It was May of 2005 when Gary Player told Ricky Ponting "the way you hit the ball, you’re wasting your time playing cricket.”
Given Ponting would play 17 years of international cricket, owns the Australian Test record for most runs (13,378 at 51.9) and is well in the argument as Australia's Best Since Bradman, "wasting time" may have been a touch over the top from the nine-time major champion of South Africa.
Ponting agrees.
“I played a few holes with him in this event [at the Laureus World Sports Awards in Portugal] and I happened to play reasonably well for a couple of holes,” Ponting tells Golf Australia magazine.
“I’d hit shots and he stopped me a couple of times, and he said, ‘Just do that again. Hit another shot.’ So I’d hit another shot and he was like, ‘you’re in the wrong sport.’"
Ponting smiles and says: "You know, 17 years of international cricket, I think I probably ended up making the right decision.”
Player never stopped believing, telling Cricket Monthly that he’d seen many golf-playing cricketers but “the best of them all was Ricky Ponting, who I really thought could make it as a golf pro.”
Others have, too. It’s long been speculated whether Ponting might one day, like tennis pro Scott Draper and the late champion bat Dean Jones, make a switch from amateur to pro, from plus-marker to play-for-pay.
So, while we have the man – here at Sandy Links in the south-east Melbourne Sandbelt for the launch of Callaway’s new driver – we’ll see if we can’t get a scoop. And thus we ask words to the effect of “turn pro, Punter? What do you reckon?”
Ponting smiles. He's 49 years old. He has several well-paying jobs in sport. One of those jobs is 'be Ricky Ponting' at corporate golf days.
“I got to plus-three when I first moved from New South Wales to Melbourne, which was right on the back of when I finished playing cricket [aged 37 in 2012],” Ponting says. “I could sort of give the game a bit more time.
"But I’m not quite as good these days, I'm about a two-handicap now.
“I'd like to get some of that competition back in my life again, because you have it as a player for so long and then the day you retire, all that competition just goes out of your life.
“But it's probably unlikely now. My summers are pretty full, there’s the IPL in India where I’m coaching [Delhi Capitals], and the kids are coming along and weekends are taken up with kids’ sport now.
"So, yeah – that’s probably unlikely.”
Mr Player? Note: he did not rule it out…
Ponting is at Sandy Links with fellow cricketers Aaron Finch, Brett Lee, Jason Holder, Dan Christian, Glenn Maxwell and Mitchell Starc, and several other sports folks, as a Callaway ‘Ambassador’. It’s a sweet gig, your ambassador. Rather than cutting ribbons, hosting foreign dignitaries to tea, and walking a tightrope of diplomatic relations at the Hague, ambassadors for a brand just have to turn up to things and be themselves, which most can carry off.
In return for their very presence, these high-profile human billboards receive what one might describe as ‘free stuff’. Indeed, if Callaway makes it, these ambassadors will play it, wear it, whack it anywhere from Sandy Links to the desert sands of Abu Dhabi.
This exposure is valuable for Callaway because a famous sports person and media identity is endorsing their equipment, their brand, telling the world that I, excellent sports person, love this thing. Millions of motorcycles are sold in India because MS Dhoni says they're good.
It’s a nice relationship for Ponting because golf is less hobby to him than obsession.
“I am the biggest, biggest, biggest golf nerd of all time,” he grins. “I've been an ambassador with Callaway since I moved to Melbourne about 10 years ago.
"Whenever Callaway bring a new product out, I'm normally the first one on the phone to make sure they get one in my specs and it's sent out as quickly as possible.
“And an event like this today, it’s great, you can be around all the new equipment and catch up with some of the boys, the cricketers here, and the footballers I'm close to.
"And to see all the new stuff, for a nerd like me, is pretty cool.”
The new stuff in question is Callaway's Paradym Ai ‘Smoke’ driver, part of a family created by the artificial but still very clever intelligence found on computers.
What happened was this: all the millions of people who had clubs fitted by Callaway, their data - where they hit the ball on the club face, their swing speed, their attack angle, hundreds of things - was fed into computers.
Out the other end came the Smoke, with a clubface with 'sweet spots' where players of different abilities hit the ball.
And, being shiny and new, humans want them. It is a thing. Ricky Ponting is no different from the 20-marker at Mowbray.
“Nothing better than new golf clubs,” he says. “All the boys will say the same. Brett Lee and Mitchell Starc have flown in from Sydney to be here this morning. That's how excited they are about the new equipment."
Some years ago this journalist played golf with the late, great Dean Jones, who was embarking on a professional golf journey on the PGA of Australia’s Legends Tour.
I mention to Ponting that one of the takeaways from the round was that Jones felt the same youthful excitement receiving new clubs as a 50-year-old as he’d felt receiving new bats aged 17.
Ponting smiles and nods along.
“There's nothing better than when that brown cardboard box turns up at your doorstep," he says. "You can't wait to rip it open.”
Amen to that, Mr Ambassador.
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