SOUTHPORT, ENGLAND | Are you an elite amateur or fledgling professional who, having watched Ryan Fox triumph at Royal Birkdale, is now dreaming of winning an Open yourself? If you are, it’s a great aspiration, but maybe you need to consider what comes after rather than leaving it until you have your Claret Jug.
The expert in this field is Australia’s Ian Baker-Finch, who just happened to be at Royal Birkdale for last week’s Open Championship. Not because he had won the Open at Birkdale in 1991, but because he is now the chair of the PGA of Australia.
As to why he is an expert, it is because he never saw himself as, say, a Nick Faldo or a Greg Norman. Where confident souls like them knew when to say “No” to the many requests that came their way, he didn’t. Inevitably, his golf suffered as he wore himself out before the end of the ’91 season.
It’s worth listening to what he said last week about the mistakes he made and the ones which others need to avoid.
“They’re easy to explain,” he told me.
“Let’s say there is someone in this crowd who goes on to win the Open as I did, the last thing he should do is to change anything. He needs to stick with the same clubs, the same balls and the same coaches.
“I tell all players, especially the younger ones, that they should only use whichever clubs they want to use. They can earn millions and millions of dollars simply by sticking with the equipment of their choice.”
Ian Baker-Finch says he wasn’t prepared to handle everything that came with winning the Claret Jug and being a major champion.
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Adrian Mitchell, who manages Pádraig Harrington, the Irishman who won three majors and has since added four more as a senior, said that all of the above had worked for Harrington. “We’ve kept the same team all along – trainers, coaches, Pádraig’s brother-in-law, Ronan Flood, who does the caddying, and myself.”
He agreed with what Baker-Finch had to say about any young champion, only here he contributed an extra, one which was not of the optional variety: “I’d say to him that he needed to forget everything with the exception of concentrating on winning his next major.”
So much did Baker-Finch change, that there were days when he felt he didn’t have his own swing anymore. “I had someone else’s. … Today I’m going to swing like Davis Love; today I’m going to swing like Freddie Couples … and today I’m going to swing like Mark O’Meara.” He began to have troubles with his back and with his feet.
Moreover, his relationship with the media wasn’t always comfortable.
Here, he said he would always advise a new champion to set aside a good hour per day for the writers, “because they can make or break you if you don’t give them good answers and enough of your time. … You may be a champion, but you’re still the same person and it’s important that you have time to yourself.”
What tickles the now 65-year-old Baker-Finch is how his problems with the media were only over when he tumbled down the rankings and they no longer wanted to speak to him.
After a desperate 92 in the first round of the 1997 Open at Royal Troon, he retired from the championship and from competitive golf itself before switching to the world of broadcasting with ESPN and ABC Sports. In 2008, he joined CBS Sports, for whom he worked until last year. And now, in what he sees as ”give-back time,” he is working for the PGA of Australia.
Among other things, he was discussing such future arrangements as Golf Australia’s new partnership with the PGA Tour to elevate the Australian Open starting next year. Already, Scottie Scheffler and Jon Rahm have declared an interest in playing over there this winter.
When he walked the course earlier in the week – it was with Tom Mackenzie from Mackenzie and Ebert, the golf course architects – the conversation would have included golf course design, a subject in which he has always taken an interest.
I asked him what he thought of the par-4, 415-yard ninth, with particular reference to how Rory McIlroy had hit a 389-yard tee shot which landed on the green on Thursday and did the same again on Friday. “Remarkable,” Baker-Finch said.
“What McIlroy did was amazing. It’s partly down to how much work he’s put in and how much training he’s done. But hold on a second. I’m now going to tell you exactly what I think …
“The distance the ball travels today is ruining the architecture of today’s courses. Something needs to be done. Strategy should come first, length second. …”
Ian Baker-Finch still runs into fans who tell him they were there when he won the 1991 Open at Birkdale.
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Also on the walk, he had looked back to the golf he had played in ’91; to the calm he had felt when he stood on the first tee, the five-stroke lead he held as he walked onto the eighth tee, and the applause which came his way as he walked up the 18th fairway in the knowledge that he was going to win.
It seemed that everyone in this year’s estimated crowd of 300,000 spectators remembered him. “I can’t stop without someone asking to have a picture taken with me,” he said. “They were mostly telling me how their fathers had brought them along to watch in ’91.”
He loved all that chat.
“Ian Baker-Finch – To Hell and Back” is the name of a book by Geoff Saunders published last year, and it covers everything.
With the struggle of trying to live up to being a major champion long over, Baker-Finch, together with his wife and daughters, could not be happier.
Top: Ian Baker-Finch, the 1991 Open champion, returned to Royal Birkdale representing the PGA of Australia.
OISIN KENIRY, R&A VIA GETTY IMAGES
