I LOST MY MIND TRYING TO KEEP UP WITH TIGER
IN A VERY FRANK INTERVIEW, ERNIE ELS ON BATTLING THE YIPS — AND TIGER WOODS — AND THE PRIDE OF PLAYING HIS 99TH MAJOR ...
WHEN Samantha Els turned 18 recently, she sent her father Ernie a handwritten note, complete with one line that will stay with him forever: ‘You’ve taught me without telling me how to get through tough times.’
Here’s how Ernie unwittingly taught his daughter how to deal with life’s uneven lies. When he learned that his son Ben, who is on the autism spectrum, would be better off at a school in South Florida rather than Guildford, he put his love for London life to one side and moved the family to America.
When he got there and still found it wasn’t right for Ben, he raised $25million (£19.3m) to build a ground-breaking high school that has just opened for 350 autistic children. ‘Oh boy, you should come and see it,’ he says, his voice oozing with pride. Now 15-year-old Ben, who once had to be dragged from the car screaming to go to school, is first through the gates.
On the course, Els has dealt with bouts of the yips so savage he once had to endure the humiliation of six-putting from three feet on the first green at Augusta. His mind was scrambled completely when Tiger Woods emerged to steal his thunder in 1997. Els lost one Open play-off to a relative journeyman who soon returned to obscurity and had one year when he finished runner-up in three of the four majors.
Yet he’s dealt with these tough times in his professional life with such character and grace that, at the US PGA Championship at Quail Hollow next month he will join a club reserved for the elite when he competes in his 100th major.
‘Twenty-five years of majoring is quite something, isn’t it?’ says the four-time champion, as he prepares for his 99th at The Open at Royal Birkdale which starts on Thursday. ‘I won a bit and might have been the best player for a while but I had my fair share of knocks. So when I stop playing and look back I’ll be able to say that I loved the game so much that I never let it go because of a few setbacks. One hundred majors? What a good life-lesson it has been.’
We meet in the picturesque house Els has had on the Wentworth estate since 1998, beside the West Course. The gates open to reveal a mini-Eden and an owner grateful he never took up offers from time to time to sell to Russian oligarchs. Inside, the shelves are teeming with books from all genres that reveal the large scope of interests Els and his wife Liezl share, with just one or two clues to what he does for a living.
‘We spend a few weeks here every year and I think it will be a few more as we get older,’ he says. ‘I love everything about the place, about Britain in fact. I went to Wimbledon and the Lord’s Test but it’s not just the sport I love. The people never take themselves too seriously and they carry on living normally, even when terrible things are happening around them. It’s just a great place to be.’
It all began for Els — now 47 — at the majors with a first appearance at The Open in 1989. ‘I was as thin as a pole and had just done my first of two years of military service,’ he recalls. ‘I entered Open qualifying and, with my brother caddying, made it on the nose.
‘I’ll never forget going to the range. There was no space but eventually I found a spot and put my bag down. When I looked up I saw Jack Nicklaus on one side and Freddie Couples on the other. Jack was so nice. He glanced at this boy who must have looked like a frightened animal captured in headlights and wished me luck with a big smile on his face.
‘I missed the cut by two but it gave me hope. It told me that maybe I could do this. So we had a nice weekend in the pubs and then we flew home.’
Els turned professional and quickly made an impression reminiscent of the one young Spaniard Jon Rahm is making now. Tall and immensely strong, he generated power so effortlessly he quickly acquired the nickname of ‘The Big Easy.’ In his first two Opens as a pro he finished fifth and sixth.
In the US Open he finished tied seventh on his debut in 1993 before making the breakthrough with a play-off win the next year against Colin Montgomerie at Oakmont.
‘We still talk about that day, I do think it was the hottest weather I have ever played in,’ says Els. ‘Poor Monty turned up in this dark, heavy shirt and it must have been like wearing a towel. Monty was perhaps the best player in the world at that time, and just made for US Opens. But he was sweating profusely and, while he wouldn’t say it was a reason why he didn’t play well, it had to be a factor.’
Three years later, the pair contested another US Open and again Els came out on top. By that stage, it seemed a matter of time before he eclipsed his fellow South African Gary Player and reached double digits for major victories but, two months earlier, there had been such a seismic event at the Masters it would change golf for ever and for a while Els was swept aside.
