The post ‘I shoveled a lot of s—‘: How Ian Woosnam bomb-and-gouged his way to a Masters green jacket appeared first on Golf.

The post ‘I shoveled a lot of s—‘: How Ian Woosnam bomb-and-gouged his way to a Masters green jacket appeared first on Golf.

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Milking cows was easy. Tractoring was the hard part.

“You don’t know what that’s like,” Ian Woosnam explains. “We had tractors with no power steering. When I was plowing the fields, I had to put everything I had to roll it.”

Woosnam was the youngest and shortest of his brothers and sisters, which meant farm work was always a particular challenge for him. But amid the struggle came a realization: The work was hard — that wasn’t changing — but it became easier the stronger he got.

It wasn’t until years later that golf entered the fray, and by the time he strolled Augusta National’s back nine during the 1991 Masters, Woosnam had morphed into something akin to a human bowling ball. Just 5’4″ tall, but with forearms the size of two loaves of bread and a trunk like a barrel, he looked like Popeye with a golf club. His blistering golf swing made him the premier pound-for-pound driver of his era, and maybe ever.

Not since Jack Nicklaus had a golfer muscled his way through the Masters like Woosnam did in 1991, and no golfer would again until Tiger Woods’ reign over golf initiated at Augusta six years later.

Nowadays, golfers of all levels recognize the importance of building strength, speed and athleticism in the golf swing. Woosnam got there almost by accident, but made history at the Masters along the way, as he shared with GOLF.com in a recent interview.

RELATED: To bet on the Masters, head over to BoyleSports Golf betting

‘I shoveled a lot of s—‘

A young Ian Woosnam’s day started at 6 o’clock sharp. As soon as the alarm went off, there was one place he needed to be: The cowshed. His parents ran a dairy farm in the summers, and that meant the cows needed milking twice a day. It was an easy start to the day. Two hours of milking, then a quick breakfast and back on the farm.

The rest of the day was filled with hard labor. Plowing the fields. Fetching, bailing and moving hay bales. Driving tractors. And of course, the general work that goes along with a cattle.

“I shoveled a lot of s—,” Woosnam says, laughing. “It’s all very different than what the kids do nowadays. But throwing hay bales is actually a lot like the golf swing, if you think about it, with the rotation involved.”

The work was never easy, but it got easier the stronger he got. He wanted and needed it, so he started using everything he could to get more. He’d practice trying to drive the tractor gripping only with his fingers. When the family would gather around and watch television, Woosnam would join them and squeeze tennis balls to strengthen his wrists. When those started to give out, he’d sit up against the wall and hold bricks on his thighs. One day, Woosnam had the idea of attaching one of those bricks to a stick using a rope, which quickly became one of his favorite exercises.

“Roll it up, and down to the floor, then up and down again,” he said. “That got your wrists and forearms really strong.”

Golf was mostly a passing interest at this point, and he gave little consideration to the idea he’d end up in a green jacket one day. The seedlings of those ambitions were only planted one summer, when he and his dad decided to erect a net in the cowshed for a bit of post-work fun.

“After we finished work, we’d practice hitting golf balls into that net, swinging as hard as we could,” he said. “Basically, that’s how I learned how to play.”

RELATED: To bet on the Masters, head over to BoyleSports Golf betting

‘Compress the spring’

When pros arrive on the hallowed Augusta National grounds for the 2022 Masters, it’ll mark the culmination of weeks, months, and years of targeted work.

Modern era professional golfers employ an army of experts, who use state of the art technology to pinpoint specific weaknesses in their bodies. They’ll compliment it with intently-targeted speed training sessions; stretches of time where pros will swing ashard as they can, tracking the ball speed on each shot they hit, with little concern for where the shot itself actually goes.

Whether Woosnam realized it at the time or not, his game was forged in the kind of speed-first environment that pros exist in today.

Back on the farm, Woosnam would practice in the cowshed net after the second milking of the day, before dinner. He’d swing as hard as he could. Harder than he thought he could, and then harder still. He didn’t care about where the ball was going because the destination for each was the same: A net a few feet away. All he cared about was the contact, and the speed.

He was about 13 years old at the time, and only playing about once a week on the course, occasionally more during the summers, when his dad would let him sneak off to the nearest golf course 14 miles away for 9 holes before his final cow milking shift at the end of the day. Those rounds became the place he learned to control his power, but not in the way those around him often instructed.

Countless times Woosnam was told to swing softer. That idea never resonated. The goal was sending the speed he’d created in the right direction, not sacrificing the strength he had worked so hard to earn. It led him down the path to a singular swing thought, based on a simple notion.

“I was always taught to swing around my head. It was just sort of a turn and a turn. The stiller I kept my head, the better it was,” he said. “I can only explain it like tighten up the spring and you releasing it. Compress the spring and let it go. That’s what I tried to do in my golf swing. I wanted to get the golf club to the top of the backswing, and if I put it in the right position, I could hit it as hard as I possibly could without hitting it too far offline.”

By April 1991, Woosnam had become a master of his craft.

