The most interesting golfer in the world’. No less than this is how the American press defined him during the last Masters at Augusta, where he was on the verge of making a big splash and winning, at the age of 50, the victory. More than three decades have passed since Miguel Angel Jimenez had the happy idea of caddying on weekends to lend a hand at home, a household with little income and many mouths to feed (they are seven brothers).
At the age of 15, he left school, dedicated himself fully to golf as a caddie and began to make his first steps on the driving range. In 1982 he turned professional and, after completing his military service, in 1985, at the age of 21, he began to dedicate himself seriously to competition. A lover of fast cars, cigars and good wine, the player from Malaga, at the age of 50, is giving more war than ever. He has been doing so since he was 40, as evidenced by the fact that fourteen of his twenty-one victories on the European Tour have come since he entered his fourth decade of life.
In his successful participation in the last Masters, where he finally finished fourth, two strokes behind the champion, he equaled the record for the best round (66) made in the history of the tournament by a player over 50 years old. Previously Fred Couples (in 2010, at the age of 50) and Ben Hogan (in 1967, at the age of 54). The player from Malaga also equaled his best score in his fifteen appearances when he shot 66 in the final round in 2010.
Only a week after his dazzling performance at Augusta National, Jiménez surprised the world once again with his victorious debut on the Champions Tour, the senior circuit in the United States. In his first foray on the over-50 Tour, at the Greater Gwinnett Championship, the player from Churriana won with two strokes ahead of German Bernhard Langer, the golfer who has 19 victories in seven years in this division. Another ‘historic’, Fred Couples, was fourth. Jiménez thus became the eighteenth player in history to win a senior circuit tournament on his debut. The player from Malaga is the second Spanish player in history to win on the Champions Tour, after José María Cañizares, who won the Toshiba Senior Classic in 2001.
And to top it all off, just as these lines were about to go to press, Pisha did it again, winning in a playoff at the Spanish Open, held in May at the PGA Catalunya Resort.
AT YOUR GOLF SCHOOL
Miguel Angel welcomes us at the golf school in Torremolinos, one of his efforts to give back to golf in his homeland the much that this sport has given him.
He arrived late because he was busy with the preparations for his second wedding, with the Austrian economist Susanne Styblo, which was to take place a few days later, and to attend to his mother, who had had a small medical problem. This gentleman doesn’t stop for a minute: he’s a 50-year-old powder puff.
In recent times he has become the fashionable man of golf. The day before, a Canadian journalist had come to interview him, that same morning a Swedish journalist, and so on every day, and he was stoic in the little time he has left between trips, between training and training “because hard work is the basis of everything. You have to bite the rock every day”.
If he is not holding a stick in his hand, Miguel feels as if something is missing, he feels as if he is wasting his time.
-You have recently been awarded the Gold Medal of Malaga, and in Andalusia in general you enjoy wide recognition. Do you feel like a prophet in your own land?
-Man, all recognition is good, isn’t it? I’ve been going around the world for twenty-six years and everyone likes to be recognized for things when you are alive, not when you’ve had it, which is what usually happens.
Nobody is a prophet in his own land, although I have won a couple of times in Andalusia, and being honored makes you feel good, of course. It’s the fruit of a lifetime’s work.
-Since a few months ago he has become the fashionable man in golf around the world, especially after his performance in the Masters…
-The last fifteen years I have been playing very good golf. They have been the best of my career. And lately, around fifty, the truth is that I am doing very well: I won in Hong Kong at the end of last year, I won the first senior tournament in which I have participated, fourth in the Masters, in short… I am still playing my best; thirty-something in the world ranking, the truth is that I am in a very nice moment of my life.
-The press all over the world is after you….
-Yes, because the truth is that it’s atypical, it’s not normal that with the age I am, I’m playing as if I were ten years younger.
-It improves with time, like good wines.
-Good wines get better with time, until, like all things, there comes a time when they can no longer improve and begin to sour.
I hope I have not reached that point yet. I am still searching for perfection and continuing to learn.
-The fifties are for most golfers a drastic change of cycle, however it seems that this is not the case for you.
-Normally when players reach fifty they are no longer productive in the regular circuit, and the last three or four years before they reach that age they are only thinking about reaching that age to start again in full swing in the senior circuit, where they arrive as youngsters.
I come from the regular circuit in good shape, in a good situation and, for the moment, with a hundred percent effectiveness: I have played a tournament and won it, what more can you ask for?
-Did you have the feeling that you could have won the Master?
-I had the feeling, given the way he was playing all week, that at least he was going to be there, fighting for the win. I was hitting the ball very well, playing well, with a very good dynamic and a focused head. Everything in its place, which is what you need to be in the Mastert…
-It would have been the pinnacle of an impressive career.
-It would have been great. Although I still have hopes of winning a major. In fact I’m qualified for all the ones that are left. I just played one where I came close and there are still more to go.
-Besides the joy of winning, what was it like to play for the first time in the senior circuit?
-It’s been fourteen or fifteen years since I got my American Tour card, where I played a couple of seasons, and now I’ve gone back about fourteen years. I see the same faces as then, the same people who at that time were older than me, and now I meet them again, it’s like going back in time.
The feeling has been very good, everyone was very happy that I was playing there, because a little fresh air is good for the Tour, for the sponsors, for television…. They have received me very well and I am very satisfied.
-The Hong Kong Open, with four victories, is unique, they should name the tournament after him.
-Hong Kong is a course that I like very much, I identify very well with it; you have to play a lot with the ball, move it well, and it adapts perfectly to my game.
-One of your objectives this year is to play the Ryder Cup. What other goals do you have in mind?
