Two weeks after he had won the recent Australian Open to be the first among Novak Djokovic, Roger Federer and himself to clock up 21 majors, Rafa Nadal would have had mixed feelings about his result in the Campeonato de Baleares Mid-Amateur Masculino in his native Spain. On the one hand, he was the runner-up, on the other, he had been hammered by the winner, countryman Federico Paez Weinbaum.
This, though, was golf, with his scores a 74 and a 77 against Paez Weinbaum’s 70 and 69. Definitely not the scratch-handicap Rafa at his best. Nuria Iturrioz, the LET player who lives round the corner from him in Majorca and plays at the same Club de Golf Son Servera, will tell you that what struck her the most when they played together was that he stayed with the same routine before every shot. “His swing,” she added, “isn’t that good, but mentally he’s the best.”
Paez Weinbaum, who just happens to be a golf referee, was rather more flattering about the Nadal swing: “It’s a great swing and he’s able to move the ball whichever way he wants. Not all the professionals can do it as well as he can.”
Plenty of sportsmen and women have the ability to play more than the one sport to a good level, though no-one will ever find himself in the same sporting fix as did Roger Wethered, brother of the legendary Joyce, on 25 July 1921. That was the day when his bogey at the 54th or last hole in the Open Championship at St Andrews cost him the Claret Jug and he discovered that he was expected to play Jock Hutchison in a 36-hole play-off. His plans were ruined. Though he had been all set to catch the night-sleeper down south for a cricket match the following day, he was eventually talked into staying put in St Andrews to give himself the chance of becoming the first amateur to win the championship since Harold Hilton in 1897. (He failed, with a score of 159 for the two rounds to Hutchison’s 150.)
Ashleigh Barty, of course, is the outstanding all-round sportsperson of the moment. In 2014, Barty, who won the women’s singles at the ’22 Australian Open ahead of Nadal coming out on top in the men’s, took a break from tennis, predominantly because she was fed up with all the travel. “I wanted to experience life as a normal teenager,” she explained. She switched to cricket to see what team sport was all about and, in no time at all, she was playing for the Brisbane Heat in the WBBL (Women’s Big Bash League) before returning to tennis in 2016.
Her next time-out from tennis was down to COVID-19. Unwilling to face the restrictions involved in travelling to either of the 2019 French and US opens, she opted to spend her time playing golf, a sport in which her father, Robert, had represented Australia as an amateur. She went into the shop at Brookwater Golf Club to buy herself a few golf balls, and it was there that she met Garry Kissick, the trainee golf professional who is now her fiancé. That coup apart, she captured the women’s championship at the club with a resounding 7-and-5 victory in the final.
“It’s not a big deal,” explained Ashleigh, who seemed a tad embarrassed at the extent to which she had impressed a reporter from the Australian Associated Press. Big deal or not, Tiger Woods had been impressed when he saw her hitting shots in a sideshow ahead of the ’19 Presidents Cup.
Meanwhile, Australia’s Scott Draper, who coached the 14-year-old Barty at tennis, has achieved an extraordinary double of his own in golf and tennis. Back in 2005, he performed the unique feat of playing in golf’s Victorian Open and the Australian Tennis Open at the one time. (He was right-handed in golf and left-handed in tennis in contrast to Ivan Lendl, a scratch handicapper who did things the opposite way round.)
After Draper had played his first round in the three-round Victorian Open first thing on the morning of the 28 January 2005, he hurried to Melbourne Park to partner Sam Stosur in the semi-finals of the Aussie Open mixed doubles. It was just as well that he missed the cut in the golf in that it left him free to play in the final of the tennis event which the couple won. A week later, Draper was as many as 20-under par in seizing the New South Wales PGA Championship on the Von Nida Tour.
Back in the 1990s, I was lucky enough to interview Rod Laver during the pro-am ahead of what was then the Women’s Colgate Dinah Shore in Palm Springs, California. One exchange I will never forget came when I asked, excitedly, for his thoughts on the British tennis stars of the moment.
Laver could not have been more mannerly in the way he handled the question. “I’m so sorry,” he began, “but could you just remind me who they are?”
Top: Tennis legend Rafael Nadal on the golf course in 2020
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