He had won 17 times on the European Tour, and cemented himself as a backbone of Europe’s new-look Ryder Cup team, which had won or retained three of his first four appearances. He arrived at Augusta National World No. 1, with a major the only gap on his formidable resume.

Woosnam’s strategy for the 1991 Masters was the same as it always had been: Hit it hard without being too far offline. Through 54 rounds that had gotten him to 12 under par and built a three-stroke lead. But as often happens on Sunday at Augusta, the nerves ticked up, and the wheels started to wobble.

Swinging a steel-shafted wooden driver head (he was a late-adopter to the emerging metalwood fad) in the final group alongside 42-year-old Tom Watson, Woosnam outdrove him on every hole. Twice the Welshman drove his ball into the gallery on the back nine on Sunday, and three different times — on 11, 15 and 18 — Woosnam drove his ball over 300 yards.

RELATED: To bet on the Masters, head over to BoyleSports Golf betting

The 18th hole was the pivotal moment and, indeed, became the iconic moment. Jose Maria Olazabal, his co-leader, had found the trees off the tee. It presented an opening for Woosnam, just when he needed it. It reminded Woosnam of a story his mother once told him. Coming into the final hole with the lead in a local junior tournament, his mother, in the gallery, wanted him to wedge something into the fairway. Woosnam opted for a driver.

“Let him learn the hard way,” Woosnam’s disapproving father said, as Woosnam tells the story.

Woosnam sent it down the middle, and won the tournament.

That day at Augusta, Woosie did what he did best. He pulled his driver, aimed at the left bunker, and walloped a drive over it.

“He let it go,” commentator Pat Summerall said on the broadcast. “I tell you what, he didn’t leave anything back on the 18th tee.”

Surrounded by spectators and facing a blind approach from a yardage that was difficult to calculate — after all, who else could hit their drive over the bunker on 18? — he muscled a short iron greenside and chipped his ball 8 feet long of the pin. He buried the putt, and with it, his place in history.

Hard and not too far offline. It was a simple strategy that was ahead of its time. One that took a lifetime of painstaking, unglamorous work to fulfill, and the engine behind a Masters memory that will live forever.

The post ‘I shoveled a lot of s—‘: How Ian Woosnam bomb-and-gouged his way to a Masters green jacket appeared first on Golf.

The post ‘I’m playing on one leg’: Inside the grittiest Masters round of the day appeared first on Golf.

The post ‘I’m playing on one leg’: Inside the grittiest Masters round of the day appeared first on Golf.

Sixty-three-year-old Ian Woosnam hadn’t played a competitive round in 18 months before he stepped on to the first tee at Augusta National at 8:24 Thursday morning. Needless to say that 2019 start wasn’t exactly the Masters — it was a senior event in Birmingham, England, where he tied for third, good for €10,017.61.

A few months after that, Woosie decided to move forward with something he’d been putting off: back surgery, on his L3 and L4 vertebrae. “I didn’t fuse,” he said Monday. “Just sort of like, cut it out so my nerves would go through — just loosened it up a little bit.” NBD, right? Seemingly not for Woosie, whose trademark scrappiness powered him to 29 European Tour wins, a green jacket (in 1991) and eight Ryder Cups as a player.

Three or four weeks after the surgery, Woosnam was back at it, banging balls on a range in Barbados, where he keeps a home. Then along came a global pandemic. “I had to fly back to the U.K., and I didn’t really finish off my treatment properly, so I had to sort of like do it over, over the internet, and finish my treatment that way,” Woosnam said. “It gave me time to heal and take time off and try and get myself reasonably into some sort of shape anyway.”

Rules

Which brings us to this week at Augusta National, Woosnam’s 32nd Masters start. Woosie had no intention of making a run. Most of his practice in the lead-up had come on a simulator. The goal, the Welshman said, was “to walk around 18 holes, or 36 holes, and enjoy it. Just to try and play the course without being in any pain really, because I’ve been in pain for the last 20 years playing around here really.”

Alas, it wasn’t to be. During a practice round over the weekend, Woosie was straining for more yards — “just trying to hit it further,” he said — when he pulled a groin muscle while also reaggravating his back. By Wednesday, he said, the pain had gotten worse. On Thursday morning, more of the same. You couldn’t have blamed Woosnam for packing it in, but Woosie being Woosie, there was little chance of that happening.  

So he played. Bogey at the 1st. Two more at the 5th and 7th. Then came his first birdie at the par-5 8th. At the 9th, Woosie short-sided himself in the left greenside bunker, leading to a messy double. But, at 10, he got one back, after slinging his drive around the corner and stuffing his second to three feet. For a fleeting moment it felt like 1991 all over again.

“He’s a phenom, one of the shortest guys that ever played professional golf at 5’4″, at his peak,” Woosie’s fellow Big 5’er, Bernhard Langer, said Thursday afternoon. “Inch for inch, he probably hit the ball further than any human being you’ve ever seen, and with his boxing background, he was just very strong and had a good mind for the game, beautiful technique. You see him, his grip is fantastic, his turn was always good.”

