Australian Golf Digest interview with Mike Clayton

Last month’s Australian Golf Digest magazine featured an excellent interview with outspoken Aussie designer Mike Clayton. We’ve reprinted part of the interview here on Planet Golf, with Clayton speaking freely to my colleague Rohan Clark about his professional career, the technological advancements made in the game, his design partnership with Geoff Ogilvy and why golf was better in years past.

By Rohan Clarke – from Australian Golf Digest Magazine.

Michael Clayton is the rare breed of golf professional that carves out a successful career in another field away from the tour. These days the 53-year-old Victorian is probably better known as a golf-course architect and accomplished writer. Clayton’s love affair with golf began on Melbourne’s sandbelt where his game and opinions were shaped and honed. He showed promise from an early age and became a prolific winner on the amateur scene. Clayton turned professional at the age of 24 and eked out a respectable career over 17 seasons on the European Tour. He was more dominant back home in Australia, winning six of his eight career titles.

Clayton stopped playing fulltime in Europe in 1995, the year he formed Michael Clayton Golf Design with John Sloan and Bruce Grant. The team won plaudits for redesign work at a number of private clubs – Victoria Golf Club, Lake Karrinyup, Royal Queensland, Peninsula (North and South), Grange (East and West) and The Lakes. Clayton was a co-designer of the magnificent Barnbougle Dunes in Tasmania with Tom Doak. Then last year he formed a design partnership with US Open champion Geoff Ogilvy.

 

Australian Golf Digest: You won nine tournaments since turning pro in 1981, how would you assess your career?

Clayton: I think I was decent, that’s all. I was a middling-ranked pro in Europe. I never practised my chipping and putting enough. I was never good enough at that. What was interesting was how the generation of players after me benefited from really good coaching. I grew up with Steve Bann and Dale Lynch playing schoolboy golf. They played for a bit and then got into the [Victorian Institute of Sport golf program]. Failed players are often the best teachers. They realise what they did wrong and they know there’s an extra dimension to teaching. So those guys became great teachers and produced a string of really good players.

I’d have done much better if I’d had a better technique. I always worried about it, never felt great. But once you’re out on the tour trying to make a living, you don’t want to take a year off and change it.

 

You had a pretty good amateur career. Did you reach your potential as a pro?

I think everyone reaches their potential. Partly you go as far as your technique will take you. Partly you go as far as your chipping and putting takes you. Partly you go as far as your attitude takes you. So there are three elements to it. I think your attitude and technique are tied together in many ways. Peter Thomson was the calmest guy I ever saw play golf. And he also had one of the greatest techniques I ever saw in terms of simplicity. I never played the game as easily as he did. So did I reach my potential? No, I don’t think I did. If I’d grown up in a different generation – if I’d worked with Lynchy and Banny as a 13-year-old like those [younger] guys did, I’d be a much better player.

 

You were renowned for having a bit of a temper on the golf course and received more than your fair share of fines. Do you describe yourself as an emotional player?

I was passionate about the game. I look back now and it was ridiculous how crazy I got on the golf course sometimes. It was my fault it took me too long to learn it. I watched Peter Thomson play golf. He never got mad at anything. And of course that’s how you should play. You need to be disciplined enough to play like that. For me it was too easy to get angry and lose the head. Geoff Ogilvy’s a great example of a guy who was hot-headed as a kid, who channelled that anger into a temperament that’s really based on common sense.

 

What was the worst thing you’ve done on a golf course? Do you regret any one particular thing?

[Laughs] I threw a putter over a grandstand in Perth once. I just had a poor demeanour a lot of the time. I was angry and would swear too much and occasionally I would chuck a club into the ground or something. What I regret is not being able to behave normally. I’m fine now. I look back and go, ‘Why couldn’t I do this when I was a kid?’ But there are lots of reasons why you don’t do it. I think I would have played better if I could have managed it better.

 

After 12 years away from the tour, why did you go back and play the European Seniors Tour, especially when you had established a course-architecture business?

One year, 2007, I played seven tournaments, then the next year I didn’t play any at all because we were busy. And really, the past two years I played because we weren’t that busy. There was not much work around for any designers anywhere in the world. So I went and played, I was away for three or four months playing. The best thing about playing was that we got a job in Madrid out of that.

