Exclusive:Bob MacIntyre on 'glass now being half full' for $40m Tour Championship after 'disaster' in Memphis
Scottish No 1 addresses needing to be ‘selfish’ to make PGA Tour season finale
On the back of what he openly admits was a “disaster”, Bob MacIntyre could easily have been sitting with his feet up at his new home on the north side of Glasgow this week. Instead, he’s among the 30 players battling out for a “fortune” in the PGA Tour’s season-ending Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta.
The Oban man was understandably proud to make his debut in the US circuit’s showpiece event two years ago on the back of wins in the RBC Canadian Open and Genesis Scottish Open in the space of a few weeks. Helped by a runner-up finish in last year’s US Open, he went the distance again 12 months ago. Getting there this time, though, is probably the best achievement of the lot.
Becoming a dad for the first time back in January - son Findlay is thriving - and adjusting to parenthood along with his partner, Shannon, meant MacIntyre, a family man to the core, found himself having to make adjustments at a time when his aspirations and expectations were higher than ever.
He’d have been hoping for better performances in this year’s majors - missed cuts in both the Masters and PGA Championship came before top-30 finishes in the US Open and The Open - yet, as this week proves, it’s been no means a disappointing campaign for the man who recently turned 30.
While the PGA Tour season is over for the likes of PGA champion Aaron Rai, as well as Rickie Fowler, Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth and Shane Lowry to name but a few, MacIntyre is competing for a $40 million purse this week and, boy, can he feel very proud of himself to be joining defending champion Tommy Fleetwood, Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Alex Fitzpatrick, Ludvig Aberg and Viktor Hovland in the European contingent in the season finale.
“Overall, with everything that has happened in my life and the changes that have happened, my goal was to be in the top 50,” admitted MacIntyre, speaking to The Scotsman from Georgia. “But, obviously, when you get in a position where you can be in the top 30, then you’ve got to push for that as well and now this week it’s a case of the winner taking home a fortune!”
In the FedEx St Jude Championship, the opening FedEx Cup Play-Off event, a fortnight ago, MacIntyre endured one of his worst days on a golf course as he slumped to a 12-over-par 82. Struggling with a knee injury, he subsequently withdrew and defended that decision, insisting that battling on in Memphis would have been the wrong call and, almost certainly, left him back home this week.
“It’s funny as everyone in the team was asking me if I’d played much during the three-week break after The Open and I was like ‘I’ve probably played the most I’ve ever played’,” he said. “It wasn’t every day, but it was close to being every second day. I then did a training camp in Orlando before having two or three decent days in Memphis and thought I’d prepared the best I could, but it was then just a disaster,” said the world No 18.
“I’ve had pain in my knee since May. The physio in the truck asked me how long I had it for and I had to look back and see when I first spoke to Barty (Fife-based sports physiotherapist Stuart Barton) about it. To be honest, I thought I had done my meniscus. I thought I was in real trouble before coming back out to the States at one point. It flares up with the amount of balls I’ve been hitting lately trying to get my game in shape.
‘It’s like someone is stabbing my hamstring’
“It doesn’t really help that it’s on my lead leg and, to be honest, I couldn’t extend my leg when I was trying to put speed into it with my driver. There are some days when I don’t feel much pain and there are others when it literally feels as though someone is stabbing the bottom of my hamstring.
“The guys on the truck in Memphis did a great job. But then out on the course I was feeling pain and I was hitting it off line. I was like ‘what’s plan A here and what’s plan B?’. I spoke to everyone in the team and they all agreed that the best thing to do was rest up and try to prepare as best as we could and get myself fit and ready to go again for last week and that’s what we did. It might look bad, I know, but sometimes you’ve got to be selfish on that side of things.”
One of the proudest Scots on the planet, MacIntyre enjoyed watching Rory Franssen land a breakthrough win on the HotelPlanner Tour recently and just loved seeing Scott Jamieson return to winning ways on the DP World Tour after a near 14-year gap as he triumphed in the Nexo Championship on home soil on Sunday.
“I remember sitting in the house watching Jaimo’s first win (in the 2012 Nelson Mandela Championship in South Africa),” recalled MacIntyre, smiling. “Going by his interviews on Sunday, I don’t think he thought it was going to happen again, so that was brilliant to see.”
The left-hander has his sights set on tasting victory again as well before the end of his calendar campaign, which, beyond this week, is set to include assignments in the Amgen Irish Open at Doonbeg and BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth before a title defence in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship on Scottish soil in early October.
“The performance last week was brilliant from start to finish,” he said, having signed off with a best-of-the-day 65 in the BMW Championship in St Louis to finish joint-seventh and climb from 36th to 25th on the FedEx Cup points list. “The glass is now half full rather than half empty. Judging by last week, the game looks in decent shape and we’ll just rinse and repeat. With a little bit of fine tuning here and there, we might have a good week, who knows?”
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