by Shane Ryan
This is another Kaymer trademark—learning from every situation, whether it involves him or not. One of his favorite hobbies is watching professional sports, but even on this front, Kaymer takes a unique angle, monitoring the other players for “behavior, attitude, momentum swings” in order to find something he can use in his own competitive life.
The world interests him, and everything he encounters represents a learning opportunity, or at least psychological material for perfecting his game. In golf, he’s as close as anybody comes to the Greek ideal of athlete-as-philosopher.
—
Kaymer was born in Düsseldorf, an international financial hub on the Rhine River near Germany’s western border with the Netherlands. His father, Horst, was an accountant, and his mother, Rina, stayed at home to raise Martin and his older brother, Philip. Horst was a tough man; the kind of father who would force his sons to fight their way through difficulty rather than helping them out. The warmth at home came from Rina, who did her best to offset Horst’s stern attitude.
“To simplify things and try to keep it a bit shorter,” he wrote to me in an email, “I would say that our father was the tough one and our mother was the softer one. Perfect combination if you ask me.”
Like many Germans, Martin grew up loving soccer. As a child, he and his friends spent most of their free time in the fields outside Düsseldorf, and Martin dreamed of playing professionally well into his mid-teens.
When his father brought him and Philip to the golf course, it was not love at first sight. He mostly played with Philip, and between the brothers, every round was competitive. The matches never devolved into fights or other ugliness, but they shared a fascination with winning, and found that they could make a competition out of anything.
He [Horst] and his wife, Rina, extracted a promise from the boys that they would not compete against each other in tournament play, but as teens Martin and Philip secretly entered a club championship on opposite sides of the match-play bracket….The match was all square arriving on the 18th hole, a tough par-4. Martin reached the green in regulation, while Philip missed it and had to chip up, giving his baby brother a putt for the victory. Martin proceeded to four-whack, handing the title to Philip. “It is a favorite story in our family,” says Philip. “It is useful when we are, as you say in America, talking s—-.”
—ALAN SHIPNUCK, Sports Illustrated, 2010
When explaining his success today, Kaymer often cites the “German character,” attributing his patience and perfectionism to a national attitude. But as a child, he told me he could be “crazy and uncontrolled.” That wildness faded as he grew up, and slowly he started believing he could play golf professionally. He won the Club Mettmann Championship at age fourteen, and attended a sports academy for high school. At fifteen, he hung up his soccer boots for good—training for both sports was burning him out—and began to dominate the amateur golf scene. In 2003, his last year as an amateur, he won the German Masters double—the country’s match play and stroke play championships.
That year, at just twenty years old, he turned pro, and less than five years later he had worked his way onto the European Tour and won his first event at the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship. Four more wins in the next two years set him up as one of Europe’s brightest young stars, but the most emotional win by far came in his home country.
His mother had been diagnosed with cancer in 2006, just before Martin played his first Challenge Tour event at the Vodafone. Philip had convinced him not to abandon the tournament, and took up the bag for his younger brother as Martin won the event that launched his career. Now, two years later, Rina was losing her fight. Playing at home once again in the BMW International Open, Martin took a six-shot lead into Sunday, but lost it all by the 11th hole and found himself trailing by a shot. He fought back, and defeated Anders Hansen on the first hole of a playoff with a seven-foot birdie putt.
He dedicated the bittersweet victory to Rina, and his family headed home to Düsseldorf. Not long after, Kaymer lost his mom.
—
In 2009, he bought a second home in Arizona, broke his foot in a go-karting accident, and came back in January 2010 to win his second Abu Dhabi Championship. That August, at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, he entered the final round of the PGA Championship four shots behind Nick Watney at -9.
Watney faded badly, shooting 81, and he left the tournament wide open. Bubba Watson put together one of the day’s best rounds, reaching -11 for the tournament, and Kaymer faced a fifteen-foot par putt on the 18th hole to finish with the same score. He holed it, and after Dustin Johnson’s error on the 18th hole, Kaymer and Watson were the last men standing.