I don’t play any more than Ben Crenshaw plays and he’s one half of the best design business in the world. But he’s still out there playing a bit. Marshy  [Graham Marsh] played a lot in America while he was working. And it gave me a chance to see a lot of stuff… My days and weeks between tournaments I spent going and playing out-of-the-way courses that I should have seen when I was a kid… I use it as a chance to go and see courses in Britain that I missed when I was playing.

 

Modern equipment has changed the pro game considerably since you first came out on tour. Where are we at now?

The ball clearly goes much further. The combination of the ball and the driver means that guys hit the ball so much further. So the courses are essentially obsolete in terms of how their architects saw them playing. MacKenzie built Royal Melbourne in the days of hickory shafts. He was writing then about the authorities needing to do something about what was happening with the golf ball. It was going too far. If he came back now and saw Tiger Woods hit a driver and a 9-iron to the second at Royal Melbourne, he would think, What happened here? So it’s clearly distorted the dimensions of the golf course… The ball goes too far for the great old courses. So you’ve got to build a bunch of courses for pros that no one wants to play because they’re all too long and hard.

Greg Norman clearly had a deserved advantage because he could hit a wooden driver and a balata ball through the wind so much better than anyone else. Because it took great skill to be a good driver… Now all I see is kids who all hit the ball the same. Everyone hits the same drive Greg hit. So are they all as good as Greg? Clearly not. So the equipment has dragged a bunch of kids into the same place in terms of where they finish off the tee. And they all hit the ball 300 yards pretty straight because it’s so much easier to hit the modern ball straight because it won’t spin as much. So you never have that fear of a balata ball into the wind with a wooden driver. If you got too steep it just went straight up in the air and fell out of the sky like a wounded duck.

Seve and Weiskopf, Nicklaus and Norman, Woosie [Ian Woosnam], Lyle, Snead, Bobby Jones had a great advantage over their competitors because they could hit long irons well. They could hit them straight up in the air and stop them on hard greens. Now you buy a hybrid club. So if you can’t hit a long iron, go get a 22-degree hybrid. Throw your 3-iron out. And then if you can’t play a bunker shot, buy a 64-degree sand wedge. So there’s so much more you can buy that gives you the shots that players of past generations had to learn to play – or had to learn to live without and manufacture their skills somewhere else.

I would hate to be trying to make a living out of the game now as a kid. How do you separate yourself? I could hit the ball straight, reasonably solid with a driver so I could have some sort of advantage. My irons were decent. But the equipment has dragged so many players into the same place in terms of what they can do. If you’re Adam Scott or Geoff Ogilvy or Jason Day you’ve got better short games, your techniques are a little better, you can break out of that pack.

If you want to extend the argument, it’s hurt amateur golf a lot because every kid thinks he’s a good player now. They hit great looking shots, so they all think they’re good players, so they all turn pro. The amateur game was better when the only guys who turned pro were seriously good enough to make a living out on the tour.

 

Should the authorities do anything to wind back the technology?

 Absolutely, they should have two balls. They argued we don’t want to bifurcate the rules. But by having one rule – having one golf ball to play with – you clearly have two separate games. It’s a completely different game for the modern pro than it is for the amateur. Forty years ago when I started playing, the pro game was a better version of the amateur game. Obviously, there was a huge difference between a 20-marker and Peter Thomson. But in terms of where the average guy drove the ball and the pro drove the ball, Peter Thomson wasn’t 70 yards ahead of the average hitting. Now Geoff Ogilvy’s 70 yards in front of me.

My argument has always been that if you had a ball for the tour players and you regulated the equipment in some way – and the ball is the easiest way to do it – then you can drag the game back closer to where it was. We played at Barnbougle. If Geoff plays with a wooden driver and I play with a metal driver, he’s 30 or 40 yards ahead of me, not 70 or 80. So it drags us closer together. If I went back to use a wood then he’s only 50 yards ahead of me, not 70.

And you can manage the golf courses better. The golf courses are the great thing about golf and what makes golf a better game than almost all others. The great courses don’t play anywhere near the way they used to. You can’t move the tees back on the suburban courses because there are boundaries in many cases. Do you want to go moving bunkers that have been beautifully placed in exactly the right spot? Do you want to move them to cater for two per cent of players who hit the ball a crazy distance?

