Ok, the course may not be the longest on the roster of the USPGA Tour, standing at 6841 yards but what happened on Sunday was record breaking in every sense for him, the course and the USPGA Tour. Nobody has ever shot 58 on the USPGA Tour beforehand and two weeks’ ago you would have said that shooting that score was impossible, if not a little fanciful. However…. just two weeks earlier on the Web.com Tour (the little brother to the USPGA Tour) a little known player called Steven Jaeger, shot the same score over a course four hundred yards longer.
So that’s two 58s in less than a month. Jaeger’s was a very even 29/29 split where Furyk’s a little bit lopsided with an outward nine of 27 and an inward half of 31. Both scores were posted over a par 70, so a little help with the overall par was needed. I’m not taking away from the achievement, just pointing out that the conditions were favourable for the two players to go out and break the records.
It’s probably easy for you the reader to think, “Well that’s ridiculous, they’ve played eighteen holes in ten shots more than I play nine!” For the most part you would be right but that is the gap now between what the best of the best are capable of any given Sunday and what the public do on a week by week basis.
The thing which stands out the most about Furyk’s achievement is that he is probably the most underrated player in the game. You could almost say journeyman; if you did you would be very unfair. Some have described his swing as looking like an octopus falling from a tree, or the kind of swing only a mother could love. You can see why, but (and it’s a big but) who cares? If it works it works, if you can play you can play, if you accurately know what the ball is doing you can seriously play.
Here are some interesting fact about Furyk; he hasn’t missed a Ryder Cup Squad since 1995 (Oakhill) and hasn’t missed a President’s Cup since 1998. Now if you factor in his official prize money is just, four hundred and thirty three dollars, short of sixty-seven million dollars - a journeyman he is not.
Whilst we watch and compare golf to the gymnasts and divers on show at the Olympics, the competitors are being scored by a panel of judges who are giving equal measure to the difficulty of the movement as well as the delivery of the movement. Or in athletics it’s how far you can throw something, how high you get or how fast you can cover the distance.
None of this matters in golf, it’s all about how few shots you can make to get the ball in the hole. If we were judging the performance by the beauty of a swing Adam Scott, Justin Rose and Louis Oosthuizen would be in the top five every time. If it was about how well you putted, Steve Stricker, Matteo Mannesaro and David Howell would have cleaned up.
So which Olympic event is most comparable to golf? I would have to say something like a cross between the Pentathlon and the Biathlon. Pentathlon because you have to be excellent at a number of events; putting, driving, bunker shots, chipping, pitching, flop shots for example. Biathlon because you have to manage exhaustion whilst being controlled and totally target orientated. Ok, exhaustion might be a little over the mark, but if you’ve seen me walk up a hill you might cut that comment some slack.
There’s a great observation in golf which goes a little like this, “Golf swings don’t win tournaments, Champions do.” So there will always be room for the Jim Furyks and Bubba Watsons in golf.
Furyk’s only swing coach was his father and Bubba says proudly that he has never had a golf lesson in his life. Which proves that if you put the time in, work diligently and believe, a lot of good can happen.
On the other hand, if the circumstances are a little different, where you feel like you are swinging like Furyk with the balance of Bubba and shooting 58, but over nine holes, perhaps you need to come to The Golf Integrated Academy at Vila Sol. You’ll be in safe hands.