by Shane Ryan
In his late teens, Dubuisson worked with another coach, Dominique Larretche, who told Le Figaro that his pupil was like a “Ferrari.” Still, life was not easy. “It was difficult to coach him,” Larretche said. “When things don’t go well, Victor tends to not tolerate any form of authority…at the end of our collaborations, there are things I didn’t accept.”
Another coach, Benoît Ducoulombier, told the Journal du Golf that when he first tried to help Dubuisson with his putting, “he ran away and treated me as if I were a terrorist.” It took a year before Victor would give it another go, and the coach learned that it was better to let the golfer lead. If he made the mistake of taking any initiative, Victor would become tremendously uncomfortable and flee.
Despite these testy relationships, the boy prospered, and the honors came fast—French amateur champion, U18 European champion, Junior Ryder Cup, European amateur champion, and the number 1 amateur ranking in the world.
When he turned professional, he came down with a case of “golden staph,” a bacterial infection that slowed him down for nearly two years. He pressed on, kept his European Tour card despite playing sick, and fought his way to Antalya, Turkey, where in the fall of 2013, his whole life changed with his first victory on the European tour.
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“And who pays? Daddy does. Today, the Federation is taking credit for Victor’s success!!! Rubbish. Victor, he adored me until he turned professional and earned a good living for himself. His dough, he can stuff it wherever he wants, surrounded by all these arrivistes [social climbers] and hypocrites…Victor, just a little respect and recognition for the people who accompanied and guided you when you were starting out.”
—ALBAN, on Facebook
When Victor decides to cut ties, he really means it. A report in Le Monde indicated that he hasn’t spoken with his uncle Hervé, the basketball star, for more than eight years due to an “irreversible rift between Hervé and Victor’s mother,” and he once told a French journalist that his uncle was responsible for “breaking up his family.”
He didn’t elaborate, but that was just the start of his retreat from the family. Four years later, his father and mother went through an ugly divorce, and Victor has yet to forgive or forget.
“A painful breakup between his mom and I happened,” Alban told me. “It really disturbed Victor, who is a sensitive boy, and that is why he hasn’t spoken to me in four years.”
And of course, that may not be the entire story between father and son. Here again, we come to a point of ignorance regarding their relationship in Victor’s formative years. Perhaps the divorce was the sum of Victor’s anger, or maybe it was only the final straw. Clues are few and far between, and our only real hint comes from Victor’s claim that he has no family, and, perhaps, from another post I found on Alban’s Facebook. According to him, the last words that passed between the two came almost five years ago, in a text message from Victor.
“You broke my balls during my entire amateur career,” he wrote. The two haven’t spoken since.
* * *
“The golfer agrees to meet with journalists about as often as a French victory in a Grand Slam tournament happens. In any case, as soon as a microphone gets close to him, the young man becomes a cactus himself: elusive.”
—Le Monde, October 2014
Victor Dubuisson’s second-greatest talent, after his golf, comes in holding a grudge. This goes beyond his family, and extends to anyone he perceives as a threat. He holds a particular animosity toward France, and French media.
The first sign of this antipathy came in a February 2011 story in L’Équipe, written by Phillippe Chassepot, in which Victor was quoted as saying, “When I see the shitty reputation I’m given and the unbearable mentality of my country, I really don’t want to play for France.”
In a 2013 interview with Le Figaro, Victor expounded on the topic. He liked the other French players on the European Tour, he said, but as for the country, he didn’t feel supported since they always criticized him. For proof, he offered the fact that he had no French sponsors, which meant that they didn’t like his image.
It’s clear that Victor’s distaste for his country runs deeper than a punitive tax system—he doesn’t like their journalists either. He told Twitter followers in July that he’d rather stick with English and American media, who understand golf better than the French journalists, and with whom he had a better relationship.
