The golf world is buzzing this morning
over the amazing finish at the British Open.
Dramatic, improbable, bizarre... they all work.
Golf is a school of life.
It's much what you have inside.
I was really feeling for him.
You know, I could see him just throwing the tournament away.
For the foreseeable future, the hot topic will be:
did Van de Velde do the right thing?
I think in golf, as in life,
yes, you have winners.
But not everybody is a winner every week.
How long will this haunt you?
Oh, I guess forever. But, I mean, as I say, you know,
who will remember in 100 years?
I was born in the southwest of France,
uh, a town called Mont-de-Marsan.
Five brothers, I'm the youngest one.
We had a vacation house in Hossegor, on the coast.
We went to the beach, we went sailing, every afternoon.
I didn't really like going to the beach.
I was staying home with a nanny.
The back of the garden was hole number four
and the front of the garden
was hole number six.
We really were strangers to the golf world.
At that time, it was rather elitist.
I could see those people walking by and I told my mum and dad,
"Please take me there."
July 1972,
six years of age,
and all I can talk about is going to play golf to my parents.
And obviously they took me to a different type of golf.
That lasted for about a month.
And then my dad got pretty fed up and he said,
"Ah, let's take him to the real golf."
I was the only young, you know, kid in that golf club.
I was six years old.
At the time, there was no clubs for kids.
The head pro,
he took one of his old clubs and cut it
so I could play.
This is how I started. He gave me my first lesson.
The following day, I came back again early.
He cut a different club this time,
uh, he cut a putter.
So, here I was with a 9-iron and a putter,
and I was running up to the putting green,
putting for hours, coming back down,
sitting down next to him.
Really, this is how the...
passion for the game came up.
I won the first under-21 championship,
the youth championship, in 1985.
You know, I was about to turn 20.
I had a few scholarships in America,
or I had the opportunity to start studying in France.
And the last choice that I thought I had was to turn professional.
I decided for the third one.
My dad was not particularly pleased.
His father was an industrialist,
he had a very nice business, which is still in the family.
He expected Jean to continue his studies.
My father could never understand
why Jean would spend the whole day pushing a ball along the ground.
And he told him,
"You will not have a job playing golf!"
At the time, people said it wasn't a sport.
Journalists were contemptuous of it.
But at the same time, golf was growing in France.
We were waiting for our champion.
Just 26 years old,
a pro player since 1987,
Jean van de Velde is making a start on his fifth season
on the European circuit.
Jean had always been known on the French golf scene.
We didn't know when he would win a tournament,
but he had already had a lot of good results.
He was indisputably the number-one French player.
But he still needed more international visibility.
I was making money. The only difficulty that I had
was I didn't manage to convert whenever I was at the front.
Whether, you know, I made some mistake,
whether I wasn't mentally solid enough, whether somebody just outplayed me...
In 1993, I actually took a holiday off
and I went to a beach resort, believe it or not,
uh, with my family, and I stayed there for two weeks.
I came back super refreshed and, you know, feeling good about...
the way that I was playing and feeling good about myself.
I went to Rome, and I happened to win that tournament.
When he won the Rome Masters,
he became the champion we had been waiting for.
Jean van de Velde, modest despite success.
After his victory in the Rome Masters,
the number-one golfer in France wants to keep a cool head.
With 35 tournaments to compete in per year,
the life of a pro golfer is hard to endure.
After seeing Italy, he repacks his bag.
From this point forward, he will be on the route to victory.
The Open Championship, or the British Open,
as most of us would call it,
is the oldest professional championship in the world.
The British Open is the biggest golf event in the world.
Each time the British, or The Open, goes to Carnoustie,
the players fear that course.
Carnoustie's in Scotland, the home of golf,
one of the hardest golf courses in the world,
set up for The Open Championship.
There are no lakes, aren't many trees.
You can't imagine the difficulty.
It's formidable.
It's known as "Car-nasty"
because it's just hard.
When the wind blows...
impossible would be a charitable way to describe it.
