The Life and Times of New Zealand golfer Phil Tataurangi

51 Thoughts were fortunate to speak to former former PGA Tour player and winner Phil Taturangi and got his thoughts on his career and his thoughts about how the game is shaping up now.

1.      What sport did you first start playing when you were growing up?

Oh, that’s a good question. I was born in Auckland, and Mum and Dad were school teachers. We moved to the southern tip of Kawhia Harbour, where Mum and Dad were teaching at a little school, so we were right on the water. I didn’t play rugby then because we were so remote and we didn’t have a rugby team, as we had only about 30 or 40 students at the school. We used to kick a rugby ball around; Dad was a fairly accomplished rugby player and we always had a rugby ball. We did a lot of water sports. I didn’t take up golf until I was 7

2.      What interested you about golf?

I got into golf because I had the option of either going with my mum and sister to hockey and Netball and standing on the side line or caddying for Dad at the golf course. That wasn’t a hard decision. After a pretty short period of time, maybe it was just a bit of plucky confidence or [maybe] I had a real interest in it, I decided that I could do a bit better than Dad did. He was about a ten handicap and it usually involved a lot of joking, laughing, swearing, and getting happy and angry. Dad would play in the morning and when he had a few beers with his mates afterwards, I would nip outside and have a few chips and putts on the green at the Waitomo Golf Cub.

3.      What was it like to play the Waitomo golf course? Was it a nice course?

Oh yeah, it was a nice course. It was a tree-lined, pathed-in course and it was a welcoming, social club. I got underway by chipping and putting around, then I went on to take up the game at the same time my mum took up the game. She had an old set of lady’s clubs and ended up getting a new set, so I got [her old clubs] cut down to size. John Menns, who was the greenskeeper/pro at Waitomo at the time, cut down the clubs for me and gave me a bit of help to start with. Whilst the old man was in the clubhouse having a few beers after playing on a Saturday, I would go out and play nine holes. I made fast friends with three old biddies at Waitomo who took me under their wing. Their first lessons to me were more about etiquette than how to hold onto the club and how to hit. It was about how to behave on the golf course. I wouldn’t say that I was doing a lot of misbehaving, [but] like most seven- or eight-year-olds, [I had] an unawareness or lack of appreciation; although a lot of the etiquette of golf is the etiquette of society, it’s a bit different from some sports. This was one of the most influential times of my career in that I learnt the game not by playing it, but by [learning] about the culture, the values and virtues of it. I grew to love the game at that stage, from that organic place rather than actually feeling that I was any good at it.

4.      Was the etiquette a complex thing to learn?

Yeah, and I think that because it wasn’t too dissimilar from the parenting I had received, I took to it fairly well. As a kid I wasn’t so much a stickler for the rules, but I enjoyed, shall we say, an even playing field. I think that was probably what the etiquette was based on – a whole heap of moral rights and a courtesy surrounding the game. It’s not dissimilar to cricket. Even though cricket’s not the gentleman’s game now, there’s a general courtesy to the sport, and golf has a similar courtesy element. It’s not the rules or the laws of the game but it’s fairly high up in the written laws of the game.

5.      How did you get selected to play in the Eisenhower team in 1988?

Ultimately, the thing that attracts me to the game is that the scorecard determines the pecking order. You’re not really selected and you don’t get to have a bad day. Someone scores a couple of tries and the team looks good. The score that you sign is the score and that is representative of how you played that day. From an Eisenhower standpoint, the first time around in 1988, there was a steady progression throughout my junior days and some of my representative golf, and then playing some international junior representative stuff as well. It was a big step for New Zealand golf and New Zealand golf selectors to pick a sixteen-year-old kid as a senior representative. I guess they saw a little bit of promise and figured that it would be a good time to give me a taste of senior international competition. It was really a shot out of the blue

6.      How difficult was it to play golf on an international course at that age?

It’s something that took a whole heap of learning. It took me a while to get the hang of the international time change, as that screws with your body’s clock a little if you haven’t experienced it before. There’s also playing on different grass types and adjusting your game to that, [as well as] playing in different climates and adjusting to how that makes your body feel, how the ball travels different distances in different climates, and a whole raft of different things. Playing internationally is different from playing at home. I was a sixth former at college playing most of my golf around the Waikato region and being a member of the club in the King Country. I had travelled before, but that’s where I was from and those were the playing conditions I was most familiar with before playing overseas.

