Australian Open golf: players hone their skills on the range

Peter Senior was huddled to the left of the Royal Sydney driving range yesterday with Craig Parry and Rod Pampling.

Geoff Ogilvy during practice for the Australian Open at Royal Sydney yesterday. Picture. Phil Hillyard

Phil Mickelson was playing a practice round with Dustin Johnson and Nick Watney before a British Open at St Andrews. Watney was being harassed into playing for a thousand bucks on his first trek around the Old Course.

When he suggested he would rather play for a less substantial sum, perhaps a thousand dollars less, they abused him.

Mickelson won the cash and Watney dutifully handed over a grand before heading to the driving range … only for Mickelson to screw up his face at the pile of greenbacks in the palm of his twitching left hand.

ESPN reported: “Watney, knowing the amount could easily increase with presses or novelty bets, had told them he preferred to play for less. ‘They started calling me names that shouldn’t be in print,’ he says. ‘So I gave in to peer pressure’. On the 18th green, Watney counted out $1000 and handed it over with a word of congratulations. Mickelson grabbed the stack of cash, gave it a quick glance and handed it right back. ‘This is Britain,’ he told Watney. ‘I need pounds.’ Watney stared at him, hoping it was a joke. It wasn’t. He had no choice but to pay Mickelson $US1700 to satisfy the currency exchange. ‘They’ve asked me to play again,’ Watney says with a slight smile. ‘And now I just say f. k you and walk away’.”

Practice rounds were in full swing at Royal Sydney Golf Club yesterday in preparations for tomorrow’s start to the Australian Open.

When players were not on the course, they were on the driving range, or the putting green, or the chipping green, all of which seemed the ideal environment for loners, which most golfers are at heart, where they could tinker with their most valuable assets, their swings, for hours on end without having to talk to another soul.

If any of the groups were playing for a thousand bucks, Australian or American, they were keeping it to themselves, although today’s pro-am pairing of Adam Scott and Brian Lara would seem ripe for at least 20 bucks a hole.

If Lara can burgle a decent handicap.

Peter Senior was huddled to the left of the range yesterday with Craig Parry and Rod Pampling. He’s been trying to not sway at the start of his backswing for decades and on the eve of his last Australian Open before retirement, the 57-year-old is still trying to stop himself from swaying.

“It can feel easy. It can feel impossible,” Senior says. “We’re all here honing what we have, tweaking things here and there, just like we’ve been doing for years, trying to find that little ingredient that will make it feel right. And if it feels right, we’re trying to hone it so it stays right. We’re always working on something.

“The range is the place where you reinforce what you’re trying to do so you can take it onto the course. You keep doing it again and again and hope it’s grooved. You see a lot of video cameras here, that’s been a big change. You can’t see your own swing so it used to be all on feel, but these days it’s easy to record your swing on your phone or whatever else. Seeing your swing is an important part of the process. We hit a few balls, look at the video, hope we can make some sense of it.”

Senior has spent the best part of half a century on driving ranges. With only two tournaments to go in his career, he’s still fiddling and adjusting and readjusting and re-fiddling like a rookie, an insight into the never-ending riddle that is golf. He held his wrist here, tried to get his left shoulder there, tried to keep his head still instead of moving back with the club.

The range at Royal Sydney is too small for the professionals. Two-hundred metres is the farthest marker, meaning players are clobbering balls clean out of Royal Sydney and into the neighbouring Woollahra club.

A smattering of spectators are marvelling at Senior’s irons consistently landing right near the 150 sign, which brings to mind the tale of Lee Trevino losing patience with an elderly female fan who watched him on the range in his heyday. For every single shot, the woman shouted, wow! Great shot! Look at that! Trevino finally spun on his heels and said, “Lady, I won the US Open. What did you expect? Ground balls?”

Senior swayed with every shot. Some sways were bigger than others. The smaller the sway, the straighter the ball flight, you could bet on it. He finished his session with his driver. His first attempt went like a bullet. He held his follow through and admired the towering ball flight. No sway! His next drive was pulled to the left. He swayed! His next drive was an exaggerated fade.

Only a small amount of sway! He seemed content enough with that because, as Trevino also said, you can talk to a fade but a hook never listens.

“You can be on top of it one minute and the next you feel like you’ve never played before,” Senior said.

“The range is where all the hard work gets done. You get all the highs and lows of golf on a range as much as you do on a course. You never really work it out. I’ve always moved back when I’ve started my swing. When I don’t move back, I can swing the club right. That’s what I’ve been working on. No movement backwards. I’ve been really concentrating on that for at least the last 20 years.

“One of these days, you’d reckon I could get it right.”