Bubba would have won in a traditional one-hole playoff after he bombed his drive just short of the green on the par-4 10th and made birdie, but the PGA Championship uses a three-hole playoff system. Kaymer struck back on 17, sinking another fifteen-footer to level the score.
On the third and final hole, the par-5 18th, Bubba went into full “Bubba Golf” mode and tried to hit his second shot 206 yards to the green from a bad lie in the right rough. He struck a nice pose after swinging his 6-iron, but the ball landed in a creek. The mistake allowed Kaymer to lay up from his own bad lie, after which he hit what he told me was “one of the purest strikes of his career” into the green. He two-putted from fifteen feet for bogey, and became only the second German after Bernhard Langer—one of his childhood heroes—to win a major championship.
Kaymer was fully in the zone, and the following February, the twenty-six-year-old became the number 1 golfer in the world.
—
His reign lasted eight weeks. Along with the swing changes he implemented after another missed cut at Augusta, Kaymer also struggled to cope with the fame and attention of becoming the public face of golf in Germany. He rarely opens up about the specific difficulties of this time, aside from the heightened fan and media scrutiny, but old interviews provide a few faint clues. After a two-day tournament in Germany, for instance, fans stalked him to his father’s house and were still waiting there the next morning.
“I got more attention, became a little bit more popular,” he told reporters that December. “No one from my, let’s say, the people I work with, was used to [having] a player who is number one in the world. So it was a matter of getting used to a lot of things, and for me, only twenty-six years old, all of a sudden being in the spotlight wherever I go in America, in Germany, it takes some time to get used to the situation and that role that you have.”
The pressure, the expectations from himself and others, and the startling lack of privacy knocked Kaymer back just as he recalibrated his swing. He did manage one big moment during this period; despite sitting out all but one pairs session at the 2012 Ryder Cup due to his struggles, he hit the putt to beat Steve Stricker on Sunday that capped off Europe’s miracle comeback and allowed them to retain the Cup. Even as his game suffered, he understood the magnitude of that moment—any other result might have crushed him.
“I think a lot of people don’t realize that it can change a career,” he said. “You think about it in the negative way and think about if I would have missed the putt, it could break an athlete.”
When he began to adjust his game after the 2011 Masters, he thought it would take six months before he won again. Three years later, he was still waiting, and had reached a low of number 63 in the world. He agonized over whether he’d made the right decisions, and whether the media were right when they called him a flash in the pan. The journey had soured.
Slowly, though, his long game began to take shape in 2014, and when it did, he devoted more energy to the short game that had abandoned him. Top-twenty-five finishes at Hilton Head and Wells Fargo were the first signs that something was changing. At some point after Augusta, Kaymer finally felt confident enough to stop leaning on his caddie like a crutch, and stop overthinking every shot. At last, he could trust his instinct and stop playing like a “weiches ei”—German for “soft egg,” a wimp.
“I can say confidently that I can hit any shot,” he said at the Players Championship. “It’s just a matter of if you can handle the pressure, if you can hit the right shot at the right time when you need to. That’s the tough part…even if you screw up once in a while, that’s okay, everybody does that once in a while. But at least you play brave.”
In the first round at Sawgrass, he stood on the second tee needing to hit a draw with the wind off the left. Here was the complete artist, forced to work with his least favorite brush. He reminded himself of that idea. Be brave. Trust your ability to hit every shot in the arsenal. This is what three years of work had been building toward, and if he didn’t attempt it, what was it all for?
He pulled off the draw, gave himself an eagle opportunity, and made birdie. He shot 29 on the front nine and finished with a 63, tying the course record. The German was back.
—
Kaymer and Spieth were paired on Saturday, and passed the front nine in style, consolidating their lead. Spieth had yet to make a bogey in forty-five holes, but when he missed a short birdie putt on 10, it didn’t stop a fan from yelling “geez!” like his own son had just let him down. Such are the pressures of life as the great white hope.
As the two players walked down the 11th fairway, Kaymer put his arm around Spieth and advised him not to worry—this, he said, indicating the course, the lead, and everything else, is just where he wanted to be. Spieth appreciated the gesture, and marveled at how Kaymer never seemed to react to a bad break. When rotten luck hit, he just smiled and kept moving on. Spieth knew that was a weakness of his, but whether he could learn from the example was another matter.
