why does a world class golfer suddenly lose it all?

Lee Jawn lost it completely after dominating European Golf for years, yet got it back.

I found that amazing

yeah i agree...another mystifying one for me was andrew coltart, i really thought he had the world at his feet

and david duval went from someone who just couldnt get over the line to almost superhuman for 2/3 years and then just like that, nothing whatsoever

and whos the english golfer from late nineties i think, used to wear a shirt and tie and waistcoat

Coltart lost it after the golf magazine programme showed  a delightful Thai girl bouncing up and down on his naked back.

Ryan Moore lobbed in his tie and wc, probably as he looked like Rod Harrington

van phillips wore a tie







what happened to steven hendry, fernando torres, eric bristow, freddie flintoff, et al

was Van Phillips part of the tremendous 'van' forum tirade by farthouse?

That was pure class

wow found a reprint somewhere on here

http://community.betfair.com/chit_chat/go/thread/view/94038/27603129/?pg=1

You're thinking of Van Phillips,sweet. Won the Portuguese way back, but I think he has packed it in now.

He used to look good on the course.

great stuff dml

Duval suffered from vertigo and lost his game and had other niggles.

For many there is a fine line between being successful and dropping down the pecking order. Some work incredibly hard on the way to the top but when they get there they ease off.

I remember Faldo saying he just got to apoint where he no longer wanted to practice for 6 hours a day.

Injuries scupper others.

Confidence is a massive thing in golf. When you are playing well what ever the level you just play on auto pilot. When you are struggling your concious mind takes over and you think about things and dont play freely.

Faldo - off course projects became a distraction, the commentary in US followed and as a Sir, he has the belief that his legacy is assured and it most probably is.

Monty - One of his recent caddies told me that Monty still hits the ball as well as he ever did, but is simply washed out with world travel and timezones. Also that he seems to have simply lost confidence in his putting, especially when he gets a sniff of the leaderboard.

Add to the above with a messy divorce, super injunction ( alleged )and a new breed of young golfers who have a game face for the tour in the first year, look at Branden Grace.

watched monty on the practice green in singapore and was totally useless. i could putt better atm.
wirachant next to him was draining everything....

Partly physical , partly mental , age related , and when you lose the winning habit its time to pack it or switch tours .

Watched a fair bit of the practice ground at the Irish Open this year .  Everyone was hitting the ball well there , but when they got out on the course and faced non ideal conditions only a few coped .

At a certain point in time ambition falters , and the daily grind and family etc become big factors . Cant see Tiger still playing in 10 years time . Nothing to prove  , and diminishing returns for effort involved .

The difference between the old timers and the modern players was that the old timers were good golfers who would have been playing golf irrespective of any success they had . It was a different game 30-40 years ago in Jack and Arnies and Garys day , and they all enjoyed a game no matter where it was or with whom .  Dont think many of the modern players would have that attitude ( although apparently there is an iconic photo of Rory and Gmac going down the 1st at Newcastle  , both major champions , just the 2 of them with a bag slung over their shoulders  , two lads  out for 18 holes , no one else  ) .

I guarantee that was for a photo-shoot kelly

Have not seen the said , Clarkey , just heard about it .  Will check it out next time I see the person who told me about it , never got any duff info from him .  Maybe it was the Northern Ireland tourist board !

Ian Baker Finch is the most famous player who went from a star to nothing overnight. From what I understand it started when he changed his swing which didn't work out for him and was never able to get it back. After that it was all psychological. Mike Weir is another one who got injured and after he returned could never find his rhythm.

This is from Wikipedia on Baker-Finch
____

Baker-Finch's British Open victory might have proved the catalyst for him to move to a higher level and start to regularly challenge for prestigious titles, but this was not to be the case. He had a 10-year exemption from the PGA Tour for the British Open win, leaving him exempt until 2001. He did achieve a runner-up finish in The Players Championship in 1992, but otherwise never came close to contending on the PGA Tour again. He picked up one relatively minor win outside the U.S. in each of 1992 and 1993, but his form then went into a steep and accelerating decline. He started to lose confidence in his game, and tinkered with his swing often. His last top-10 finish on the PGA Tour was a tie for 10th in the 1994 Masters Tournament.

Baker-Finch then famously suffered a complete collapse of his game. The problems were often psychological: He would hit shots flawlessly on the practice range, and then go to the first tee and hit a weak drive into the wrong fairway. In the 1995 Open Championship at St Andrews, he notoriously hooked his first round tee-shot at the first out-of-bounds on the left side of the fairway shared with the 18th, with attention focused on him as his playing partner was Arnold Palmer, competing in his final Open. In 1995 and 1996 he missed the cut, withdrew after one round, or was disqualified in all twenty nine PGA Tour events that he entered.

Baker-Finch later said: "I lost my confidence. I got to the point where I didn't even want to be out on the golf course because I was playing so poorly. I would try my hardest, but when I came out to play, I managed to find a way to miss the cut time and time again. It became a habit."

