When bad things happen to good men

David Davies recalls the dramatic and agonisingly public decline of one of the most gifted golfers of his generation.

Ian Baker-Finch stood on the first tee at Royal Troon in 1997, a former British Open champion who knew that wherever he should be at that moment it was not where he was. He knew that what he was about to attempt was ludicrous and could well turn out to be demeaning, not just to himself but to the oldest and most prestigious championship in the world. But there was no escape.

The starter had announced him and he had no option but to continue. To walk away at that point would be unthinkable. And so the man who, six years earlier had destroyed a British Open field at Royal Birkdale, embarked on one of the loneliest experiences in professional sport, to try to achieve respectability without the semblance of a game to help him do it.

In 1991, he had played the last nine holes of the third round in 32 and the first nine holes of the final round in 29, 18 consecutive holes in 61. Now he was about to take 31 shots more than that in the first round of the 1997 Open. In 1991, he was arguably the best player in the world. His final round at Birkdale recalled the quip attributed to an Irish rugby international after a failed attempt to tackle England's Phil Horrocks-Taylor: "Horrocks went one way, Taylor the other, and I was left holding the hyphen."

On that Sunday at Birkdale no one saw which way the tall, dark and hyphenated Baker-Finch went. At that stage he was a regular winner on the US tour and he confirmed a huge talent by winning the Open. Few could have imagined that it would be his only major championship. At the time it seemed he had the game to dominate world golf for years, but almost before we knew it he had acquired one of the cruellest nicknames ever coined in golf: Ian Baker-Flinch.

David Leadbetter, a leading coach, says of him now: "He had the perfect game for the majors. He was not ultra long but very steady, a beautiful short game, a great, great putter. But he was never content. To get longer: that was his downfall. He kept saying, 'I've got to get longer, longer'. But he was long enough and, with his other attributes, he was fine."

Baker-Finch, of course, did not see it that way and consulted coach after coach, trying to find a "secret" he did not need. "I put my faith in a number of highly regarded coaches," says Baker-Finch, "and in hindsight should have trusted just one person because I never gave my confidence a chance to catch up. I hit too many bad balls on the range and it corroded my confidence."

It was so corroded that by 1997 there was none left and that first round at Troon was a nightmare. Baker-Finch, a man much too nice for his own good, who had been persuaded to play at Troon against his better judgment, went round in 92, the equivalent of playing to a handicap of around 20. It was embarrassing to experience even as a spectator, as a once formidable player was subjected to a day of ignominy.

Most men, after a few abject holes, would have acquired a "bad back" or a "sprained wrist", but Baker-Finch is not most men. He would be first on anyone's list of table companions, first into anyone's preferred fourball, first as a fellow passenger on a long-haul flight and, as far as he was concerned, as a traditionalist, a round of golf once started had to be finished. It was to his immense credit that he did so.

"I had no intention of playing at Troon," he said recently, "and I had even sent my caddie home. I had a bad back and no preparation, but I've always had this willingness to listen, and some members of the Australian PGA board said: 'Come on, Finchy, you're a past champion, play.' And I thought, 'Well, I'll be out of this slump by next year. I'll be playing better, so I'll keep my record of not missing an Open since 1984 intact'. "

It is a decision he has bitterly regretted. "The awful thing is that some people will remember me as someone who should not have played, who had no respect for the Open, and not for what I achieved in the championship and elsewhere."

He sees this severest of slumps slightly differently. He believes a flaw in his swing led to the initial decline before it became a mental problem.

"You don't just wake up with the yips," he says. "There's a reason for it and that reason is a technical flaw leading to poor results and loss of confidence. Often you can play well in practice, but you need to be bulletproof to play at the highest level. If you're timid, it's impossible to compete; and a flaw in the swing makes you timid."

Leadbetter has had great experience in dealing with the afflicted and can find it distressing. "On an emotional level," he says, "it can be very sad for a coach. It's a difficult world to enter because they block themselves off. Their minds are strongly against anything; they know that, no matter what you say, it's not going to help."

Leadbetter found trying to help Baker-Finch, whom he calls "a great guy", demoralising because, in essence, he could not rebuild a confidence that was shattered.

"Ian didn't have a lot of self-esteem. Even though he won the Open there was always something in Ian's make-up; he was never the cocky Australian."

Once Baker-Finch offered the opinion that "just because I've won an Open" that did not make him better than or different from "Mike or Craig or Peter", meaning friends and fellow Australian professionals, Harwood, Parry and Senior. But it did. He just never acknowledged it.

Leadbetter saw Baker-Finch crumble completely. "He had been one of the straightest drivers in the game but then he couldn't hit it at all. You know, when a golfer is playing well they can't wait to go and show off their wares. But when it goes bad they get to a point where they don't want to embarrass themselves. They go from a person exuding confidence and wanting to show what they're made of, hitting shots under extreme pressure, to someone who is concerned with people, crowds watching, television watching, not breaking 80. All sorts of things go through their minds.

"Ian got to the point with me when he literally felt he was going to miss the ball. The driver in particular. I mean, when you get the yips with the driver, what do you do? You can't go to the belly-driver."

It seems likely that Baker-Finch, now creating a brilliant second career as a television commentator, was too intelligent, too imaginative, as well as insufficiently confident. Mike Clayton, a journeyman Australian golfer now working in the media, writes in a perceptive book, Golf From The Inside, that at Birkdale, in that final round, Baker-Finch had told him: "I could see a white line on the ground all the way to the hole and I just hit along it." But within a couple of years those white lines had become double-yellows - don't go there, don't stop here.

Clayton says: "I think he earned his way into the group of players who were the best in the world and then he looked around and saw all the things he thought they did better than him."

It was a recipe for disaster. In the year before Troon Baker-Finch had competed in the US Masters, taken a nine at the 13th en route to a second-round 79 and missed the cut for the 22nd consecutive time on the US Tour. It was a very public humiliation, but it was no match for his resilience, for his instinctive grace. As that awful round was coming to a close, Baker-Finch arrived on the 18th tee knowing already that his Masters was over. He hit a long, beautifully flighted fade to position A-plus on the fairway. A small knot of spectators applauded and Baker-Finch, with a wry smile, turned to them and said: "Been hitting them like that all day." And, as you should, he left them laughing as he went.

Guardian Service