7.      What clubs and balls did you use during your younger days?

During my younger days, I used a round one. With Mum and Dad being school teachers, we were by no means high on the roost. I can remember that from a very early age if I wanted new equipment, I had to earn it by winning my golf balls at club competitions or working to save money. If I wanted to buy a new golf club, I had to earn it that same way. Back in the day, of course, we didn’t have the means to get fit for golf clubs, so if you liked a golf club, it didn’t necessarily mean that it was going to work for you. I can remember some of the early golf clubs I had and sometimes I was fortunate enough to be given clubs when people thought they might be helpful to me. I certainly wasn’t Titleist from head to toe in the early days. A really nice breakthrough occurred around the same time I was announced into the Eisenhower team in 1988. New Zealand golf had just started a junior development programme, the first of its kind, and had received the support of Jones Brothers in New Zealand, which was the importing company for Titleist. So all of a sudden we were receiving all this gear that only the rich kids could afford (or that was certainly out of our league and stuff that guys were using on TV). That was a huge step forward, and the quality of the equipment was of a far higher standard. Then I received support by getting those clubs fit for my specifications.

8.      How difficult was it to get clubs fitted for you?

I didn’t know too much about it, really, but the great thing with golf is that the ball never lies. You hit it and it goes where you want it to go. Doing it once is not the right way to approach it. If you hit ten balls, it gives you some kind of percentage. You can’t manufacture the ball to go with equipment that doesn’t work for you too many times in a row. The fitting process back in the early days was a bit like that. You had a bit of baseline equipment and baseline numbers. If you could hit the ball this far, then this shaft weight would work for you. If you’re hitting the ball too high, then you have too much loft and if you’re hitting the ball too low, you most probably don’t have enough. If you’re having trouble with some shots around the green, you didn’t have enough bounce. So it was a bit of trial and error back in the early days. I received a fair bit of help from my first golf coach, John Griffin; he had an experienced brain and wisdom about club fitting and he helped with that process – fitting clubs to make a set of tools. It’s very similar to being a builder. There are a hundred different hammers, but each builder has his own. If you’re a golfer and getting into the high-performance part of the tournament-playing end of the game, you want tools you can rely upon that are going to be repetitive and that fit your technique, not necessarily those that look flash. You want the ones that fit what you do. So I learnt quite a bit in those formative years. For the most part, not much of that has changed.

9.      What was it like to play on the Eisenhower team in 1992?

Quite a bit different compared to the first time around, as I missed making the team in 1990 when it was back here in Christchurch. There was a fair bit of determination to make the team in 1992. When they started that junior development squad back in 1987, the goal was to win the trophy in 1992. Why 1992? To give the program a chance to mature and to give whoever the characters were in that programme a chance to get enough experience. As it worked out, among the guys who ended up going to Vancouver to play in that tournament, I was the only one who came from the junior development squad. The other guys were around the fringes of it and would be members in the years following. We had a goal, we had an expectation, we had quite a bit of experience under our belts even though Steven, Grant and Michael had done it in a slightly different way in their formative years. There was quite a belief that we could win, and the rest is history. It was a classic example of having a plan and the plan coming to fruition just right, exactly how you had drawn it up.

10.   What did you do after Eisenhower? Did you concentrate on playing in the Australasian tour or did you set you sights on getting into the Nationwide tour?

I didn’t turn professional straight away. The other three guys did, but even though I felt that I was the leading individual at the Eisenhower in 1992, I still had quite a bit of learning to do before I turned pro. I wanted to turn pro and have success straight away; I didn’t want to go through the pain of learning the professional world. That’s what I thought at the time, and of course that was a bit naïve. There’s no way you could do a lot of the learning as an amateur; you needed to get your feet wet, jump in and see where you had to go. I certainly had to do that once I turned pro. I stayed amateur for ten to twelve months and played pretty much a professional sort of schedule. I played in many professional golf tournaments to get a lot of experience. I ticked off a nice personal goal of winning the New Zealand amateur. I didn’t want to start on the Australasian tour because of my winning the Eisenhower and the New Zealand amateur. I had some status on the Australasian tour; I wanted to have a twelve-months-of-the-year job, not a three- or four-month job, which is the Australasian tour, and play Pro-Ams for the rest of the year. I wanted to have some status on a main tour, so I went to the US tour school in October 1993 and got through all three stages. I got my PGA tour card straight out of the gate. (There weren’t too many guys at the time who got their tour cards straight away. It was a big jump to do that; naivety played a big part in getting my tour card. I didn’t really know what I was trying to do. It was a bit of a dream. Once I had my tour card I certainly learnt what it was like to lose it.)