If I were a good player I’d want to play with hickory shafts. I’d certainly want to play with wooden drivers and balata balls and bladed irons and a 56-degree sand wedge. Because the more skilled you are, the more advantage you have… Everyone hits the ball like Greg Norman off the tee now. Why is that good for the game? Why shouldn’t someone with that level of talent have the advantage that talent deserves?

 

We like to think Australia has many great and unique golf courses? But what is the reality when you compare our 1,500-odd courses against the rest of the world?

I think there’s one great course in Australia. Great needs to mean great. To me, a great course is one of the best 15 or 20 courses in the world. Royal Melbourne is the one great golf course in Australia. People try to differentiate between the Composite Course and the West Course. The West Course is still a great golf course. The Composite Course is better because they take the best of the East and put it on the West. It’s an even better golf course.

I’m astounded at the quality of golf in Britain. If the 40th best course in Britain is the 10th best course in Australia, that’s about where we are. Melbourne has a great group of courses but people make the mistake of equating a great group of courses with great courses. Melbourne’s got, individually, really good golf courses. But as a group they’re fantastic. Britain’s the place for me. There are 100 golf courses in Britain that I would drive four hours to see. In Australia there are 10, 20 maybe.

People make the mistake of thinking golf on the PGA Tour is what American golf is. America is full of incredible golf courses but it’s a huge mistake to think tour golf is what American golf is. Tour golf is entertainment golf, that’s not American golf. Those courses don’t rate in terms of the great American golf courses.

 

Tell us about your philosophy with regard to golf course architecture? What do you like and dislike? What has shaped your opinions? 

Royal Melbourne shapes your opinions. I grew up playing in Melbourne and I watched tournaments even before I was playing golf. My Dad would take me to watch Peter Thomson play at Metropolitan in 1968. I went to Yarra Yarra just after I started playing in 1969. I grew up thinking that was what tournament golf was like all around the world. And I saw fantastic golf courses right from the start. I played Kingston Heath in 1971. I played Metro in 1972 with my uncle who was a member there and I played Royal Melbourne in 1974. So I had my fill of playing the best sandbelt courses by the time I was 15.

You just think that’s how golf is. The middle of the fairway was never the best place to play to the hole from. You always had to go to the edges to get to the best line because the greens were hard and it was windy. I guess you just grow up thinking that’s what all golf is like. You watch golf now and it’s just hit the fairway, hit it between the lines. Kick field goals between the posts. So my philosophy is shaped initially by Royal Melbourne, which was the best example of what golf was about in Melbourne. I played St Andrews in 1984 and you get totally confused by that place. You see there’s no rough, really. Figure it out for yourself where to play. So my philosophy is don’t tell anyone where to go. Don’t dictate to the player anything. Just give them space and let them figure it out for themselves where best to play it. So if they’re strong at one part of the game, they can use that strength somewhere.

Golf oughtn’t be a test of execution, solely. Professional golf is largely a test of execution. The players want it fair, which equates to boring to me. St Andrews is not fair, Royal Melbourne is not fair. The best courses aren’t fair.

 

Are pro golfers the best-qualified people to rate golf courses?

No, they’re some of the worst. But it depends who you’re talking about. Ben Crenshaw to rate a golf course, absolutely. But he wouldn’t do it because he’s too nice and doesn’t want to create the controversy. Pro golfers, like most golfers, look at the game through the irrelevant prism of their own games. So guys who hit the ball straight want narrow fairways and small greens. And guys who hit the ball crooked want more space. Or they want thicker rough so they can get it further down [towards the hole] and gouge it out of the rough.

How many guys have read Robert Hunter’s book, let alone heard of Robert Hunter, let alone know what book he wrote? So how many golf pros have ever read the great architecture books like I did when I was a kid? I had dinner with golf pros for 25 years. I know what they think about golf courses. You would trust some of them to rate a golf course and you wouldn’t go near plenty of others.

 

You earned praise for the re-design work you’ve done at several top Australian clubs. However you’ve still only designed one new golf course – the Ranfurlie course at Amstel Golf Club south of Melbourne. It is frustrating you can’t land that plum gig on a pure piece of land?

We did Barnbougle [Dunes] with Tom [Doak]. He got more credit than we did but essentially we were co-designers there. Royal Queensland was a new course. That was on the same bit of land but there was nothing left of the old golf course. And we’re doing two new ones in Madrid.

