* Patrick Smith
* From: The Australian
* August 03, 2010 12:00AM
STUART Appleby was a blip from finishing the round of his life.
His final putt moved ever so slightly from left to right. Before it plopped into the hole for a birdie that would deliver him a 59 he started after the ball. His right fist was clenched. Appleby had spent the previous 18 holes bending the Old White Course to his will. The 18th green and a piddly putt of three metres had no chance of defying him.
The putt took him to 22-under for the tournament and a one-shot lead over American Jeff Overton. Unlike the four other times golfers have beaten the magical mark of 60, Appleby did not jig or scream. Not even smile. He held his first clenched for a moment longer, looked grimly satisfied, and awaited his fate.
It was 59 but it was not the tournament. Appleby had not won since 2006, had lost his game last year and no amount of searching on the practice fairway could find it. The eight-time winner on the US tour had learnt nothing can ever again be taken for granted. Not 59, not a one-shot lead.
Overton had a chance to level with him on the 17th hole, but his one metre birdie putt slipped left. Overton, flustered and furious, made much of his opinion that a spike mark had kicked the ball from the hole. There was no evidence of that. Then a long birdie putt slipped past the 18th hole. There was no spike mark to blame. It was Appleby's tournament.
Appleby has not won a major but he has been a major player for much of the time on the tour he joined in 1996. He has been a top-10 ranked golfer and he has lost a British Open in a play-off. Until 2009 golf, if it did not always come easy to him, was always a feel, a swing away. He could always draw on a sense of rhythm ingrained after hours of practice, starting back in his home town of Cohuna, Victoria. Paddocks were his fairways.
Last year Appleby could not play golf. Not as he knew it anyway. He could not go to the practice fairway knowing that a little muscle memory would guide him back to his simple and smooth stroke. The harder he searched for the tempo that would allow him to picture the flight and curve of his strokes even before he hit them, the further it shrank from him.
He fell out of the top 100 golfers in the world and did not earn enough money to keep his card according to the annual money list. Tournament starts were no longer guaranteed and he played with an exemption that came with his position in the top 25 career prize money winners. His dramatic form slump was thought to be caused by a change of equipment supplier. His traditional backer Bridgestone failed to pick up his contract and so he became a Callaway man.
Along with coach Steve Bann, he practised. And if that could not rediscover his swing hitting buckets of balls, then he played as often as he could. In 25 tournaments he missed the weekend nine times. He finished in the top 10 just once and made about $600,000. Nearly $2m less than he did in 2008 and all but $3m shy of what he collected in 2006. This year he has played in 24 tournaments and missed the cut in 11 of them.
This separation from their powers that sports people sometimes experience is always debilitating and sometimes irreversible. British Open winner Ian Baker-Finch fiddled with his swing to find extra length and a natural rhythm was killed off. He could find it in a practice round but he could never again call upon it when he most needed it. Baker-Finch gave up competitive golf when he should have been at his peak. David Duval was once the best golfer in the world. Something broke the connection between his mind and his muscles and the former No 1 golfer played golf not knowing whether he would hit left or right. Everybody just knew he would hit it wrong.
Appleby has courage. He vowed to himself that he would not play golf again when he lost his first wife Renay in a car accident in London in 1998. He felt his love of the game died with her. Renay, a golfer herself, had given up her career to be her husband's caddy. Within a month he was playing again. He took a media conference as part of the grieving process. He wept more than once. "It's tough getting through nights. When you really love someone, you miss the simple things. Everyone has been fantastic, but no one can replace that person," he told the media. You looked into his eyes and saw nothing. The man had been hollowed out by sadness.
Yet he would fight back. He rebuilt his life, found love again and his second wife Ashley was there after his historic round with their three children at yesterday's Greenbrier Classic. He is a man of stunning resilience.
He has had bigger trials than a disobedient swing. His 59 ought to prove that he is back but once you lose your confidence, something you always presumed would never go away, you tremble inside that it all might disappear again. Nothing can be taken for granted ever after. Yesterday he played with a lucky emblem on his golf ball to underline the link remains tenuous.
Appleby has come back from the brink twice. Once personally, once professionally. He is an admirable man and a golfer reborn.
From The Australian published on Aug 3 2010
