LANGER’S SECRET TO GOLF SUCCESS
German has 14 top-10 finishes this season
Sometimes, when you really want to find out what makes an athlete tick, you have to ask his peers or competitors.
Take Bernhard Langer, for instance.
“He’s a great player. He’s won two Masters and he had a great career prior to the Champions Tour,” offered Paul Goydos, the defending champion of the Pacific Links Championship, which this week is at Bear Mountain Golf Resort where Langer is clearly the favourite.
“As we get older we tend to forget. We’re already forgetting how good Tiger [Woods] was. People don’t remember how good he [Langer] was for the 30-odd years before this,” added Goydos. “He’s mentally stronger than I am, I know that.
“He doesn’t seem to let things bother him. He doesn’t play perfect golf by any stretch of the imagination, but bad shots don’t bother him. Good shots don’t get him overly excited either.”
With Langer, what you see is what you get. He’s a stoic 59-yearold, who doesn’t show a lot of emotion on or around the course. He simply exhibits a tremendous peace of mind, is in outstanding shape and has great patience.
“He just seems to have the right amount of patience. He’s focused on the task at hand. All good players are able to do that and he seems to be able to do that 24/7, which is a very rare skill,” said Goydos. “He’s been doing it for 40 years and he never seems to get off kilter or have a bad day or be in a bad mood.
“Everything is about the task at hand and that’s focus. He seems more focused than everyone else, in a superhuman kind of way.”
That, in a nutshell, describes the leader of the Charles Schwab Cup, which ranks players on the PGA Tour Champions money list.
Langer, of Anhausen, Germany, has won that title three times, including the last two years. This should be his third as he stands No. 1 by a country mile. His $2,432,659 US in earnings over 17 events is ahead of second-place Joe Durant at $1,337,662 in 19 tournaments played. Miguel Angel Jimenez is third with an impressive $1,304,362 in just eight events.
“Golf is a lot about confidence,” Langer said Thursday before heading out for the pro-am on the Mountain Course, which has received rave reviews so far this week. “My game has been, for the most part, very good this year and the last three weeks have been pretty special with a win and two seconds.
“My confidence is high. I feel really comfortable about my ballstriking and putting and looking forward to this competition and hoping to put another W behind my name.”
Asked just what makes him tick, Langer wasn’t shy in his assessment.
“There’s not one or two secrets, it’s a puzzle and a lot of pieces have to fit together to be good or extraordinary or just be a little better than most,” he began. “I still have the drive to compete. I still enjoy practising. I love the game of golf and to compete.”
Urged on a bit more, he then added: “I can’t pinpoint it, I just know that some people embrace pressure and excel in it and others crumble, and I’ve had a bit of both in my career.”
“I’ve had tournaments where I’ve excelled in it and I’ve had one or two where I felt the pressure was overwhelming. So you have to learn to live with it and deal with it. Most of the time I think I’m excelling in it. Look at Tiger Woods. In his prime the more pressure there was, the better he got. I sometimes have those moments, not always, but I have a few.”
Which is unfortunate for the rest of the field that tries to bring him down a peg on a weekly basis. Paul Broadhurst, who is also here, did it last week, edging Langer and Kevin Sutherland by a shot at Pebble Beach.
But Langer has four wins this season, two seconds and 14 top 10s. Overall, he’s won 29 times on PGA Tour Champions; claimed three PGA Tour victories, including the 1993 and 1985 Masters. He has won two other international events and added 59 other wins over his career. He has won $20,337,691 over his senior career, just about double what he earned on the PGA Tour at $10,513,044.
CHIP SHOTS: Langer tees off in Round 1 today at 12:55 p.m. with Jimenez and Vijay Singh, the second-last threesome of the day. The first group goes out at 8:20 a.m.