11.   Once you got onto the PGA tour, what was it like to play in your first tournament?

It was phenomenal. My first tournament came the week after the New Zealand Open, the second week of January in Hawaii. I found myself on the range in Hawaii surrounded by guys whom I had just been watching on TV. Even though I had spent the last twelve months prior to that preparing for professional golf, there’s playing professional golf and then there’s playing on the biggest tour in the world. That’s professional golf ramped up quite considerably. My first few events on the PGA tour were a huge eye-opening experience and for the most part I was doing it on my own. I had a couple of mates in my first year from New Zealand caddying for me and we were travelling together, trying to encounter different experiences. My girlfriend at the time, who became my wife, came over halfway through the year. I didn’t play well that first year, and looking back it’s no wonder, because each and every week you’re on a different golf course, going somewhere new, making mistakes for the very first time each and every week. It wasn’t the best platform to bring your best game as you were playing against the best players in the world. It’s always going to be tough to be competitive when you’re making a handful of mistakes every week.

12.   How difficult was it to play regular PGA tour events?

It was tough to get a schedule. In my first year I didn’t know the golf courses, I didn’t know where I was going. Some of them I recognised from TV; it was completely different to play them, and coming out of qualifying school, you can’t really set you schedule. Your schedule is determined by everyone else, who are exempt from tournaments whether they decide to play or not. I really didn’t have a clue as to when I was going to play, so I didn’t get a lot of starts. During the summer months, I was in eight tournaments in a row and I played in all eight of them. I was completely shagged by the end of that stretch; those are the sorts of things you learn only by doing them. I haven’t played eight tournaments in a row since. It was really tough but fantastic; I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. There are a couple of things I certainly would have liked a bit more advice on, but maybe I was receiving that advice and I was a bit too pig-headed to take it. I think that having those experiences shaped the rest of my career.

13.   You mentioned playing in those eight tournaments in row. How did you get to play in those? Was it by invitation or some other way?

The way it works is that each and every player who has a PGA tour card has a ranking or a status. Those guys who were exempt the year before are exempt for about 90 percent of the tournaments. Obviously, the top ten to twenty golfers in the world are exempt for all the majors and every single tournament. I’m a little bit further down the pecking order, coming out of the qualifying school. There are 144-150 spots each week, so the number of spots available a bit further down the list depends on how many of the guys above you in the pecking order decide to play or enter those tournaments. That’s why I say that when you’re out of qualifying school, you get to set your own schedule; you’re at the whim of those guys who have greater status further up the pole. That’s one of the bonuses of being a fully exempt player on the PGA tour; you basically get to set your schedule for ninety percent of the weeks.

14.   What was it like to win your first PGA tournament?

It was the culmination of a lot of hard work. It was a bit of a dream come true in lots of ways. When you play PGA tours, there’s a clear line between those players who have won tournaments and those players who haven’t. In many ways the tour kept reinforcing that it was a different club and not only in your exempt status, not only in the tournaments you get into and the perks that come your way by being a lifetime member of the PGA tour. It’s a different echelon of players you get into, and it drove me in lots of ways. When you are motivated, and you have a lot of aspirations, you don’t want to be that guy who is a nice player but can’t win. I had won tournaments as an amateur and so it was a natural progression to win tournaments as a professional. I had a bit of luck with that by winning on the Nike and Australasian tour (With the Australian PGA Championship in 1996) and so the progression was to win on the PGA tour. It’s not that easy as, it’s very competitive and the toughest tour to win on and to finally get over the hump, it was gratifying for all the hard work that you had put in and the help that you had received. It was a lifelong goal that had been realised.

