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Danny Willett is keeping his feet on the ground following Masters victory

By: Golfshake Editor | Sun 17 Apr 2016


Post by Sports Writer Derek Clements


LIFE will never again be the same for Danny Willett. No longer will he and his wife be able to enjoy a quiet meal out in their favourite restaurant without prying eyes boring into them. Never again will he be able to go for a walk without being asked for his autograph. Never again will he be able to walk past strangers in the street without somebody outstretching their arm to shake hands with the man who won the 2016 Masters.

Never again will the Willett family be able to go on holiday in a popular destination for fear of being mobbed everywhere they go. Even popping out to the local shop for a loaf of bread can never again be a straightforward task.

Willett is a measured, well-balanced, down-to-earth young man with a good sense of perspective - and he is going to need all those qualities in spades as attempts to come to terms with his new life. If he wants an idea of what he can expect, he should have a quiet word with either Rory McIlroy or Tiger Woods. The big difference is that those two were groomed to be superstars from an early age and learnt to cope in different ways with the spotlight. In his prime, Woods had little or nothing to do with his adoring public, blanking them on his way to and from the scoring tent. McIlroy is a different kettle of fish altogether - he is a people person and likes to be liked, so he makes time to interact with his fans. Ditto the incredible Phil Mickelson, who signs autographs until there is nobody left.

Like Mickelson and McIlroy, Willett is a popular man, among fellow pros, caddies, the media and the public. He will, of course, be receiving lots of advice about how he should deal with his new status. There will be plenty of new sponsors offering him big bucks, there will be invitations to every tournament he has ever heard of (and a lot he hasn't). He has already been told there is PGA Tour membership waiting for him whenever he wants to take it up, but Willett has hinted that he plans to remain faithful to the European Tour, even though playing more in America would almost guarantee him more world ranking points than he can accumulate in Europe.

He is now ninth in the world. “I’m a long way behind points wise but it’s always been a goal of mine to be number one in the world,” Willett said. “It’s the reason you get up in the morning and go training, to go and hit balls and putt. It’s what you do and how you go about your daily business to try and achieve something great.

“Fortunately I’ve now tasted the top echelons of the sport and you just want more. You want to keep dedicating yourself to working hard and playing good golf and hope to be more and more in them positions on a Sunday afternoon at majors, World Golf Championships and normal PGA and European Tour events. That’s what we work for. We’re going to try and enjoy a bit of normal time off and then get straight back to the job in hand of trying to achieve those goals.

“There’s no targets been set in terms of the number of majors I hope to win. The only target you can set yourself is how hard you work and if you can tick that box and you’re working hard at the right things, if you win a couple of golf tournaments along the way that’s fantastic.

“And if that can take you to some of your dreams, then that would be fantastic. A dream of mine was to win major championships and that’s what I dedicated myself to do, to work hard and gain that self belief it one day might happen and weirdly, three days ago, that’s exactly what did happen."

There are those in America who have been questioning Willett's worth as Masters champion, choosing to focus instead on the unravelling of Jordan Spieth It doesn't trouble Willett in the slightest. “I don’t really mind what people think, who won or who lost. I am obviously able to sit here in the green jacket and enjoy it," he said.“Part of golf is being able to handle certain things, handle the pressure and hit the right shots at the right time. If I’d have shot 72 and Jordan did what he did it would have been a different story.

“I was able to put myself in a position where if anyone did make a mistake we were there to capitalise and that’s we did. It’s what (Nick) Faldo did in ‘96 with (Greg) Norman, it’s what happened many a time in golf tournaments around the world. That’s golf, that’s life. I do feel very fortunate that I was in the position to be able to capitalise on a few of the things that happened to Jordan. He had a bad beat on 12. He might not have hit the best golf shot in the world but the punishment around there is massive. But I still had to be in the position to go ahead and do what I did.

“Who won, who lost, I don’t really know what people are going to think and I’m not really that fussed to be fair.”

He has secured his Ryder Cup place and can also look forward to representing Great Britain at the Olympic Games. Some players have turned their noses up at the prospect of going to Rio. Not Willett, “The Olympics is going to be great fun,” he said. “It’s going to be awesome to be in and around the best athletes in the world at their allotted sports; to speak to them and see how they go about their daily routines.

“For us with the majors and WGC’s we get four chances a year at each of them, these guys get one chance every four years. It kind of puts it into perspective how important those few weeks are for them athletes. Just to be in and around that is going to be brilliant.

“And then to be on the plane to Hazeltine with Darren Clarke and the lads is going to be a dream come true. I’m going to be a rookie so it’s going to be great fun to embrace everything that goes around it and to get advice off people who have done it many, many times before, to sit down and talk to Rory [McIlroy], [Henrik] Stenson, Sergio [Garcia] and ask them, as crazy as it sounds, how to deal with the pressure of the Ryder Cup. “Apparently the nerves I felt on Sunday compared to the Ryder Cup is massively different.”

If there is one man you would want on the first tee at Hazeltine, it is Willett.


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