Sometimes a man must wait a long time before he finds himself. For Robert Karlsson, this wait has been longer than most and certainly more complicated. It has, however, been worth the patient effort even if at times the chief demons, anger and frustration, have flown wickedly around his head.
As he strides into 2009 and into what, for The European Tour is a brave, new and, potentially, hugely lucrative world, this tall, introspective, yet well mannered and sociable Swede does so as the freshly anointed winner of the Harry Vardon Trophy. Traditionally, at this stage of proceedings, one would contract this high honour into the simple statistic: Europe’s Number One player.
Yet, however, in a year when a Ryder Cup team-mate won two Major Championships, such a title would fly in the face of logic. This is not only my opinion, it is Robert’s. As he pointed out: “Padraig has had the better season. He’s the one with The Open and the US PGA Championship.”
Quite so. Still, it says much for Karlsson’s own glittering campaign that it took such prodigious trophy gathering by the Irishman for the Swede’s sensational season to be headed in the home straight.
No-one, after all, has been more consistent and it is this high-level graph of relentless achievement that marks him out so vividly from everyone else. Historically, he is the final Order of Merit winner now that The Race to Dubai takes over and, judged however you may wish, he is among the worthiest of victors of this prestigious accolade.
No fewer than 12 top ten finishes – including back-to-back victories in the Mercedes-Benz Championship and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship – bear eloquent statistical testimony to his play, while his performances in the year’s four Major Championships also demand the highest respect.
He was, after all, tied eighth in the Masters Tournament, tied fourth in the US Open Championship, tied seventh in The Open Championship and tied 20th in the US PGA Championship. That is some drum roll of achievement especially if one factors in the thought that it was only his second trip to Augusta National, his fifth US Open and his seventh US PGA. It also bears mentioning that – prior to this year – in the 15 Open Championships in which he has competed since turning professional, he had failed to qualify four times and missed the halfway cut on nine other occasions.
What this tends to suggest is that the Swede is one hell of an improved golfer. This is partly down to improved technical competence but mostly it is because, at 39 years of age, he at last appears to be at ease with himself. Until relatively recently the better acquainted he became privately with golf’s finer details, the worse he performed publicly. For a man playing the game for a living, this is not the best of news.
When this happened he turned to various sources to try to work out the who, what, why, where and when questions. It is now irretrievably attached to his curriculum vitae that, apart from psychology, he experimented with some of the fringe outlets open to a man with an inquiring mind and a spiritual sense of self. Yes, he ingested some volcanic ash, yes he spent some time deep in the woods and at retreats lost in silence and, yes, he fasted for days on end. Other stuff, too.
He has talked openly about all these things but prefers now to leave these experiences in the background having learned the hard way that such honesty can encourage ridicule from certain quarters. “Many people think I am crazy,” he has said. “But I try not to care too much.” It is, of course, the perfectly correct attitude.
Born the son of a greenkeeper at Katrineholms Golfklubb some 75 miles south of Stockholm, his childhood home was a pretty house to the side of the fourth fairway. By 13 he was practically unbeatable by any of the members and it was around the same age that he announced he needed to learn English well because, he was “going to be a golf pro.”
He turned professional in 1989 by which time his handicap was plus three and earned his Tour card the following year at the Qualifying School Final Stage. He has never been back. His first European Tour win came in the Turespaña Open Mediterrania in Spain in 1995 and he has now captured nine European Tour titles, a flurry of success that makes him Sweden’s most successful golfer although, not yet, as successful as he desires.
His father was an accomplished pistol shooter but lost much of his appetite for the sport when he realised he could not be the best and it is this genetic default position, this ambition to achieve overwhelming excellence, that has eaten away so much at Karlsson over the years. Now it appears, rather ironically, that having accepted that he cannot always be right at the top of his game, he actually mostly is.
“I tried too much to force results, tried to make it happen instead of just going out and playing. I didn’t play my game; instead I sort of went out and tried to play someone else’s,” he explained. So he has learned to be himself, to fly through life with the wings he was born with.
Also, as it happens, he has learned the secret of putting or at least how to remain sane on the greens. “I used to get too tense, to grip too tight when I was putting,” he said. “Now I know that after I’ve worked out the line I need to relax and that if I make it, I make it and if I miss it, I miss it.”
Mostly this year he has made it and when he is in that mood, in that zone, then he is irrepressible. So tall he can look awkward sometimes as he stands over a shot, he now has the ability to go with the flow of his game. Most of all, he has learned to trust his instinct and to accept, with a smile, the occasional setbacks fate throws his way.
After all that soul-searching he has reached a place that offers contentment. “All I found out is that there is nothing to look for,” he grins. This, however, is the same wisdom that comes when realisation dawns that it is not the answer that is important but the sagacity of the question in the first place.
Annchristine Lindstrom has helped him hugely to reach this conclusion. She is, he says, his coach for “everything except golf.” He likes to retreat to her village in the Swedish wilderness to recharge his body and mind while living a simpler life and sharing in the chores. His golfing success helps to fund this general lifestyle just as his charitable foundation aims to improve the future for challenged children.
His wife, Ebba, says that she knew he was different right from the start. “My first impression of Robert was that he knew something I didn’t know. He was a bit mysterious and he had a lot of charisma.” It is a compelling combination.
What it means is that, in a world often populated by the tediously one-dimensional, Karlsson’s multi-faceted, deeply-questioning approach to the conundrum that is life, never mind golf, shines very brightly indeed. The other thought is that no-one ever has worked harder or longer to win the Order of Merit.
Top man. Top Title. Number One in fact.
Bill Elliott
The Observer
Reproduced by kind permission of The European Tour Yearbook 2009, available now in theEuropean Tour Shop
