EarthGolf

Nice interview with Nick Faldo at the Times. Although, I have to admit to amusement when the article’s author is amazed that Faldo hasn’t hit the hard drugs. Imagine a person of strong enough will, integrity and intelligence that they can find a release without turning to the crack pipe. Novel!

“EVER tried cocaine?” I ask.

“No,” he replies.

“Never?”

“No, I’ve never seen hard drugs, never mind taken them; I’ve not even had a drag from a cigarette.”

“You’ve never seen hard drugs?”

“No.”

“Or been offered them?”

“I was offered a spliff once. I’m in Hawaii and this guy comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, want to come to a party tonight? Want some bud?’ I said, ‘What?’ He says, ‘Do you want some bud?’ I thought he was talking about Budweiser, that’s how square I was. So, no I have never seen it; I am pretty naive on that, pretty square.”

“That’s a surprise,” I observe. “I would have thought, given the circles you move in, that you would have been offered it at least once.”

“But I have never been in those circles,” he argues. “I’ve never been a party-goer. Some guys are down in the nightclubs until four o’clock in the morning, but I’ve never been like that. I was going to say ‘hate’, but I’m not interested in nightclubs. Why go to a place where it’s smoky and it stinks and it’s so loud that you can’t even talk?”

“So what was your release?” I ask.

“My release?”

“Yes, what was your release when you were the world No 1?”

“To just get away from things,” he says. “To go fishing for the day.”

“Fishing! And that would be enough, would it?”

“Yes, I have always been that way. It started as a kid by going cycling. I’d come home and get on my bike and ride through the villages of Hertfordshire and get lost. I’d be out there for hours, just riding from village to village down beautiful country lanes, so that was my first release.”

“You enjoyed your own company?”

“Yeah, I’d go to the range on my own and I’d be happy as a sand-boy doing my routine; getting up every morning, arriving at the club, practising and making up games on my own and then playing in the afternoon on my own with imaginary friends — or imaginary pros, rather, and I was happy, mega-happy. I have never been bored with golf. I still enjoy tipping a bag of balls out and having somebody watching my swing.”

“So, you’re saying that when you were world No 1 and the pressure was intense, that a day’s fishing could reboot you?”

“Yeah, it was just great to get away; to get down on the river with no clock-watching and spend the day there, but I haven’t had enough of that; my schedule for years has been crazy. It’s like, Jackie Stewart calls me and says, ‘Why don’t you come to Monaco next week?’ And I’m thinking, ‘Oh no’, because I know Matthew [his son] would love to go. So I tell him a week later, ‘Guess who called me, Matthew?’ and he is literally beating me up. ‘Oh Dad, you’re joking’. And I say, ‘Next year’, but it’s tough to keep saying, ‘Next year’.”

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