IN THE absence of Tiger Woods for the rest of the season, the golf world awaits the crowning of a new No.1. It is anticipated that Phil Mickelson will surely step up and grab the biggest honour that has eluded him, but Mickelson has a habit of missing out, and of the top ten in the world right now, only one player has actually dethroned Tiger Woods, and that is Ernie Els.
He may have been No.1 for just nine weeks, but now the absence of the Tiger could see the lion of South Africa roaring back to the top. Except for one tiny problem – by his exalted standards, Els has been playing unsatisfactory golf for most of this
season. The man they call the Big Easy has been finding things a little tough.
Next week he returns to Loch Lomond where he won in 2000 in the tournament's original guise as the Standard Life Invitational, before adding the Barclays Scottish Open in 2003. Then it's on to Royal Birkdale to try and win the Open Championship for a second time.
If he is to get back to winning ways, Els himself hints that he has to perform an anatomically impossible feat. Asked recently about the difficulties he had been experiencing, he replied with succinct description of the nature of his problems. "My head was up my behind a little bit," said Els. "The game kind of grinds you a little bit."
Those comments came after his sparkling performance in the early rounds of last month's US Open at Torrey Pines – his putting eventually let him down and he finished 14th – which may just have marked the start of a second revival of the year for the South African.
The first resurgence came after more than three years without a win on the American PGA Tour when Els won the Honda Classic in early March, beating Luke Donald by a shot. He has won plenty tournaments around the world in the last four seasons, but it was still a relief for Els to notch an American victory.
No sooner was that bogey punily laid to rest, however, when his form slumped so badly that he missed the cut in five of his next seven tournaments and he finished only joint-46th in the Masters. To put that run in perspective, Els once simultaneously held the record for consecutive tournaments without being cut, 46 on the US tour and an incredible 82 from 2000 to 2007 on the European Tour.
Even his rabid fans in the South African sporting press openly speculated that Els might just have lost the desire for playing golf. He has a booming course-design business, with the latest being at the multi-billion Dubai Sport City. He works hard for charities, especially those for children – his young son Ben is autistic – and he is very, very wealthy, with homes at Wentworth in England, in the USA and in South Africa.
Els will also hit the big four-oh late next year, an age when even the best golfers start to power down. Having played golf since the age of nine, after 61 victories around the world, perhaps Els was starting to wake up and smell the coffee – or in his case wine, as he co-owns one of South Africa's finest wineries.
Normally Els drives for miles, hits long iron shots to die for, his touch round the greens is genie-like and when he drops the putts, he really nails them. In short, usually there are no weaknesses to his game, but the drastic slump in form this spring required drastic measures.
Out has gone coach David Leadbetter and in has come Butch Harmon, mentor to Tiger Woods, Greg Norman, Adam Scott and Darren Clarke among others. Out, too, has gone caddie JP Fitzgerald, replaced by Yorkshireman Ricci Roberts, who was Els' bag carrier when he won his two US Opens in 1994 and 1997, and also at Muirfield when Els won his sole Open.
Harmon's first diagnosis concerned Els' swing, which was always fluid for a man of 6ft 3in and 15st. The pair set to work to rectify the problems, and Els is sure that improvements are already noticeable.
"It's just trying to get the swing on plane," Els explained. "I got a bit long on my backswing, and subsequently got out of sync with my lower body and upper body. And trying to be very aggressive through the ball, going forward instead of leaning back, and that's basically just starting with a good position on the backswing. From there you can really power the ball. I felt like I drove it really well. It's starting to feel a lot more comfortable."
Reuniting with Roberts for at least the third time, Els said: "It was a tough decision breaking up with JP. Over the last 18 months or so he's become a great friend of mine and a friend of the family, too. He spent a lot of time with me, a lot of hours on the range, and he was supportive all the way when I first spoke about working with Butch. He's a great caddie and we'll stay good friends, I know.
"But still, just now it feels right getting back together with Ricci. We've obviously got a long and successful track record together; one of the best in the business, in fact. Hopefully there are many more wins to come."
However, does he himself have the desire to keep going? After winning that Honda Classic, Els was open about the choices facing him: "I am 38 right now and I can, quite easily, go and enjoy my kids and go build golf courses and stuff. But I really still want to achieve a lot in the game and I still want to win a lot."
On his personal website yesterday he told the world just how he would achieve that lot: "Generally speaking, I'd say this is the hardest I've worked on my game in a long, long time. I'm now starting to see some results tee-to-green and my stats at the US Open showed that. It's satisfying, but there's more to do. To be honest, this is the most motivated I've felt in a while. It's hard work obviously, but I'm loving it. And when it all comes together, I know it is going to feel very sweet."
No Tiger, new coach, new swing, new(ish) caddie, new zest for hard work – at Loch Lomond and Royal Birkdale, the Big Easy might just make it very hard for the competition to stop him being No.1 all over again.
The full article contains 1119 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