-Playing the Ryder Cup is my main priority, so I’m not going to play any more on the senior circuit until the Senior British Open, which is right after the Open.
My goal is to be in the European Ryder Cup team and for that I have to play in the regular circuit, then we will see how we finish the year and how we are in the world ranking.
I will also see how I start next year and then I will make a decision, because in 2016 there are the Olympics, and if I continue to be well positioned, maybe I have to make another sacrifice and play the Olympics,” he says ironically.
The truth is that I would love to be an Olympian. I’m going to let time make the decisions for me.
The image you project may seem a bit atypical compared to that of young golfers, very gym-oriented, very athletic; you don’t give up your cigars, good wine… it would seem that you are more interested in the “good life” than in demanding training, but I imagine that your successes are not given to you, that behind them there is hard and constant work?
Of course. I’m not going to change my physique at the age of fifty, far from it, nor to stop enjoying the things I like, but smoking, drinking and eating will not get you anywhere, they are pleasures apart, then you have to do a serious and constant work.
I get up and go to the gym, but I’m not going to be there 24 hours. I have to do maintenance work, keep stretching, a little bit of weight training, but not too much because I don’t want to change my structure or get injured if I overdo it. And then give balls and more balls. The guarantee of success is in hard work, you have to hit the rock every day.
When I started on Tour 26 years ago, people didn’t prepare as they do now, everything was much more technical. Now there is more power, more power: it is modern golf to which we all have to adapt in some way.
-What do you think of the nickname you have been given in the United States: “The most Interesting man in golf”?
-There are always people eager to find nicknames for things, and well, very well, I don’t dislike it, I like it.
-Although he still leads the world ranking, the gap with his pursuers has narrowed considerably, with Scott and Stenson just a few tenths of a second behind him. Do you think Woods’ reign is about to end or is there still a Tiger for a long time to come?
-How can I say that Tiger W.’s time is coming to an end when he is in his thirties and I am in my fifties? You can’t kill anyone before his time. He is an impressive player, and today the only one on earth who can beat Nicklaus’ record in terms of majors. We must have respect for him. Nobody can think that a player of that class is going to be lost overnight.
-Do you find it difficult to travel almost every week?
-What I like is what I do: competing, and that forces me to travel.
Although it’s true that it’s a little hard because it’s been many years going around the world, but this is what I know how to do, it’s what I enjoy, and it’s what I live for.
-Have you lost the desire to continue organizing tournaments?
-Keep organizing tournaments? For how grateful they are? Fuck them… If they want me to organize tournaments I am delighted but let them come with the butter in front, because I have lost a lot of money and people have a lot of face – he does not want to specify who, but it is understood.
In the last Open de Andalucía I lost an institutional sponsor days before the tournament, when everything was already committed, and then they said no. We had everything set up and Miguel Ángel Jiménez only has a word, and that’s why the tournament took place. We had everything set up and Miguel Angel Jimenez has only one word, and that’s why the tournament took place, but that was the end of it.
I am willing to do everything for my land, to do things here, but these gentlemen who are in charge of tourism and economic policies do not realize that thanks to golf we still live in the Costa del Sol / Costa del Golf. If we are not able to have a permanent tournament to use it for promotion and to organize fairs, bring tour operators and do a thousand things, they are blind. Let them dedicate themselves to something else.
THE FASHIONABLE MAN
Is it climate change, do insects not like golf, when will we get out of this damn crisis? Unanswered questions. Although Pablo Larrazábal would like to know why the hell he became the target of a swarm of giant Asian wasps during the Malaysian Open. The Spanish player was forced to jump into a lake on the golf course to avoid being stung by the winged insects, which stung him for quite a while…
Another less annoying peck, on the contrary, is the one given to Miguel Ángel Jiménez a couple of years ago. Cupid, you know, the little devil of love, gave it to him in the form of a crush. El Pisha is living, with half a century behind him, a second vital spring. If on the emotional level things seem to be going well for him, on the professional level they couldn’t be better.
The pro churrianero has been on an unbeatable streak since April, when he astonished the golfing staff, which amounts to millions of souls, most of them in suspense, with his vibrant performance at the Masters. He equaled, with his 66 strokes, the best round in that major by a player over 50 years old, and finished fourth in the famous tournament at the no less famous Augusta National. Such was the impact he is causing on the other side of the Atlantic pond that Uncle Sam’s nephews -the Americans, come on- have given him the nickname of “The most interesting golfer in the world”. Almost nothing!
Then he would make another one of his own, winning his first appointment with the Champions Tour, that circuit of champions that gathers in the United States the best fifty-year-olds in the world, with mythical names such as Greg Norman or Fred Couples, for example, whom the golfer from Malaga left -behind- with a nose in the air.
And to top it all off, days after his wedding to Austrian Susanne Styblo, officiated on the lawn of his golf school in Torremolinos, Jiménez triumphed, once again, on the European Tour, this time in a tournament he had been reluctant to play until then: the Spanish Open.
It is clear that the years do not pass for Michelangelo, at least in his level of play and in his positive attitude towards competition and life. It is very rare to see him angry or worried, although, like all mortals, his life is not exempt from the bad experiences inherent in every existence (what a lot of exes!).
The well-deserved tributes do not stop and, after the awarding of the Gold Medal of the Province by the Diputación de Málaga, the Royal Andalusian Golf Federation is going to propose that a street in the capital of the Costa del Sol be named after this authentic golf artist.
Jiménez deserves it for his sporting merits and for everything he has done and continues to do to promote tourism in his beloved land, which, as he never tires of proclaiming to the four winds, has given him everything. Although he exaggerates a little (something, a lot, he has given himself), it is true that in Malaga and Andalusia he is admired and loved from the heart.
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