Golf: A survivor of major setbacks

By CHRIS RATTUE

It is regarded by many as the most famous collapse in sports history.

The career of Ian Baker-Finch still fascinates, even though the golfer himself no longer dwells on the yips to end all yips.

But to listen to Baker-Finch, and even observe his sunny manner at the New Zealand Open at The Grange in Papatoetoe this week, it is hard to believe that this is the same man who found such sporting euphoria and then extraordinary despair within the space of a few years.

Baker-Finch was due to make a rare professional appearance in Auckland, but had to pull out because of injury. It was, he says, a major disappointment to him.

But disappointment is a comparative thing, and in terms of his remarkable golfing career, missing the New Zealand Open must be akin to biting into a dodgy after-dinner mint following a brilliant entree and a dreadful main.

Baker-Finch, the 40-year-old tall, tanned Queenslander is now a highly respected golf commentator for American media giants ABC, with whom he has just signed a five-year contract.

He has the rare ability to not only explain the top-level game to the masses, but also to relate to the duffers and hackers who put enough balls into lakes to raise the water table.

In his greatest sporting moment, Baker-Finch produced two brilliant weekend rounds to win the British Open at the Royal Birkdale course in Lancashire in 1991.

A few years later, the only fairways he could land the ball on were the ones he wasn't aiming at.

If it is easy to pinpoint the high of his career, the 1991 victory, it is hard to pick out the lows, there were so many of them.

There were endless missed cuts, plus 30-odd coaches and gurus on sport and life trying to find out why the winner of a golf major suddenly lost the plot, not to mention the ball, as soon as he tried to tee off in front of a crowd.

Thousands of people wrote to Baker-Finch, suggesting everything from serious golf remedies to imbibing chamomile tea and spending a bit of time in the lotus position.

"It was a mental problem," says Baker-Finch, when asked yesterday whether he had ever discovered a technical flaw that had ruined his game.

There was a famous moment at St Andrews in 1995 when Baker-Finch hit the first tee shot dead left over two fairways into oblivion.

One writer described it thus: "The ball was last seen chattering toward the parking lot."

Undoubtedly, his worst moment came in the 1997 British Open at Royal Troon. With Australian tennis star Todd Woodbridge on his bag, he shot a 92.

A disconsolate Baker-Finch withdrew from the championship and went to the club's Champions Room where he lay in a "ball" with his wife Jennie for 45 minutes as he tried to deal with the emotional despair.

At The Grange yesterday, he talked of the hundreds of books that are a strange monument to his plight - they deal with subjects ranging from self-analysis to the golf swing.

Baker-Finch, who is about to shift home from Australia to Florida with his wife and two children, still plays almost every day with his mates.

And he not only has a flourishing career as a commentator, but is also involved in golf-course design.

For a man who is virtually famous in golfing circles for holding his dignity through a sporting nightmare, he can now observe from the sidelines a golfing phenomenon with a character he respects.

"Tiger Woods is brilliant," he says. "There have been a lot of great champions who were absolute pricks ... there weren't too many who were great blokes such as Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer."

So commentating and his continuing love of the game is providing Baker-Finch with a good life that helps to remove any bitterness he might have held over the collapse of his career.

But there was another sort of happy ending to his top-level playing career that had a Field of Dreams quality to it.

Before the British Open at Birkdale in 1998, he played a practice round on his own at the scene of his greatest triumph.

He was treated as golfing royalty when he turned up at the club.

And as he played the final hole, a strange sound began to greet him.

Unbeknown to him, the club had recorded the crowd noise as he had walked up the 18th fairway in 1991 and the Birkdale people arranged to replay it over loudspeakers during the golfer's lonely walk up the final fairway seven years later.

Club workers and members also lined the balcony to cheer.

"I was fighting back the tears that were welling up in my eyes," says Baker-Finch. "It was an amazing experience."