HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA | There is a beauty and an elegance to the way he swings a golf club and goes about his business.
Which pretty much is the challenge that Luke Donald faces. After all, how does one measure beauty? (The answer: You cannot.) And TrackMan doesn’t spit out data for elegance, does it? (The answer: Don’t be silly.)
Thing is, we are living in shallow times. We have lost the ability to appreciate what we see, to trust our judgment, to savor what we feel. Instead, we run to cold and impersonal numbers spit out by a computer and refuse to let our mind process any sort of thoughts that don’t fall within the parameters of a spreadsheet.
This is the sort of mindset that accompanied me on a warm and sultry Saturday morning walk here at Harbour Town Golf Links, where my interest was watching Donald. He had made the cut on the number (2-under) and was 10 shots off the lead. This was a tournament that resonated with power brokers named Jon Rahm and Scottie Scheffler, Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay and Matt Fitzpatrick.
So, what’s with watching Donald?
Plenty. At least if you appreciate how difficult it is to swing a golf club with an abundance of rhythm and tempo. Donald, of course, has no such problem. His syrupy swing, at least to my eyes, is still as good as anyone’s in the pro game – a joy to watch, and it mattered not at all that he wasn’t in contention.
There is beauty in golf well played, and Donald provides much to appreciate.
“It was ‘How many fairways did you hit?’ or ‘How many greens did you hit?’ You had to shape it and control it.” – Luke Donald
Yes, as Donald went about his job in the third round of the RBC Heritage, it occurred to me that he exemplifies how dramatically the pro golf game has changed in the past 20 years. Here he is, the owner of a nearly flawless golf swing, one that oozes with great balance and uncanny consistency, yet no instructor would teach this swing to a student with aspirations to be a tour professional.
“You’re taught to hit it hard now,” said Donald, not so much disappointed as he is resigned to how the power game has taken over pro golf.
Whereas serious competitive golfers at the amateur level, and certainly every pro golfer, can recite their ball speed and clubhead speed, Donald never knew such data existed 25 years ago. “It was ‘How many fairways did you hit?’ or ‘How many greens did you hit?’
“You had to shape it and control it.”
Mind you, Donald accepts that the game has changed. He has no complaints. Quite the opposite, in fact. He appreciates the timing of his entry into pro golf and that he very much caught it right.
“I came in just after Tiger (Woods),” said Donald, an Englishman who stayed at Northwestern for four years, earning a degree in art theory and practice, and turned pro in 2001, five years after Woods. “Tiger did a lot for the game. He was a huge influence on the popularity of our sport. He’s a sporting icon (who) brought more eyeballs to golf.
“Sponsors loved that. Money went up.”
Donald, like so many of his peers, reaped the benefits. In his PGA Tour career, he earned $37.42 million, and another $18.18 million in DP World Tour prize money. So, no way you’ll get Donald uttering any “oh, woe is me” sort of talk.
But Donald is an incredibly savvy athlete, a polished golfer who has played all over the world, and at the age of 45 he very much knows his style of golf doesn’t chase down trophies anymore.
All this power “has made the fields quite a lot deeper,” Donald said. “Certainly, if you look at the statistical analysis we have, if you look at strokes gained, the answer is obvious: hit it far.
“People understand that, and you shouldn’t penalize people because they hit it far. Hitting it far and straight is a skill.”
Donald had at least one of those aspects down solid – he hit it straight – but if you’re thinking he’s one guy who didn’t try to chase the length, think again. He did.
“Things were just starting to change with technology (in equipment) and the golf balls,” said Donald, who said he tried to get longer. “It was a little bit before 2008, then I had wrist surgery and that was a big wake-up call for me.
“I thought, I’m much better if I’m out here healthy, and I’ve got to do it my own way. I had to figure out how to compete against these guys on my own terms.”
That is where Donald is perhaps grossly underrated as one of his generation’s very best talents. He possessed a set of skills – rhythm and tempo, straight driver of the golf ball, killer short game, quiet on-course demeanor – that fed into his desire to employ superb course-management precision.
“It takes up a lot of your time, but it’s better for me to be out here. Better to be around the guys and not on the couch.” – Luke Donald
While European contemporaries also reached No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking, Donald takes pride in holding the top spot on four different occasions in 2011-12 for a total of 56 weeks. Digest that again – 56 weeks! Then consider that Nick Price held No. 1 for 44 weeks, Vijay Singh for 32, Fred Couples for just 16. Donald held it for 56 weeks more than Phil Mickelson.
