I ran into Steve Mariucci a few months ago at a Sports Emmy Awards party in New York. I was going to be interviewing Mariucci's good friend Tom Izzo, coach of the Michigan State basketball team, so I asked Mariucci about Izzo's golf game. "He loves to tell the story about playing golf with Tiger," he said. "You have to ask him about it." And so I did. But I also asked Izzo who he'd call if he had a three foot putt for his life, how he kills time on long flights; I asked him to relate coaching to managing his golf game, and how he would've coached Jean Van de Velde through the mess he made at the '99 British Open.
In a situation where a golfer is collapsing at the end of a round, a
Jean Van de Veldian choke at the British Open several years ago ...
Yep. I watched it.
If you were his caddie, how would you coach him through that situation?
Well that's a great question. I think of a free-throw shooter or a
three-point shooter who can't make a shot, a pitcher who can't throw a
strike . . . I remember John Smoltz went through that. I guess a guy
who can't make a putt would be like that, but that meltdown along with
the Shark's at the Masters, were some of the greatest in sports --
forget just golf -- watching that I wanted to climb through the TV and
tell him to play it safe. How many strokes up was he? And there was one
bad shot right after another after another. It wasn't two or three, it
seemed like six or eight. So I think if I was his caddie, I would've
been more like the guy in "Happy Gilmore". I'd have broken his clubs
before I let him take another bad shot.
Here's a link to the entire interview.
--Matty G.
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