Golf: Too painful to watch

Long-suffering golfer Michael Campbell should give up, says Greg Turner. Frank Nobilo disagrees. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Greg Turner, for many years New Zealand's best golfer, thinks it is probably time for Michael Campbell to hang up the clubs.

Turner has observed Campbell's decline in the last few years and struggles to see any light at the end of the tunnel.

"You get on that terrible spiral," Turner explains. "There comes a point when it gets harder and harder and I would say he is past that point. He has dug a pretty deep hole and every week you play badly is another spadeful of dirt. The older he gets and the longer the period of poor play, the higher the mountain becomes. Sooner or later, you don't come back."

Since that astounding US Open win in 2005, Campbell's game has been in almost constant freefall. Until the French Open last month, he had not made a cut since October 2009. Indeed, Campbell has made it through to the weekend in just five of his last 38 tournaments and the last top 10 finish came almost two years ago.

He has shot rounds of 80or above on nine separate occasions this year and has pulled the pin midway through tournaments seven times over the last two seasons. Turner, who played alongside Campbell for the best part of a decade, admits that all golfers have low periods but it is length of time that counts against Campbell in this case.

"When you have been going badly over a long period of time, it takes increasingly smaller negatives to impact on your concentration and your conscious. You become really fragile - you are only one bad swing or one bad bounce away from losing confidence - that is the hardest thing to overcome."

Brilliant inconsistency has long been a hallmark of Campbell's career and Turner has always admired his ability to bounce back.

"He has been able to put long periods of poor play behind him more quickly than just about anybody else I've known. But the more often you go to the well, sooner or later it is going to come up dry."

Turner wonders if this great strength, this capacity to spring back into form and put past poor performance out of the mind, is also a fatal flaw.

"Potentially you can make the same mistakes and, when you look at Cambo's career, it seems sometimes there is a certain amnesia there. Perhaps that amnesia extends to understanding what it is - or was - that has caused the slumps in the first place."

Frank Nobilo holds a different view. Nobilo, one of our best performed professionals and now a respected analyst for The Golf Channel in the US, feels it is all about perspective.

"I know what it is like being on the other side, not playing, not competing and I would love to be in his situation. It is the greatest job in the world and you don't know it until you don't do it. There is always time to quit-why do it today?"

Nobilo wonders if Campbell's priorities have become blurred: "After you have 'made it', there comes a time when it gets stale; the travelling; the top hotels; it loses its newness, so sometimes you have to realise how fortunate you are. The glass really is half-full. You have got to realise what an unbelievable opportunity you have."

Nobilo first met Campbell when he was a teenager and recalls the highly ambitious, highly talented amateur out of Titahi Bay.

"Maybe he has forgotten that dream he had as a little kid - has it been clouded by everyone else telling him what to do?-and if he has lost that, then that is the most distressing thing.

"But if you retire what do you do then? Sit in your room and look at your trophies. I've got some, it doesn't make you happy, believe me.

"Golf is a really weird game - when you are playing well you don't see lakes, you don't see out of bounds, you don't see any of those problems. When things are going poorly you see it all. When you are playing well, the only thing you think of is distance and have I got the right club?

"When you are playing poorly you think left and right-trying to keep it out of the left and right trees - and that has applied to every player I have ever spoken to in my whole life. After a while you are not playing golf, you are playing avoidance."

So is there a road back? According to Nobilo, Campbell (as well as the rest of us) has to change his perceptions.

"Everybody is comparing Michael's golf of today to what it was in 2005 [and] saying how bad it is. Right now, if he is shooting 75s or 80s, that is the player he is as of today. It is all about going in the right direction, shooting 73 is better than 75.You have got to earn your stripes again.

"As a golfer, you have got to re-establish a good standard. That might not be a winning standard straight away - so is he up for the long haul? Is he out to grind out making the cut by a shot, then it is comfortably making the cut, then it is leading by 36 holes in the odd tournament. It is a long hard road back."

For Nobilo the root of the problem is also where to find the heart of the solution.

"Everybody wants a reason [for the decline]. In other words, it is the coach, it is the psychologist. Or it is the new driver, the new putter shaft, or the ball. Sadly, it all comes down to pilot error."

"You never really know what is inside an athlete's head. It is like a boxer who doesn't want to get hit any more; you never really know. The question that Michael is probably asking himself every day is, 'Do I really want it'. You can say you do but sometimes it is not the same thing."

On coaching and guidance, Nobilo has mixed views on whether Campbell needs a change of environment.

"I've always thought that coaches get way too much credit when the players are playing well and they don't get enough criticism when the player is playing poorly. Having said that, if you look at some of the scores he has been shooting and the way he has been shooting them, I don't think you can put the blame entirely on the coach."

