For those of us who have spent a lifetime admiring German efficiency and focus on the football field, the car factory and almost everywhere else, it is tempting to label each fresh German prodigy with the same serious epithet. Tempting, and in the case of Martin Kaymer, apposite.
The new Race to Dubai champion might be fun and possess a quietly wicked sense of humour off the course but inside the ropes he is indeed overwhelmingly focused while his game is the sort of finely-honed efficient fusion of movement and talent that marks a man out early as potentially something special.
At 25 he is now an integral part of the future of European golf, a player surely destined to further embroider his game into the global consciousness. As European Number One he is a worthy successor to a long line of outstanding champions. He is also one of the youngest.
“I am very proud of what I have achieved this year,” he said. “It has been a fantastic season and to have accomplished all the goals I set out for myself at the start of the year, culminating in winning The Race to Dubai is just wonderful. It will be a tough act to follow next year but I will be trying my hardest, you can bank on that.”
It seems extraordinary when one reflects that it is only three years since he was voted the Sir Henry Cotton Rookie of the Year. The fact remains, however, that since that accolade was bestowed upon him towards the end of 2007, he has made the sort of progress others may only consider during their more dreamy moments.
Kaymer, mind, is no dreamer. Instead he endorses that other German strength – he is a practical man and a golfer who realised early that the harder he worked, the more he strived and the higher he reached, then the better he became. This may be a simplistic truth but too many talented young players fail to fully grasp this thought, confusing time spent on a practice ground with actual, hard-graft practice. Not Kaymer. Never Kaymer.
Petra Himmel, a golf writer who casts an elegant eye over the German scene from her base in Bavaria, has been one of the keenest of observers of Kaymer over the years and reports that he has always been an intelligent, polite young man whose ego has remained as small by contrast as his achievements are increasingly spectacular.
“Martin has always been a very nice guy,” she said. “He comes from a very good family with good values and they have always made sure he has remained grounded. Because he lived a part of his college life in Arizona he was not as well known in Germany initially as he should have been, but that has changed now. He works very hard and he is his own man. Even as an amateur he impressed the others because he practised so much and always seemed to know exactly what he wanted.”
Of course what he wanted was to be the best that was available to him. The interesting thing is that he is still finding out how good this ‘best’ actually is.
Born in Dusseldorf on December 28, 1984, he is the younger by two years of two brothers. Like most German lads, their imagination was originally captured by football and no doubt they practised penalties until darkness prevented them once again beating England in a World Cup Final played out in their back garden.
Their father Horst, however, was increasingly drawn to golf. Bernhard Langer was in his Masters Tournament-winning pomp at the time and at last the game was being driven forward by positive publicity in the German media. Happily also, just down the road from the family home was Mettmann Golf Club and swiftly this place became a playground for the brothers and their dad.
Martin and Philip turned out to be naturals. Enthused by the old game, they brought their hand-eye co-ordination away from the football field and onto the golf course. Horst, meanwhile, encouraged. He also challenged.
When they were big enough in their teens to properly attack the ball he laid down a template that the boys followed faithfully. First, he encouraged them to play off the back tees and then he challenged them by outlawing tee pegs. Even for drivers. “It meant that when we got to use tees in competitions we thought driving the ball was really easy,” said Martin. Watch him, he still does.
This was no considered and scary Tiger Woods-esque preparation for the professional stage by an overbearing father. He never envisaged either of his sons playing any game for a living, he simply wanted them to play golf to the best of their abilities. Indeed, he expected them to enter other, safer and more obvious professions; law, medicine, or the business world.
In his late teens, however, Martin began to entertain other ideas. He admits it took courage to tell his father and mother, Rina, of his ambition but when he at last plucked up the courage, he found that his parents were surprised but supportive. Once committed, none of them looked back.
So he turned professional in 2005 and entered the first stage of The European Tour Qualifying School. Philip offered solidarity by entering alongside him. Martin finished first, Philip was last. A few days later Philip signed up for law school. Horst was happy.
