took it 20 yards left of the green, almost over the tree line, and hit a huge slice in there. It bounced off the fringe and rolled up to 12 feet, and he beat the college boys in his pairing. Of course, he didn’t always hit the right shot, and he didn’t always win the tournament. It might not seem like it today with all the talk about Scot- tie being “boring.” Nobody wants to play better more than Scottie, and as a younger player, his temper would get the better of him, not where you would necessarily see it – and not directed at another competitor or any other person – but you wouldn’t want to be a locker or the carpet in front of it because he’d scorch it. He learned to channel that into the desire to work on whatever it was that let him down. It became positive fuel. Instead of being humiliated by losing, he wanted to show what he could do the next time.
Scottie but with little graphite shafts and some weight shaved from the heads so that they were in proportion to the length. The wedges were real ones – a 56 and 60 – and was he so proud of those. His clubs might have just reached the bottom of his bag by the time he started playing in big events against fully-grown competitors. Scottie was 13 the year the Texas State Amateur was played at Royal Oaks, and he was paired with college players who were a foot taller, 50 yards longer – and car- ried those big-time college logo bags. Scottie was in it, too, hanging around the top 20, but when he got to the 16th hole, a 220-yard par-3, he hated the idea of having to hit driver when the college play- ers were hitting 5-iron. I told him I’d be watching from next to the green and that he’d better pick the right club. Sure enough, the big headcover came off. But the hole was playing downwind, so Scottie
VIDEO VAULT Scottie at 14 from my V1 archives. Grip is still a bit strong, but even then he was more about delivering
the clubface than making a swing.
76 GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA
JULY/AUGUST 2024
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