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MORE QUESTIONS? Yes, the young lady with the tattoo. (Inaudible.) I understand how you might feel that way, if you're not a golfer. But there's this whole literature of golf that informs Ogilvy's view of the game, books like Haultain's The Mystery of Golf and Galway's The Inner Game of Golf.
DID WINNING at Winged Foot convince Ogilvy of this approach's rightness? "Everybody's different, but yeah," he says, "winning gave it credibility."
His temper, Ogilvy adds, is no longer an indicator of his overall satisfaction with life. He's happy with his feisty American wife, his cooing infant daughter and his starter set of big-time golf trophies (which includes the big blue tureen he won at last year's Accenture Match Play). His U.S. Open triumph was transformative, the frustrated child in Ogilvy yielding at last to the confident performer. "There's some part of me that's uncomfortable in that fishbowl with everybody looking at me," he says, "but just before I played the final hole at Winged Foot, I would have told you I was having the most fun I'd ever had on a golf course. Being in contention on the back nine at a major — that's it, that's the thrill."
In the year since, Ogilvy has looked like a man for whom one thrill is not enough. He was 16th at the British Open, tied for ninth at the PGA Championship and rode the leader board at the Masters until his third-round debacle at 15. He hasn't won since Winged Foot, but runner-up finishes in the Australian Open, Target World Challenge and the Match Play suggest that Ogilvy will put up a vigorous defense next week at Oakmont.
But you didn't fly a thousand miles to talk about the Open. You're on a golfer's mystery tour, and Ogilvy is the robed guru sitting cross-legged at the mouth of the cave. If he just has time for another 20 or so questions. . . .
Alas, he doesn't, but you sneak in one more. Was there one event, a single revelatory experience, that changed him from a tantrum-prone underachiever into a highly regarded champion?
Ogilvy shakes his head. "No epiphanies. It was a gradual thing."
Epiphanies. Damn.
Write that down.
