Single Minded
The six-time Major Champion has had to deal with his fair share of high-pressure moments. So what sets him apart from the rest?
elieve it or not, for someone who’s regarded as having one of the game’s strongest ever minds, Sir Nick Faldo once stood over a ball and felt his legs buckle with nerves. It was a Ryder Cup match. “Oh sxxt”, thought Europe’s greatest ever golfer as he stepped away to take a moment. Of course, he executed the shot to perfection, as he so often did in pressure moments throughout his trophy-laden career.
The 62-year-old doesn’t suffer the same sort of moments these days. In the commentary booth, he watches others go through the mill. He does, however, have a tendency to shout at the television when he doesn’t like what he sees, which is normally something strategy related.
Faldo’s game was not built on power. His greatest assets were
Bconsistency, distance control and course management. It’s one of the reasons he gains so much pleasure from his course design projects, using his strategic mind to test modern pros and amateurs.
When we speak, Sir Nick is hosting the Grand Final of the Faldo Series in the UAE. It’s this great golfing brain his students have access to, so we’re keen to learn one or two mental secrets as well…
No, it wasn’t. Trying to win an Open was a whole new experience. You’re churning inside. I was doing the best I could. I felt really nervous on the greens. I wasn’t striking the putts as well as I wanted. It was just hard work because it was such a
Absolutely. It was all those years as a kid learning to swing with all the attention on you. You learn to get so engrossed in what you’re doing. You put yourself in your own little world and you feel even though your stomach is tight, if you know what you’re doing and how to do it well, that relieves the pressure. I knew how to strike a golf ball and I was able to do that time after time.
The other secret is, you have to have that discipline to start the process for every single shot – what you want to do and how you’re going to do it. Then, commit to it. away. When I got to 15, I was two back. I was messing up. I let go of the whole week and said, “Forget everything. You’ve got four holes; you’ve got to play the best four holes of your life.” The 5-iron, 4-iron, 3-iron around 15, 17 and 18 I regard as three of the best shots I ever hit. 100 per cent confident in my game. It was obviously pretty damn good, but not like ’90 or ’92. The greens were like rocks. I knew where to position it and where to land it. My ball landed on every green. It went off the 5th and 15th, I think. Then, at the end of all that pressure, I hit the shots that I wanted to.
It only became a real one-on-one when I came off the 12th and I was two ahead. Then it was, “Oh wow, I’m trying to protect, Greg could still birdie…” We both birdied 13 and 15. He gave me two shots down 16 and that was kind of it, but until then it was just hit your best tee shot, your best iron shot and do the best on each putt. That’s all I could do.
That last wedge shot in ‘95 [against Curtis Strange] was real pressure because I knew that if I could get up and down it would change the whole Ryder Cup. You’re doing it for everybody. My legs were going and I thought “Oh s**t”. I had to step away. I had a 93-yard wedge shot and I knew if I hit it over the back I was dead, so I had to hit a soft shot under all that pressure. dark days. I lost sponsors. Nothing was going right. I wouldn’t advise to do that mid-season. Go to a tropical island with your team and make camp somewhere.
I did a quieter rebuild through the end of ’91, week by week. I remember going to Valderrama and thinking I’m just going to practise bunker shots and nothing else. Sure enough, I did a week just doing that and got better.
“That was real pressure. I knew if I could get it up and down it would change the whole Ryder Cup”
You’ve got to try and create a bit of scare factor and find a few shots where you know the players are going to miss it. You try and bring in strategy, but it’s tough because they just cut the corners.
A pro course has to be close to 8,000 yards to test them. I’d love for them to hit driver, 3-iron into a par 4, but a drive is going 320 and a 3-iron 240, so there’s your maths. They hit it 50 yards further than we did. That makes a huge difference to design. Trying to accommodate everything is tricky.
They pound it down there. They believe that if they miss maybe nine fairways, maybe six of them they can still get close. Sometimes I scream at the TV. They feel if there are 20 young guys playing that way and they don’t join the party, how are they going to beat them?
Some courses, the old 2-iron to the top of the hill and a 7-iron into a 15-foot circle, you’ve got a chance. When a guy hits a driver and it’s in the rough and the best he can do is a wedge to 50 feet because he’s just in the wrong place… I would be kicking myself.
No one has shot -24 around Riviera yet! What is the game doing to classic, great golf courses? The problem with old-school design, beautiful greens and beautiful bunkering, the players don’t see it. It’s just a fairway and a straight shot to the green. Pinehurst No.2 still stacks up. It scares the pros because you can chip it off the green and you’ve got a 40-yard pitch shot coming back. hit it left and right. A lot of people design a course and they put the bunkers miles away from the green because they think they’re making it easier, but the amateur puts it in there and they’ve got a 50-yard bunker shot.
Jack [Nicklaus], Tom Watson had a very strong mind. Hale Irwin was a good thinker. Everybody had their own strategy. Seve wanted to cut the corners: “The hole goes this way, but if I can go this way…”
I played with Phil Mickelson way back at The Open for the first two days and his strategy on the links was dreadful. He went for everything. He went through a big learning curve. pond left and out of bounds. I taught myself this kind of visualisation. My practice ground had one green, one bunker and one flag. It was fantastic because every single shot had a purpose.
I learned to swing a 2-iron and hit a slow-motion cut over this bunker. That helped me develop the skill of looking at a target. When you really get good, you look at the flag and everything else becomes a blur.
You’ve got to learn to paint pictures. The chipping ground is a great place to start because you can see the ball flight, see it land, see it run, see it hit the pin and go in. That’s the formula. At least you get some feedback. I tell the kids to aim at a target. You may think you’ve hit it nicely on the range, but if you miss by seven or eight yards, guess what, you’re missing every blooming green. You’ve got to follow the ball flight to the finish and not just see it get airborne.
• Sir Nick Faldo was speaking to GM courtesy of the Faldo Series and Faldo Design. The Faldo Series is widely recognised as the only global amateur series for junior boys and girls. Faldo Design is an award-winning golf course design firm with more than 50 design projects around the world, either open for play or in development.