15.   When you were playing in the US did you find a US coach to help you with your golf game?

No, I had for the most part of my career I worked with John Griffin out of here. John would could come over and help me two-four times a year, then with the invention of technology we were able to send a few swings to each other. I would come home one or two times a year and that was the way that we kind of kept an eye on things. There were plenty of guys who wanted to help me, that player / coach relationship is successful and born out of a lot of trust in John. He had also been influential in lots of different ways in my life not just as a golf coach. We had a good relationship and that’s the decision to make.

16.   What was it like to play at the masters?

It was also a career goal to do that. It was exciting to go to the masters let alone to get inside the ropes and play there. I had aspirations to play well there and coming off a nice season in 2002 I felt good about my game even though I was caring an injury at the time it kind of felt like the golf course was set up pretty well for me. I did all my preparations by going to Augusta one month before the tournament to get a lot of those first time to Augusta stuff out of my mine. I had an opportunity to go to the masters prior to earning the right to go there and I turned those down. I wanted my first time I went there to be on right and get to have a hit, so in that respect it was nice to earn that. I got to play with Arnold Palmer the first couple of days, so that was pretty special

17.   What was he like to play a round with?

Like playing with your Grandfather really, at the time he was in his late 60’s and coming to the end at playing at the masters. It was slated to be his last masters and he played one more after that. He played out of his king and shot two rounds in the late 80’s but he was an absolute champion with standing ovations from tee to green. As I say it was like playing with your Grandfather in the biggest tournament in the world.

18.   Was it good to play with a guy like Arnold Palmer?

Oh yeah, I mean it certainly wasn’t inhibiting to my performance that’s for sure. We received a lot of attention like you would expect and Ryan Moore was an amateur, the other guy that I had played with and he was reigning US amateur champion, so he had pedigree. Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus are two of the biggest names that you would associate with the Masters tournament in the last 40 – 50 years. What an amazing thrill and a bit of an honour really, and it’s like saying there’s playing at the Masters and there is playing at the Masters with an icon. It kind of adds to the experience a little bit.

19.   In terms of going to the tournament, did you have any pressure / expectations on yourself?

Only the stuff that I applied to myself to achieve my own aspirations and goals really. No one else was putting any pressure on me really, I had a whole heaps of friends and family coming over and I wanted to play well for them and I want to play well for myself. So it was only the stuff that I was heaping on myself really.

20.   Which was your favourite part of Augusta?

Being inside the ropes really, I got myself into the fridges of contention on Saturday and a little bit on Sunday. Feeling those juices, getting to play and playing some of the shots that growing up as a kid and watching on tv seeing people hit shots on Sundays or the weekend of the Masters and being able to be there and do some of it yourself was something that you dream of doing when you’re a kid and here I was doing it. So that was good fun

21.   Later in the year you got to play in the PGA Championship. What was that like to play in?

That had a totally different feel and a different time to. I had back surgery about a month after the Masters, as I said I was carrying an ailment at the time and my back was playing up for a little while and I decided to have back surgery in early May of that year. A bit of a target was to be ready for the PGA Championship and it was my second tournament back from back surgery (it was sort of like what Tiger is going through at the moment). I have been there and done that and trying to push the rehab a little bit and I was guilty of coming back a bit too soon. Unfortunately, I reherniated my back that week and so although I had quite high hopes and that week it was just was kind of just about getting back into playing again. So it was a totally different week.

22.   In terms of your back injury was that one of the main injury that affected you throughout your career or did you have other ones?

Yeah, it was the most debilitating but I had a whole host of different injuries to be fair. I had neck injuries, a couple of wrist injuries, repetitive injuries from playing and practising. It’s just part and parcel of playing and having the schedule you and trying to achieve what I was, a lot of practise, a lot of wear and tear in my body and most probably a bit of naivety to body mechanics given as it’s not as prominent as to what it is today.

23.   How would you prepare to play in a tournament?

Preparation is key really and I remember learning that in one fairly early on in my rookie year. I was doing all this learning, I didn’t really know where I was going or what I was doing, I didn’t really have a set schedule, so I didn’t really prepare to the best of my abilities. So that was one thing that I changed up pretty sharply in my professional career. I never felt like I was under prepared or poorly prepared, I always felt like I prepared well  and that’s a matter of doing the practise that you need to be doing. Whether it would be one or two practise rounds, whether you have pro-am commitments, scoping out different golf courses and trying to figure out what areas suited my game and what areas are going to be challenging on that given particular week. Also, a lot of the stuff off the golf course too, when do I need to get to town, where am I staying, good restaurants for the week, how far away from the gold course you need to be, and all of those different things can impact your performance. I always felt that preparation was a key part of playing well and once I kind of got through my first year or so of professional golf I always felt like I prepared pretty thoroughly.