When I saw Carnoustie for the first time that week,
this was the hardest test of golf I had ever seen in my life.
When I arrived there,
I was like, "All right. Well, yeah. It's brutal here, I know it.
I'm ready for it."
You have no expectation.
He was ranked outside of the 100,
maybe about 150 in the world.
I'd have to think back really hard
to think when the last Frenchman was to win a major championship.
There were about 15 of us
who were there supporting from France.
"Jean's Fan Club."
In the evening, we had rented villas.
There were people who had brought spices in their luggage to cook for Jean.
There was not one second that we weren't proud
to be at our friend's side, supporting him, of course.
When Jean arrived at Carnoustie, on the first day, he shot a 75.
Seventy-five wasn't a very good start to the tournament.
There were no expectations...
No great expectations.
We said to ourselves, "Hey! He did really well! That's good!"
Day two at Carnoustie
and The Open is not being any more forgiving
to the world's best golfers.
But on the second day, he shot a 68.
And there, at Carnoustie, that's exceptional.
The surprise leader is Frenchman Jean van de Velde,
who hit the lowest round of the championship.
He played well, with incredible iron shots and putting.
First-rate putting.
Sixty-eight, the best score of the day. Considering these conditions,
are you surprised at all
that that was a number that was out there, Jean?
Well, I'm surprised, you know,
if someone would've told me this morning, "You're gonna shoot 68,"
I would have had a big smile on my face and probably I wouldn't have gone out.
At the first press conference, it was pretty much
an astonished group,
with only a few people in the room.
They were asking questions like, "Who are you?
Who are you, in general?"
You know, I'm embarrassed to say that...
I'd never heard of Jean van de Velde before,
you know, and I covered golf.
Now, news of another exceptional day
for the Frenchman Jean van de Velde at The Open Championship.
The world #152 and previously a rank outsider
is now clear favorite to become the first Frenchman
to win The Open in 92 years.
No disrespect.
You're ranked 152nd in the world, though...
- That's amazing, isn't it? - It is. Don't you think so?
It's about time to move up, that's what I think!
There was something refreshing
about his kind of manner and his way.
You know, of this kind of debonair...
devil-may-care Frenchman.
And that's exactly how Van de Velde played.
Rather than hitting irons off the tee,
he made the aggressive play.
He hit driver.
He was playing the most aggressive golf of anybody, all week long.
He was hitting drivers on every hole.
The fairway is so firm and the wind is blowing so hard,
if I miss the fairway, I might as well
miss it very close from the green.
If you're scared of something, nothing's gonna happen, so...
So far, I'm going for it! What the hell, what am I gonna lose?
Right now, the Frenchman is in control of the Championship,
and the elements...
It's surprising to be so far ahead and to be on top, but...
you know, you have to believe yourself, that you can do it.
And if you do believe, well, one day, you have to do it.
A few journalists made their way over
to Scotland from France and from Paris.
On the first day, you have a press conference with four journalists,
and two are French.
While the last day, you have more than 200 journalists,
asking a thousand questions.
In France, we like champions. People who win.
The French soccer team in '98...
that we liked.
People were ready to put him on a pedestal.
- News from The Open in Britain for golf. - Yes.
It's important since Van de Velde had the perfect start.
And it's been quite a long time since a Frenchman won The Open.
1907?
- 1907. - No pictures from it?
On the night of the final round, Saturday night,
I didn't change anything, really.
I went for dinner with the same people that I did previously.
The only difference is, when you go back to bed,
It's very hard to find your sleep.
You know, you do what we call the toast action. You know,
you grill one side and then you grill the other,
and then you grill on one, and... It's very hard to find your sleep.
I slept perfectly well.
But since then, I don't sleep as well.
Are you confident?
Well, you know, I'm just happy. I'm happy to be here.
- Good luck. - Thank you.
And now, as the suspense continues, we return to golf.
Jean van de Velde is still in the lead in the British Open.
