By the time he settles down to speak on the sapping Friday evening, the 69-year-old is panting and sweating. Nick Faldo has just sipped some electrolytes, spent half an hour talking golf with Sachin Tendulkar and Kevin Pietersen for the official studio show of the DP World India Championship.
“It’s a shame. You no longer need a strategy to conquer courses. I don’t know how we rein in things. I’m trying my best to bring back classical ball striking skills. I suggest we try different heads, different lofts.
Maybe we stop at 56 degrees, maybe we don’t have anything less than 10 degrees of the driver,” Faldo said.
“It was all about consistency for me on that final day. I had a really good goal in my mind — they call it a gameplan now — which was to get within three shots after nine holes,” Faldo recalled. “I actually did better, I got within two, and by the time we’d stood on the 12th, I realised things were getting serious for me. I was just comfortable churning it out hole after hole. The greens were like rock, and you had to position it. It was perfect for my style of play, but more importantly, you’ve got to believe that I can still do it.
My 67 was my lowest round of the weekend, in fact it was the best in the whole field.
That said, you’re churning inside, but you still have to hit the good shots under that amount of pressure.”
A fairly successful player on the tour, albeit without a major win until then, Faldo worked with coach David Leadbetter to get a more compact backswing and a stable clubface, which ultimately gave him better accuracy. The grip became more neutral, the swing became flatter, and the torque generated from the core became central to this overhaul. “You have to be brave. It took me two years to get used to it. it was very difficult to play with a new backswing and an old follow-through, but I had the desire to keep improving. “It’s been a great journey and I have loved every part of it. I want the game to go to new geographies. I want youngsters to pick up golf the way I picked it up after watching it on TV,” he concluded.
I knew I wasn’t quite good enough, and I wanted to be the best, consistently,” he said.