I spoke with François Scimeca at the French Golf Federation, who first met Victor at the French Open when the boy was just fifteen years old. Scimeca has a good relationship with Victor, but he recognizes the pitfalls of dealing with the erratic star.
“He is not very friendly with the media,” Scimeca told me. “He doesn’t like it. In France, nobody can access him easily, because he wants to play golf, live golf, and have his outside life, and that’s it.”
As much as Victor’s friends and agents and coaches tell him that he has to accept the presence of French media, and that speaking cordially with them is one of the obligations that comes along with the perks, the lesson hasn’t stuck. He still avoids journalists at all costs, and he openly detests the Journal du Golf, a subsection of the French sports media giant L’Équipe.
Benjamin Cadiou, a writer for Journal du Golf who has borne the brunt of Victor’s fitfulness, entertained a few of my questions at the Ryder Cup. He first met the budding French star in 2007, in an interview organized by the French Golf Federation with the top amateurs. Even then, Dubuisson was shy and reticent.
“Our relationship is complex,” he said. “It’s very difficult to communicate with that kind of guy. I’m not complaining, but it’s tough.”
In the beginning, Cadiou said, Victor loved to read the Journal, and claimed that he had it all the time in his youth, since it was free and he came from a poor background—another exaggeration from Dubuisson, at least according to his father, who said the family lived comfortably. The semi-cordial relationship continued, with a few minor ups and downs, all the way to 2014. In January, Cadiou spent ninety minutes chatting with Dubuisson at Torrey Pines, and came away thinking they had solidified a good working relationship. The next day, Victor shot a final round 76, and wouldn’t even look at Cadiou when he approached him for a quote.
Later in the year, Cadiou did a video interview with Victor, and asked him what he liked to do outside the course. The golfer took out a set of car keys from his pocket, dangled them, and told them this was his main hobby. It seemed like an innocuous moment, but Dubuisson became angry when the footage aired, and it set a pattern for his interactions with the media. He would give a quote without regard for how it sounded, and when it ran, he would accuse the outlet of either distorting his words or using material that was supposed to have been off the record—a dubious assertion, since he doesn’t have many private conversations with journalists in the first place.
Cadiou doesn’t trust any information he hears about Victor—there’s no way to investigate each new rumor, and even if the information came from Victor himself, it’s likely to be a half-truth at best.
Finally, fed up with the mistreatment at the hands of France’s brightest stars, the writers of the Journal broke their long stoic spell at the British Open. Philippe Chassepot penned an article called “Le Malaise Dubuisson,” which started out with a bang:
“Victor Dubuisson is at war against the French press. Since forever. But he seems to have crossed another line this week at the British Open, which is good for no one: neither for him, nor us.
Small recap of an ordinary week with Victor Dubuisson: On Tuesday, we looked for him unsuccessfully. On Wednesday, we followed him at practice holes but we weren’t able to catch his eye. On Thursday, after his frustrating +2, he told us “have a good day” and left. Yesterday, the French player was once again about to leave, but Benoît Ducoulombier [Dubuisson’s coach] brought him back to his senses and Victor welcomed us with a “Go ahead, ask them, your rubbish questions!”
&nbs
p; Chassepot went on to call Dubuisson “the most hypersensitive athlete we have ever met,” and to accuse him of “paranoid projections.” In one absurd episode, Chassepot wrote, Dubuisson became angry with an Internet user who had called him “a pathetic schmuck” in the comments section of an article, and transferred his anger to the Journal itself.*
Chassepot pointed out that unlike the British tabloids, which would be only too happy to delve into Dubuisson’s dark side—“of which he doesn’t lack”—the Journal had respected his request for privacy in his personal and family life.
Needless to say, Dubuisson did not respond well to this piece. He immediately cut off all ties with L’Équipe, and hasn’t spoken with them since. A French cameraman told me that Dubuisson was “still a child in his mind,” and that it was a “nightmare for us trying to talk to him.” It got so bad for journalists like Cadiou at Victor’s events that they finally resorted to asking sympathetic foreign journalists for help—ask this question, please, and relay the answers back to us, or we’ll have nothing to write. (I rendered this service on more than one occasion.)