I started watching during the fourth round,
at the Hossegor golf course.
We were all there, watching golf and rooting for him.
He will become the first Frenchman to take the title since 1907.
It was broadcast to millions of French people that an hour before
were not even aware that there was a British Open.
Do you think he'll be on the front pages in Paris
and not the Tour de France?
He's got a three-shot lead with one hole to go.
Mike Tirico said,
"He has, like, 110 steps...
until his destiny."
This will rank up there,
as one of the biggest shocks ever.
Curtis, he has a three-shot lead.
I've gotta play an iron.
He could make a double bogey, a 6 on a par-4, and still win.
He could chip it short of the burn.
He could chip it on the green in two putt,
for five, a bogey. That's a safe play.
Rossie, just as you said that, the driver head cover came off.
Eighteen is a brutal hole.
So I thought, "Y'know what? I'm gonna hit driver
and I'm gonna put it forward as far as I can."
This is the one club that could get him in trouble.
It was a bold play, let's just put it that way.
There are some groans, Rossie.
Goodness.
I'll tell you that, you think the golfing gods aren't with him?
It carried the burn on the right.
- That's the other side. - It went right out on that island.
Oh, my goodness!
He missed the burn to the right, in the 17th fairway.
He got lucky.
From the 17th fairway, he had a shot to the green.
And I think he took a two iron, which is a long iron,
which was enough to give him the distance he needed,
enough to give him the height of the flight,
which he needed,
and, crucially, enough to carry...
the little river in front of the green called the Barry Burn.
Curtis, I don't know if he oughta take a shot at this one either.
He decides he's going for it, you know,
c'est la vie. Boom!
Woosh!
Taking a couple of bounces around the burn...
I hear a clunk of a noise, a big noise,
and the crowd reacts, going, "Wow!"
And then something happened and they go "Ah!"
Even more noise, more roar.
And I'm like, "What happened?"
It hit the bleachers, then hits the top of the wall,
the stone wall of the burn,
and bounces back toward him.
- Is this real, Mike? - No.
Are we actually seeing this
or is this just... Pfff!
And as I walk towards the green,
somebody is pointing and showing me a spot.
When I saw Jean's ball in the rough,
short of the green at the 18th,
um, I realized that he had a difficult lie.
It's not a terrible lie.
He's got 63 yards to the hole.
He wins with a six. His third shot's coming up.
I got a pretty big cushion here.
So, I'm still here thinking, "Okay, well you're three here,"
you know, "You're gonna play four. With four, you're gonna play five.
Find a way to make a six."
One thing he had to do was to clear the Barry Burn.
Lookie here...
Uh. It went in the burn!
Hold the presses. Literally, hold the presses.
Mm, that's not a good thing here.
We didn't say a whole lot
because there was nothing to say.
It is possible to hit a shot out of the water,
when we first saw it.
He's in the water, in three,
with an enormous sheer-face wall right in front of him.
He wasn't just hitting the ball out of the water.
Can't get it out, he has to drop four or five on the green
from 50 yards, say, to win The Open.
Now the ball just sank, though.
I'll tell you, while he was going down there now,
the ball just sank a little.
The shot of Jean in the water,
with his pant legs rolled up
and his hands on his hips,
looking down at the ball... is...
the very picture of sporting disaster.
There's this famous shot where I got my hands on my hips
and I'm smiling.
I'm smiling because Craig Parry, my playing partner, says to me,
"Jean, if you wait some hours,
the tide will go down, you can probably play it."
So...
So it took, you know, all the drama out of the situation,
for a second, anyway.
And he's decided to pick it up and go play,
and try to get it up and down in two.
He decides that he can't play it from in there,
so he takes his lift out of there.
That's four.
And he attempts his fifth shot.
When he decided to take a drop,
he muttered to me,
"Putain, je l'ai perdu,"
which means, if you'll excuse my English:
"Shit, I've lost it."
Just a reminder,
if he hits this one on the green in two putts,
he's in a playoff.