Yeah, it’s tricky. There isn’t that many new courses built in Australia. Greg did a lot of the housing development stuff and [so did] Peter Thomson. So if you want to build new courses you need to get out of the country… But as much as you want to build new courses, it’s been great fun working on old courses. It was great fun to do Lake Karrinyup and The Grange and Peninsula. I played as a kid at Peninsula and the North Course was an awful golf course on a great piece of land. Turning that into a decent golf course was really fun to do. Royal Queensland was a great job for us because it was an old historic club that essentially lost a third of its golf course.

 

After working hard for 15 years to build a name as a course architect, why did you form a partnership with Geoff Ogilvy – who some people would regard as a relative novice as a designer?

Our first job was at Victoria [Golf Club] in 1995 when Geoff was 18. So he grew up as an amateur watching what we did there. He led a Vic Open that I finished up nearly winning. I three-putted the last hole to lose. So I met him there and we played a little bit and talked about it. He read a bunch of books and I knew he had read the books and we spoke about it and we played. I knew he was interested in it. The more we spoke about stuff I knew that he clearly had a great idea of what he was talking about. And I knew it was something he wanted to get into once he finished playing. So for us it was a perfect chance for him to get involved in this. But he was one of the very few guys I would do it with.

Geoff and Ashley [Mead] and Michael [Cocking] are in the business – they’re in their mid-30s – so who knows how long they’ll stay in it. But hopefully they’re in it for the long haul. Pete Dye’s 85 and still working. The goal is to be as successful as Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, which is not successful in terms of building millions of golf courses but being able to build the quality of stuff that those guys have.

 

Judging by what you’re saying, Geoff brings a lot more than just having a US Open against his name?

There are lots of guys who are celebrity endorsers and real-estate salesmen. Geoff will be much more involved. The money he’s going to make out of the design business is going to pale into insignificance with the money he makes on the golf course. It’s not about the money. It’s about the fun of doing great work.

The reality of the business overseas is that there are some jobs where names help. If Geoff went and won the Masters this year we wouldn’t be the unhappiest people in the world. But more than that he brings a passion and a knowledge and an understanding. And he’s got time to learn it.

 

I imagine it would be a test of patience to deal with golf club committees while tinkering with their course. Do you have an interesting anecdote about that? Do you have to occasionally bite your tongue?

We’ve been lucky. You hear about architects complaining about committees not letting them do this. Or it didn’t turn out the way it was supposed to because they wouldn’t let us do it the way we wanted. I don’t think we’ve ever had a job where we’ve been compromised more than one per cent. But largely we’ve never worked strictly to plans, we’ve always stressed the importance of concepts rather than exact plans.

It should be a prerequisite for anyone on a committee to have read the basic books on golf course architecture. The Anatomy of a Golf Course; [Robert] Hunter’s book The Links; The Spirit of St Andrews. Here’s what good and bad architecture is. Not many people have read those books. A lot of people are the same as golf pros. They see the game through their own eyes. People play golf for a long time and they form their opinions about what they like and what they don’t.

 

You’ve long been regarded as a traditionalist and have championed the cause of walking a course. So how does riding in a cart alter the experience of a round?

It misses the whole point of the game. The fun of golf is actually walking on the ground and taking your time. You don’t get any sense of how a golf course feels if you drive over it.

The best way to play golf is with a caddie. The second best way to play golf is with clubs on your shoulder, then to drag them on a buggy. The worst way is to drive in a golf cart. I don’t understand why people want to play in golf carts unless you’re physically unable to get around a golf course.

 

With regard to course design, the 17th at St Andrews. Talk me through that?

It’s the ultimate hole. You drive it blind over the sheds and the closer you go to the out-of-bounds line, the better the angle. And the further left you go the poorer the angle… The way it was in 1984 was brilliant. Seve drove it left in 1984 so he had the horrible angle, out of the rough, with a flyer, and he hits the great shot with a 6-iron. He hits that thing to within three yards of where he had to hit it from a bad angle and made the 4. If Seve hit it there in 2010 he just hits it out sideways with a wedge. There was too much rough and it was too thick down the left-hand side. Now what’s more interesting? I think giving the guy a chance to hit the great shot.

