of us do, but the ones that don’t, you never hear from again.”

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