24.   What about diet and exercise, what sort of things would you stick to while you were playing?

In my early days, I didn’t focus on diet and again that was a bit similar to the bio-mechanics, exercise, training and that sort of stuff. There wasn’t a lot of literature out there to say that this is what you need to be eating and how you need to be exercising to be at optimum performance. It’s not so much that it is prescriptive one size fits all but over my career I have learn about diet and about exercise. Obviously with injuries, learning about injury prevention and maintenance whilst you’re on the road all of those sorts of different things are common place there basically like knowing about how to put a grip on your golf club nowadays.  There influential parts of optimum performance, back in the day I knew what my body did and didn’t like and what would and wouldn’t make me feel good. Obviously playing in the states you have to watch those buffets as they will certainly trip you up if you fall in love with the American style of eating. It was more learning about food and what foods give you energy and what food saps your energy and over the years you learn that with golf being in lots of ways an endurance sport because you’re out there for four to five hours. You have different peaks and troughs it’s a matter of trying to keep an equilibrium of your system because whatever you stick in your body is ultimately controlling what your mind is doing really and so it’s not only fuel for your body but its fuel for your mind. If you can keep your mind on some sort of even keel, your giving yourself the best chance to have the ultimate performance.

25.   What do you think of the FED-EX Cup do you think that it would have been beneficial to when you were playing?

I think it adds a crescendo to the end of the season which was sadly missing from the PGA tour. Those tournaments that came after the PGA championship and before the Tour championship really struggled to get fields of any decent quality. That was one of the major contributors to the FED-EX cup. They wanted to come up with a system that led to a season long point race. It used to be a season long money race now it’s a season long points race which I think for a lot of the fans it has been a tricky thing to understand and comprehend. If you can get a feel for it, a lot of what the FED-EX cup point system is based around is similar to the NASCAR points system and in that they wanted a season long points race that reflects consistency over the course of the year compared to a few flashes in the pain. Because you couldn’t get a consistent purse from tournament to tournament effectively to raise the funds that they wanted to. For the most part the tournaments with the biggest prize money have the better fields and are the more prestigious tournaments. What the FED-EX cup points race has done is that each tournament outside of the majors, World Golf Championships and the Players Championship all carry the same amount of FED-EX cup points and so whether you win a six or seven million dollar tournament or a four million dollar tournament you effectively get the same amount of points. So that has added some consistency to it. The FED-EX cup finals has brought in a little bit of drama to the end of the year but nowhere near as much as if had been a slightly different format and if there had been a little bit more elimination taking place than what happens.

26.   You mentioned that you work for the PGA Tour, what sort of work do you do for them?

That’s the broadcasting stuff I do in the states so that the events I go over and broadcast. I predominantly am employed by the PGA Tour and so I would go out on the PGA Tour world feed broadcast, digital platform, PGATour.com and PGA Tour radio as well

27.   What is it like to commentate your first round of golf on television and explain to people what is happening on the golf course?

I enjoy the challenge of trying to do it well. It’s a different sort of skill set from playing but a similar sort of mindset so the mindset it to try and do well each and every day and learn little bits and pieces that will make you a better broadcaster tomorrow than what you are today. That’s the same sort of mindset as playing, the skillset is different obviously and it took me a little while to comprehend all of the backroom I guess of a broadcasting setup for a tournament and all of what goes into what goes into shooting a 65 on the golf course and what does a 65 look like as far as putting a show together for live golf. Learning all of those different moving parts, the different systems, protocols and processes for a TV broadcast is a fun challenge.

28.   Compared to when you were playing what do you think about today’s golf clubs, have they changed drastically since when you played?

