Baby who helped dad become golf’s new superstar
Inspirational story of the unknown Yorkshire vicar’s son who’s become a global golf superstar overnight — all thanks to his baby son arriving 12 days early
BY LONG-STANDING tradition, organisers of the U.S. Masters golf tournament allow TV cameras into the clubhouse to capture every flicker of the players’ emotions, as one of the world’s great sporting spectacles reaches its climax.
Those of us who stayed up into the small hours yesterday to witness the unlikely immortalisation of Danny Willett — an unknown Yorkshire lad who started hitting balls in a soggy Welsh sheep field — were treated to fly-on-the-wall scenes that were at once compelling and utterly surreal.
As his main American rival, Jordan Spieth, fell by the wayside and it dawned on Willett that he had bagged one of golf’s most prestigious trophies — and with it a cheque for £1.2 million — the usually steely young man from Sheffield sucked the air in disbelief.
After surviving several suffocating bearhugs from his colossal manager, Andrew ‘Chubby’ Chandler, the 28-year-old champion called his wife, Nicole, to share his delight, as good Yorkie husbands do.
However, the Face-Time video connection between Augusta, Georgia and his £500,000 family home in Worksop, five time zones away, was fuzzy.
So, with the world listening, the man who had just become the first Englishman to win the Masters since Nick Faldo in 1996 kept shouting: ‘Shall I call back on’t landline?’ It was rather like a TV sketch by the northern comic Peter Kay.
Yet as Willett’s mother-in-law, Simone, 51, told me yesterday, the drama in America’s Deep South was almost matched by events this side of the pond.
For just 12 days earlier, Nicole, who turned 28 yesterday, had given birth by Caesarean section to their first baby, Zachariah. As he is, naturally, not yet sleeping through the night, his carrycot was plonked in the living-room as the Bollinger corks popped for a party that went on past 2.30am.
‘It was terribly nerve-wracking for a while, but it turned out to be a fantastic night,’ said estate agent Simone, who was valiantly at her desk yesterday despite a late night. ‘Nicole usually travels to tournaments with Danny, but obviously she couldn’t be in Augusta, so we watched it on TV with her.
‘The baby kept waking up and dozing off, oblivious to it all, but one day we’ll be able to tell him he was watching when his daddy became a Masters champion.
‘ It’s just an amazing coincidence, because Nicole was born on the weekend of the Masters, on Sunday, April 11, 1988. Her father and I both love golf and we were watching that night as Sandy Lyle (a Scot) won. We didn’t dream she’d marry the winner.’
OF COURSE not. But then, there was so much serendipity about Willett’s gloriously uplifting triumph. Indeed, this devoted family man — the son of a recently retired Anglican vicar — was so determined to be in England for the birth of his son that if the baby hadn’t arrived early, he wouldn’t have entered the Masters this year at all. He was the 89th and last player to register.
Reading the witty Twitter commentary from his brother Peter, 33, as the drama unfolded on Sunday night was almost as entertaining as the action on the golf course.
‘If the boy does what he should, I’ll be able to say I shared a bath with the Masters winner — brilliant,’ he mused.
When the tension ratcheted up, he tweeted several nervy expletives. But with victory assured, there was more affectionate sibling humour: ‘ Speechless. I once punched that kid in the teeth for hurting my pet rat.’
And then a jibe about the famous coloured jacket awarded to Masters champions: ‘Green makes you look fat, refuse the jacket.’ It was all so amusing that the Twitterati deemed him ‘the real winner’ of the event — and he earned an interview slot on Chris Evans’s radio show yesterday.
Almost as witty was his brother Matthew, 35, a South Yorkshire firefighter, who tweeted dryly: ‘ Backed you £ 10 at 66- 1, bro! That’ll pay for the knackered alternator in our lass’s motor.’ The snooty Augusta National Golf Club, which only admitted black players in 1990, and once boasted President Eisenhower among its members, must wonder what sort of character has gate-crashed its elite ranks.
With his wispy goatee and roughedged brogue, Willett may not seem like the archetypal golfing gent, but they will find him as admirably uncomplicated and reliable as his swing.
And down in the Bible Belt, they will love his church background. Born in Sheffield in October, 1987, his paternal grandfather was a missionary, and he credits his father, the Rev Stephen Willett, for keeping him focused as he pursued his golfing ambitions.
‘I gained a lot, watching him, from wanting to work hard to his meticulousness and the way he helped a lot of people through difficult times,’ says Willett. He is equally grateful to his Swedish mother, Elisabet, and plays with a golf ball embossed with her homeland’s yellow and blue national flag.
‘I had a normal life [growing up], where golf was hardly mentioned, so I’m grateful for that. When I came home, a good day wasn’t about whether or not I’d shot 65, but whether I was all right.
‘You see these other parents force the game down the throats of their kids, and it’s so destructive. I’ve been to a few sports psychologists, but I know the best one is my dad, because what he says is so grounded, and it’s about whether you’re doing right or wrong.’
As a boy, Willett was keen on various sports, but says his brothers inadvertently steered him towards golf because ‘I had to find something I could beat them at’.
His father was also a keen, though average player, and when Willett was around five years old he was encouraged to take his first, muddy swipes in a sheep pasture in Anglesey, North Wales, where the Willett family spent their summer holidays.
He would practise for hours, and as the Rev Willett recalled yesterday, Danny’s dedication sometimes interfered with his education and caused family rows.
‘Every Wednesday — my wife used to argue with me — I’d take him to a golf club, drop him off, pick him up at 8pm and get told off for keeping him off school.’
Mrs Willett, herself a teacher, spent yesterday ‘grinning like a Cheshire cat’, and remembered how her husband ‘used to write the most appalling’ excuses for letting their son miss school.
‘But the PE department — the better he got, the more they supported him. So the school, in the end, was fantastic.’
Willett was rewarded with his first set of clubs at the age of eight or nine — a junior ‘bargain bag’ costing about £20. His parents also paid for him to have lessons.
‘Danny came to me when he was around eight years old, and you could see he was different, even then,’ his early tutor, Paul Lovell, the professional at Llangefni Golf Club, told me yesterday.
‘Most children find learning the game difficult because their mind wanders, but he was able to concentrate and focus, even at that age. He just had a great natural enthusiasm for the game.’
Willett was soon beating his brothers, and at 12 he could drive a ball further than his father. He became a junior prodigy. After leaving school at 16 he was awarded a golfing scholarship at an American university, and by the age of 20 he was recognised as the world’s best amateur.
HAVING risen steadily under the radar in recent years as a pro, life is set to enter another stratosphere — not only for him but for his photogenic blonde wife (also an estate agent), whom he met on a night out in Rotherham, and married (in a ceremony conducted by his father, naturally) in 2013.
She, too, is a keen golfer and plans to take their child on the global tour with Danny. Yesterday she said: ‘We’re all absolutely delighted. It’s the best birthday present I’ve ever had. It really has been a whirlwind of a two weeks.’
Experts say that aside from the money from Danny’s Masters victory, they can expect to bank well over £10 million in the next few years in endorsements and prize-money.
This will doubtless come as sweet music to the ears of his burly agent, Chandler. He has found a modest, appealing new superstar client.
Those who know Willett best, however, say we shouldn’t expect to see him strutting the fairways in flashy clothes, much less pressing the self-destruct button like some other sporting celebrities.
Next year, when he dons his illfitting green jacket to attend the annual dinner for Masters champions, there is even talk that he will ask for the menu to include Yorkshire pudding. With lashings of thick gravy, naturally.