MacIntyre thriving after being written off
Most people’s year to forget proves memorable for Scot
IN this endlessly complex game that rewards, maddens, satisfies and frustrates in equal measure, you should always savour the successes when they come along.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional emerging victorious on one of the main tours or Norman and Bessy claiming the Husband and Wife Salver at Broomieknowe, that winning feeling is something to cherish.
Robert MacIntyre has been a winner, or he’s been there or thereabouts at the sharp end, throughout his young career. From a notable double whammy in the amateur game back in 2013, when he won the Scottish Youths and the Scottish Boys’ Strokeplay titles during a shimmering summer, to his maiden European Tour win recently in Cyprus, the 24- yearold has that clinical edge and competitive instinct that separates the best from the rest.
Having been back in Oban for a couple of weeks, before heading off on his travels again this weekend to South Africa and then Dubai, MacIntyre had had time to take stock.
“Looking back on my first big win as an amateur, I’d broken my elbow earlier that year and I thought my season was over,” he reflected of that teenage breakthrough and the parallels it had with his latest victory. “And now, this year, I was almost writing it off too, what with everything going on surrounding the coronavirus and my form. But, all of a sudden, things have changed. That’s golf for you. You can have a poor season and then a couple of good results saves it.
“Every win I’ve had in my career has provided a stepping stone. All I want to do is win. That’s what I love, being in the heat of the battle on the final day. You get a feeling you don’t get with day- to- day stuff and you want to experience that feeling as often as possible.”
Away from those feelings of giddy euphoria, of course, MacIntyre has had his own lows to deal with during a trying year for everybody.
In the emotional aftermath of his Cyprus conquest, he talked of the mental strain that lockdown and the confinement of the European Tour’s strict, yet necessary, bubble had taken on him.
MacIntyre has been parading a logo on his golf bag this season for Martyn’s Monday Club, an Oban- based mental health charity set up in memory of local man, Martyn Cruickshanks, who took his own life two years ago.
“His family lived just up the road from us,” added MacIntyre, who has been very open about the effects the pandemic- induced restrictions have had on his own state of mind. “It’s not until you start to feel down yourself that you realise ‘ wow, this can happen to absolutely anybody’.
“The lockdown and the tour bubble sent me a bit mad. Even at home, I was getting fed up with my mum and dad. It wasn’t their fault, it was just the way the world was at the time and it was brutal. When I’m at events, I like to have my team with me and when I couldn’t do that, I really struggled with it.
“Don’t get me wrong, being on tour is a great lifestyle for certain people but it’s no holiday. Some don’t enjoy it as much as people think we do. When things slowly started to open up a bit, I could have my coach [ Davy Burns] out with me again and I could work the way I wanted to work rather than be told how I had to work.”
The team that MacIntyre has around him is as tight knit as a sewing bee while that 15th club in the bag remains a very special one. “My mum is my goto person,” he said with glowing affection. “She’s made of tough stuff. When I was struggling she guided me through it.”
Having followed up a third place finish in Cyprus with a win, MacIntyre’s campaign has been injected with new vigour as he heads into his final three events of a topsy- turvy 2020.
“I have a lot to play for now,” said the world No 63. “Before Cyprus, I was almost playing for the sake of playing but now I have a real buzz. That’s how I like it. I don’t like going through the motions. That’s when you don’t work hard. In this game, you can’t rest on your laurels.”