With good reason, he has hardly talked in detail of what it was like feeling the full force of the Tiger, but he does so now. ‘That Masters
‘I was OK against Monty but Tiger had more power in his engine’
‘The crowd in Britain? It’s like the roar comes out of the earth’
really shook up all of us,’ says Els. ‘Everything was different after that. Suddenly there was three times the media covering the game and different crowds showing up. It was a difficult setting in which to compete, and on top of that he was holing these crazy shots every week. He really was a force, and he dried up my majors tally dramatically. When Tiger came around, I wasn’t that patient any more.
‘I’d been comfortable competing against Colin and everyone else but Tiger had a little more power in his engine and suddenly I’d lost my control. Athletes are all control freaks, and, when things are not going your way, you’re anxious. Yes, I won some events when he was chasing me down, but it was a very different environment.’
Like everyone else, he’s saddened by what’s happened to Woods. ‘I saw him at the movies recently, would you believe,’ he says. ‘He knew that Samantha had got in to Stanford University where he went, so we talked about that.
‘We live just a couple of miles from him but I couldn’t ask him about the other things, nor could I watch the video released by the police. I feel for him, it must be tough dealing with things we don’t know about and I just want him to be happy. Man, he offers so much. He’s done so much.’
Els lost five years of his career trying to solve the Woods conundrum. In the end, it was coach David Leadbetter and a nonqualified psychologist called Jos Vanstiphout, who sorted him out.
‘You could tell I’d lost my mind because I went to crazy Jos,’ he says, laughing. ‘But I played some of my best golf from 2002 until I blew my knee out in 2005. I should have won more majors during that period. The one that really hurt was losing to Todd Hamilton at Troon in 2004. That really screwed me up. Something in my hemisphere changed and I was never the same after that.’
Els was an outsider by the time he got to Royal Lytham in 2012, after going through all sorts of agonies with his putting. He was using a long putter, something that didn’t sit well with the arch traditionalist. ‘It was at the 2010 Tournament of Champions in Hawaii that I first started having problems,’ he recalls.
‘I’d just beaten Retief Goosen for the South African Open and was feeling good. But I stood over a short putt and couldn’t bring the putter back. I phoned Liezl and said to her I was in trouble. She said it was just the long flight and, sure enough, the next day I shot 65. Then I went out in the second to last group and the same thing again — I couldn’t bring the putter back. I was in shock, thinking of all the good players who had to give up the game because of the yips.’
The last resort was the long handle and it worked well enough to get him to the fringes of contention at Lytham. He was six shots behind Adam Scott going into the back nine. ‘It was not the most beautiful stroke but somehow I was getting it done,’ he says. ‘Nothing happened on the front nine but I just had a weird feeling with nine to go. One of my favourite Opens was in 1988 when Seve played one of his great rounds to beat Nick Price. I got to know Seve well in his last few years.
‘He still had the passion. I said to my caddie Ricci (Roberts), let’s go play like Seve on the back nine, so I went for everything.’
He birdied the 10th, 12th and the 14th but was still three behind on the 18th tee. ‘That’s one of the holes I will always remember,’ he says. ‘I hit one of my best-ever drives, a good shot to 15 feet and then, when the birdie putt went in, the hairs were standing on my arms.
‘There’s nothing like a British crowd. I don’t know how you guys do it, but it’s like the roar is coming out of the earth. Scotty was on the 16th at the time and I knew he would feel uncomfortable when he heard it. Man, I was sad for him when he finished with four straight bogeys but that’s the game we play.
‘Looking back, that has to be my best victory. People who understand golf, they know what you’ve been through to win at that stage of your career.’
Since then, the anchoring stroke has been outlawed and, without that crutch, Ernie had his horrific six-putt at Augusta National last year. ‘That was a huge setback,’ he concedes, but he’s still here, still standing. ‘I’ve rewired the computer yet again,’ he adds, with a grin.
At Birkdale this week he will meet up with another man playing his 99th major and another true survivor — Phil Mickelson. ‘Man, we’ve been playing against each other since we were 13 years old,’ he says.
At Quail Hollow, they will join the likes of Player and Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson. Only the greats of the game get to 100 majors and Ernie will reach that landmark exactly as the Stanford-bound Samantha described.