MIND / 75TH ANNIVERSARY M
won their first ma- jors. Faldo’s steady run of poor finishes also cost him spon- sors. “Outwardly at least, it was like he really didn’t care,” remembers Lead- better. “He just set that Claret jug as his holy grail, and that was it.” As Faldo told Guy Yocom in 2006, there was more. “I’ve kept much of that experience to myself. It was dark, intense and sometimes negative, won- dering when the changes were going to take – and if they would take.” In 1987, they did. “Everything finally became less conscious,” Leadbetter says. A turning point was at the Magno- lia State Classic in Mississippi, the opposite-field event the week of the Masters, which Faldo was not invited to for the second year in a row. “I could sense that Nick was uptight about missing Augusta. Without really think- ing the last thing I said to him was, ‘soften your arms.’ With that thought, he went and shot four 67s and finished second. It was a breakthrough feeling for Nick that he carried right through Muirfield, something I said purely on instinct.” In May, Faldo won the Spanish Open, his first victory in three years, on a course set up by Seve Ballesteros to ap- proximate major-championship condi- tions. It was a positive signal to Faldo that his game had a new dimension. The Open at Muirfield would be Fal- do’s first major of the year, but Lead- better had to stay in the US. Before the championship he told Faldo, “You’re ready.” “In retrospect, it was almost ideal,” says Leadbetter of the week that Faldo turned 30. “By my not being there, Nick had to take off the training wheels, and that’s when he really owned the chang- es he had made. That final round of 18 pars, that penetrating 5-iron approach on the last hole, held up. Muirfield was the giant step for both of us.” For all the great players that Lead- better coached over more than four decades, he never had another whose perfectionism so thoroughly matched his own. SEEING GREEN Leadbetter eyes Faldo’s putting stroke the week of his first Masters victory.
rounded motion in the backswing by having him turn his left forearm clock- wise along a flatter plane while pivot- ing more deeply into a flexed right leg. In the downswing, initiating the tran- sition with a turning rather than the sliding of the hips shallowed the plane into impact. The former reverse-C fin- ish was transformed into one marked by a straighter body and a lower arm follow-through. The result was a lower, more pen- etrating ball flight that was easier to control and allowed more shot-making versatility. With the rotational big mus- cles allowing the hands to be more pas- sive, Faldo’s swing would be less timing reliant and more resistant to pressure. It was a swing built more for precision than power and so was especially suit- ed to iron play. “Major championships test iron play more than any part of the game,” Leadbetter says. “Every great player has been a great iron player. Nick became one of the best ever.” When Faldo and Leadbetter began working together in June of 1985 in the Central Florida heat at Grenelefe, the soon-to-be 28-year-old Faldo would hit more than a 1 000 balls a day. “He was relentless,” Leadbetter says. “When I spent a week with Nick, I was mentally tired but also exhilarated. He was a perfect student. He had learned the new movements pretty quickly. Of course, they hadn’t been embedded in tournament play, which is the hard part that takes time.” There were legions of British doubt- ers who feared their young hero would lose his way with this obscure guru. They gained more ammunition as the year went on, as Faldo finished at the bottom of the field in strokeplay events, including a T-53 at the Open, and then was forced into the lion’s mouth at the Ryder Cup at the Belfry. Faldo was expected to be a stalwart on a European team vying to win for the first time since 1957, but with the swing changes he simply wasn’t ready for such a pressurised arena. After playing poor- ly while paired with Bernhard Langer, Faldo asked captain Tony Jacklin to keep him out until the singles, which he would also lose. The roasting he and Leadbetter received would have been
“When I spent a week with Nick, I was mentally tired but also exhilarated. He was the perfect student.” worse but for Team Europe winning. “That was too much, too soon, and Nick was exposed,” Leadbetter says. “The thought crossed my mind that if he was ever going to quit this project, this was the time. But he kept looking big picture and never had a questioning word, which increased my confidence that something very good was going to come of this.” Yet 1986 was another long year, high- lighted only by a fifth-place finish at the Open at Turnberry. Faldo increased his intensity, diligently following Leadbet- ter’s encouragement of constantly re- peated swing drills. “Nick is very much a feel player, contrary to how he is perceived,” says Leadbetter. “He did the drills because he understood that they reinforce an exaggerated feel that you can keep within yourself and repeat. It’s that feel, not thought, that you rely on in competition.” There was no ignoring the ticking clock as Faldo’s contemporaries, San- dy Lyle, Langer, and Greg Norman, all
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