Observer archive: Best golfer in the world

The American golfer Bobby Jones hated to see himself described as having played a brave shot, the concept of courage in a game containing no trace of danger was, to his mind, absurd.

He had a point, but one of such narrow pedantry as to deny the truth.

Anyone who watched the television coverage of last week’s United States Open Golf Championship, and saw the close-ups of Tony Jacklin’s boyish face gulping for air, cheeks ballooning in stuttering exhalation, will have recognised that his victory was essentially a conquest of fear.

There were plenty of ghosts to haunt him as he played out those six last holes – he said later that he kept remembering incidents like the time when Arnold Palmer lost a seven-shot lead over the last nine holes in this same championship four years ago. He was caught by Billy Casper and lost the play-off next day. And there were other, more powerful demons within him.

At 15, so the legend goes, Jacklin had a violent argument with his father. Jacklin senior, who drove a lorry for a sand and gravel contractor in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, was ambitious for his son and wanted him to become apprenticed to an engineering craft. The boy insisted he was going to be a professional golfer. The shouting match ended with Tony hoisting his golf bag on to his shoulders storming from the house and promising: “I’ll never accept another penny from you as long as I live.”  He never did.

Whatever the facts, the story is entirely true to Jacklin’s character. Headstrong, conceited and temperamental, he made no secret of his intention to become the greatest golfer in the world, a laudable ambition but one best kept to oneself.

He was a likeable lad but there were times, especially when things weren’t going his way, when he was a royal pain in the neck. He was lucky in his choice of golf as a career. Conceit simply cannot survive in a game which contrives so many ways of making even the best players look like fools.

His next stroke of luck was to become an assistant at Potters Bar Golf Club under Bill Shankland, a craggy Australian of intimidating physical strength, who recognised that this cocky brat was something out of the usual run of assistants and set about the shaping of a champion in much the way that he turns a rough block of persimmon wood into a highly finished precision golf club.

First the rasp to remove the rough edges. He force-fed him rough edges humility, riding him hard and giving him the dirtiest jobs.

While the other assistants served in the shop and repaired clubs, Jacklin cleaned the shoes and clubs of the members, swept the shop and acted as general dogsbody. Jacklin hated Shankland at the time. A hundred times a day he chanted his private litany: “I’ll show that bastard.”

Much later he realised that he was not so much being picked on as picked out. When Shankland was satisfied that nothing was going to deflect Jacklin, he moved on to the sandpaper varnish stage, modifying Jacklin’s amateur swing into an action that would stand up to the pressures of pro golf.

Jacklin emerged from his apprenticeship with a strong swing, a realistic attitude to his job and a belated affection for Shankland. He had a quick success on the modest British tournament circuit, but was hindered by the same quality which was his greatest strength – an impatient and consuming drive to get to the top. He would play himself into a challenging position and then, sensing a kill, his swing would get shorter, and faster, with dire effect on his directional control.

Some golfers never acquire the self-discipline to maintain their rhythm at the critical moments when nervous tension is worst. Again Jacklin was lucky with the entry of two more people into his life.

The first was the American impresario and business manager Mark McCormack. who had already guided Arnold Palmer. Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player into the world of personal jet planes and million-dollar deals.

McCormack realised that Britain was starved of a golf hero and he picked Jacklin as the likeliest candidate. That meant America and another phase in the education of a golfer in the toughest school in the world.

Although the American golf circuit offers something over $6 million a year in prize money, most of it is creamed off by the leading players.  Most youngsters from Britain, homesick in an alien and sometimes hostile environment, cannot adapt quickly enough to produce their best golf. They return home dispirited and broke.

Jacklin has the aptitudes of a hermit crab. He did not let the sharp edges of the American way grate on his British sensibilities but he moulded himself around them. To that extent he has become Americanised. He rationalises his attitude simply: “I knew I was going to have to live in America a lot of the time so I made up my mind from the start that I was going to like it.”

Last week he said much the same thing about the Hazeltine National course which some of the players had characterised as “The Brute”.

“I knew they wouldn’t change the course on my account so I decided I had better get to like it.”

Even with that advantage, he did not begin to realise his potential until he married. On a trip home he saw an attractive girl at a dance and told himself: “That’s the one for you.”

She wasn’t so sure. She thought him uppity and too full of himself by half. Still, one dance wouldn’t hurt. It was enough.

Marriage brought stability into Jacklin’s Gypsy life on the golf tour, and he knows it. At a tournament in Dayton, Ohio, last year I was slightly concerned at meeting Vivien Jacklin walking in Tony’s gallery. It was impossibly hot and humid and baby was due in two or three weeks. I suggested she ought to sit in the shade for a bit with cool drink. “No, I’m all right,” she said, adding in explanation: “Tony never talks to me when playing, of course, but he likes to look up at times and see me. Even when there are hundreds of people and he couldn’t possibly pick out he likes to here somewhere.”

With everything working for him. Jacklin at last claimed his birthright by winning the Open Championship last year.

Then Eric Brown, the British Ryder Cup captain, astutely pitted Jacklin against the top American players; Jacklin responded by aggressively carrying the team to a tie.

One doubt remained. The late Walter Hagen’s squelching remark – “Anyone can win an Open – once” – carries an unspoken corollary. By winning last week Jacklin passed his final test.

Lytham was no fluke; he had proved, with his second classic victory, worthy of his own high ambition.

Watching his play over the last holes at Minnesota on Sunday, you did not need to be an expert to appreciate the excellence of his driving. But those second shots, hit to the front of the greens and yards from the hole – were they good shots?

The answer is that they would provoke no comment in a club competition but in the context of an Open championship, with all his instincts to hit the ball right up to the flag, those conservative, controlled shots were super and, above all, brave. They marked Jacklin’s final maturity.

Some years ago I wrote in The Observer Colour Magazine that Jacklin would be a millionaire by the time he was 30. He has made it with five years to spare and today it is impossible to assess his financial standing beyond the most satisfactory word in the fiscal vocabulary: enough.

Money has given him a comfortable home, a flash Jensen car and an easier life but, most important to him, it has eliminated one of the demons within: one pressure fewer in the business of winning golf titles. The winning has brought him a mellowness and engaging modesty. There is, after all, nothing left to prove except that he can go on winning.

Jacklin has done much for golf; but golf has done more, far more, for Tony Jacklin.