Campbell's coach since 1998, Jonathan Yarwood, seems as mystified as anyone: "His game in practice is as good as when he won the US Open. His swing on video and in practice has looked almost better than when he won the US Open. It is a matter of him, under the gun, being able to produce what he is capable of.

"There is nothing wrong with his game, apart from his driver. It is a little confidence issue in his head. He is at the point where he is the only one that can turn it around. He has all the tools he needs. I'm just the mechanic in the garage - he is the Ferrari that goes round the track."

Yarwood acknowledges that Campbell has always had consistency issues: "Right from his amateur days, he has been a streaky player and there is no real reason why he should be. I don't know if there is a little kind of crossed wire somewhere - there may be a tiny flaw in there somewhere."

Though Yarwood is aware of the criticism, especially in New Zealand, he is keeping faith with the modus operandi of the past few years.

"We are sticking to the system that has always worked and has produced 14 wins. I think he can get back and be better. He can't work any harder. He has calluses the size of golf balls on his hands."

However, Campbell's former mentor Mal Tongue pulls no punches.

"He can see as many psychologists, golf coaches and specialists as he wants but the bottom line is he has to stand in front of the mirror naked and say, 'this is Michael Campbell; do I want to do this, do I want to suffer to get back?"'

While the technical side of things is obvious to the Wellington- based coach-"his swing is too short, too fast and there is too much tension" - Tongue admits the mental element is extremely complicated.

He believes Campbell needs a change of coach and a new environment "otherwise how long do you leave it? This could be the end."

Campbell has made no recent comments on his future plans and his website lists no future scheduled tournaments.

Nobilo would love the chance to offer some good old fashioned Kiwi advice.

"If he was here [in the US] I promise you I would be knocking on his door saying, 'hey mate, what is going wrong, what's up?'. I would be in his face."

Nobilo says that Campbell's reluctance to take on the American challenge reveals much. Twice Campbell has tried his luck on the US PGA tour before retreating to the more familiar surroundings of Europe.

"He had a game that could have translated very well but to me he wasn't comfortable here and this is meant to be the mecca; the biggest stage. Maybe the little boy who grew up just outside Wellington, deep down-that is still in there.

"Sometimes success doesn't sit well with everybody. It ostracises their friends or family, it makes them different and makes people look at them differently and maybe that is what changes, or that is what changes within him.

"Running away from things, if there is a general trend there, that is what it was.

"He ran to where it was more comfortable. I really believe if he had stuck it out, he would have found success over here on a more regular basis."

THE CAMPBELL COLLECTION
2010
* Tournaments: 13
* Cuts made: 1
* Top ten finishes: 0
* Best result: 79th at French Open

2009
* Tournaments: 25
* Cuts made: 4
* Top ten finishes: 0
* Best result:
* 62nd at SAS Masters

2008
* Tournaments: 20
* Cuts made: 11
* Top ten finishes: 4
* Best result: 3rd at British Masters

2007
* Tournaments: 28
* Cuts made: 14
* Top ten finishes: 2
* Best result: 4th equal, British Masters

2006
* Tournaments: 23
* Cuts made: 15
* Top ten finishes: 7
* Best result: 2nd at Shinhan Open and Volkswagen Masters

2005
* Tournaments: 26
* Cuts made: 19
* Top ten finishes: 9
* Best result: 1st at US Open

FIVE WHO FELL
Steve Stricker
After a promising start to his career, the Wisconsin native endured years in the doldrums and even lost his tour card in 2004. Has managed a steady climb back and is now ranked fourth in the world.

Ian Baker-Finch
The most famous fall from grace. The 1991 British Open champion suffered a complete collapse of his game and golf fans watched in horror as he struggled, unsuccessfully, to put his game back together. "I felt naked; I felt the grass was taller than me," he said of his struggles. Now a respected commentator for CBS Sports.

David Duval
Won the British Open in 2001 and was once ranked the number one player on the planet. The 38-year-old has now not won a tournament in nine yearsand competes only occasionally on sponsors' exemptions.

Chip Beck
Three times a runner-up at Major championships, he was also a proven Ryder Cup performer whoonce shot 59 on the PGA tour. Then missed 47 consecutive cuts on the PGA between 1997 and 1998 and left the tour to become an insurance salesman. Has since returned with some success on the Seniors tour.

Bill Rogers
Outlasted Bernhard Langer to take the 1981 British Open and after a second place in that year's US Open was ranked No 2 in the world. His game slipped away steadily after that as he faded into obscurity, eventually retiring in 1988 at the age of 37 to work at a country club.