Could you build that hole [today]? Everyone’s asked that question. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to build a tee shot, blind, across a railway shed, with out-of-bounds down the right and a road across the back of the green, and a wall, with a green you can barely hit with a wedge, and ask you to hit a 3-iron at it, with a bunker in the front of the green that almost has a vertical wall, that 50 per cent of people who play it can’t get out of, that you can putt into from off the green. If you built the hole now they would think you’re completely mad.

How many great holes in the world could you build now given the howls of protest you would get if you built them? Could you build the 15th at Kingston Heath and avoid anything less than severe criticism for building a hole that the average person can’t play? Yet go to Kingston Heath now and suggest touching the 15th hole and they would cut your legs off before they let you touch the 15th hole. Ted Ball took six to get out of the bunker. It wasn’t just the bad players who have trouble with it.

 

Greg Norman said he preferred the old Lakes at last year’s Australian Open. And he was overheard to say he couldn’t “wait to get out of this place”. Does a comment like that hurt? Or do you put it down to professional jealousy?

It depends what version of the old Lakes you’re talking about. It’s like me saying I prefer Greg Norman’s old swing. Which swing do you mean? Do you mean the 1974 swing at Ryde-Parramatta when I first saw him play? Or the 1978 swing or the 1986 swing when he won at Turnberry, which was longer? Or the Leadbetter version? Or the Butch Harmon version? So which version of The Lakes do you mean? Like me he never saw the original course before that freeway went through it. So do you mean the course when Devlin and Von Hagge first handed it over? Or when Greg won the City of Sydney tournament when he shot 63 in the last round in 1978? Or when he won the Open [1980] or when Baker-Finch won in 1984? Or the 1990 version? Or the 2000 version? Or the 2008 version? Those six incarnations of this course were as different as Greg’s swing was in 1974 to what it was when he won the Open at St George’s.

So which version of the old Lakes are you talking about is the first question. There have been four 18 holes here in my time. So which one do you like? The one you won the Open on or the one Jack [Newton] and Graeme Grant built? Or the one Peter Thomson built? Or the one we built?

The problem is that there’s not enough long debate about architecture. Greg makes a throwaway line… Every golf pro has walked out of a golf course where they haven’t played well and said, “I can’t wait to get out of here.”

 

Do you just put it down to the fact that Greg may have been grumpy on the day?

I don’t want to upset Greg, but Greg’s always grumpy. When was the last time Greg came to Australia and looked like he loved being here and looked like he really loved playing a golf tournament? Greg hasn’t looked like he’s really enjoyed playing in Australia for a long time now. Perhaps I’m wrong, but that’s just a perception. Perhaps I’m being unfair.

When I watched Kel Nagle play, he always looked like he loved being out there. He really enjoyed playing golf in front of the people and putting on a show. Not that Kel put on a great show; he just hit beautiful shots. Bruce Devlin always looked like he loved coming here to play. Bruce Crampton never did.

 

We were out on the course today and bumped into some Lakes members. I asked one what he thought of the 13th hole and he said he would love to tar-and-feather you. What do you think about that?

[Laughs] Was he the guy who hit it left off the tee?

Yes.

Here’s a hole that’s short [288 metres] – driveable – with a big wide fairway but a difficult green to hit. And you really want to play to that green from straight down the line of it. There’s a ridge down that fairway, that if you’re left of that ridge you’ve got a bad angle. He was 30 yards left of the ridge, so he’s 50 yards from where ideally he should have been. Rather than pitching up the green and having 60 feet between the front of the green and the flag, he’s now coming at it from the side, pitching up a steep bank and instead of 60 feet he’s got 20 feet. That’s OK, so now he’s got a much harder shot. He hits a decent shot but it lands four feet from the hole and kicks over the back. I don’t have any sympathy.

I don’t get why people hate that hole so much. It’s a longer version of the fourth at Woodlands. It’s a severe green that you have to come to from the right axis. So if you get out of position with your tee shot, you’re in big trouble because the green is up in the air and you’re going across it… The ultimate shot there was Freddie’s [Couples] shot on Friday [of the 2010 Australian Open]. Playing with Greg, he drove it on the green. Here’s a 51-year-old guy into the wind, smashes this thing onto the middle of the green. What a great shot.