After shooting a 92 in the first round of the 1997 British Open at Royal Troon, an extraordinarily bad score by tournament professional standards, Baker-Finch admitted that he cried in the locker-room that afternoon. He withdrew from the championship after one round and retired from tournament golf.

The only PGA Tour events Baker-Finch has played since the 1997 Open Championship was the 2001 MasterCard Colonial, where he missed the cut with rounds of 74 and 77, and the same tournament, now named Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial in 2009, again missing the cut with rounds of 68 and 78.

just played golf today. i take it back. i'm more retarded than monty at putting at the moment

Micheal Campbell another example that looked as if he had gone at game after us open win. It has been a great effort to return to some resemblance of form the last 6 months of this year. Like Lee John must be made of stern stuff to return and not give up.

was the title of this thread a Whitney Houston song ?

i think she was humming it when she fell asleep in the bath

Paul Way and Robert'Disco Kid' Lee went nowhere near the heights predicted for them when they first came to prominence.

wasnt paul way, nick faldo's pet project before dougherty? or did i just imagine that?

Way was on tour in the mid 80's...maybe a bit early for Sir Nick's guidance.

..when scores are high and putts are lipping...why does a world class golfer suddenly lose it all..

Nick Dougherty

From 2007 to 2009 he won over €3m on the european tour

2011 winnings were €10,600

this 2012 season he finished 39th on the Challenge Tour rankings, winnings were €44k

then came T151st out of 156 at Q-School shooting +20 over par (80-73-77-74)

I hope he can make it back

this is for pokeron just trying some thing out in my room just now, just thought process at mo but you could try it see how you feel,my take is when your putting you need stop the puter wobbling about so can start where your aiming.
ok so lets say your putting something together say with twp screws i know sounds silly but bare withme.ok you put one in top and you put one in bottom that way your stablizing the whole thing from piviting just like if you ahd one srew in top you can swing the frame.
so if your wanting putter to stay firm and stop wobble why would you put both hands close togeth when if you shake putter it still wobbles before grounding it.
so suggest one and on putter just on the grip on no more just missing the metal shaft and the other hand on the top of grip just getting on the putter that way there is a gap between hands, a few free flows first to make sure the brain is engaging both hands at same time then go on line.

Villegas lost his tour card, pretty early in his career for such a fall. Maybe he should do away with the ridiculous Peter Parker routine now, kind of thing that looks good when you're playing well but makes you look a right **** when you don't have a card.

* tossa i was trying to say, c'mon Betfair we're all adults here

thanks mepoor.
the other day i was wondering why the fat kj choi like grip on my putter wasnt working for me when it worked for me at the begining.
then i figured out why the other day. i had changed from holding the putter baseball bat style with thumbs down the shaft (so hands not together as traditionally taught) to having my hands interlocked.
going back to my original grip has me putting better already as it feels more natural.
my thought process was,' if i was a caveman back in caveman days and picked up a stick and tried to whack a ball of dung into a hole i would not interlock.'
whatever floats your boat i guess
i was also experimenting with hovering the putter before takeaway, but whilst it felt straighter, i couldn't get the weight right. still experimenting with that.

Hovering the driver works OK pokeron , a la Sam .  But not with the putter , you are not starting back from a fixed point  , which is much more significant for the putter than any other club .

Only advice I can offer to those who find putting difficult is to practice . And for short putts , ensure that the putter head travels directly towards the hole after the strike ( assuming its a straight putt  , but hell , all putts are -- or should be -- straight , its the contours which determine where the ball finishes ). Very few Billy Mayfairs about .

i always thought putting to be a different game, golf part 2

the rules of grip and swing used for part 1 dont always carry over to part 2

there are plenty of things to try and discard, or try and keep


oh course the abiding rule is if it aint bust , dont fix it

Pokeron , you back in OZ after your sojourns in Singapore ? Think I saw a post of yours to that effect .

Reason I ask is that this morning we got a package from OZ from our friends in Brisbane who were in Europe ( including here with us ) recently . Apart from photos and correspondence there is a video "The Man from Snowy River " , pursuant to a discussion we had about Banjo Patterson when they were here . Is it an Aussie standard ? , get the feeling it might be , looking forward to viewing it .

back in perth yes.
not aussie standard. but that's me. maybe the older gen. i'm 33.
however, it was standard fare in schools when i attended and no doubt before my time as well. maybe not nowadays....

Lucky you pokeron , watched the test match most of the way recently , people who haven't been there  dont realise how big and fast the conditions are at the Waca .  The weather here is crap , grey , rainy , cold  , would love to be going back to OZ , Western Australia we loved , so much space , no traffic , hot but not clammy . And a good economy , driving the country .

If Kirk Douglas is in that film it must be pretty old , but I suspect it will be the scenery which stands out .  Cheers .