| COVER STORY
Kaymer has worked hard during the offseason on both his swing and physique
Cometh the Hour After helping Europe secure the Ryder Cup with that dramatic 18th hole win at Medinah, Martin Kaymer has his sights on his best season yet, writes Lewine Mair.
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hen Martin Kaymer describes himself as being ‘in good shape’ ahead of this year’s Masters, you need to know that it is rather more than merely a glib aside. Not only has the 2010 PGA Champion finally mastered the right-to-left shape of shot he needs for Augusta but he has altered his body-shape. In the case of the latter, he says that he has “changed completely” and that he is happy with the results. Even to the casual eye, he emerged at the start of this season looking bigger and stronger about the shoulders – and more assertive to boot. In Qatar, and again in Abu Dhabi, he finished in the top 10. Tiger Woods was arguably the first to go down the road of marrying his body to his swing. Lee Westwood has since done the same and, had the Englishman succeeded in setting a Major alongside his new physique, the public at large would have been that much more inclined to take note. Yet Westwood’s fellow players, Kaymer included, could see the difference and were impressed. The swing and body adjustments made by the 28-year-old Kaymer may be readily apparent but the inner Kaymer remains the same. He is an intensely private young man and as unlikely a source of tabloid stories as it is possible to get. “Martin is totally focused on the game and plays because he loves it,” said his manager, Johan Elliot. “He’s certainly not interested in the fame. If it comes to him through his golf, that’s OK, but otherwise it’s neither here nor there.”
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Kaymer spent eight weeks as the world number one but, where others would have been celebrating, he felt less than comfortable in that position. “For me,” he said, “it wasn’t the right time. I was the number one but I didn’t feel like it.”
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Not usually one to show his emotions, Kaymer let loose after sinking the crucial that now famous six-footer at Medinah (opposite) in September; en-route to winning the US PGA Championship at Whistling Straits (above) in 2010 32
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It was in June 2006 that the connoisseurs first committed the name 'Kaymer' to memory. That was when the then 21-year-old German returned a 59 in the Hadsberg Classic on the minor European Development Tour. It was newsworthy enough for the BBC's golf correspondent to give it a mention in his short report from that week’s main tour event. Kaymer’s winning of the PGA should have propelled him into the limelight rather more than it did. As it was, his victory was not unlike Paul Lawrie’s Open Championship triumph in that it begat a couple of other stories which the press saw as rather more significant. Where Lawrie’s coverage suffered at the expense of Jean Van de Velde’s adventures in the Barry Burn, Kaymer’s achievement had to play second fiddle to not only Bubba Watson’s implosion at the third extra hole, but also to Dustin Johnson’s two-shot penalty when he grounded his club in an area of sandy waste that had bunker status.
Kaymer won four times in 2010, with his other victories coming in the Abu Dhabi HSBC Golf Championship, the KLM Open and the Alfred Dunhill Links. He followed up with a similarly arresting 2011 season in which he won in Abu Dhabi for the third time in four years and set a WGC event, the HSBC Champions in Shanghai, alongside his Major. That spring, he spent eight weeks as the world number one but, where others would have been celebrating, he felt less than comfortable in that position. “For me,” he said, “it wasn’t the right time. I was the number one but I didn’t feel like it.” His concerns were mostly down to his game and how it was still "work in progress". He confirmed how he was doubly aware of the shortcomings every time he turned up at Augusta where his habitual left-to-right flight was never going to be the answer. He missed the cut in each of his first four years at the Masters and last year he missed it again. By then, though, he had dedicated himself to mastering a draw under the eye of his coach, Gunther Kessler. Because of the remedial work, his 2012 season was nothing to write home about and he accepted as much: “Sometimes you just have to do the things that feel right. They may not make sense to other people but that doesn’t matter. Not as much as it should matter to you. HKGOLFER.COM
“I don’t want to look back in 10 years and think, maybe, I should have done this, that or the next thing.” Shortly before the Ryder Cup, when the story went the rounds that he was thinking of standing down on account of his poor form, he was quick to set the record straight. He had indeed asked questions of himself but, on the eve of the contest, he made it clear that he was well and truly ready to do battle. His week was not the best until it came to the end. That was when he made that six-footer which secured a famous European victory. “It was,” he says, feelingly, “such a fine line between being the hero and the biggest idiot.” Later, he would elaborate on how, away from its context, the putt had been simple. “At the end of the day, if you stick to the facts, it was the easiest putt you can have – uphill and inside right. We have that putt millions of times ... I said to myself, ‘There’s no doubt here. It’s inside right, step up and make it.’ So they were very clear thoughts.” That the six-footer had been his to tackle is something he will forever see as a gift. “It’s very, very rare that you are in a position to make such HKGOLFER.COM
an important putt,” he marvelled. He proffered the further point that it would not be the same if he were to have one of similar magnitude in 2014 “because I would have done it before.” Because he is not that sort of a man, Kaymer had been taken aback at his emotional response to the moment. He had asked his brother if he had looked ridiculous and his brother had assured him that that was not the case. “He told me that even if it did look ridiculous, it was a good thing, because it comes natural. It was a true feeling.” It was in watching the closing stages of the match on German TV that Kaymer almost welcomed the fuss being made by the European media. As he listened to the German TV commentators, his heart had sunk. He went so far as to mimic their miserably monotone commentary. “It was like, ‘Oh yeah, Kaymer’s putt has dropped in. It’s very nice, there is great celebration.’ They are just so flat and, for me, it is difficult to understand. “You try your very best, not only for yourself but for golf in Germany and then there’s so little excitement. There is something so big that is happening and in they just don’t get it ...” HK Golfer・MAR 2013
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“But madam,” the Mission Hills caddie master began, “there are thousands of caddies and they’re all in love with Martin Kaymer.”
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Kaymer has a terrible record at Augusta (above), making only one cut in five attempts; the German's win at the 2011 WGC-HSBC Champions tournament in Shanghai was his first in China 34
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When he arrived in St Andrews for the following week’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, he had found himself thinking, wistfully, of what the atmosphere would have been like in pubs such as the Dunvegan Hotel and the Jigger Inn as people had poured in to watch the denouement. Then the wistfulness had given way to a feeling of warmth. Where better for him to be at that point than at the Home of Golf where everyone understood. Kaymer will never attract a rush of screaming, shouting fans like a Tiger or a Rory. But, make no mistake, he has his share of admirers. At last winter’s HSBC Champions, when I had something to hand over to a girl caddie whose name I had not quite caught, I did my best to explain which girl it was by furnishing the caddie master with the following clue: “It’s the one who’s in love with Martin Kaymer.” “But madam,” he began, “there are thousands of them and they’re all in love with Martin Kaymer.” The girl in question had been on buggy duty that week and had given me a lift down from the practice ground one evening when Kaymer and his caddie, Craig Connolly, had been the only team still at work on the range. She had not exactly jumped at the chance to
give me a ride but, half-way down the hill, she had put her foot on the brake and explained herself. For years, she had worshipped Kaymer and, that evening, she had finally got herself into a position in the buggy queue where she was certain to have him as a passenger. That is when I had stepped in and, if unwittingly, ruined everything.
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