CARNOUSTIE, SCOTLAND | Last Monday, Jean Van de Velde was among those French golfers who carried the Olympic torch in a relay ’round Le Golf National, the suburban Paris venue which is playing host to their sport on August 1-4. A day later and he was practising for the Senior Open at Carnoustie, the links where, in 1999, he came so torturously close to winning the Open Championship.
What happened on the last day 25 years ago is not a story that can easily be cut short, but to give it a go, the then 33-year-old Van de Velde was three shots ahead standing on the 18th tee in the final round before closing with a triple bogey-7.
“If there’s any shot I have regretted more than the rest,” he told GGP on Tuesday evening, “it was my third. I should have taken the Barry Burn out of the equation.”
Having been fortunate to find dry land with his drive, his 2-iron second ricocheted from a lone metal rod on the spectator-stand before taking another jump – this one backwards – from the Barry Burn’s wall into deep rough.
Then came the third shot that has irked him ever since, landing as it did in the water. At which point the photographers were able to take their award-winning pictures of a bare-footed Van de Velde standing amid the rising tide as he decided on his next move.
Eventually, he took a penalty drop before dispatching shot No. 5 into a greenside bunker.
The bunker shot and the 6-footer which took him into a playoff with Justin Leonard and Paul Lawrie could not have been more commendable. Lawrie went on to win and, not that it would have been much consolation, the Frenchman stole the headlines.
Last week’s Senior Open – he had played in the 2016 installment at Carnoustie – was not some maudlin exercise on Van de Velde’s part: “In a humble sort of way, I saw it as the best place for what’s likely to be my last Senior Open.”
He said that he would be keeping an eye open for all those friendly folk who had willed him to get the job done all those years ago, and that he would be remembering every shot he had hit on that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday afternoon.
It was 9:30 that night when he had finally walked into the press tent. Messages were going out from Carnoustie’s station master to tell people that the last train was about to leave; sports editors were ringing their writers to demand their stories at once.
Away from his golfing facts and figures, Van de Velde unquestionably gave a lot of pleasure to an abundance of fans and inspired countless kids. What is more, no sooner had he retired from the European Tour than he was running the Open de France.
Van de Velde, for his part, remembers the silence that greeted him before he took the initiative. “Has anyone died today?” he asked.
After the media questions, Van de Velde had long weeks of answering the public. He had been told that some 200 million people watched the denouement on TV, and it was as if every one of them had approached him. They may well have been thinking that he had choked, but if that was the case, he could not remember anyone taunting him with “anything mean.”
There was, though, the odd, “You had it won!” to which he would reply that it was just one of those things which could have happened to anyone. “Sometimes,” he said, “I was left with the impression that they were wondering whether they could be that ‘anyone’ to whom something pretty awful might happen any minute.”
Others would ask if he was religious and, if so, did he think that God had been testing him. Here, he was inclined to suggest that God would have had rather more on his hands than what was happening in the golfing world.
Of course, his ego had been badly bruised, but when GGP asked if there were any remarks which did something to cheer him up, he cited Nick Faldo’s take on events.
Whenever people had tried their “choking theory” out on this winner of six majors, Faldo would say that if Van de Velde had been going to choke, he felt he would have been showing signs long before the 72nd hole.
“Shit just happens,” continued the now 58-year-old Van de Velde. “My brother died last year, and that experience was on a different scale altogether.”
“I’m not haunted by what happened to me at Carnoustie 25 years ago, and I’m never going to be.”
Jean Van de Velde
He was lost in thought for a moment, only then he noticed his 16-year-old son, Louie, waving from the player and family entrance to the grand facilities which have been in play at Carnoustie since the last Open. Of Van de Velde’s five children, Louie was the one who had been free to accompany his dad to Carnoustie.
“Look how tall he is,” said Van de Velde. He was at least 6 feet 2 inches and is a promising footballer who is attending a special soccer school near Miami before heading to a U.S. university.
You could see from his face that Van de Velde was intensely proud of the lad. So much more than he is of himself, which is more than passing strange when you consider how he won the 1993 Roma Masters and the 2006 Madeira Islands Open besides being a runner-up in a couple of regular events on the PGA Tour.
“It’s like a second career,” he said. “You have to ask yourself, What’s going to take me out of bed? when your golfing day is done and, for me, switching to this new role replaced the adrenalin that was burning inside me, just as it does for any competitor.
“I’m not haunted by what happened to me at Carnoustie 25 years ago, and I’m never going to be. When you think about it, the latest young things on the PGA and DP World tours will be concentrating on their futures rather than the who-did-what in past Opens.”
E-MAIL LEWINE
Top: Jean Van de Velde stands shin-deep in water on Carnoustie's 18th hole in 1999.
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