“It’s finished,” said Cadiou, of their relationship with Victor. “Nothing, absolutely nothing since. And we didn’t do any mistakes, it’s totally wrong. We never use off-the-record words for our article. He’s very suspicious, and we will never speak together again.”
* * *
Q. What do you make of Victor?
LEE WESTWOOD: It’s very difficult to know what to make of Victor. He’s quite shy. He’s quite unpredictable. He’s got a lot of flair. He’s got tons of game.
Victor is not without his defenders. Even his most frustrated coaches say he can be humble and kind, and that his sour turns are merely the result of a sensitive boy who has trouble knowing how to behave in the intense glare of the spotlight. Benjamin Cadiou thinks that he’s very smart, even if it doesn’t come across in the academic sense. The Damianos scoff at the idea, bandied about in his early days, that Victor is lazy, and even Larretche, the coach who found him too difficult to stay with in 2010, shed a tear when he won in Turkey.
His father, too, always recovers from the moments of anger to express his love for Victor. The very last message he sent me, before our correspondence ended, felt a little heartbreaking. “Victor est une belle personne et très attachante, j’aimerai que vous le rencontriez un jour,” he wrote. Victor is a beautiful person, and very endearing. I would love for you to meet him one day.
Well, I had met him, and even if I hadn’t seen those qualities, the father’s affection still moved me. For everyone else, Dubuisson has remained a mystery. Had he actually left school at age ten? Did he live alone, with no parents? Is he crazy?
After dazzling the golf world in Arizona, Victor changed his phone number without letting anyone know, which led to missed texts from a few people, including Paul McGinley. It was nothing new—his reputation for skipping important meetings had continued, and now plagued his sponsors. Supposedly, he even failed to show up for a practice round with his hero Thomas Levet in January, though this bit of information comes from The Daily Mail, who are still under the impression that Victor lives in Honduras.
In any case, bonding with Dubuisson—and incorporating him into the team—was always going to be one of McGinley’s greatest challenges. But he had a plan. He would enlist Graeme McDowell—a man whose charisma and wit made him a perfect counterpoint to the quiet Frenchman—to play an avuncular role. McDowell’s task was to integrate Victor with the rest of the Europeans, assuage his discomfort and nerves, and join him as a partner in the cauldron of Ryder Cup foursomes.
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* His current coach, Benoît Ducoulombier, said in January that Victor had been hurt by messages on social media, and that he had encouraged him to quit.
26
AUCHTERARDER, COUNTY OF PERTH, SCOTLAND
The Ryder Cup; An American Course in Scotland; McGinley’s Ascension; The Gutting at Gleneagles; A Tale of Two Captains; The Mickelson Rebellion
“Thus it follows that the highest form of warfare is to out-think the enemy…the great warriors of old not only won victories, but won them with ease; because their victories were achieved without apparent difficulty, they did not bring them great fame for their wisdom or respect for their courage. Being prepared for all circumstances is what ensures certain victory, for it means you are fighting an enemy who is already beaten.”
—SUN TZU, The Art of War
The Ryder Cup came to Scotland less than a week after the country’s 5.3 million citizens hit the polls to vote on breaking away from the United Kingdom to form an independent country. The UK loyalists took a 55.3 percent majority, but in the apartment windows of Glasgow’s beautiful West End—a liberal stronghold, and one of the few cities to vote against the grain—the blue “yes” signs remained, endorsing a bygone dream.
From the city center, hourly shuttles took journalists on the forty-five-mile ride northeast, on the M80 and A9, to the town of Auchterarder and the Centenary Course at Gleneagles. We drove through the lowland swells, past fields the color of dark moss, where stone walls fenced in herds of sheep and cattle. The first NO THANKS signs—a polite refusal of the independence movement—appeared as city became countryside, and politics became conservative. The bus labored as we continued north, and soon we were on the very edge of the Scottish Highlands.
