June 2013: Playing golf at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland in the pro-am preceding the Irish Open.
Three amateurs doing their best not to drag down their pro, the Spaniard Jose Maria Olazabal, two-time Masters champion and a man with a silken touch around the greens.
I hadn’t played to my handicap, hitting a lot of shots left or occasionally ballooning them out to the right. On the 16th tee Olazabal could stand it no longer. He came over to me and put his face close to mine. He raised his right fist and said: “If you don’t get your effing weight off your left side when you swing the club back I am going to effing hit you.” Then he walked away. My next shot was hit as if by Olazabal, straight and true. I had learned my lesson.
John was Golf Correspondent of The Times from 1993 to 2010 and only the second non-American to be presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism by the PGA of America.
Memory added on February 16, 2021
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