Waking up to find the magic has disappeared

"Joel, you've got to help me, man. I'm spending everything I've made, my game is falling apart and I don't want to see my life diminish. There's no reason. I'm too young for that. I've too much energy and I'm willing to work hard and learn."

The Joel in question was Joel Hirsch, insurance mogul and thoroughbred amateur golfer. The man seeking his help was Chip Beck. It was the year 2000 and the former Ryder Cup player and four times winner on the PGA Tour had seen his game tumble into a desperate state of disrepair.

This was a player who had finished second on the money list and claimed the Vardon Trophy for low scoring average in 1988. At the 1991 Las Vegas Invitational he recorded 13 birdies in a round of 59. He played in three consecutive Ryder Cups and won six of his nine matches. He was runner-up to Bernhard Langer in the 1993 Masters and still competitive in 1996 when he was second at the Buick Open. Now he was on the phone looking for a start as an insurance salesman.

As anyone who has played the game can testify, the form of one week or even one day can easily be gone the next. It has happened to three British Open champions of the last 25 years in Bill Rogers, Ian Baker-Finch and most recently David Duval. Lee Westwood seemed to be heading for a similar decline but hauled himself back.

Once Beck started missing cuts in 1997 the magic just disappeared. Forty-seven times in a row Beck teed it up on Thursday and packed his bags on Friday. No cuts made, no money earned and a whopping mortgage on a multi-million dollar house.

What went wrong? Well at various points over the course of a decade a lot of change affected Beck's life. For a start the game changed and Beck, always a short hitter, was left behind. He needed eye surgery and then his back gave trouble so that he had to change his swing. He lost his accuracy and spread his drives everywhere and anywhere. He had moved to Chicago with his second wife but ended downsizing from that luxurious house. He changed coaches and caddies several times, he changed equipment and he even changed religion.

About the only things that didn't change were his popularity, his optimistic outlook and, despite it all, his love for the game. The Beck cup is always half full rather than half empty. "Chip Beck could be falling off a 4,000-foot cliff," says Jack Nicklaus, "and on his way down he'd be saying, 'there must be some place soft to land on down here somewhere'."

"All athletes' skills diminish, though not with all the pitfalls I fell into," says Beck. "But I regrouped. There comes a time when you find out who you really are, where you're really happy. I've been able to spend time with my kids. It's nice to have my home life."

The home life has meant commuting to the insurance office, working on other business interests and still practising his golf. Beck makes occasional forays onto the Tour but hasn't made a cut on the main circuit for five years and has earned just $3,546 on the Nationwide Tour this season.

He will turn 50 next September and plans to try the Champions Tour. "The break has been good but I've got to be in the game. It was nice seeing my friend Mike Reid winning the Senior PGA. It's nice to have hope it can happen. If it's meant for me to live without golf then I can do that. But I'd rather live with it."

The cup won't be empty for a long time yet.