For The Love Of The Game

Miguel Angel Jimenez is currently competingin his 36th consecutive year as a professional.Does he still love golf? You bet!

- Neil Tappin

With a cigar in his left hand throughout, Miguel Angel Jimenez runs through his inimitable warm-up routine. There is a 50-strong crowd watching as the veteran Spaniard loosens up ahead of a special clinic to mark the opening of his new short-game facility at Las Colinas Golf Club near Murcia in Spain. Lunging this way and that, hoisting his feet up onto his bag and bending double, there is no doubt he is playing to the crowd. An entertainer through and through, Jimenez is just about the only sportsman who can transform the mundanity of this process into a must-watch spectacle. A combination of ohhs, ahhs and claps follow his every move.

There is only one Miguel Angel Jimenez. Born in Malaga in 1964, he came from modest means and his first experience of golf was when he worked at the 1979 Spanish Open. Despite never having picked up a club, he turned professional four years later. Having established himself as a solid player in the ‘80s and ‘90s, Jimenez became a prolific winner in his 40s. As players from his own generation were fading from the limelight, Jimenez stepped onto centre stage and loved it. He won 14 events after turning 40, including the European Tour’s flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship, and played in four Ryder Cups.

Throughout his career, he has stood apart from the rest, approaching life on tour in his own way. As golf courses got longer and the path to success became seemingly ever more reliant on power, Jimenez continued to show there was more than one way to skin a cat. During the most successful phase of his career, he was a testament to the idea that golf is game that neatly balances the demands of the physical and mental, and that a good brain is just as important as a good swing.