General / Steven Rawlings / 26 June 2009 / Leave a comment

Following Lucas Glover's surprise US Open win, Steve Rawlings asks how easy is it to predict when a choker will win.

Before I get shot down in flames for using such a derogatory term as 'choker' let me set a few things straight. I have the utmost respect for anyone who plays sport at a professional level and fully understand that it takes tremendous bottle for a golfer to get to Tour level. I get nervous watching when one of my bets gets in the mix so it's a mystery to me how these guys hold their nerve at all.

I tend to try and use polite terminology as a rule, words like wobble and struggle don't sound quite as brutal as choke, but choke's the universally recognised word used when describing the process of failing to win because of an attack of nerves. Indeed, this is what Woody Austin had to say about his own performance after coming up short in last year's Zurich Classic of New Orleans.

"I choked my guts out. I flat out choked. I played like a dog the last nine holes. I was puking my guts out."

That was a tad strong maybe, but you have to admire the guy's honesty and it's a refreshing change. Most players blame it on a cold putter, or the conditions, or in the case of Anthony Wall recently, the pace of play. In fact they'll blame anything but their own inability to close it out.

All golfers get nervous, from Tiger Woods, who very occasionally hits a stray one on the very first tee, right down to Briny Baird, who really is hopeless when he so much as sniffs the lead, and all other players fit somewhere in between.

Last week's US Open winner, although already victorious on Tour, was way down my list and not a whole lot of places above Briny. To be brutally honest, I had him down as a choker, and a grade A one at that, so watching him win on Monday was a real shock.

I could go into denial and claim that all his closest challengers flopped just at the right time, or that he had the best of the conditions, but I wont. When he saved bogey from around eight feet on the 9th he found a stoicism that I didn't know he possessed, playing the back nine in level par and going on to win deservedly.

So were there any signs that this win was imminent? With hindsight, there were, but only just. A strong finishing third at the Buick and a second place at the Quail Hollow Championships were admirable enough efforts this year, though in truth he never looked like winning either event. To counter those efforts there have been some bad chokes, that are very hard to ignore. I can still remember Glover four-putting one green on the way to shooting 80 on the final day at the Bob Hope Classic in 2007, slumping from first to 31st and even more horrific was his run of three holes that he played in eight over par, right after he hit the front with just five to play at the Shell Houston Open just a few months ago. Even with hindsight, I've no regrets about underestimating Lucas.

The problem is the more you watch golf, the longer your list of chokers can get and it's very hard to determine what's a choke and what's just poor play on a Sunday sometimes.

The players that I believe are regularly choking and that I really want to be against time and time again are those who were formerly regular winners. With age comes a slight loss of nerve and Major winners like David Toms, Davis Love, Mike Weir, Fred Couples and Ernie Els are often priced up on what they were and not what they are.

The younger chokers are more dangerous to oppose, look at Brian Gay. Winless and poor in the mix for 292 events, he's now won three titles, and impressively too, in just over a year.

Everyone needs to learn how to win and besides Glover, other recent Major winners Trevor Immelman, Zach Johnson and even Padraig Harrington were all poor closers before their big wins.

So it's clear that a player who's struggled to win can suddenly transform themselves into a solid performer but the problem is gauging when. In the long run it's better to just keep swerving them and take results like Monday's squarely on the chin and move on.

For now I'll stick to swerving the 'chokers', especially the oldies.