A plea for more smiles and visibility among golf’s gilded set

A plea for more smiles and visibility among golf’s gilded set

Jack Nicklaus (left), Arnold Palmer and Gary Player, shown during the 1970 British Open at the Old Course in St. Andrews, used to love mixing with the locals.

Ernest Chapman, Mirrorpix via Getty Images

TROON, SCOTLAND | The more today’s professionals travel, the more they want to stay in their own world. One of their more recent preferences – and it applies at Royal Troon Golf Club this week – is to have their own tented, triple-deck hub, a creation given over to their training facilities, ice baths, physio rooms, relaxation areas, restaurants, and so much more.

That most of them no longer want to use the clubhouse may be sad for the members and for everyone else who likes to get to know something of the players’ off-course personas. But it clearly works for them, as does their inclination to rent a house with a chef as opposed to mingling with the outside world in a hotel.

Yet when such players as Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Gary Player used to come over for the Open, they looked forward to chatting with old friends among the locals at the various venues.

At Royal Troon, club members and staff at the Marine Hotel (which overlooks the 18th green) alike have been dining out on their conversations with the stars for years, and that’s what they are going to miss as much as anything else in the future.

To give just a few illustrations, it was back in 1989, when a porter-cum-Jack-of-all-trades was sent to Room 110 of the Marine to mend Jack Nicklaus’ phone. A bemused Nicklaus took one look at the fellow’s splattered white overalls and asked, “If you’re a painter, why would they have sent you here to mend the phone?”

“Because I can do something of everything,” came the reply.

The same all-rounder, when he was called to fix the taps in Vijay Singh’s bedroom, could not take his eyes off the players’ clubs, all of which had been lined up along the bedroom floor. Singh had a rag in his hand and was cleaning each of the shafts in turn.

“Do you play?” checked the golfer of his wide-eyed handyman. When he was on the receiving end of an eager nod, he went on to ask if he would show him his swing.

“What, in here?” queried the alarmed visitor. “I’d better not.”

Another member of staff recalls a day when he led Gary Player to his room and told him along the way that his dad was his greatest fan. “That’s good to hear,” said Player, or words to that effect. “I’ll give you my phone number and I’ll speak to him.”

Seve Ballesteros signs autographs during the 1997 British Open at Royal Troon.

R&A Championships via Getty Images

Jaclyn Jennings, today the rooms manager at the hotel, remembers signing in Seve Ballesteros for the 1997 Open week and enjoying a bit of chat in the process.

Though the Spaniard was upset to miss the cut, he remembered that conversation and how Jennings had told him that her husband was the only golfer in her family. He caught up with her before he left and handed over his player’s pass on the grounds that her other half might want to spend his weekend watching play.

Phil Mickelson, no less than Seve, had his faults, but the Mickelson whom Jennings saw was “a lovely man.” His golfing fans would have gone along with that on the grounds that he seldom, if ever, refused to sign an autograph. Jennings, though, was impressed with how he went out of his way to thank the housekeeping team on his floor.

By the time it came to the 2016 Open, the one when Henrik Stenson had the better of Mickelson, things were starting to change. According to a staff member who has been at the hotel for as long as he can remember, the players were as friendly as they had ever been, only by then they were coming off their private planes armed with Tupperware containers bearing their own ultra-healthy fare.

Could there come a time when today’s players, with their tented hubs, are so one-track-minded about their golf that it could amount to a step too far?

Maybe it was always going to come to that. Back in the ’60s, Player was arguably the first of the golfers to link performance with diet. To start with, he was laughed out of court for eating a banana at every other hole, but goodness knows how many billions of bananas have been devoured by golfers, tennis players and other athletes since then.

Moving on from the start of the banana blitz, Robert Karlsson, a Ryder Cup player in 2006 and 2008 and a vice captain in next year’s Ryder Cup for a third time, followed the instructions of his Swedish dentist-cum-guru to grow his own breakfast cereal in his hotel basin.

This GGP correspondent asked the said dentist if she could fly over to Sweden to interview him and he agreed, although only on condition that he could extract any mercury fillings which the writer might have.

This may sound a bit pathetic, but the answer to that improbable request was a firm: “No.”

However, when I interviewed Karlsson at a stage when his name was first being put forward for the Ryder Cup vice captaincy, I mentioned his breakfast-in-a-basin habit and asked if it was something that he still practised. “Not anymore,” he said with a chuckle, “but there was a time when I was prepared to give anything a try.”

Bryson DeChambeau engages in some “dimpled chit-chat” after winning the 2024 U.S. Open.

Gregory Shamus, Getty Images

Good for Player and Karlsson, but could there come a time when today’s players, with their tented hubs, are so one-track-minded about their golf that it could amount to a step too far? And that does not just apply to the professionals, but to those amateurs who are chasing their World Amateur Golf Ranking points and, on the women’s side at least, often looking as if they are sitting exams in the process.

Golfers need to be seen to be enjoying their golf rather more than concentrating on the millions they might make.

Bryson DeChambeau’s “dimpled chit-chat,” as Washington Post columnist Sally Jenkins described this LIV man’s contact with the crowds en route to winning the U.S. Open, may have provided a touch of light relief for some. But if, as others suspect, his frolics were down to LIV golf-recommended merriment, we can rest assured that they will fall out of fashion almost as quickly as that clichéd falsehood. “I had fun out there.”

As far as the connoisseurs are concerned, it’s the smiles and expressions of a Scottie Scheffler or a Rory McIlroy which speak the truth and stand the test of time