Golf Vic Vol 60 No 3 2019

Aaron Baddeley burst onto the Australian golfing scene as a teenager. At 38, he believes his future in the game remains bright. MARTIN BLAKE spoke to the former prodigy, now family man, who is still chasing his dreams. Aaron Baddeley is driving the SUV in Scottsdale, on the way to pick up the ‘kiddos’ from school. He has five of them incidentally, ranging from two to 10, so his life is not short of entertainment even when he’s not playing golf. The sound of the hubbub permeates through the phone. But he and his American wife Richelle have never hired a nanny, proving that Baddeley’s wife of 13 years is quite something. “She’s unbelievable,” he says. “She’s a rock at home, keeps everyone in line, everything in order. She takes care of everybody. She’s incredible.” The eight-seater comes in handy for the family of Aaron and Richelle – daughters Jewell and Jolee and sons Jeremiah, Josiah and youngest Jaddex. The 12-seater in the driveway gets a run, too, because Richelle Baddeley has three sisters who live in Scottsdale, all with families of their own. “Including our kids, there are 13 nieces and nephews within 20 minutes of each other,” he says. “After church, or after a baseball game or a soccer game, we pile in and come up for lunch.” Family is all-important to the Baddeleys. Aaron recently skipped a US PGA Tour event in Dallas partly because he had a stiff back that needed management, but there was another reason too: his eldest daughter Jewell had a solo to play at a piano recital in Scottsdale and he wanted to witness the occasion. Second daughter Jolee is more into dancing and has her own solo performance soon; the boys are into sports like baseball and, often, a few chips at the short-game area in the Baddeleys’ backyard in Arizona. “The balance is trying to play as much as you can and also be at home as much as you can,” he says. “I try not to miss out on stuff at home and be here.” Despite being a dual citizen and born in America, where his father Ron was working as a Formula One crew chief before the family moved to the eastern suburbs of Melbourne when Aaron was two, he’s never lost his Australian touch. For instance, he’s already on to the fact that Gary Ablett junior has been reprieved by the AFL tribunal the day before. He has always been a Geelong supporter and knows Ablett personally. “I reckon I follow the footy more closely than some Aussies still living in Australia,” he says. “I’m always on the app, watching the highlights.” He’s even retained his accent with the antipodean edge, a mere hint of the American twang having infiltrated his speech in 20 years. “Thankfully, I’mhanging on to that!” he says. Twenty years? Can it be that long since a pimply-faced boy from Wonga Park stunned the golfing world in winning the 1999 Australian Open as an 18-year-old amateur at Royal Sydney, then backed it up with another as a professional in 2000 at Kingston Heath before heading to America to (theoretically, at least) become the world’s best player? He’s still working on that, even though the more cynical have written him off at 38. At the end of the 2017-18 PGA Tour season he lost his full playing rights, finishing 132nd on the points table, seven spots outside of where he needed to be. But with only provisional rights to peg it up in certain tournaments, he has quickly moved back into stride. At the Safeway Open in the Napa Valley in October, the first tournament of the wrap-around 2018-19 season, he Monday- qualified and promptly finished tied fourth. At the Puerto Rico Open in February, he led into the last round and ultimately finished second and at the Corales Puntacana Resort and Club Championship in the Dominican Republic in March, he was tied seventh. He also qualified for the US Open and by the start of June had earned more than $US900,000, picking up enough FedEx Cup points to know that, barring a disaster, he will qualify for the Fedex playoffs and have full playing rights again for the 2019-20 season. This is quite a comeback; hardly the performance of a player on his last legs. What happened? In his own words, the putter saved him. Baddeley is renowned as one of the world’s best with the short stick but by his standards he was miserable in 2017 and 2018 on the greens, 89th and 128th on tour in the most accurate number to disclose it – strokes gained from putting. For a player who is routinely in the top 10 (nine times in the 15 years that the statistics have been calculated, including topping the list in 2015 and being second in 2014), this was a disaster. His famed putting had abandoned him. His explanation is simple. He had an equipment deal with Ping which required him to use its putters and while the money was good and he loved the irons and woods, he needed another putter. Which is why when he almost won Puerto Rico this year, he had no endorsements on his cap or shirt, a rarity in this age. He deployed an old-school Odyssey #7 putter, he’s been using it ever since and he’s back inside the top 25 on the putting stats. The Ping irons and woods are still there, just not the old putter. “I wanted to make sure that I had the flexibility with the putter to use what I wanted,” he says. “That’s why I didn’t sign any deals. I’m still using Ping equipment and a Vokey wedge; I just changed the putter. I mean, I feel like with equipment companies, unless they’re paying you life-changing money, it’s not worth it.” Perhaps the most significant change for Baddeley has been a period without a coach. For a player known for tinkering with his swing – and who has worked through a cluster of coaches from Dale Lynch to David Leadbetter to Andy Plummer and Mike Bennett’s controversial Stack and Tilt method, to Scott Hamilton to Adam Scott’s brother-in-law Brad Malone last year – the Victorian’s conscious decision to go it alone is interesting. It’s a plan that would warm the heart of the late Peter Thomson, who always thought professional players leaned too heavily on coaches when they were better served to solve their own issues. Baddeley says that Hamilton helped him when he was “lost” in his swing and that Malone, his most recent coach, “gave me the keys that I needed to work on with my swing and from there just being myself, I’m working on those keys”. The good thing is that it is working nicely for him and he feels that he Golf Victoria, 2000. Golf Victoria 11