OK, so that’s a little humor at Mickelson’s expense. But it remains one of the PGA Tour’s greatest curiosities: despite his impeccable career, Mickelson never did ascend to the top spot in the world order. Of course, a certain rival named Tiger Woods was in full force up until the end of 2009 and pretty much owned No. 1.
Donald was one of those European golfers who took advantage when Woods’ world spiraled out of control in 2009 and into 2010. With his tumble down the OWGR, others moved in – first Lee Westwood, then Martin Kaymer, then Donald.
“Individually, winning that playoff (at the BMW PGA Championship in May of 2011) to become No. 1 in the world is the highlight of my career,” Donald said.
Donald is right to circle that accomplishment and to take pride in what he did, but we would be wrong not to stop and extend proper respect to Donald’s entire 2011 season. One could argue that it is as good a year as any golfer not named Tiger Woods has authored in this era.
Donald was utterly majestic 12 years ago, posting four victories, including the WGC Accenture Match Play Championship at Dove Mountain. Here were just some of the details:
- After missing the cut at Riviera to begin his 2011 campaign, Donald finished top 10 in each of his next 10 tournaments.
- So brilliant was his fairways-and-greens game that Donald played nicely at places that truly favored longer hitters. He was T6 at Doral in the Cadillac Championship; T7 at Jack Nicklaus’ Memorial; joint second at the Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone in Akron, Ohio; T8 in the PGA Championship at the Atlanta Athletic Club; and third in the Tour Championship at East Lake.
- In 26 tournaments that year, Donald had four wins, three seconds, four thirds, three fourths, and a grand total of 21 top 10s across the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour, and the Japan PGA Tour.
- After wresting No. 1 away from Westwood, Donald kept it for the rest of 2011, but lost it early in 2012 to Kaymer. Undaunted, Donald got it back on three other occasions in 2012, after wins at the Transitions Championship at Innisbrook, a successful defense at the BMW PGA at Wentworth and later in the season when he won in Japan at the Dunlop Phoenix.
- Then there is this flavorful morsel: Europe’s stunning singles rally in 2012 to win the Ryder Cup at Medinah never would have happened had Donald not delivered his heroics late Saturday. Woods and Steve Stricker had cut a 4-down deficit to just one hole when Woods stuck his tee shot at the par-3 17th to 4 feet. The ground shook with thunderous roars. Then Donald stiffed his tee shot inside of Woods’, and with halves at Nos. 17 and 18 the Donald-Sergio García team won to give Europe hope. The 10-6 deficit was better than 11-5.
“Ask me what my thought process was at that moment during that shot and I couldn’t answer you,” Donald said. “I had no consciousness.”
His win at Innisbrook in March of 2012 stands as the most recent of his five PGA Tour triumphs, and he doesn’t have any worldwide victories since the successful title defense of the Dunlop Phoenix in November of 2013.
Donald’s world ranking has fallen to No. 448. In eight PGA Tour starts in 2022-23, he has missed four cuts and hasn’t finished better than T39. At Harbour Town, a favorite shotmaker’s playground of his where he has finished second five times, Donald closed with 69 to finish T67.
Translation for all that: Donald no longer is the elite, top-10 player whom he once was, and most of his appearances are owed to his captaincy for Europe in the Ryder Cup this September in Italy. In fact, two of his vice captains – Edoardo Molinari and Nicolas Colsaerts – were prominent as they walked around Harbour Town last week. Donald will pair with Molinari in this week’s Zurich Classic of New Orleans, a two-man team event.
“You can do it,” said Donald, when asked if it was possible to play a schedule during a year as a Ryder Cup captain. “It takes up a lot of your time, but it’s better for me to be out here. Better to be around the guys and not on the couch.”
“A lot of people, with the way I play the game, wouldn’t have thought I’d have a chance to become No. 1. But I did, and I stayed there for 56 weeks.” – Luke Donald
But to focus on where Donald’s stature is now as a player at 45 years old is to do grave disservice to the respect his career warrants. Five PGA Tour titles among 17 worldwide victories. For a long while, the Englishman was not only pure class, his quintessential rhythm and tempo was the envy of his PGA Tour peers at a time when that was the desired way to swing a golf club.
Things have changed, of course, as power rules the game, but this remains at the heart of this dignified Englishman who relied on precision: “A lot of people, with the way I play the game, wouldn’t have thought I’d have a chance to become No. 1. But I did, and I stayed there for 56 weeks,” Donald said.
“I’m very happy with what I’ve achieved in my career – Ryder Cups and all that kind of stuff. Doing it in my own way is very satisfying.”