We rumbled on through the narrow roads, and for the first time in my limited UK travels, I was experiencing a shade of that old American feeling—the expansive sense that you are on the road, heading into the unknown, and that the horizon might be infinite. If England had always felt cramped and claustrophobic to me, this was the wild green yonder I had been missing. The difference was that in contrast to the newness of America, the Scottish frontier came laden with a heavy sense of history.
We drove past the town of Stirling, where William Wallace won his great victory against the English. As the road twisted and climbed toward Gleneagles, we left the motorway and passed through the village of Braco, where cobblestone footbridges spanned lazy creeks, and the main street held small shops and linked cottage homes with gabled roofs. Aside from the satellite dishes poking out from second-floor windows, I felt that a place like this might have looked the same five hundred years ago.
The PGA Centenary Course, on the other hand, has barely been open two decades. In the shadow of the palatial Gleneagles hotel—a massive work of Georgian architecture, made of blaxter sandstone and rough-casted brick—it stands as an opulent fraud. First there’s the name, “Centenary,” which signifies a one hundredth anniversary and sounds very prestigious. The problem is that when the course opened in 1993, neither Gleneagles nor the PGA of Great Britain and Ireland had attained the century mark. In fact, it was originally called “The Monarch’s Course,” and only renamed to Centenary in 2001 to honor the PGA anniversary—a bit of a cheat, if you ask me.
There’s also the problem of the course’s style, which the Gleneagles website makes a valiant effort at tying into the country’s long history: “The Gleneagles courses, although not by the sea, resemble the older links golf courses in Scotland in that they are built on sand and gravel.”
That’s a little like saying my golf game resembles Rory’s in the sense that we both use metal clubs. In truth, Gleneagles looks far more like an American course than anything you’d see on linksland. Which doesn’t detract from its beauty—framed by farmland and hills that fade from a robust hunter green to clover to dark olive to fallow brown, the rolling valleys would make a pretty postcard. Pershire County is also “Big Tree Country,” and pines, beech, oak, yews, and larch lend a certain ancient stature to the scene. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the Centenary, except that it doesn’t feel like British golf, and for a competition that travels to Europe only once every four years, there’s something just a little off about a course that departs so completely from tradition.
So why hold the Cup at Gleneagles, when there are slews of legendary links
tracks all over Scotland that would gladly do the job? The answer, as ESPN’s Bob Harig reported that week, was money. The European Tour operates the Ryder Cup when it’s away from America, and because they’re not as financially robust as the PGA Tour, and have to subsidize their own events in the face of less generous sponsors, they milk their marquee event for every penny. Golfweek reported that the difference in the European Tour’s annual profit between the home Ryder Cup year in 2010 and the non-Cup year in 2011 was over sixteen million pounds—a ₤14 million profit in ’10, and a ₤2.2 million loss in ’11.
The Ryder Cup is how the European Tour survives. Aside from the fee the course pays them, the hosts also have to commit to hosting and providing the purse for a Tour event for a term of around fifteen years following the Cup. All the expenses involved in preparing the course fall on the club, while the profits from gate sales and concessions and merchandise go to the European Tour. It costs a pretty penny, and since the European Tour depends on the revenue for its survival, they will inevitably sell the event to the highest bidder, regardless of history or prestige.
Hence, Gleneagles.
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The first Ryder Cup was held in 1927, in Massachusetts, and a team from the United States that included Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen defeated a Great Britain squad by a score of 9.5-2.5. The teams alternated victories for the next six years, at which point the U.S. went on a run of dominance from 1935 to 1983 that produced twenty victories in twenty-two events. The unbroken dynasty made the whole thing a bit of a bore—nobody cared, which is why the PGA Tour never fought very hard to wrench the event from the PGA of America’s grasp when the two organizations split.