WATCHING Angel Cabrera smash his way around Loch Lomond at the weekend, it occurred to me that the only South American golfer I've ever seen who could justifiably be described as thin, was an elegant player from Brazil called Mario Gonzalez, who won his national championship seven times between 1946-55 and then again, as an afterthought, in 1969. The rest, mainly Argentines, have tended to have massive shoulders which take up the space where their necks should be and hit the ball for miles.
It was interesting to hear Peter Alliss remark that the Argentine players don't seem to have much truck with golfing gurus, preferring to pick up the game by watching good players in action, which seems a very sensible idea considering that over the
years they have had the likes of Roberto de Vicenzo and Romero's clansman, Eduardo, as role models.
The system certainly seems to work and there are few more pleasing swings on the scene today than those belonging to the Argentines. There's a comfortable power about the way they play, an easy action through the ball which belies the explosion which is taking place. That was how de Vicenzo played when I first clapped eyes on him at Muirfield in 1948 and that's how Cabrera is playing now.
Copying a swing which has been tempered in the heat of battle seems to have a lot going for it and, whether or not we care to admit it, we've all done it. I've often tried it and I'd try it again if it wasn't for the fact that the feline glide of yesteryear has gone now and been replaced by a sort of stiff totter which makes it very difficult to generate much power at all – comfortable or otherwise.
Someone who didn't mind admitting a bit of copying was the American professional, Gardner Dickinson, who put his faith in Ben Hogan to the extent of wearing a white cap and walking with a limp, which would seem to be taking adulation to its limits. I met Dickinson at a reception held before the Alcan Golfer of the Year tournament at St Andrews in 1967 and he was a friendly, dapper man who didn't turn into Hogan until he walked on to the first tee.
However, following Hogan is one thing, but there are others whose swings don't lend themselves so readily to imitation. Gay Brewer springs to mind, the man who won that Alcan event in a play-off with Billy Casper, having donned the US Masters green jacket at Augusta earlier in the year. Brewer broke an elbow when he was seven years old and, as a result, developed a swing which took him all round the houses in order to get back to the ball. It was an extravagant flail which lifted the club back on the outside with the right elbow flying high and then looped back in what Brewer described as a "figure of eight".
It's doubtful if anyone who saw Brewer play could have resisted the temptation to have a go. I know I did and had the same disastrous results I'd had years before when, inspired by pictures of the Irishman, Jimmy Bruen, doing his own famous loop, I'd rushed to the course and hit a couple of beauties before the spell was broken and things got back to normal.
Brewer's swing was roughly similar to Bruen's and it seems to have been just as effective. It certainly worked for Brewer and when his playing career eventually went into decline, it was the putting that did for him, not the strange swing.
The trouble is, when you haven't been blessed with the extra chromosome necessary for the playing of consistently good golf, it is simply not possible to stick with a swing for any significant length of time very long. Most club players have had the experience of suddenly finding a swing which works and gives rise to wild hopes that this is it, the secret. The sun has penetrated the valley of gloom and now the misery is ended. Of course, this is rarely the case.
At some point, sooner or later – and it's usually sooner – a speck of grit will fall into life's Vaseline, the game will falter and, try as you might to put it out of mind, the swing in which so much faith has been placed is on its way out and there's nothing to be done but watch it go and prepare to start again. Gay Brewer might have had an odd swing, but it worked and it never left him. He might have had flat days, but he could always count on his swing.
As the drama at Loch Lomond unfolded, Wayne Grady, referring to Ross Fisher's sizzling form, said: "When you're playing like he is, you try to ride the wave as long as you can." There's the rub. In Fisher's case, the ride might last for months. There are those among us who would settle for a couple of holes.
The full article contains 848 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
