I vowed never to slack again after massive wake-up call put me on path to glory
Teenage humiliation still has driven Lawrie fired up at 50
Doug put me in a ‘Beat the Pro’ competition and I played absolutely terrible PAUL LAWRIE
HE might have just turned 50 but Paul Lawrie is still driven by a brutal lesson from his teenage years that taught him how to survive in the cut-throat world of professional golf.
Thrown into a Beat The Pro event in 1986, that’s exactly what 90 per cent of the field proceeded to do as an 18-yearold assistant from Banchory Golf Club was humiliated by the amateurs who took him on.
The next day young Lawrie was taken aside by his boss in the pro shop and gently told he needed work harder to have any chance of making a go of this game.
More than three decades on it remains the abiding memory that underpins a work ethic that has taken him from a five handicapper dusting clubs to an Open champion and Ryder Cup hero.
And there’s no chance of slacking off any time soon now that his half century, which was celebrated yesterday, opens new exciting opportunities to get back in the winner’s circle.
The Senior Tour beckons for Lawrie and he’s not going there just to make up the numbers.
Which is why he wrote off half of last season on the European Tour in order to get surgery on a chronic foot problem to ensure he is fit and ready to hit the ground running.
Now hitting balls again and gradually gearing up his practice with every passing week Lawrie is focused.
Speaking in a blog released by TV producer Ally Begg yesterday, Lawrie said: “A lot of people know my work ethic is really good but that never used to be the case.
“I turned pro by chance after playing in a taxi drivers’ competition at Banchory. My father was a taxi driver and my brother still is so I was teeing off at the first tee and Doug Smart, the pro, watched me.
“He approached my dad and said there was an opening for a junior assistant and wondered if I’d be interested.
“I was playing off five, which was a little bit high, but Doug was keen to speak to me. Until then I had no intention of being a pro and at first I didn’t really work at my game.
“Then Doug put me in a ‘Beat the Pro’ competition and I played absolutely terrible.
“He came in the next day after just about everybody had beaten me, sat me down and said, ‘Listen, this is not for my benefit as I’m not bothered whether people beat you or not but, for your benefit, you need to start working and practicing. Even if you settle at a PGA pro level you need to be better than you are’.
“I got a real scare from that and from there on I was in every morning hitting balls, then at lunchtime and again hitting balls after work.
“I got stuck in and that’s where the reputation for being someone who works pretty hard at his game came from.
“I still think back to that day. That drives me to hit an extra 60 balls or so at the range.
“I hope it never happens again, in fact I know it won’t because I won’t allow it.
“That memory has been a trigger for me over the years. I’m getting older now and my body is breaking down after hitting 1000 balls a day for five or six days a week.
“That’s 10 large buckets of balls a day. Trust me, when you lay them all out in front of you, that’s an awful lot of balls in the space of a day.
“I do it properly – through my routine, through my game including my practice swing. If you add that all up it’s about three to four thousand swings of the body per day!
“I’ve done that going on 20 years as I knew it was the only way I was going to get better given my lack of natural talent. You must have the work ethic.”
But despite being so driven Lawrie admits there were times he considered quitting.
He said: “I turned pro in 1986 so I’ve been a pro a long time and it’s not been plain sailing. There’s been many tough times where I made up my mind to stop but, after sitting down with my wife Marian, most of these conversations ended with, ‘For f*** sake, get your a*** off the couch and practice’.
“I practised harder and found my confidence again.
“I’ve always prided myself on getting way more out of the game than the talent I had but when you think, ‘I can’t do this any more’, it’s how you deal with it mentally that makes you go on.”