Sponsored by:
Dealt this outcome, Ogilvy makes a strangling noise, lifts the club over his shoulder with two hands and drives the clubhead down into the grass, turning over a hunk of turf. He is, you recognize instantly, working on himself.
ANY QUESTIONS? You, in the back. (Inaudible.) You're right, Ogilvy does have a reputation as a hothead. Or did have. (Inaudible.) Well, he's almost got it under control. In the first round of the Players, for instance, he hit his tee shot into the water on the island-green 17th. The old Ogilvy might have kicked the tee markers or ripped the heads off the begonias behind the tee, but this time he didn't react at all. He simply walked over to his bag and calmly put away the club.
(Inaudible.) The Masters? Well, I asked him about that. He said, "I played 68 holes under par and four holes way over," and he dismissed the 9 he made at number 15 as "a few minutes of stupidity" during which, he pitched two balls into the water. But, he said, "I didn't punish myself for that. I didn't say, 'You're an idiot.' " Or if he did punish himself, he didn't do so for long. He said, "By the time I got to the car, I was well over it."
(Inaudible.) No, I didn't see him get into the car.
THERE IS temperament — to paraphrase Bobby Jones, a reformed club-thrower — and there is tournament temperament. Last June, during the U.S. Open at Winged Foot, Ogilvy sailed through the four rounds as if he were piloting a skiff across Melbourne harbor. "The calmness that was over him was brilliant," says his wife of two years, Juli, a Texan. "When he made a mistake, he simply moved on." His composure, Ogilvy would admit later, contributed as much to his one-stroke victory as his chip-in for par on 16, his clutch up and down for par on 18 and the spectacular final-hole blowups of Phil Mickelson and Colin Montgomerie.
Ogilvy's growing sense of peace extends off the course too. Six years of seasonal residence in Scottsdale, Ariz., have schooled Ogilvy in American politics, but he prefers the measured prose of The Economist to the hot-button polemics of the radio ranters. For news he goes online to read the Australian dailies. ("The only TV show he watches is House," says Juli. "He loves what a smart-ass House is.") Ogilvy plays rock guitar, alternating between "electric months" and "acoustic months" — although there have been no guitar months since the birth of the couple's first child, Phoebe, now eight months old. "But it's great," he says of his musical hiatus, "because playing with my daughter is so much fun."
