The year in Review Men's Professional Tour
Philip Reid reports on a season of the unexpected and a remarkable quartet of major champions
In truth, nobody saw it coming; the year when professional golf, a sport where wallets are filled with grotesque amounts of money, would regain its soul. No one, not even the wisest of men, predicted the earth would stop spinning, or that the golfing world would be put into a spin of its own.
Nobody envisaged Tiger Woods would go through a year without lifting a major; or that two virtual unknowns would be among the quartet of men who did manage to win a major. Nobody realised how refreshing such a scenario could be until it happened.
Okay, let's admit it, 2003 was a strange and wonderful year; a season when Mike Weir became the first left-handed player in 40 years to win a major, the US Masters; and a season when Jim Furyk, derided and the butt of endless jokes for his unorthodox swing, won the US Open. But those two were just a sampling of the different menu that would be served up to golf fans in this year of the unexpected and the unpredictable. Life was to get so much better, so much more bizarre.
Ben Curtis got a place in the British Open field through a curious qualifying route in a non-descript US Tour event, and bloody well won the thing. He was ranked 396th in the world and playing in his first major and, for the first time in a long time, we believed golf was a game anyone could play and majors were there for the taking if only a player believed enough in his own destiny.
Fate, too, played a part in the year's final major, the US PGA when Shaun Micheel, a tour journeyman but also a genuine life-saving hero, contrived to complete a remarkable quartet of major champions.
At a time when most believed the golfing world revolved around Woods, we were given proof to the contrary. Of course Woods won, five times in fact, and two of those were World Golf Championship tournaments.
But he didn't win a major; and, in professional golf, that is how you are judged. It's why Padraig Harrington finished the season knowing he had not delivered on either his own expectations or those of many others; and why Darren Clarke, the most genial and amicable of men this year, was so moody and despondent at Royal St George's. It was to be his time, only it wasn't to be.
Let's retreat to the start of it all, Augusta National in April. Martha Burk and her small legion of like-minded souls who protested at the club's male-only membership were restricted to a car-park a mile away where they were joined by Elvis Presley impersonators and the like. On the course, Weir - who had once written to Jack Nicklaus as a child wondering if he should attempt to play right-handed - became the first Canadian to win a major when he beat Len Mattiace in a play-off.
An interesting part of Weir's routine is the slow, exaggerated waggle in the moments before he strikes the ball, a tip he got from Nick Price. Weir actually abandoned that routine for much of 2002 but returned to it this year, with dramatic results. His win at the Masters was his third victory of the season. "I feel like I've (already) exceeded my expectations of what I thought I was going to do," said Weir.
Growing up, he wanted to be an ice hockey player - just like the other kids in the area - but, in the summer, he would play golf, "as a kind of seasonal sport". But then his dad put up a net in the garage, and he'd find himself drawn to hit balls into it. In the winter, he was drawn to the nearby Lake Huron where he would stand on the shore and smash balls out into its frozen waters.
After taking up golf competitively while at university, Weir's initial foray into the professional game was not very successful. It took him six attempts at qualifying school before he won his US Tour card and his early life on the circuit was spent playing in Asia, Australia and Canada.
"It's an unbelievable progression," he admitted, "to think that I've finally gotten here. But, even back then, I believed I would get here somehow."
His win in Augusta meant he became the first left-handed player since Bob Charles in the 1963 British Open to claim a major title.
In the 103rd US Open at Olympia Fields, outside Chicago, the mad odyssey continued. Furyk, much maligned and often mocked for his unorthodox swing, produced a performance that was vindication for one of the game's hardest workers.
Prior to his major win, Furyk had garnered no fewer than 11 top-10 finishes in majors. This win gave him the most prestigious title yet of his career, and removed his name from the list of Best Players Never to Win a Major.
"I never paid much attention to that," insisted Furyk. I still consider myself young at 33, but it does become more difficult as the years go on. You start to put more pressure on yourself."
Strangely, on what should have been the most pressurised day of his career, there was none. Nobody made a charge at him; in fact, most of those who started the final round as pursuers went into retreat. Furyk started out with a three-shot lead over Australian Stephen Leaney and, by the end, even finishing with two bogeys, his right to the title was beyond question. He wasn't even disrupted by the sight of a topless woman running onto the 11th green, so focused was he in pursuit of his dream.
That dream first surfaced as a young child when he would imitate his hero Arnold Palmer and pretend he was holing a putt to win a major.
"From a professional standpoint," he admitted, " the most special thing is that my name will forever be on the trophy with the unbelievable names in golf. You can't take that away from me, it is a special feeling."
The golfing gods produced a story of outrageous proportions on the bone-hard links of Royal St George's. As fate dealt a cruel hand to others, including Woods losing a ball off his very first drive, Curtis - a 26-year-old American in his "rookie" season on the US Tour - defied those who deemed you have to learn to lose a major before you can win one. For much of the final round, Tomas Bjorn seemed destined to claim the 132nd British Open title; and, for sure, he will look back and believe it should have been his.
On Thursday, the Dane incurred a two-stroke penalty for hitting a bunker on the 17th hole in frustration - an incident that will haunt him for a long, long time - and in the final round the sands of doom took further vengeance on him. Seemingly cruising along, he crumbled on the final stretch of holes with a run of bogey-double bogey-bogey from the 15th. It was to prove a costly run in, leaving him a shot behind Curtis.
In the great scheme of things, Curtis's win is one of the more unlikely in major history. It ranks up there with John Daly's 1991 US PGA and with Jack Fleck, an obscure professional, beating Ben Hogan in a play-off to win the US Open in 1955.
Micheel's win in the US PGA Championship at Oak Hill was, in many ways, an appropriate conclusion to golf's summer of surprises as first-timers took all four majors for the first time since 1969. The 34-year-old journeyman professional, playing in his first US PGA, was ranked 169th in the world - however, when he fired in a seven-iron approach to the 72nd hole in his showdown with Chad Campbell, it was a shot that would change his life.
Back in 1993, Micheel went into a river in North Carolina to rescue a 76-year-old woman and 68-year-old man trapped inside a car that had crashed. Micheel was preparing to play in some mini-tour event called the Croatan National Classic at the time when the speeding car hopped over bushes and dove into the river. He stripped down to his boxers and swam into action, pulling out the bloodied couple and, as the car began taking him down, searching the back seat in case a grandchild was about to be left behind.
At home the Nissan Irish Open was won by Michael Campbell in a play-off and the Smurfit European Open by Phillip Price and, for the Irish, it was a year when Harrington finished runner-up to Davis Love in the Players Championship but beatBjorn in a play-off for the Deutsche Bank TPC of Europe, only to endure a summer that didn't deliver on expectations.
For the new slimline Clarke, there was at least the consolation of winning his second WGC event, the NEC Invitational.
