The Challenge Tour prides itself on nurturing the best young golfing talent and ever since storming onto the scene with victory at the 2015 GANT Open as a 17 year old, Dominic Foos has fit the profile perfectly.
Still only 19, the German is on the comeback trail after missing the end of last year through injury, and begins his 2017 campaign at the Omega Dubai Desert Classic. Having not seen or heard from him since August, we took the opportunity to talk to him about his injury, his life, his hopes for the season and, of course, Tiger Woods.
First things first, how are you? How is the injury?
I’m 100% now so that’s why I’m really, really happy that the wrist is totally fine. I haven’t felt any pain since I started hitting balls again so that’s a really positive thing.
How did the injury come about? Was it a repetitive injury?
No it wasn’t repetitive. It was at the Swedish Challenge hosted by Robert Karlsson on the second day, 17thhole, and I hit it off the tee into thick rough and I knew and saw that it was a really bad lie. I was actually thinking about taking an unplayable lie, but the rough around it looked as bad as the lie, so I hacked it out of the rough, I actually didn’t think I could move the ball more than five or six yards but somehow I got it 20 or 30 yards out.
Two or three hours later in the evening when I was back in the hotel room, my wrist started hurting, my right wrist. I finished the tournament and we went to Germany to see my doctor there, did some physiotherapy stuff, then I played the Rolex Trophy, and I played well, finished sixth, but I played with a lot of pain but somehow battled through.
Then I took another week off, drove from Germany to France, a nine hour drive to the Cordon Golf Open, played a nine hole practice round only to notice there was no way I could play the tournament because of the pain, then I drove back nine hours, so that was not a successful journey!
I had a cortisone injection so that hopefully I could play the big events at the end of the season – Kazakhstan, China, Ras Al Khaimah and then Oman. I signed up for a Mena Tour event because I took two or three weeks off after the injection.
The first round I played I felt the pain again and it got worse and worse, so then we went to see the doctor in Munich and he said I needed to take eight weeks off completely, not do anything, and he thought it would heal that way. This is exactly what we did, for me the season was over.
It was hard because taking eight weeks off would also mean I would miss Qualifying School, and because I wasn’t inside the top 45 on the Challenge Tour I would have needed to go to Second Stage as well, so I made up my mind that the season was just over – it was a bit better knowing I already had a full Challenge Tour card for the upcoming season.
I gave it an extra two weeks to rest, so I think I took ten weeks in total off, without swinging a club at all. It was the longest break I’ve ever taken from golf – before that I think it was only about two weeks, so that was a very tough time, and a bit nerve-wracking to start playing again.
To take this time off, to be fresh again when I come back, that can only be a good thing, that was how I tried to think about it, but of course it was tough – September 19 was the last time I played golf and I started hitting balls again December 10, so almost three months.
Now that you’re fit again, how has your preparation for 2017 been going?
It’s been going really well. I’m really looking forward to the Omega Dubai Desert Classic, and I’m actually going to play five tournaments in a row, this week in Dubai and then four weeks in South Africa. I think it will be very good preparation for the Challenge Tour, to get back into the playing mode and some competitive golf.
It’s a great field this week, and I know the course very well. I’ve played the tournament for the last two years, I’m based out here in Dubai now and I really like the course, so it should be a great week.
Obviously we can’t ignore the fact that Tiger Woods is in the field…
Tiger playing is obviously incredible. It’s going to be my first time playing in the same field as him and I think it’s such a good thing for the tournament, for everybody, because it’s a different kind of attention when Tiger’s playing – it doesn’t matter how he plays, but when he’s playing it’s something else.
I was born in 1997, so I don’t remember his best times around 2000, 2001, but I remember watching tournaments with my family and the final day, Tiger wearing red, so I have really good memories of it and it’s really cool to be playing alongside him this week.
So looking ahead to this season, have you set yourself any goals?
My main target this year is to finish in the top 15 on the Road to Oman and make it to the European Tour. I don’t view these European Tour events that I play as a way to get a European Tour card, I see them more as very good preparation because I prefer that mindset. If I happen to play really well, who knows? That’s a nice bonus and I’ll probably change my plans accordingly, but the way I view it now is that playing these events is getting myself really ready for the Challenge Tour and get it going there.
You’re still so young, just a teenager, but you’ve been around on the Challenge Tour for a couple of years now. Do you feel ready to take that step up this season, push for graduation?
I really feel like this is my time. I actually had that feeling last season, that I was going to make it, because I was just starting to play really well – I was second in Northern Ireland, then Sweden the following week I injured my wrist but at that point didn’t think it was a major thing, then at the Rolex Trophy I finished sixth and really felt like my game was good, hitting a lot of different shots, very creative, good short game, very good putting, just very sharp in general, and I didn’t expect that it was such a serious thing that I would need to take eight weeks off. I was still thinking I would finish the season and I was 100% sure I was going to make it into the top 15, so at first I was pretty sad I wouldn’t be able to finish the season, that was really tough to take, but I really feel good about the upcoming season.
Your whole life so far seems to have been very golf-centred. Have you managed to enjoy growing up, and have some kind of ‘normal’ life?
I’d say my life was very golf-centred, and there were quite a few sacrifices as well, but I am totally ok with that because I love golf so much and I am really happy on the golf course. So I don’t actually see it as a sacrifice, not being able to do so much with my friends and all this stuff – I can still see them, go out with them, just maybe not as frequently as I could theoretically if I wasn’t playing golf and I was just studying, for example. I’m really good with my life being a bit golf-centric but now I’ve realized, of course, that there are other sides to life as well, not only golf, which is also something that I learned over the weeks I had to take off, so that’s a good thing.
This week is a ‘home’ event for you, being in Dubai. How long has that been your base?
I’ve been here in Dubai for about three years now. We’ve been coming here through the winters since I was about 12, because in Germany I wasn’t able to practise at all in the winter, so my dad and I would come out for a practice camp for a couple of weeks at a time, so I’ve been coming here for a long time but I’ve been based out here for three years.
Was that after you’d finished school?
I finished school in Germany and then I came to Dubai, I didn’t keep going to school when I came here. Just for training purposes this is such a good place, and I like the city in general. It makes traveling very easy as well because you can fly anywhere in the world, and my swing coach is based out here as well, so I kind of like it here.
The 2017 Challenge Tour schedule was announced last week. How have you planned your year? Did any particular tournaments catch your eye?
I’ve planned my year around the big events – it’s good, for example, to have the Portugal event, with €500,000, quite early, so I was really happy about the Challenge Tour schedule.
The tournament that really caught my eye was the nine-hole match play tournament in Spain – 36 holes of stroke play and then knock-out match play for the weekend.
I think it’s good to experiment with the format a little bit and do something different. It’s now quite a long time since I played match play, but the biggest amateur events are all match play, and I love match play so I’m definitely looking forward to that event.
Do you think that gives a slight advantage to the younger guys who have only just turned professional, so might be more used to playing match play from their amateur days?
I don’t know if it’s necessarily an advantage for them. When I play games for practice, out here in Dubai for example, I generally play match play as well, so I’m kind of in match play mode anyway, though not in a real competitive mode, so I think it will be easy to get back into that.
