Faldo: My Tips For Major Glory

In among all the usual talk of LIV Golf at Sir Nick Faldo's press conference, Britain's most decorated golfer gave us an insight into how he would make his plans for future success.

The six-time major winner would base things around the big ones. From The Open in 1987 to the one at Muirfield five years later Faldo landed five majors, another would follow at the infamous Masters in 1996.
Come the end of his career he would have an incredible 19 top-five finishes.

Faldo is famous for his swing rebuild that took place in the mid 80s but there were other mini tweaks that would pay dividends.

"I started planning my next season after the PGA (in August). I was already thinking and I would start looking at my game. I did a really good mini-rebuild in end of '91. I had a bad year that year, and I remember I said, let's put three or four (goals), one of them being bunkers.

"And I went to Valderrama, and I said, I'm only going to hit bunker shots this week. Just practise bunker shots, and that's basically what I did. But all the extra practice was just bunker shots. I thought, tick the box, so I can at least say I’m a decent bunker player now and then move on to another part of the game.

"I generally think of how I would plan my schedule, and you look ahead, six, nine months ahead. My diary is always six or nine months ahead, I know what I'm doing and blocked it and where I'm flying around the world. It's the same in those days. I was already in the mode months before."

We have to go back to that Faldo win in 1992 for England's last victory at The Open, before that we're looking at Tony Jacklin in 1969. Elsewhere around Great Britain and Ireland, in the past 50 years, we've had Sandy Lyle and Paul Lawrie and a relative wealth of Irish players landing the Claret Jug – Padraig Harrington (2), Darren Clarke, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry.

"You do a little bit of extra practice when you could so you have a good run. Obviously when we went to St Andrews, we were at the French Open, and there's a massive putting green there. I said to Fanny (Sunesson), oh, this is perfect, and we were playing at St Andrews afterwards so we practiced 40, 50 and 60-yard putts. I was always thinking ahead, plotting, thinking what I would need.

"In '87 when I played that week, I was hitting the ball better, it was really good. If I thought it was a 6-iron, I grabbed a 5-iron, so I was already getting ready for Muirfield. Pretending I’m Sam Snead, hit it softer. Always planning and plotting."