Off the ball: Golf lessons in staying mediocre

By CHRIS RATTUE - COMMENT

Maybe it's time to clean out our national golf coaches because, let's face it, they've hardly been a roaring success - and now we may have a clue as to why.

Shock, horror. We learned this week that the national coaching director, Mal Tongue, and his five assistants have resigned "independently", whatever that means, because Tongue doesn't get on with the Golf Association's chief executive, Peter Dale.

So there you go, kids. Lesson one from your coaches. When things get tough, when you can't get your own way, QUIT. Just pick up your bag of clubs, chuck them in the lake and take up snowboarding.

Apparently the relationship between our top coaches - each and every one of them, if you can believe that - and the top brass has been going putt, putt, putt splat.

And in the process, we've discovered a soft underbelly to our game that may be the reason we don't foot it in the toughest golf arenas.

New Zealand is hardly flush with big tournament winners, or even contenders. Lots of talent, we are told, yet our golfers rarely even make the cut where it counts.

Even dear old Blighty produces better golfers than we do, in a climate often more suited to snowboarding.

If ever a small country was designed to produce golf champions, it is New Zealand.

The weather is great, there are golf courses galore, and you don't need a mortgage to play a round.

But what have we got out of this? Pretty much zilch, compared with what it could be.

Instead, Fiji - yes, that little Pacific holiday resort - has produced a golfer so far ahead of what we have that it's almost embarrassing.

This particular golfer, Vijay Singh, epitomises professional dedication. As the story goes, about the only time his kids see him is when they take his lunch out to the practice fairways. Maybe it's character weakness, rather than a lack of technical ability, which leaves New Zealand golf in the rough.

Maybe our golfers are being pampered by men who, when faced with adversity, stamp their feet rather than stamp their mark.

Men like Singh and Tiger Woods never quit. And maybe our golf coaching system has become too much of a cartel, unable or unwilling to spot, foster and deal with the maverick talent which lies at the heart of the world's best players.

Instead of hearing booming drives right now, all we can hear are booming egos. Something is drastically wrong with the development of golfers in this country, and it has to be a wider issue than this spat.

Maybe we'd do better to return to the days of rugged individualism rather than national coaching schemes. Even our star pupil, Michael Campbell - for all his European success - seems fatally flawed when the pressure goes on in the American big time.

There are all sorts of characters apart from North Americans at the top of world golf - South Africans, Scandinavians, Brits, a Zimbabwean, Australians, and our Fijian mate.

Apart from Michael Campbell, ranked around 50 and sliding, New Zealand is nowhere to be seen, and we certainly haven't produced any young champions to rival Aussie Adam Scott.

There is no reason New Zealand should not be among them. Yet where are we? Chucking clubs in the lake.