Oh yeah, absolutely there is, we are not to dissimilar from tennis when they went from a wooden racket to a graphite racket and a far larger sweet spot. We have had the same thing with just about all the clubs to be fair and the golf ball has continued to advance. So the combination of the two and you get fitter and stronger athletes playing the game, who swing the club at a higher speed. All those combinations have the ball going distances that they haven’t gone before. That doesn’t always corelate to the average player but certainly for the top players who have a swing speed of 117 – 118 mph there getting quite a decent boost.

29.   Do you think the quality of golfers have got better in the last few years?

Oh, it’s hard to know, it’s hard to compare players from era to era I think for the most part globally it has become more competitive in that there a greater number of players that are of PGA standard. I think that in the past there were 20-30 guys who came out of Europe who could play and compete and win on the PGA Tour. There’s a handful of players from other parts of the world who of been able to do the same.  Nowadays there’s any given player on the European tour who could compete on the PGA Tour and we are seeing that. There are emerging markets too from Asia and South America and there was a time where there was probably a handful of Australasians (Australians and New Zealanders) on the PGA Tour and Vijay out of Fiji. Now there is 20 or more Aussies and Kiwis that have their starts on the PGA tour.

30.   What are your thoughts of New Zealand Golf currently and going into the future?

We kind of had a boom I guess when Lydia and Danny turned pro and they had instant success and Lydia has gone on to become an icon of the game as a teenager. I think out of the back end of that it’s tough to replicate those players, athletes because it’s not that easy. There is a lot of things that Lydia can do that no other women golfer in the world can do and to think that we will be able to produce another Lydia after her turning pro is low. Having said that she has been an inspiration and a motivation for a lot of those families and young girls to take the game seriously and look at it as a profession. Also, to look at it and see what the game does for different individuals, she has become an outstanding young lady that’s been recognised globally. I think if the game can produce more Lydia Ko’s the person we will have a greater opportunity to produce Lydia Ko the professional. So that’s what I think the opportunity is there and on the Men’s side we have got a number of guys trying to cut their teeth on different tours like the Australasian and Asian tour, look at Ryan fox making his way through Europe. It’s just a tough game to make it to the highest level and its incredibly competitive and you have to be really single minded and quite dogged and selfish and very persistent and perseverance as the game really sets you up to fail more than succeed. It’s not that easy to make it outside of New Zealand borders. I think we have a number of players kind of on that cusp of taking the next step and succeeding internationally. That’s the toughest step, we have had a number of players that have got up to that stage but it’s just being able to break through to that next stage and seeing who can do that.

31.   What is your favourite moment in your golfing career?

I have had a few pretty cool ones, obviously winning in Vegas was nice and it was a career goal to win in the US. To be fair I get just as much joy playing with my son and his mates as I did succeed on the PGA Tour, it’s just a different kind of fun that’s all.

32.   What’s the best course / course you would like to play on?

My favourite course is St Andrews,  there are numerous, just playing tournament golf you don’t always play on the most enjoyable golf courses. They are big and they look good on TV, they just are not necessarily the architecturally  the most fun, that’s what I seek out doing as much as possible now. Is to try and play not necessarily championship golf courses but golf courses that are really fun, enjoyable and architecturally sound and designed by architects that I revere and there are plenty of the world and New Zealand to be fair. I look forward to playing on those courses,  those kind of get me up like I used to gear up for when I played in big tournaments. I get excited about playing golf courses now days that are fun or have a good reputation of being architecturally sound and/or different quirks or things that provide different things and interests.

33.   Who were one or some of the best golfers that you have played with in a tournament?

Tiger is by far the most talented player that I have played with. He could just do things with the golf ball that no one that I have ever played with could do. I have played with a lot of different celebrity’s, sports people, NFL quarterbacks, NBA, Baseball players and a couple of ice hockey players over the years in states in different pro-am formats and that sort of stuff. I have played with some people from Hollywood at tournaments like the Bob Hope and then at a couple of private clubs in LA. The game affords you that right to be able to mix with people across all different levels of society. I enjoyed playing with them equally as much as I do playing with a bunch of mates of mine when we go on golfing holidays and weekends. No one is really more special than the others, it was nice to play with Tiger during his heyday and to be able to look back at a couple of instances and go that was as close as I’ve come to playing the game perfectly. He was far from perfect on both occasions it was right in the middle of when he was arguably playing at his best in the early 2000’s and it will be interesting to see whether that was his best that we were seeing then or whether that is yet to come.