Executive Golf Magazine

England’s favourite former footballer is a golf nut who now gets to talk about it for a living.

Gary Lineker is fortunate and the word is used deliberately to differentiate it from lucky. As a young man he was gifted with the skills and reflexes to play 80 full soccer internationals as a striker for England and score 48 goals. While not quite in the same large quantity, though it is growing all the time, he has also been handed the ability to communicate with fellow sportsmen in a way which makes for entertaining television. And like many very good sportsmen Lineker has more than one string to his bow. Since hanging up his boots he has become a very useful single figure golfer with a burning passion for the game which he admits borders on an obsession.

Throw all the ingredients into a melting pot and what emerges is the picture of a very fortunate man indeed. He is not only the well established anchor man for the BBC’s flagship soccer programme Match of the Day, but he is also now the face of the corporation’s golf coverage. And when we agreed to meet on the piece of lawn in front of the Royal Liverpool clubhouse at Hoylake that had been set aside for his interviews during last year’s Open Championship the extent to which he is enjoying life, now that he no longer has to ride tackles from hulking defenders, is plainly evident.

Lineker had just finished a lengthy interview with Jack Nicklaus, the greatest golfer of all time and was waiting for the game’s modern day stars to finish their rounds and join him in front of the cameras. Talk about being able to mix business with pleasure! And at the age of 45 the pleasure he has been able to derive from the game shines through with every anecdote. As a youngster he would “mess around chipping and putting in the garden at home”.

It was an early education in the game which still serves him well to this day. As he quipped with remarkable self-deprecation. “The strength of my game now is from close in. I am useless from long range. Just like I was at football.”

When I turned round to Ernie for approval he was bent down pretending to tie up his shoelaces. ‘Didn’t you see that?’ I asked. But he merely replied, ‘no do it again’

And then as if to prove the point he tells the delightful story of his favourite moment on a golf course – the first time he ever broke 70 which just happened to be at one of his two home courses, Sunningdale, and with a very famous close golfing friend a somewhat hostile witness to the feat. “I needed a four at the last and hit a good drive,” he says, “but typically pulled my second left of the green and when I got to my ball the lie was rotten. It was totally bare and I had short sided myself. I had to get the ball up quickly and over a bunker with no room to work with in front of the pin.

“What made matters worse was as I approached the ball I noticed that Ernie Els had just walked on to the first tee for a round with some friends and was somewhat amused to see the predicament I had found myself in.

“Anyway, eventually I played the shot – perfectly. I somehow flicked the ball up, it bounced once, and then went straight into the hole. But when I turned round to Ernie for approval he was bent down pretending to tie up his shoelaces. ‘Didn’t you see that?’ I asked. But he merely replied, ‘no do it again’. No chance, I could have tried a hundred times and not repeated it.”

Els also features strongly when Lineker is asked about his other home course Queenwood, the ultra exclusive Surrey club, which could boast of having probably the strongest playing membership in the country if it were not for its rigid policy of no publicity which extends down to the absence of even a nameplate on its high security gates.

Just to be a member there is the height of privilege and shows how far Lineker’s interest in golf has developed. Early in his football-playing career at Leicester and Everton he would occasionally play with his team-mates but in his younger days with good money burning in his pocket he liked to watch the game on TV and have a bet.

“Tom Watson was my hero,” he says. “I picked up good money when he won The Open.” ‘Which Open’ is the question that naturally follows. Carnoustie in 1975, Turnberry in 1977 or perhaps Muirfield, Troon or Birkdale? “All of them,” he replies. “I would back him every time and it certainly paid handsome dividends.”

It was only after he had turned 30 and decided to finish his football playing career with the Grampus Eight Club in golf-mad Japan that Lineker began to take his golf seriously and gradually on returning home he worked his way down from a handicap of 14 to his current level of six.

“When I got back to England,” he says, “I sneaked my way into membership at Sunningdale, had my first serious lessons instead of creating my own bad habits, and got addicted to the extent that I now try to play around three times a week as well as practice.”

And his playing ability has earned him the respect and friendship of some of the top names in European golf. At Queenwood he can tee the ball up alongside Els, Darren Clarke, Thomas Bjorn, David Howell, and Adam Scott, to mention just a few of the members who enjoy its privacy and superb practice facilities.

“Inside it’s just a members club and some of the pros play in the competitions with handicaps. I think Darren has just gone up from plus five to plus six, but it’s great fun to play with them,” he says, though once again being unable to resist a light hearted dig at Els.

“He’s a miserable so and so. He insists on playing off scratch against me and will only give me six strokes. So the other biggest day of my golfing life was when I managed to beat him 2 & 1.”

It is the handicapping system which Lineker appreciates most in golf. “Apart from when I am playing against Ernie and he’s being mean with the strokes,” he says. “If I am having a good day with my handicap I can play against the pros on the top golf courses and compete.

“And that is why golf’s handicapping system is unique. There is no way I could go on to the centre court at Wimbledon and hope to give Federer a game. And when I was playing football an amateur couldn’t just turn up at Wembley and either play or take on the pros on a level playing field.”

Late in 2005 Lineker’s golfing career had to be put on hold when he tore both medial ligaments in his knees in a skiing accident and no sooner had he got himself back on to his feet and out on the golf course than he suffered a rotator muscle injury in his shoulder. And after a six-month lay off he developed an erratic hook with his driver which plagued him throughout this summer.

But it all came at a time when he had another golfing challenge to take on. Inevitably in 2005 when the BBC chose Lineker to inherit the popular and professionally polished Steve Rider as their golf anchor man the TV critics were ready to pounce. And even he admits to having had serious initial reservations about taking up the Beeb’s offer despite his love of the game. “It is a very different job to presenting Match of the Day and there also could have been the problem with scheduling. But fortunately The Open fell just after the World Cup and I can take a weekend off from football for The Ryder Cup.
“But it is very different from presenting football in so many ways. On Match of the Day you have the other experts with you and, as you build a relationship, there can be light-hearted banter between the three or four of you.

“Presenting the golf and doing the main interviews is just one-on-one and then there is the timescale that’s involved. With football you have pre-match, half-time and full-time slots with the two halves of action in between. But there are specific times in which we can focus on the issues.

“With golf, however, the action never stops all day so coming over to me is always an interruption in live play for the viewers. And most people want live sport not live banter so I have to make sure I make it worthwhile.”

The Open at Hoylake was only Lineker’s third tournament in front of the cameras and, given that the BBC’s coverage of golf is restricted to just a handful of top events every year, Lineker admits he could be serving a long apprenticeship in his new occupation. “Maybe after three or four years and say 15 events I will start to know how it all works,” he says but then adds, “It’s something I am enjoying learning.”

And as jobs go what a fortunate position Lineker finds himself in.

Membership to the Executive Golf club is free. Simply click here and become a member of Executive Golf

Membership to Executive Golf is free. Please click here to apply to become an Executive Golf member.

« Return to previous page