Canada discover grass is cooler than ice after Weir’s Master stroke in golf

On Sunday he finally put the gritty competitiveness he learned on frozen ponds and backyard rinks to the best possible use, outlasting Mattiace to lift one of sport’s best prizes. In Canada, where golf courses are buried under snow for four months and mostly unplayable for two more, Weir’s golfing fundamentals were put in place spending long winters blasting hockey pucks and smacking golf balls into Lake Huron, or into a net his father set up in the family garage.

“I don’t own a green jacket, I was hoping some day this would be my first one,” Weir told reporters. “I’m glad to be wearing it right now, believe me.

“I was really just a summer golfer. I would play hockey through the winter and fall and spring and then play golf in the summer. But I did hit balls. My dad put a net in our garage to hit balls we would fish out of the pond at the golf course. On a decent day in the winter, we would go pound them out into the lake. That was the extent of my golf really, in the winter time there wasn’t very much.”

Canadians generally limit their sporting attention to hockey but Weir, twice voted his nation’s athlete of the year, is almost as popular in his country as hockey favourite Wayne Gretzky, who now counts himself as one of his biggest fans and supporters.

So does Canadian Prime Minister Jean Cretien, a keen golfer who took time out from meetings in the Dominican Republic to watch Sunday’s final round and call Weir later to congratulate him.

“This win is a win for me and my family, but it is a big win for Canadia golf and the fans that have been very supportive of me,” said Weir, who was serenaded with a rousing rendition of “Oh Canada” as last year’s winner Tiger Woods helped him slip into the coveted green jacket.

“Mr Cretien said he was very proud of me and it was just real nice of him to think to call me. He said he’s in the Dominican Republic right now so he was sitting there with the President of the Dominican Republic. He said they were watching and he was jumping up and down and his wife was jumping up and down and he said they were very excited.”

The first left-hander to win at Augusta, Weir once wrote to six times Masters champion Jack Nicklaus, asking whether he should switch to playing right-handed. In a reply Weir has framed and hangs in his office, Nicklaus told the 32-year-old Canadian to stay with his natural swing.

It earned Weir a golf scholarship to Brigham Young University after which he joined the Canadian Tour and began the long and lonely climb up golf’s professional ranks. After six trips to qualifying school, a determined Weir finally earned his Tour card in 1997, but the lean times continued and his wife Bricia occasionally caddied for him.

In 1999, he finally claimed his first title at the Air Canada Championship and now has six PGA Tour victories, including three this season, to his name.

“It was a long road,” recalled Weir, who was embraced by his wife in the Georgia twilight when his winning putt dropped at the first extra hole. “I mean it took me six years to even get on the tour out of college.

“Those times missing Q school, and playing overseas, and the commitment that takes not only for myself, my family, my wife….

“It’s an unbelievable progression that I’ve finally gotten here but I think even back then I believed that I would get here somehow.” (Reuters)