They moved on, past the cabbage palmettos and the magnolias, the clumps of crown and cordgrass lining the fairways, the sandy mounds topped by pampas grass, and the ubiquitous pines and live oaks. I heard two fans coin a nickname for Spieth—“Heir Jordan”—even as he began to lose control of his driver. He flew it right on 14, but recovered with an incredible hybrid to the green. He managed to save par again on 15 after blasting his drive left.
I caught a glimpse of Spieth’s grandfather following the group on a motorized wheelchair as the golfers survived the island green with two more pars. On 18, with Kaymer up a stroke, it looked like Spieth’s bogey-free streak would end when he left himself a lengthy par putt from the fringe. Instead, he buried it, and it was Kaymer who blinked, missing his short par putt to sink to -12, in a dead heat with Spieth. A cheer rose up from the adamantly pro-Spieth gallery, but Kaymer wasn’t offended. He just tapped in his bogey, smiled, and waved—and again, Spieth was amazed at his equanimity.
The situation after the round must have struck Kaymer as a bit odd. The man who had been overwhelmed by attention when he rose to number one now sat before a very small cluster of reporters in the interview room. Meanwhile, outside in the gathering dark, even Spieth’s caddie commanded more attention. You could hear the girls behind the ropes scream Jordan’s name—his youth, and his showing at the Masters, had elevated him close to the Beatles-esque status enjoyed by Rickie Fowler and Rory McIlroy.
Their cries, and the cheers for Kaymer’s miss on 18, signaled to the German that he would face a Ryder Cup–type atmosphere on Sunday.The diverted attention came with a silver lining—he could go about his business while the crowds and journalists flocked to Spieth. He’d need to be brave and to trust his game; he also knew that a bit of luck wouldn’t hurt. In order to close the book on three years of struggle, Kaymer would take every advantage he could get.
As for Spieth, Sunday presented a chance to redeem his final round at the Masters. A few very important questions loomed. What had he learned from Augusta? Could he control his drives under pressure? Was Jordan Spieth a legitimate winner, or was he just another talented young kid years away from rounding into form? Was he the next big thing, a Tiger in the making, or the living embodiment of a hopeful idea that couldn’t stand up to the cold truths of competitive reality?
The next afternoon, both players would try to put a capstone on an era of their professional lives. One would succeed, and the other would continue to languish in uncertainty.
* * *
“Well, I think golf, you know, you should play for the right reason. You should not play golf to make dollars. And, for me, the nicest thing is just to get up in the morning—for example here, to get up in the morning 6:30, 7:00, get on the range and see the sunrise, that is the best moment. Those things, I think, that is life quality. And for me it doesn’t really get better.”
—KAYMER
Sunday was Mother’s Day, but Kaymer didn’t need the holiday to remember Rina. He thinks of her each time he sees the sunflower on his golf bag. It was her favorite flower, and it opens to the sky in her memory.
Spieth came out at 12:20, giving himself an hour longer to warm up than he’d allotted at the Masters. He wore a salmon pink shirt and gray pants, and started out on the putting green, using three balls.
“He’s incredible,” a woman watching remarked to her friend. “So many adults I know don’t have that composure.”
In other words: Here we go again.
An overcast sky brought a faint humidity that thickened as the day went along, choking the air as the Spanish moss choked the branches of the oaks. Martin Kaymer and Sergio Garcia emerged from the clubhouse together, with the German dressed in pink and blue. He set up behind Spieth on the range—he could see the young American, but all Spieth could feel were the eyes on his back.
Kaymer wore a tennis ball on a lanyard around his neck to help him keep his forearms together—“a smart way of being lazy,” he called it, since the lanyard kept him from having to chase the ball if it came loose. Sergio hit the range picker by accident, delighting the fans.
As the players approached the first tee, Spieth pounded fists with the fans along the ropes. Kaymer looked bigger and more athletic, with his usual sheen of sweat or sunblock covering his face and forearms. The two shook hands and had a very short talk—Kaymer was no Bubba Watson, and he wouldn’t be keeping up a stream of nervous chatter throughout the day. From the stadium seats at the first tee, the fans roared for Spieth, and clapped politely for Kaymer.
