Poised to stand alone as the winningest Senior PGA Tour player, Hale Irwin remains a lone wolf who thrives on stiff competition
The Senior PGA Tour is the coffee and dessert of a man's golf career, but Hale Irwin might not be enjoying this course nearly as much--might not have won 29 senior titles--if not for something he did five years before he became a senior and a few months before he became the oldest player, at 45, to win the U.S. Open in 1990. Struggling for several years as he built a golf course design business, without a win or a trace of confidence, Irwin pulled out a legal pad and inventoried his previous 17 PGA Tour victories for swing thoughts or mental keys.
"It was to the point where I was going to forget about golf," Irwin says. "I was tired of it. But I wrote down those thoughts, and it was like unlocking a door I had closed." Before Irwin knew it, he had gone to Medinah and played the last eight holes of the fourth round in five under par, holed a 45-foot birdie putt and celebrated with half of Illinois. The next day, in a playoff with journeyman Mike Donald, Irwin secured his third U.S. Open title and cemented his reputation as one of the best golfers of his day.
For a man whose image is so textbook it should come with page numbers, Irwin can fool you. His reputation is as a nuts-and-bolts guy, but he swears he has never had a formal golf lesson. Years ago, after storing his shoulder pads and eye-black and joining the PGA Tour out of the University of Colorado, just another young pro driving a car with a big trunk, he sometimes would join the gallery behind the practice range and spend a minute watching each of his peers from afar. Absorbing a rhythm or admiring a position, Irwin wondered what would work for him.
While instructors often teach golfers to aim at the smallest of targets, Irwin sometimes widens his sights. "What if you miss the leaf?" he asks. "I can barely see that leaf, how can I hit it?" A big-picture approach in the final two rounds of the U.S. Senior Open last summer allowed him to shoot 65-65 to overtake Bruce Fleisher, win his sixth senior major and prove, at age 55, his staying power on the senior tour.
"I think I've been my coach, my critic, my cheerleader," he says. "Sometimes I'm my own worst enemy, but sometimes I'm my biggest fan. I think I know me."
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