But by the time Woosie made the turn, the ebbs and flows of Augusta’s terrain were getting to him. “On a pretty flat course, I’m pretty good,” he said later. “But as soon as you get on this course, you’re on different slopes — you’re twisting your hips all different ways, you’re hitting off upslopes, downslopes.”

When he holed out for par on the 11th to stay at three over, Woosie was in so much discomfort that he was debating calling it a day. “After the back operation I feel pretty good and then I get to this place and it just tears me apart,” he said.

Food

He played on, slouching after poor shots, expressing little emotion after good ones. After another birdie at 13, followed by bogeys at 15 and 18, Woosie signed for a four-over 76, matching, on what was a supremely difficult day at Augusta National, the score posted by Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau and Matt Wolff. On Thursday evening, 17 players were at five over or worse, including world No. 10 Patrick Cantlay.

Woosnam was asked if he was content with his round.

“I’m playing on one leg really, so yeah,” he said. “Plus I haven’t had a scorecard in my hand for 18 months, so I was pretty damned pleased really.”

And will he get back out there on Friday?

“Well, being that I’m stupid, I’ll most probably play, get out there, and if it is unplayable, I’ll just have to come in.”

Don’t count on it.

The post ‘I’m playing on one leg’: Inside the grittiest Masters round of the day appeared first on Golf.

The post With a style all his own, Sandy Lyle (probably) says goodbye to the Open appeared first on Golf.

The post With a style all his own, Sandy Lyle (probably) says goodbye to the Open appeared first on Golf.

CARNOUSTIE, Scotland — I’ve always had a soft spot for Sandy Lyle. My first British Open was in 1985, the year he won. I had caddied for a player who did not make the cut and watched Sandy up-close through the final nine holes on Sunday. About five years later, I found myself in the cottage home of Alex Lyle, Sandy’s father, then a retired golf professional who had one main swing mantra for his son: “Make it pretty.” Another of his phrases was “tempo, not temper.” It was another era in the game, of course, and it’s curious to think that Lyle was, in his day, a certifiable power player. In the Lyle-Faldo-Seve-Woosnam-Langer gang, all born in 1957 and 1958, Lyle was the smash-it guy. Ballesteros and Woosie were long, but not like Lyle. Sandy kept it simple, overthought nothing, never said a mean word about anybody, was passed over as a Ryder Cup captain because he was too nice and too old-fashioned, and played his way into the Hall of Fame. He played big amiable golf all his life. Ian Woosnam became Ian Woosnam by trying all his life, from boyhood on, to beat Sandy. Harold Woosnam, Ian’s father, once told me that Ian’s boyhood cry was, “I’ll get you one day, Sandy Lyle!” You could fit two Woosie’s in Sandy’s big-boned Scottish frame.

On Friday, Lyle likely played in his final Open. It was his 43rd. Past champions age out now at 60. It used to be 65. That’s how Gary Player got to 47. Lyle could still get in a future Open if he wins a Senior British Open, and he’s playing in one next week, at St. Andrews. He could get in through the 36-hole one day final qualifier, held in early July. Lyle, after his round on Friday, didn’t rule it out, if he’s living in Scotland, if the qualifier is nearby, if he’s feeling and playing well. Chances are, he’s played his last. He shot 75-76. Damn good golf. He still plays in the Masters as a former champ. His win at Augusta in 1988 came off a Sunday birdie on 18, in the last group. Check this: 1-iron into the fairway bunker, 7-iron out of it to 10 feet, made the putt to win by a shot over Calc. His father said, “If I go tomorrow, I’ll be a happy man.” He died in 1996.

Lyle talked for a few minutes about how he and his gang spurred each other on, “no different than Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler and the rest do today,” he said. It’s not every athlete who can acknowledge the excellence of the succeeding generation, but Sandy has always had the giving gene. He was never wound tight, even if his swing was decidedly inflexible.

He made about a 20-footer on the last on Friday for a birdie to end his day and likely his run. It was an odd, tricky left-to-right putt that was faster than it looked. Big Jack made a mini-bomb for his last moment in the Open, at St. Andrews. He was upset, because he missed the cut by two shots. When Lyle’s putt when in, he was elated. Different guy.

I asked Sandy what Seve would have said about his final putt.

“He would have said, `That’s the way to finish!'” And then he made that right-handed uppercut that was the hallmark of the Seve celebration, without the speed or the verve but with a sincere manner that was and is all his own.

The post With a style all his own, Sandy Lyle (probably) says goodbye to the Open appeared first on Golf.

The post Trivia with the World Golf Hall of Fame Class of 2017 appeared first on Golf.

The post Trivia with the World Golf Hall of Fame Class of 2017 appeared first on Golf.

See how much Davis Love III, Ian Woosnam and the rest of the Class of 2017 know about their own careers.

See how much Davis Love III, Ian Woosnam and the rest of the Class of 2017 know about their own careers.

The post Trivia with the World Golf Hall of Fame Class of 2017 appeared first on Golf.