The most interesting result of the first week in the new PGA Tour season came from a non-competing golfer: Vijay Singh’s tie for 40th at the Sony Open in Honolulu — at age 62. He didn’t have enough playing last week in the top 10 and likely won’t have enough playing in any PGA Tour event, not right now. That won’t stop him from trying. The opposite.
Singh is the personification of will. He is a testament to the benefits of relentless dedication to the craft. More than any other golfer this side Ben Hogan and perhaps including Ben Hogan, Singh turned the practice sessions into public displays of meditation and mindfulness. Not that Singh would ever use such words. If Singh had to choose between “manifesting” and “being a ball”, he’ll go with btb.
But what Singh has really done, all these years, is hit so many balls that he has been able to play with something approaching sanity.lessness. That is, shortening your mobile thoughts from a manageable number (one) to the grail of all grails (nothing). A swing without thoughts, without language, without anything but swing whoosh. Dustin Johnson, at the peak of his powers in 2018, was once asked what he thinks during his swing, what his mind is doing. He said, “That’s a good question because I have no idea. I hope you’re not doing anything. When I’m actually hitting it, I’m not thinking about anything.” For Singh, practice sessions are a time to make the swing more instinctive, more like walking, breathing, being.
Over the years, if you’ve been to tour events and senior events, you might have seen Singh’s ex-wife, his ex-girlfriend, his son and various players watching parts of his marathon sessions as they went from one hour to two to three. (His cadets, and there were many of them, were always asked to testify to everything.) Singh has a patch of year-round grass to which he claims resident rights at the back of TPC Sawgrass distance, not far from his home in South Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. Once he almost crashed when another player (his friend Rocco Mediate) tripped him. Singh’s self-absorption can be astonishing. It’s also his superpower. It should also be noted, from time to time and over the years, that Singh has befriended players who had almost no chance of keeping their Tour cards but were almost his match for commitment. He would practice alongside such players, play practice rounds with them.
No non-American player has won more on the PGA Tour than Singh, who has 34 Tour victories. Rory McIlroy is 29. Gary Player is 24. He grew up in a working class family in Fiji. He fought every way as a young professional. He was banned from the Asian tour in 1985 on a cheating charge. Singh has always denied the allegations, but it appears to have informed the rest of his professional life. He avoids talking to reporters when he can, is often curt or curmudgeonly, and his marathon sessions, knowing his history, have come across as some kind of golf offering. They look consecrated, serious, important. It’s not like he’s just filling the time. At 23, Singh was working as a club pro and bouncer. At age 43, he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. There were no other Hall of Famers playing last week in Hawaii.
He earned $31,522 there, bringing his tournament total to $71,312,738, which places him eighth in All-time PGA Tour career money list. Given that Singh hasn’t played the tournament full-time in over a decade, and that he was 30 when he played his rookie season, that’s pretty surprising. Yes, he caught all the years when Tiger money flowed through the game, but not a penny of LIV-inspired funny money. Maybe there will be some in his future. It is not clear how many tournaments he will play this year. An educated guess is a bunch. What will make him feel more alive than trying to beat a collection of the world’s best players? Singh is a golfer, period.
He could easily pass the player who is now ahead of him on the career money list, Jim Furyk, before the year is out, as Singh uses a one-time exemption as a top-50 money winner to play regularly this year. This exemption does not get Singh into small events and invitations, but it does get him into most everything else. In theory, he could play his way into the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Players Championship and the Arnold Palmer Invitational. These events are played on courses where he can top-10. He often played well at Bay Hill and won there once.
Singh is already in this year’s Masters, due to his victory there in 2000. Yes, there were tournaments in 2000 that were won by players other than Tiger Woods. There were several players who posed a serious threat to Woods’ peak, most notably Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson. There was no player better equipped to handle the heat generated by Woods than Singh.
In a 10-year period from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2009, the player ranked no. 1 went back and forth between Woods and Singh. Woods, Singh; Woods, Singh; Woods, Singh; Woods, Singh; Forests. Woods’ reign was much longer, but these are the only two names atop the official World Golf Ranking list for that decade. When Singh won at Bay Hill in 2007, Woods made a bogey on Sunday’s front nine. “I wasn’t too worried,” Singh said in victory. Woods faded that Sunday.
To anyone who thinks a 62-year-old Hall of Famer shouldn’t take a spot on the PGA Tour that could go to a much younger, much needier player, I say this: He’ll be 63 before the Tour hits Florida. He has absolutely earned the right to play the Tour. He is not taking a seat from anyone. He claims a country that is his, that he has earned. The tournament has a rule that allows him to play, and he’s taking advantage of it.
In 2005, Tom Kite, at age 55, took advantage of the same rule with the goal of playing a full season. He played in 12 events and made only three cuts. Amazingly, in one of those events, the Kemper Open played the old man Congress out of Washington DC, Kite tied for the lead through three rounds, then had a dismal Sunday. Kite was trying to do what Singh is trying to do, what countless people around the world are trying to do: slow down time. Singh will have the firepower to achieve more than Kite did more than 20 years ago. Is it an indictment of the senior tour that Singh is doing what he is doing? Of course it is. Singh knows that the best chance he has to improve the quality of his game is to play against the best players in the world.
When Padraig Harrington won the US Senior Open in 2022, he won by one stroke over Steve Stricker. Harrington’s four-day total was 274, 10 under par. When it was over, I asked Harrington who he would have scored if the field had been made up of the world’s best players rather than the world’s best senior players. “It would have been lower, but I would have shot lower,” he said. It was such an obvious answer.
It is difficult for journalists to engage Singh. When I first met him, I was a caddy, and over the last 35 years he sometimes half-tolerates me because he thinks of me as more of a caddy than a reporter, but I’m not kidding myself here. In the fall of 2024, I found myself at a high street pro-am tour party at Pebble Beach with Singh in attendance. I wrote it a while ago, but now seems like a good place to get it out for some fresh air.
“Vijay, can I ask you a swing question?” I asked.
“Not now,” he said in his usually dismissive way.
Not now is his reflexive response to every question.
“Vijay, if not now, when?”
He half nodded his approval.
I mentioned an evening session on the range I had seen at Carnoustie two months earlier, at the Senior British Open. He stayed there for two hours if not more. I asked him what he had been working on. He hit driver after driver. He answered immediately.
“My transition,” he said.
I, of course, cannot know whether he was really referring to that specific session or, more likely, any session. (I’m sure he was trying to save me too.) However, some respond: transition. A one-word swing thought of the steering beam. If you don’t complete the backflip, you can’t do a backflip.
I think the trick in Vijay’s golf life is to get away from the distance where you’re hitting it right in the face with the benefit of a single swing thought, and then actually play golf, golf on a golf course, and not think about anything at all. Playing golf with the delirious joy of an empty mind, but also with full intent, total commitment. Maybe it can’t be done, but a boy can go to his maker by trying.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@golf.com.
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