Des Smyth interviewTom Humphries talks to one of the gentlemen of Irish golf about life as the newest supernova among the galaxy of stars on the Champions Tour
This life. It's midweek and mock exam time. The man who tied for second with Tom Watson at Twin Eagles in Florida about 10 days before is doing the school run. Native roads around Drogheda. Native weather. Grey skies and a drizzle of rain. He'll be back around 10 a.m..
This strange job. One day it's Florida, smooth cheek by tanned jowl with some of the greatest names in golf, today it's the school run. Tomorrow it will be Seapoint or Baltray, where you lean so hard into the elements that if the wind stopped you'd fall over. You could see him on those eastern roads and only the weather-beaten face would betray any hint of a life less ordinary. Next week it's Mexico.
Would you want it any different?, he says of the variety he has sprinkled his life with.
He was 50 a few weeks ago and with half a century notched Des Smyth is going through a new phase. He's the wet-behind-the-ears rookie on the Champions Tour in the US. Till this year that was the Seniors Tour to you and me, but too many connotations of Cocoon with added Golf led the marketing whizzkids to change the tag. Besides, Champions Tour is more apt. If you line up the main cast of the regular PGA Tour and they are Tiger Woods plus supporting cast. You get a group photo of the Champions Tour and it looks like the pantheon of the Pringle gods.
Des Smyth shouldn't be impressed. He's been on the European Tour since 1974 and has seen everything come and go from sideburns to plus fours, but even he is impressed sometimes when he looks down the entry list and sees his name in there on a rota that should be chipped in marble at the foot of a monument to golf's well-being.
He grabs a few names and tosses them on the table.
"Hale Irwin, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson - these guys are all playing out there on that tour. I was at a players' meeting out there last week and when I went in it was Gary Player that was speaking. Gary Player! He said everyone in the world who's 50 or over wants to play on this tour and there are only 80 cards. It makes you look around the room slowly. I said to somebody last week that if I was to stop and think about the guys I was playing with I probably wouldn't hit a shot."
He does though. He might have gone, as he says, from being the oldest player on the European Tour to being the youngest on the Champions Tour, but that doesn't mean he's not the same knotty-tough pro that he's always been. Rubbernecking is for the clubhouse. As a pro, he puts the ball down on the first tee and switches off.
"You switch into tournament mode. That has nothing to do with who you are playing with. It's how well can you play and how tough is the course and how can you manage yourself. I put it out of my head that this guy teeing up beside me is Tom Watson. I'm here to do my job. It's the same job as his."
Except, of course, Des Smyth's job just got better. Winner of the Champions Tour Qualifying School. Runner-up on his first week out on tour, 10th place in his second week - the sun is shining and it's raining prize money and the newness of it all is hitting his system like a needle-full of adrenalin.
Two tournaments in and he's just finding his feet, absorbing an overload of introductions to people and to situations which he is still trying to categorise. In the past two weeks in Florida he has pumped the hands proffered beneath so many smiling faces that he'd need a data processor to remember them.
Fortunately he has one. Part of the introductory kit to life on the tour is a personal computer. Even the most recalcitrant Luddite has to take one and figure it out.
"They want to keep you informed via the computer. You log on, get down and your tee-off times are there, you're schedule, everything you need. I'm not a computer person. I have had one lesson and I'm due to get another one in two weeks in Los Angeles. When I'm up to speed on that it will make life a little easier."
When you glance through the media cutting for the Champions Tour the odd one, like "Rodriguez Missing due to Angioplasty", catches the eye, but mainly what strikes one is how much coverage there is, how much money there is and how much instant name recognition there is. Smyth noticed all that a long time ago. Despite two good British Open appearances back-to-back and a win in Madeira just two years ago this month, he was never in any doubt as to where he wanted to be when he turned 50.
Thus, on February 12th he found himself quietly celebrating his birthday and getting ready to play his first Champions Tour pro-am the following morning. This brave new world? He loved it.
"Everything is very impressive. The standards. The efficiency. The range standards. The quality of the golf courses, the way they present them. The situation - you play your practice round from a buggy, play your pro-ams from a buggy.
"Everything is like clockwork. Rounds don't take more than four hours and 15 minutes. The pro-ams are held in the mornings and afternoons on Wednesday and Thursday, official practice is Tuesday.
"They give the pro-am four hours 30 exactly and then a klaxon goes and everyone stops playing when they finish out that hole. If you have 16 completed that's all you get. They give you pars for the rest. You get off the course and the next crowd come on. It all starts at 8.0, finishes at 12.30 and then the next lot start at 1.0.
"On the European Tour often guys would come into the clubhouse and they'd be dead after being out for six-and-a-half hours in the pro-am."
AND the eyes are wide when it comes to the specimens who fill out the courses. This isn't golf for grumpy old men. You can only have a buggy if you have a medical cert or an injury. When Smyth arrived he found most of the competition were working out in the gym. Practice is as intense as the competition.
Yet there is a welcome maturity to the whole thing. Nobody plays silly buggers. The one-upmanship of younger bucks isn't necessary. Mutual respect is a key part of the ambience. When Smyth arrived, not a million-dollar name or a well-known face, every player he met congratulated him on what he had achieved in winning the Tour School down at Rolling Oaks. They wished him the best of luck. Smyth had worried that he might encounter an insular, closed shop sort of world. Instead he felt at home.
