Age no longer a barrier for top-class players

There’s an old wisecrack that relates to age. It goes along the lines of, “once you’re over the hill, you start to pick up speed.” In golf, ironically at a time when a generation of young guns have brought a new energy to the sport, there’s also evidence that age, as in older and more experienced, still has its part to play.

For example, five of the last six winners of the British Open have been in their 40s. Henrik Stenson – at 40 – became the most recent player to embellish that particular statistic when out-duelling Phil Mickelson, six years his senior, down the stretch at Royal Troon.

His name was engraved beside those of 40-somethings Zach Johnson, Mickelson, Ernie Els and Darren Clarke who trumped the younger brigade since 2011. Only Rory McIlroy, in 2014, managed to get one over on those nearing the time to join the grey brigade.

Highest levels

The longevity of players competing at the very top level of golf is distinct from other sports. You couldn’t see an old guy out-sprinting Usain Bolt, for example. And, in team sports, be it soccer or rugby, Gaelic Games or whatever, players in this modern age simply don’t compete at the very highest levels into their 40s.

Perhaps the greatest example of someone competing beyond his years, so to speak, was that of Tom Watson at the 2009 British Open at Turnberry. Watson was 59 years of age at the time and only lost out in a playoff to Stewart Cink.

Watson actually had the chance to become the oldest Major champion in history in regulation play, but failed to get the necessary par on the 18th hole of the final round.

Afterwards, firmly believing he could have won, Watson exclaimed: “The old fogey almost did it . . . It would have been a hell of a story, wouldn’t it. It wasn’t to be and yes it was a great disappointment. It tears your gut, as it always has torn at my gut.”

The US PGA Championship takes place at Baltusrol Golf Club, in Springfield, New Jersey, this week. It is the last of this year’s four Majors, brought forward in the calendar to avoid any interference with golf’s return to the Olympic Games.

One-week gap

It has meant only a one-week gap between the British Open and the PGA, two Majors in three weeks, but interestingly one of those who spent most time at Baltusrol prepping in recent days was Mickelson, aiming to bounce back from his latest close-call at a course where he won his first PGA title back in 2005.

Make no doubt about it, Mickelson will be one of those with an eye on the title again this coming week in the championship once known as “Glory’s Last Shot,” given its traditional place as the fourth and final Major of the season.

Unlike the British Open where those in their 40s have dominated in recent years, the PGA – for whatever reason – has been a younger man’s domain.

Only one of the past 11 winners of the famed Wanamaker Trophy has been in his 40s: that distinction is held by Vijay Singh, who was 41 when he captured the title at Whistling Straits in 2004.

Yet, with a greater awareness about strength and conditioning among players and also nutrition, the age card is not the obstacle it once was. As Pádraig Harrington responded recently when asked if he thought someone in their 50s could actually win a Major title, “I don’t know about a regular basis, because I don’t think anybody can win regularly at this stage. There are so many good players, but it will happen.”

Harrington elaborated: “Where guys were retiring at 32 and 34 just before I started playing golf, and it’s not like that at all. More and more guys are fit and strong, coming up to their 50th [birthdays].”

Nobody in their 50s has actually ever won any of the four Majors. The oldest player to win a Major was Julius Boros, who was 48 years of age when he claimed the 1968 PGA Championship at Pecan Valley in San Antonio, Texas. It was the American’s third and final Major title.

Golden career

Boros took that distinction of being the oldest Major champion away from Old Tom Morris, who was 46 when he captured the British Open in 1867.

Before Singh, the last player in his 40s to win a PGA was Lee Trevino in 1984 and before him none other than Jack Nicklaus. The all-time great won the 1980 PGA Championship at Oak Hill in Rochester, New York, when he was 40 years and six months.

That title was the 17th Major of Nicklaus’s golden career and his 18th would prove to be arguably the most remarkable of all. Nicklaus was 46 when he ran away from the field to win the 1986 US Masters at Augusta National, making him the oldest Masters champion.

And Nicklaus has history too with Baltusrol, a famed course in its own right originally designed by AW Tillinghast. “Is it the toughest of golf courses? Probably not. Is the quality of golf as good? It’s a matter of debate, but I think it’s very good . . . as they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Since I’ve won multiple victories at Augusta National, St Andrews and Baltusrol, all three of them are fantastic golf courses to me,” said Nicklaus, whose Major successes at Baltusrol came in the 1967 and 1980 US Opens.

The odds, of course, are stacked in favour of one of the younger brigade ultimately lifting this PGA Championship: there’s a lot of them  . . . and they’re bloody good. Jason Day, the world number one and defending champion, is 28. Dustin Johnson is 32. Jordan Spieth is 22. Rory McIlroy is 27. You get the drift, the best of the best are young guns. And the average age of a US PGA champion over the last 15 years is 31.

Flying the flag

What was it Mark Twain once said? “Age is an issue of mind over matter; if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

There’s a generation of older players, headlined by Mickelson and with Harrington too flying the flag, who are anything but their ages and, through carefully managed fitness programmes, have bodies able to compete with the young guns but also the experience and the know how to stay in the game.