John Huggan: Why Lee Westwood needs to learn that cups still beat cash

Published on Saturday 24 April 2010 20:38

SO LEE Westwood reckons that, right this minute, he's the number one golfer on the planet. Which is fair enough. A strong prima facie case can certainly be made for the 37-year-old Englishman. Top-three finishes in each of the last three major championships and a spectacular closing performance in winning the inaugural Race to Dubai are obvious evidence of a very fine golfer in perhaps the best form of his life.

But Westwood's bold assertion got me thinking. In professional golf there are so many ways of gauging success. We have Orders of Merit, money-lists, Fed-Ex standings, world rankings, races to somewhere or other; all sorts of things. But do any of them really stand up to close scrutiny?

Let's look a little closer and use Westwood as an example. By my reckoning, the two-time Order of Merit winner has, over the course of his 16-year professional career, played a total of 117 times on the PGA Tour, the most exacting circuit in the game. And he has won but once. On the European Tour, by comparison, Westwood has recorded six victories since 2000. Clearly, he is a terrific player, one in whom there is much to admire. But can a man with that sort of "winning" record really be the very best golfer in the world? Just asking.

Then there is another Englishman, Oliver Wilson. Currently ranked the 45th best player anywhere, Wilson has yet to win a tournament, eh, anywhere. And he has been a professional since 2003. All of which begs more questions: should his obviously high level of consistency be rewarded with such a high ranking, or should actually winning count for more? And again, what is it that we are really measuring? What we don't seem to be looking for is genuine dominance.

One who thinks more weight should be given to finishing first is former Walker Cup captain, Peter McEvoy.

"We live in a golfing world that does not breed winners," contends the two-time Amateur champion. "Part of that is the money, which is the root of all golfing evil. If we created a different competition, one where the pros put their own money in and it was winner-take-all, a very different animal would evolve. He'd be a golfer who took chances and went for his shots. And he wouldn't be a guy who was happy to churn out yet another eighth place finish and collect a nice cheque. The whole thing is self-perpetuating and has created a system where a high level of mediocrity is over-rewarded."

McEvoy makes a good point. In so many ways professional golf has become stereotyped in its approach. And, sadly, it continues to march resolutely down that misguided path. Almost every week is 72-holes stroke play. The high level of quality control involved in the manufacture of equipment and the modern ball has led to a strong similarity in the way the game is played by the leading practitioners. So has course preparation and set up. Fairway widths, speed of greens, height of rough, grade and depth of sand; all are practically the same week after week.

So, while the players are undoubtedly being asked difficult questions, they are being asked the same questions, over and over. The result is that they are all very, very good at a very narrow form of golf. And, perhaps more to the point, really not very good when asked to perform outside that cosy comfort zone. Think back to the sorry states some have been in when put under real pressure in the Ryder Cup.

Coaching – or should we say over-coaching – is another characteristic of top-level golf in the 21st century. Today, it is almost unheard of for any leading player not to employ a swing coach, a sports psychologist and a fitness trainer.

"Sometimes I question the teaching of the game," says two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw, a man who grew up under the laissez-faire tutelage of famed instructor, the late Harvey Penick. "I hate to use the word 'stylised', but it seems that way to me, everything in the same box. I don't see some players able to adjust on the course. You have to be able to do that on the course, especially when you are not playing well. It's no good waiting until you can go back to the range for the answers. They are relying too much on the guys standing behind them.

"I'd like to see America's leading players competing more outside the PGA Tour. If you get a set of conditions that are somewhat the same week to week, it can't be good. You have to change the arena now and then. Give them something different. Plus, a reliance on lots of people in your camp doesn't always equate to success."

But what is the alternative to the present sea of sameness that is professional golf, given that competing for their own cash outside of a friendly four-ball on Tuesday afternoon of tournament week isn't something too many of today's leading players would relish.

"When the world rankings first came out they were quite rightly questioned and scrutinised," points out McEvoy. "But they aren't any more. They have improved, but they can never be really accurate. Yet if someone says he is seventh in the world, his word is accepted without question. I'm not sure why that is.

"I remember composing my own amateur rankings when I was helping to pick the Walker Cup side. I had to give different weightings to different events. I'd give 100 points to the winner of, say, the Brabazon and the Scottish Stroke-Play. But for winning the Amateur Championship I awarded 1,000 points. To my mind, the difference is that marked.

"But that doesn't happen in the pro game. They give, say, 100 points for winning a bog standard event, then something like 120 for winning the Open. It's out of proportion because of all the vested interests. Every tour wants their events to get as many points as possible."

That last factor, of course, means that all of the world's many circuits are automatically and instinctively opposed to any sort of change to the status quo. But golf needs to be more like tennis, a game decided by head-to-head battles where you have to actually beat the bloke in front of you, which is why a relatively small number of players win most of the tournaments. The irony, of course, is that professional golfers need to get back to playing more like amateurs. Before they started playing for money, the leading players all played to win. It was that simple because there was little or no reward for finishing sixth every week. But now they play a game where there is no real need to win. So they don't, at least not very often.

Yet more irony: only those, like Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus, who reach a point where money ceases to be a concern actually return to being "amateurs". Their only aim then is to lift the trophy. And that is the key to halting the present production line of plodders: the sooner everyone gets back to playing for the cups rather than the cash the better.