Martin failed to go on to win his playing rights and therefore instead of a big adventure in 2006 he found himself grinding away for peanuts on the European Professional Development Tour. He soon prospered, however, entering 14 events and winning five of them.
This victory roll included the Habseberg Classic where he started with a par and then a bogey before strolling through the next 16 holes in 14 under par for a 59. It is a score that still irritates him. Four years later he told Sports Illustrated: “I’m still annoyed that I parred the 17th hole, a really easy par five.” Never satisfied is always a sign of impending greatness.
His success moved him on to the Challenge Tour in August 2006. It was a very late start if he was to earn enough to secure a place on The European Tour the following year and few expected him to do it. No-one except Martin and his family. In the end he played in eight events and won two of them to do just that.
The first of these victories came at the Vodafone Challenge near his home in Dusseldorf but it was a crucial win that almost never happened. By then, sadly, his mother was ill and a fall saw her taken into hospital. Martin’s instinct was to drop everything and head for her bedside.
Horst was down to caddie that week but instead asked Philip to set aside his law books and to do the job. When Philip got to the course he saw an upset Martin prepared to withdraw. It was then that Philip made the motivational speech of his life, telling his little brother that it would not help their mother if they sat by her bed with tears in their eyes and if they wanted to do something positive then they should gear up and go out and win.
“After that he played with more focus than I have ever seen from him,” Philip later reflected. Together, the Kaymer brothers won. That evening they presented the trophy to Rina in the hospital and of course there were tears. A second win a few weeks later in France saw Kaymer secure his card to play The European Tour in 2007. He was off, although, as it turned out, not yet running.
He missed the cut in his first five tournaments in 2007. He felt homesick and more than a little lost as he faltered during the Tour’s early swing through the Far East. Once again Philip lobbed aside his law books and headed east to offer support off the course and to carry the bag on it. It worked and a series of high finishes, highlighted by ten top 15s, saw a reinvigorated Martin end the year as top rookie.
A couple of months later in early 2008 he won his first big professional title at the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship. Six months later, Rina insisted he play rather than spend time with her as she approached the end of a weary two year battle with cancer – he did just that and won the BMW International Open in Munich. The tearful victory was dedicated to his mum before, sadly, Frau Kaymer passed away a few weeks later and her son’s stellar season understandably stuttered to a premature halt.
Since then, however, he has won another six titles including this year his first Major, the US PGA Championship, when he watched with co-leader Bubba Watson in the Whistling Straits locker-room as the unfortunate Dustin Johnson mistook a bunker for a building site to miss out on his place in a play-off. “Bubba and I looked at each other and said the same thing, ‘that’s sad’,” he said later.
Sad or not, while Watson approached the play-off with a gung-ho strategy which ultimately backfired, Kaymer once again tapped into his reservoir of efficiency and focus to take the title after having holed one of the putts of the year from 12 feet on the 72nd green to make the play-off in the first place. He was, he admitted, more concerned initially with making sure of a place in the European Ryder Cup Team - the US PGA Championship, it seems, was no more than a really decent bonus. Everyone got the impression he wasn’t kidding either.
He won on his next two outings as well, the KLM Open and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, to offer us a rare hat-trick of victories to savour. In so doing he set up a Race to Dubai lead that, though whittled away by a determined Graeme McDowell, proved significant enough to secure him The Harry Vardon Trophy at the culmination of the Dubai World Championship where he finished in a share of 13th place to see him end the season with record earnings of €4,461,010.
Some season then and some golfer. Asked to sum up his rival for the Race to Dubai crown, Graeme McDowell thought for a few seconds before offering: “Nothing seems to faze him.”
Meanwhile, his old, unflappable inspiration, Bernhard Langer, came up with his usual considered thought. “He has a good head on his shoulders. If he doesn’t get distracted, he should be up there for a long time.” Coming from Bernhard, that is by way of a coronation endorsement.
Herr Kaymer, sie sind der mann!
Bill Elliott
Golf Monthly
Reproduced from The 2011 European Tour Yearbook - to order your copy, click here
