TOURNAMENT PREVIEW | HONG KONG OPEN
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Hong Kong Open 16-19 OCTOBER 2014 THE HONG KONG GOLF CLUB
Daniel Wong
Miguel Angel Jiménez is going to have his work cut out if he’s to become the first player in history to win five Hong Kong Open titles this month. The Fanling legend, 50-years-young, will face major competition in the form of Ernie Els, the easy-swinging South African star who is making his debut in the tournament. Turn the page to read about the greatest moments in the championship’s long and storied history plus an exclusive interview with the man known as “The Mechanic”.
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HONG KONG OPEN | MIGUEL ANGEL JIMÉNEZ
Clockwise from below: Jiménez is all smiles after taking hold of the Hong Kong Open trophy for the fourth time in his career; moments after holing the winning putt to defeat Stuart Manley and Prom Meesawat; in full flow during the third round
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Apart Lewine Mair profiles four-time Hong Kong Open champion Miguel Angel Jiménez, everyone’s favourite golfer. Photography by Daniel Wong and Kimi Tai
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en years ago, when Colin Montgomerie was asked to extol the virtues of the upand-coming 40-year-old that was Miguel Angel Jiménez, he delivered a humorously grudging, “Well, he’s big in Malaga”. Jiménez, who turned 50 in January, just a month after winning his second consecutive Hong Kong Open title, is nowadays rather more than merely a celeb in his home town. He is one of the biggest draws in the golfing world. On the European Tour, his presence is sought at one tournament after another. Over in America, meanwhile, they yearn to have him as a permanent fixture on their Champions Tour where he won on his debut earlier this summer. At a time when people have been complaining that there are not enough characters in the modern game, Jiménez is certainly doing his bit to balance the ledger. The four-time Fanling champ is commanding as much attention as Monty ever did and it not just down to the fact that he has won 14 of his 21 European Tour titles since turning 40. It has more to do with his professional savvy. Better than any of the players, young or old, he knows that hitting great shots and winning tournaments is no longer enough. He recognises HKGOLFER.COM
At a time when people have been complaining that there are not enough characters in the modern game, Jiménez is certainly doing his bit to balance the ledger.
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Far from being embarrassed by his beginnings as a caddie, Jiménez is inordinately proud of being the last of a long line of Spaniards to have played their way on to the European Tour via the caddie ranks.
Clockwise from top: the Spaniard with new wife Susanna; splashing from the greenside bunker on Fanling’s 18th after finding sand on the final hole of regulation play; a well-deserved hug for his caddie 46
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the need to win over the people who pay to watch; and he recognises how important it is that the sponsors should go away happy. They, after all, must justify the massive amounts they are pouring into the game. The Saturday of the Spanish Open he would win in Gerona in May was as good as it gets for Jiménez-watchers. His auburn hair had been touched up for his wedding a week before, while he was on top of the golfing world in the wake of his win on the Champions Tour and his fourth place at the Masters. He started that Saturday with his circus act of a warm-up routine before posting a 69 which would see him going into the last round two shots behind Belgium’s Thomas Pieters. After handing in his card, he spent 45 minutes responding to TV and media requests before turning his attention to the crowd behind the little media square. He gave them as long as it took to sign autographs and to chat to all comers. Indeed, he
spoke to each and every one of his fans as if he or she was precisely the person he wanted to see. At one point, he glanced across at your correspondent and murmured, “This is something you have to do”, perhaps because he was conscious of being seen to be lapping up the limelight. He need not have bothered to say anything for this was Jiménez being himself. He is a ‘people’ person, one of the game’s great socialisers. As he himself once said when someone had quizzed him over-long on his score, “There’s more to life than golfing the ball.” In time, the happy pack of fans dispersed and the Spaniard took a step back and lit one of his famous cigars. As luck would have it, the first puff detonated the arrival of a new wave of childcarrying supporters. Gently, he laid the cigar on the ground and started all over again, bending down to have his picture taken with the little ones and embarking on chat that was every bit as animated as what had gone before. Dinner must have been on his mind but, an hour and a half after he had posted his score, he was still some way away from his first glass of Rioja. A practice session away, to be precise. He spent another hour sorting out the handful of drives which had gone awry in his 69 and then and only then did he head for his hotel. That really was it, or so we thought. Yet, at HKGOLFER.COM
the following week’s BMW PGA Championship, we learned that he had been up until one o’clock every night during that Gerona week as he dined with comrades he had known all his golfing days. Jiménez has never been short of friends. Take, for example, the relationship he enjoys with the people of Crans-Sur-Sierre, home of the Omega European Masters. When he first played in the tournament in 1986, he stayed in the Miedzor Hotel with a group of other Spaniards. So much did he enjoy his week in that hostelry that, when he paid his bill, he asked the owners, Jan and Heidi, if he could book the same room for the following year. Even when the hotel was turned into apartments, Jan and Heidi made sure that the apartment incorporating Jiménez’s room would remain available to their old friend who has never stayed anywhere else in 26 visits. It was a month or so prior to the 2008 Ryder Cup at Valhalla that my office at The Daily Telegraph asked if I would go out to the following week’s European Masters to interview the Spaniard. The request had come a little late and a phone call to the player’s management group revealed that Jiménez was not doing any more interviews. He wanted to have nothing to worry about beyond the Ryder Cup. Fair enough. I decided to go to Switzerland just the same and write a piece based on his form of the moment. But when I was standing in his crowd 48
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There’s no doubt who the galleries at the Hong Kong Golf Club were pulling for on that dramatic Sunday last year 50
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behind the 18th tee, he spotted me and came across. “So,” he said, “you come anyway. Please join us for lunch – one-thirty in the pizzeria up the road.” “Us” turned out to be a table for 12 taking in friends and family including his now ex-wife, Montserrat. He was the perfect host whilst simultaneously giving his full attention to questions about his career. People say of Jimenez that he is comfortable in his own skin and he is absolutely that. Far from being embarrassed by his beginnings as a caddie, he is inordinately proud of being the last of a long line of Spaniards to have played their way on to the European Tour via the caddie ranks. He may have a reputation as a bit of a ladies’ man but Jimenez manages to remain on good terms with Montserrat and has a lovely relationship with his two sons, Miguel Angel and Victor. Miguel Angel, the older at 19, is now at university in the United States but was with his father when he won in Gerona.
Miguel Angel Jnr had watched his father many times but this was only the second occasion he had seen him win and the first time in 15 years. Since Jiménez’s new bride was back home in Austria that week, the victory – it was at the first extra hole, just like at Fanling – made for the best of father-son moments. With regard to the new bride, there was something which Jiménez wanted to make clear. Namely, that this was his second marriage rather than his third. The confusion, he explained, had arisen because Maria, the girlfriend in the middle of the two wives, bore the ‘Jiménez’ surname without being related to him in any way. The new edition is called Susanna and works as a bank auditor. “I may be 50,” said Jiménez, “but good things keep happening to me – first the wedding and now I win the Spanish Open.” It’s not outside the realms of possibility that the good things will extend to everyone’s favourite player claiming his fifth Hong Kong Open this month. HKGOLFER.COM