I thought the old hole was terrible. Hit it down the fairway, pitch on the green. If you were a short hitter you were hitting it over a 30-foot high paperbark. So you couldn’t play it if you were a woman. You had to chip it up to the corner and chip it on. And if you did what Sergio did when he drove it on the green in 2001, it’s a blind shot over a tree. Is that any good?

 

As a course architect you’ve got to develop a tough hide. Anyone who steps foot on your golf course will have an opinion about whether this is a good or bad hole.

Sure. If that exact same hole had been there for 40 years, and we’d dug it up and put the hole that was there before, the same people who are bitching about the hole there now would be going nuts about the other hole.

[Alister] MacKenzie’s line about, “Every man has got an affection for the mud heap on which he plays.” And it’s true, every man loves his golf course. They love that the beer’s cold and they play with their mates. They can do a good score there and they’ve got good memories of what happened there. And they don’t like people messing with it. There’s not so much debate about the actual change, it’s the emotion of the change.

So the level of the debate in the Australian Open should have got to a much higher level than it did. And Adam [Scott] came out and said: I hope the tournament’s not at The Lakes any more. Why? Expand on it and tell me why? Are the greens too hard, too fast, too soft, too slow? It doesn’t suit your game? You know you can’t beat Geoff [Ogilvy] there because Geoff’s a better putter? I don’t care if you don’t like the golf course. But expand the debate. Don’t just chuck the hand grenade in and walk out and say, “I’ll go and play in Singapore.”

 

How disappointing was it he made that comment?

It didn’t bother me at all. As usual the most famous players get to have their opinions aired before guys who aren’t… Paul Sheehan was a member here a long time and I’m just as happy to hear Paul Sheehan’s opinion as Adam Scott’s. Paul played here as a kid and he said, “God, this golf course is way better than it was.”

 

Are players more suspicious of the media and wary of the ramifications of what they say?

Yeah. They’re unduly suspicious of the media. They get a microphone stuck under their nose and they say something on the spur of the moment. I know Australian guys that are wary about what they say in America because they’ll say something when they’re hot after they’ve walked off the 18th green and all of a sudden it’s a headline in Australia the next day. So they get wary about what they say.

It’s clearly in the player’s interest to have a good relationship with the press. But they don’t need to because their incomes aren’t reliant on having great images. Mickelson understands the value of the press. Tiger clearly doesn’t care. Tiger doesn’t give a damn about the press… You know what he’s going to say before he walks into the room. It’s the same bland, boring stuff. And that’s fine if he wants to say that. Jack [Nicklaus] was more interesting.

You can understand why Tiger doesn’t say, “I think there should be a different ball for golf because the ball goes too far.” Nike, or whoever is sponsoring him [would say], “Tiger, that’s not what we want you to be saying. We want you to be saying that modern equipment is fantastic for the game.” So have the corporate people bought Tiger Woods’ silence? Jack Nicklaus was never afraid to say the ball is going too far.

No matter how intelligently they might frame a comment about where the game’s going or what the equipment is doing to it, it’s going to be written up by some journalist with a sensationalist headline. And the boss is on the phone the next day: “We’re not paying you to talk about this stuff.” If the journalist wants to report it fairly and write both sides of the argument, not sensationalise what someone says, then OK. But the player can never guarantee that’s going to happen unless he sits down with a like-minded journalist who the player knows and trusts.

 

Have you learned anything since you’ve been on the other side of the microphone/tape recorder?

You learn that you need players to talk intelligently and interestingly about the game.

 

Do you think that happens enough?

No, every sportsman’s the same. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a footballer, a tennis player or a golfer – they’re all as boring as each other. When was the last time you saw any sportsman offer anything interesting about their sport? “I’m going to go out and have fun.” “It’s the process.” “I’m taking it one step at a time.” You almost don’t know why journalists bother sticking a microphone under a sportsman’s nose anymore. Because they get the same junk no matter who they talk to.

 

Why do you think that is?

Perhaps they’re not asking the right questions of the right people. Now if you go and ask Tony Johnstone you’re not going to get that answer. If you asked Mac O’Grady a question you always got a great line. Mac came out with some of the most unbelievably brilliant lines. For Tom Ramsey, Mac was the only guy he ever went and listened to in a press conference. So partly it’s the fault of the questions, partly it’s the fault of the answers. Partly it’s the fault of players not bothering to come up with something interesting. And partly because perhaps they don’t know any better.