Spieth lost his drive to the right off the first tee, but had a clear shot to the green on his approach, and saved par. Kaymer gave himself a good early birdie look, and took par after missing the nine-footer. On two, the long par-5, Kaymer couldn’t pull off the draw and left his drive right. He dried his palms on Craig Connelly’s towel, and Spieth dipped his head into his shoulders, first one side and then the other, wiping off his own sweat.
Both made birdies on two, and followed with pars on the par-3 third. The fourth hole saw the day’s first separation, when Spieth hit an approach to seven feet on the short par 4, and knocked in the birdie for a one-shot lead. On the next hole, his drive found the left rough, and he decided after much discussion that the lie was too thick to go for the hole, which was guarded in front by a series of difficult bunkers. He laid up, but his approach from 108 yards was mediocre, leaving him twenty-seven feet for par. The putt came up a foot short, and Spieth gave a dirty look at a fan who yelled, “Pick it up!” He fell back into a tie, and snapped his bogey-free streak at fifty-eight holes for the tournament.
On the sixth, Kaymer made his first real error of the day, hitting a weak uphill putt from thirty-eight feet that stopped ten feet shy of the hole. Spieth had just a foot longer for birdie, and it looked like a two-shot swing could be in the offing. Instead, Spieth missed, Kaymer holed a huge par putt, and the two remained deadlocked at -13.
Elsewhere on the course, Jim Furyk was making some final round noise with four birdies on the front nine, but at -10, he was still three shots off the lead. Sergio was one closer as he neared the turn, and Rory McIlroy and Jimmy Walker were unleashing back nine runs that would prove to be spectacular, but not quite good enough to erase the gap. For the moment, Spieth and Kaymer were the only show in town.
On the 8th, a
tough 237-yard par 3, Kaymer looked almost anguished as he watched his ball land, but it fell safely on the green, twenty-seven feet away. Spieth wasn’t so lucky. His tee shot came up well short, landing in the left rough thirty yards in front of the hole.
“I can’t get up and down from there!” he moaned. “It’s the worst place to be.” As he stowed his club, he continued to complain about his shot. “Anywhere right is fine…not there!”
He managed a good flop shot that got him within eleven feet, but he couldn’t hole the putt. When Kaymer two-putted, the German held his first lead of the day. The lost stroke wasn’t a killer for Spieth, but for those who knew his on-course style, the sudden attitude change was an urgent cause for concern. Just like at the Masters, he gave in to the woe-is-me lamentations that rocked his focus—as if fate was against him, and all he could do was curse the cruel universe.
The last hole on the front nine is a 583-yard par 5, and Kaymer led off by bombing a 322-yard drive that stopped just shy of the creek bisecting the hole. Spieth hit a nice drive of his own, and since the wind was helping, he took out a hybrid and went for the front of the green 260 yards away. He hit the ball slightly on the heel, and just missed his landing spot. He wound up in the right rough, while Kaymer put his second shot into the greenside bunker. The German’s shot from the sand was perfect, stopping seventeen inches from the hole for an easy tap-in birdie. Spieth pitched out to the front of the green and took a decent line, but the ball tumbled off at the last moment. He wrenched his club angrily, and had to settle for par and a two-shot deficit.
The Augusta parallels continued—Spieth’s hot start had carried him to an early lead, and he lost it before he had even made the turn. Now he had a chance to show courage and resilience, and to respond to his bad luck with a bit of Kaymer’s combination of stoic resolve and aggression.
The rain began to threaten on the tenth, and when Kaymer hit his tee shot right, a few fans began to heckle, albeit lightly. His muscular forearms glowed with perspiration as he hacked out of the rough and onto the green. Any chance for a reversal was lost when Spieth’s approach sailed left of the hole. The young Texan sent the ball across the green on the way back, and took yet another bogey. Thunder sounded in the distance as Kaymer grabbed a three-shot lead, and Spieth’s hopes began to fade. On number 11, he looked about as overcast as the sky, and I thought for a second that he might throw a club.