When the leaders in the recent Mallorca Golf Open were struggling with that stressful double of slow play and rising tension, the talk in the Sky commentary box was of how they should “stay in the moment.”
In keeping with which, Richard Boxall, from the ranks of the commentators, began to recall that day in the 1990 Peugeot Open de France when he made the mistake of doing the complete opposite. At a time when he was leading the tournament with eight to play, he started thinking ahead to his winner’s speech.
Since the admission was all the more interesting in that not too many professionals would want to own to such an elementary error, I was probably not alone in wanting to hear more. Maddeningly, the tale was cut short when another member of the commentary team was primed to draw viewers’ attention to some interesting developments on the course.
The updates complete, the third member of the commentary team returned to Boxall’s speech, saying he was sure it would have been a good one. But by then the moment for the World Cup Englishman to resume had well and truly passed. And that was that until GGP asked if he would be good enough to give us the full version.
In Chantilly that year he had been playing in the final group alongside then Masters champion Nick Faldo. The two were level after nine but when Boxall holed his bunker shot at the 10th he took the lead.
Both players caught the fairway from the tee of the par-four 11th before coming to a standstill as the players in front dallied on the green.
When the time came for Boxall to return to the golf, there was something missing: his concentration.
“I don’t have any trouble in remembering what happened next,” said Boxall. whose confidence had been buoyed by a runaway win in the early-season Italian Open. “Since I’d done my yardages and everything for my next shot, I leaned against my golf bag and gazed down the fairway. Almost at once, my eyes were drawn to the handsome yellow Peugeot signs draped round the back of the green.
“I can see them now and they were just the cue I needed. I decided I would start my speech by paying a warm tribute to Peugeot for their sponsorship – and that I would go on from there to mention a courtesy car service which had been up there with the best we had ever known.”
When the time came for Boxall to return to the golf, there was something missing: his concentration. His second flew wide of the green, he duffed his chip and he dropped out of the lead. After that, he struggled all the way as Philip Walton, Bernhard Langer, Eduardo Romero, Faldo and Rick Hartmann went galloping past to leave him in a share of sixth place.
Thereafter, Boxall stuck, religiously, to practising what he had first learned from his psychologist, Alan Fine, about staying in the moment. Indeed, he nowadays goes out of his way to remind people that it is not the tired old cliché they might think. “It can work for everyone,” he promises.
He himself, however, did experience one more notable collapse, if of a rather different nature …
When he was only two shots off the lead in the middle of his third round in the 1991 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, there was an ominous crack as he played a 1-iron from the ninth tee. His beloved club was still in one piece but his left leg had snapped.
For the next eight months, this staunch advocate of “staying in the moment” was going nowhere.
E-MAIL LEWINE
Lewine Mair