What pressure? Just that of the mocking gallery in the background. What pressure? Just that of the mocking gallery in the background.
Images: ShootOut Golf

After an indifferent round, your correspondent feels safe that he doesn’t have to worry about privately testing Jones’ proposition. But then the first three holes are drawn, and each corresponds to the scarce number of holes I actually played well on. Involuntary sweat beads on my brow – the thought of breaking into a play-off with a round as bad as mine is downright embarrassing. The fourth hole is drawn and a fifth, and my lack of results there put an end to the anxiety.My exuberant playing partner, “J-Rod”, a former pro baseballer, relishes the prospect of the play-off before the round. He qualifies second, and another player in our foursome, Grant, with the big, rolling hook, also makes it in. Whether it’s good karma or bad on the part of the group, it’s hard to say.The eight shooters play the 18th hole twice, first from the fairway as a long par-three, then as it is in regulation, a par-four. The first player up hits it to ten feet. What pressure?

The following seven take their shots, and the entire sequence is a reminder of – in golf – never to get ahead of yourself. One player, an older gentleman, hits the worst of the tee shots nearly out of bounds and visibly resigns himself to elimination. He proceeds to get up and down in two shots from 50 metres, a feat that many pros would admire, and safely advances to the second play-off hole.To manufacture added drama, ShootOut resolves ties on the play-off holes via a putt-off. Four players on the same score each face a cascading, downhill 15m putt on Terrey Hills’ 18th green for the one spot left on the second play-off hole. The first effort is good indeed, to within a metre – yet another feat a pro would take as his own in a heartbeat.Grant’s up next. He’s played first grade cricket in Sydney, so he has some measure of being watched out in the middle. What follows he’ll find hard to top – he buries the long, snaking putt with perfect pace, and a cheer rings out. The other players in the putt-off, J-Rod among them, have their backs turned so they get no advantage from seeing the line of the putt. The gallery lets them know before they turn around. “This happens all the time in putt-offs,” Parkes says.

The final four return to the tee, and after a wrong ball mix-up causes some discussion, the entire event comes down to two players with a pair of lengthy putts. Both leave themselves a second putt of nerve-jangling length, a prize of a Las Vegas trip on the line. Stuart Perrau buries his almost-two-metre putt, a quality shot in a play-off. Perrau, from Illawong in Sydney’s south, is a builder by profession. He amiably agrees that nothing he’s done in his line of work has prepared him for the pressure of high-stakes golf (it would be interesting to see how, say, a brain surgeon would handle it).He describes himself as a once-in-three-months golfer, but Perrau also reveals he’s something of an old hand at ShootOut. He reached the play-off in the major national event in Queensland last year, playing before a crowd of more than 100. “I was thinking, ‘just put club on ball,’” Perrau recalls. “You can get the crowd out of your head, but they’re always in the background.”It’s debatable whether experience makes a golfer better at play-offs – Norman notoriously lost them in all four majors, while the great Ben Hogan won eight and somehow lost 12 over his career – but they do impart a sense of perspective. Once you get a taste of the stress, it’s hard to chastise the tour pro making the typical excuses for choking down the stretch that week. “You think, ‘That’s trash,’” Perrau says. “But now I’m feeling for them when they miss the short putts. I know how easy they are to miss.”

– Jeff Centenera

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