Thomas Detry opened his eyes wide, looked at the clock and couldn’t believe what he saw. There were almost nine hours left before his tee time in the final round of the WM Phoenix Open and he couldn’t sleep any longer. He wasn’t tired. His body had already started to stir. He was nervous. It was four in the morning. He was due to play just before one in the afternoon.
He tossed and turned in bed, tried to calm his heart rate and clear his mind, but it’s not easy to win the battle against stubborn insomnia when you’re on the brink of your long-awaited first major victory. Detry knows this better than anyone because it’s not the first time it’s happened to him. He gave up, got up and began the routines he has incorporated into his life to deal with these situations.
Basically, it’s about returning to the present. “My big flaw is that I try to get too far ahead. It’s always happened to me. I think about winning and not about everything that needs to be done first to achieve it,” he explained yesterday to journalists with the trophy still warm under his arm and a mix of happiness and relief on his face. It was a calm euphoria.
The first thing he did on Sunday morning was meditate. Like every day for more than a year and a half. In the morning and at night. Ten minutes each time. “At first, I would start and immediately be thinking about what I was going to have for dinner at night. I’m getting better at it and it helps me keep my mind blank, to be in the present. Everyone should do it: athletes, businessmen, politicians… It’s a way to help the brain think better,” he states.
The next stop in the morning was an ice bath. He did it on Saturday before the third round and it worked wonders. It’s not easy to think about other things when you’re on the brink of freezing. In the end, it’s about staying in the here and now. All this helped Detry to win at TPC Scottsdale. Despite everything, there are always cracks in this armour of routines and positive thoughts. The Belgian’s came at the 13th hole, a par 5. He reached the green in two but left with a par after three putts. Meanwhile, alongside him, Daniel Berger made his second consecutive birdie and closed to within three. It was the most delicate moment of the day.
“That’s when I went back to the future, started thinking he was getting very close, that I had to react, that it could slip away. I’ve had thoughts like that many times. The par on the 14th was important. I didn’t hit a good tee shot, but I played it well strategically. I forgot about the flag and focused on not making a bogey, nothing more. Then, for me, the key shot was the tee shot on the 15th. It was playing with a bit of a headwind and I knew that if I hit a good drive, I’d have a second shot with a 7-iron or 8-iron. I only thought about the drive and it was spectacular,” he assures.
Emotionally, Detry places more importance on the tee shot on the 15th and that birdie than on the great shot he hit on the 16th, the famous par 3 inside the stadium. Basically, it’s because he stumbled upon it. Absolute sincerity. “I hit the 9-iron because I wanted to aim for the centre of the green and leave myself a long birdie putt of about seven or eight metres. I wanted to play to the safe zone. However, probably due to adrenaline, it came out stronger. I thought it would be two or three metres away, but when I got there, I saw it was a hand’s breadth away and it was a great joy. It’s the most important shot of my career, but mentally I stick with the tee shot on the 15th,” he assures.
Detry admitted after winning that he had been chasing that goal for four or five years. Every time he failed in an attempt, he remembered the lessons of coach Small, his head coach at the University of Illinois. His mantra was: “poor, hungry and determined.” That’s how he repeated ad nauseam that he had to be a golfer to succeed. And if by chance he ever forgot, there was his caddie to remind him, Charlie Danielson, a teammate from those university days who had to quit golf due to a serious knee injury.
Now, his new goal is to get into the FedEx Cup final, stay loyal to the DP World Tour and play the last tournament in Dubai and qualify for the Ryder Cup. In reality, the latter is more of a dream than a goal. “I won’t make the mistake of thinking about the Ryder now. That would be stepping out of the present. Of course, I want to be at Bethpage, but I’ll achieve it tournament by tournament and round by round. It’s my results that will lead me to qualify or earn a spot by selection,” he notes.
Detry confirmed yesterday after the victory that he is capable of shouting victory in four different languages: victory, victoire, victoria and owerwinning. At home, he speaks English because his wife is British, he thinks in French (he measures distances in metres), he speaks Spanish because his grandmother was born in Spain and he learned Dutch in Belgium. What he doesn’t speak is German, despite many American fans thinking it’s his country of origin. “They see the colours of the flag and get confused. I’m Belgian, not German. I think now they’ll know me a bit better and it will be easier. It’s also a good win for Belgium.”
Everything adds up to winning a tournament when you’ve been chasing it for so long. The mental part is decisive, although surely in the end the most crucial thing is confidence, the determination that coach Small preached. “Before going out to play, deep down, I really trusted myself. I felt that I had done many good things in the past to put myself in that position and I was convinced that I was ready to win. Deep down, I thought yes, this time no one was going to take it away from me.”