So at the players' meeting which he attended his ears were pricked and every item of data was saved. It was made very clear by the Tour's commissioner, Tim Finchem, that this was a different sort of tour and players should act accordingly. No dog eat dog. No cutlasses. Players need to sell their Tour. Friendliness towards the press and the spectators was encouraged. Nobody should ever refuse an autograph. Smith ticked every item off. No problem. No problem. No problem.
Every head was nodding.
"You're dealing with mature people here," he thought. "It's entertainment on top of the competition."
And Gary Player spoke. Said that thing about every player in the world who was 50 wanting to be on this Tour. Des Smyth from Drogheda was processing the information, feeding in new data all the time. The field is the top 31 from last year's order of merit, then the 31 all-time money winners, then your next in if you are one of the eight qualifiers from school. And there's invitations, conditional cards, etc. And he fed in some of the names of the players who'll soon be 50. Andy Bean, Craig Stadler, Jerry Pate, Jay Haas, Curtis Strange, Mark James, Sam Torrance, Mark McNulty, Eduardo Romero. Punch the button and the feedout told him there was only one place to be at the end of each season: top 31 with a watertight guarantee that this one was going to run and run.
That he has what it takes to survive isn't in doubt. And the money is so good that he who survives prospers. Chances are you've never heard of Dave Eichelberger, a 56-year-old Texan who has played 1,000 pro tournaments in a 32-year career. Twenty-six years he was on the regular Tour and in that time he made $1.1 million. For six years he has been on the senior swing. In that time he has put away $3.5 million.
SMYTH has a hunger which will exceed that of Eichelberger's. His appetite is fed by memory. He learned to win the hard way. By 1977 he had been a pro for four years and "some of my closest friends were saying, 'Des, you have no chance'. They meant well. They really did. They thought, Des, you haven't the game. I appreciated their honesty. I never believed them though."
And the people who said stick with it?
"That was me! The little man in my head! Kept me going."
He was a young man and this was the job at hand. He wasn't playing for money, which was lucky because he wasn't winning any. He was playing for the adventure and the experience, but the gradient was getting steeper and steeper.
"In 1977 and 1978 I questioned my decision to play. Having started in 1974, things were bleak. Bills were mounting. There wasn't a sponsor to be seen. Economies were bad. No golf on TV. I enjoyed the challenge. Really I did. What's happening now gives me more of a sense of satisfaction having come through that period.
"In 1977 I was questioning myself. Is there a future? How will I make a living? Very serious questions. I thought of taking a regular job, but made progress in 1978, finished in the 60s in the order of merit. I had a card, but needed Monday qualifying every week. Been quite successful on the qualifying days for the British Open ever since. I think that's a throwback to that period of turning up in places on a Monday and being stuck there. I can remember not qualifying in Madrid, having failed for the week, and having to get to Rome the following Monday to get into the Italian Open. What do you do? You work hard and go hungry. Or else you break."
He jumped the hurdle in 1979, holing an eagle putt on the final hole to deprive Nick Price of the European Matchplay title at Fulford. He was hungry and dogged. The next summer he won the Greater Manchester Open following a 90-minute play-off from holes 10 to 16 with Brian Waite. They played in the driving rain, matching each other all the way. The first prize was less than an average pro would get out of bed for these days.
"It was a love affair though. I wanted to be a professional golfer. Tough as it was, I wanted to succeed. You never forget those times. I might be cautious this year because it's built in to me. I had four or five years with my career on the line. When things get better you appreciate it.
"I'm more determined not to go back. I'm determined not to be at Tour School next year. I did well there this year, but I was edgy. I didn't enjoy it one bit. And looking around. There were tears, heads held in hands. I won at 13-under. Last card was nine-under. That's four shots. Over 72 holes. That's two bad golf strokes being the difference between getting a card and not getting it. That's pressure."
It was a time before courtesy cars and plush hotels. He remembers getting trains and humping luggage and cadging lifts. Taxis to train stations. Trains to London. Two or three of them travelling in a posse. Himself and Jimmy Hegarty usually. Paddy McGurk played a few events in those days. Joey Purcell too. They all travelled together for a while. How poor were they? If they had 10 quid between them they could eat and that was doing great.
"We used to chuck our own balls. I'd hit balls to Jimmy, he'd stand and collect them and he'd hit them back to me. We had to carry our own practice balls everywhere. Ooh the weight of golf balls we'd bring around! You had to bring everything. It was murder, and the courses were like battlefields. I hear lads bitching today and it makes me laugh. When I won my first, I'll never forget it. Winning that matchplay. I was on a high forever."
He flies to LA tomorrow and from there straight to Mexico City where they'll argue the toss over $2 million or so late in the week. He'll travel light, pick up what he needs when he gets there. He'll do that 25 times this year, he'll keep going and keep hustling till he's sure that the adventure will continue.
And the competitive edge honed in the bad days will serve him well. He likes the genial ambience, like the fan-friendliness, the sort of place where, when a man puts his ball down on the first, well, if he still has a hunger he knows he can turn a dollar or two.
Life doesn't begin at 50, it just gets better.