Greg [Norman] would come out with some ridiculous line about whatever it was. But he understood his job was to give the guys who were sitting in front of him a great story. And most players don’t really understand that. They just go in there: “I birdied the fourth.” “I played great.” “I’ve got a new coach and he told me this and it really helped.” That story’s been written a million times. There’s always a fellow pro that’s given someone a lesson that’s inspired a great round.

The player’s job at the press conference is to give the guys in front of him an interesting story. And it’s the guys sitting down there, it’s their job to ask interesting questions. So it’s give and take. It gets skewed by the tabloids at the Open every year in Britain where there’s a sensationalist story. [Scott Hoch once described St Andrews as the “worst piece of mess I've ever played”.] They just sit on that story until the Open and they bury Scott Hoch. Or they bury Faldo or whoever. There’s always a target. There’s always someone to hammer.

Where are the days of Bernard Darwin when Darwin wrote great stuff about golf? Or Pat Ward-Thomas or Peter Dobreiner? Geoff Shackelford is a brilliant journalist. His blog is fantastic. That’s the best golf writing/blog/commentary in the world. I see he’s with Golf Digest now. He’s the most interesting commentator on golf in the world by far. Shackelford ought to be hired by whoever is doing the telecast for the Presidents Cup this year. He would be an unbelievable addition to the commentary team. Shackelford is a great polemic that understands the game and where it should go and what should happen… Do we get Eddie McGuire and Ian Healy? God bless them, they’re great football and cricket commentators. But what do they know about golf? What can they add to someone who wants to see the game at more than just the basis level?

I bet if you hired Geoff Shackelford to commentate golf wouldn’t be boring. Cricket’s not boring on the radio with Peter Roebuck, Kerry O’Keeffe, Jonathan Agnew and Jim Maxwell. I could listen to those guys all day… Sport on the radio is always more interesting than sport on TV because they’ve got to make it more. The British Open on the radio is fantastic.

 

Where does the Australian Tour sit in the world of golf?

We don’t have a tour any more.

 

What is the future of Australia’s tournaments?

Australia should have and needs to have great tournaments. It needs to have a great Open, it needs to have a great Masters, it needs to have a great PGA. There needs to be a decent New Zealand Open. And it needs tournaments like the Vic Open, but guys can’t make a living out of that. But it’s a place for young kids to play.

 

Is OneAsia the right way forward?

It’s as obvious as the nose on your face that there needs to be one proper tour in Asia. By proper, it needs to be something that’s of value to a sponsor so it’s worth televising. And it needs to be a place that can nurture young players and send them to America if that’s the next step for them. There needs to be a place where good players can make a decent living. There needs to be tournaments worth watching for spectators. Professional golf doesn’t exist without spectators and television and something worth watching.

 

Finally on the lighter side, you gave us all a laugh when you accidentally dropped the putter on your ball at the 1997 Australian PGA Championship at New South Wales Golf Club. People can watch the incident on YouTube. But what actually happened?

I hit a putt that was always just going to miss short. So I urge it, left arm, you know how you let your putter go and go to grab it. And I missed it. I’ve done it a thousand times. The thought flashed through my mind that it might drop on the ball. I think I went after it with my right hand. What do you do? You’re an idiot. You trip over. How does that happen? It’s bizarre. You can’t be that stupid.

 

So how long was the putt?

Fifteen foot away. I went to urge the putt on and then kind of let go of it with my fingers – let go and grab it again. And I fumbled it. And of course it never would have gone anywhere near the ball. I thought it might fall on the ball. So I went after it with my other hand, I think. And it looks like it’s in slow motion when you watch it. But it didn’t feel like it was in slow motion when it was happening. Everything touched the ball. Me. Club. Fortunately the ball was stopped on the edge of the hole. So it was a one-shot penalty. I missed the cut by a shot.

The funniest story about that, there was an R&A guy who I saw at the Open qualifying at Kingston Heath a few years ago. And he said, “I do rules seminars in Russia. It’s impossible to make a Russian laugh. I show them that and it cracks them up every time.”

 

Click here to view Clayton's famous putting mishap on YouTube!

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