He hit the fifth shot in the bunker. So now...
Now there's gonna be a playoff,
if he doesn't hole his bunker shot.
Well, it could happen.
His ball was resting
against Craig Parry's ball,
who had hit his second shot a long time ago, actually.
Craig Parry is ahead of me.
He says to me, "Let me get out of your way,
so you can, you know...
breathe a little more, or whatever, or think about it."
Parry is playing his third shot.
This isn't happening!
This is not happening!
This guy hit the shot that I need to hit to win The Open Championship.
You know, what else is gonna happen today?
We were aching, in anguish, wanted to be somewhere else,
an hour in the future.
We were joyless.
This is for six, for double bogey,
and this is to win The Open Championship.
His sixth shot is on the green.
After this cataclysmic disaster
where nothing has gone right,
literally not a single stroke that he has recorded on this hole has gone right.
He needs to make, like, a ten-footer
just to make it into the playoff.
That's a tough putt.
On the TV, we couldn't see too clearly.
We couldn't really see how hard the putt was.
When I picked up the ball, I threw it in the crowd, to...
whoever.
"Keep it as a present."
There was frustration that he hadn't won.
Because he could have made one shot less,
he could have made two shots less and won.
But he hadn't lost at that point. He went to the playoff.
I was going in the playoff, but... I had it in my hand...
and I couldn't win it within, you know, within the...
the first 72 holes.
I had 45 minutes or 40 minutes,
whatever it was.
Not enough time to process what happened,
and way too much time to put it on the side and move on,
straight on,
and continue in the same frame of mind and spirit
and fight within the extra holes.
The driver continues to give him trouble.
When he teed off
for the playoff, he hit the ball to the left into the trees...
unplayable.
And I said to myself, "He's cooked."
He's done, as far as I'm concerned.
That's tough but, you know, how can you come back?
Mentally, how can you come back?
It's sad. It's very sad.
If I can... Can I go and play it again, actually?
The pressure, I was like,
"What the hell just happened here?"
I'm gonna have to live with it, not you guys, so...
I was angry, I was mad.
Mad, sad, everything, everything combined.
You know?
It was so close, and then it was so far.
Jean van de Velde blew a three-stroke lead...
The Frenchman Jean van de Velde threw away a three-shot lead...
He lost in the playoffs, when he had a guaranteed victory going in.
Everybody was thinking the same thing throughout America,
throughout Europe, South America,
Australia, Japan. They're all watching this.
He coulda hit wedge all the way home.
You know, he could have just bunted it up there all the way down.
I'm not gonna feel or be a lesser man
by saying that I was crying from disappointment, without a doubt.
It's the dream of every golfer in the world to win The Open one day.
So, it was a dream since childhood, an absolute dream.
Jean missed out...
on something incredible.
I can imagine the pain he must have felt,
because his name was practically engraved on the Claret Jug.
There were people who said
he's a loser, what he did was ridiculous.
A "FRENCHY" IN A WAR OF GOLF
What was said about him
was very unfair.
It went as far as really mocking him.
Things very often happen for a reason, you know?
Either you can find a rational explanation,
or if you don't find any, you just have to cope with it.
And now, which part of yourself is gonna come out?
Who are you, really? What are you made of?
THE RESULTS DON'T TELL EVERYTHING
When school started again in September,
at the golf club here, they have a school for kids,
basically, at the golf club.
And usually there's about 15 kids.
Ten, 15, 20 kids.
A hundred kids showed up.
- Everyone happy? - Yes!
The teacher was like, "W-what's going on?"
Apparently,
all the dads and mums were saying, "Well, they've all been so excited
with what happened to Jean throughout the summer
that they all think that golf is cool and they want to play golf."
Van de Velde is at the peak of his game,
as golf is becoming more and more accepted.
There are now 280,000 golf students in France,
a phenomenon that Van de Velde isn't indifferent to.
If I can be part of sparking more interest in golf,
whether in France or elsewhere, I'm delighted. For me, it's my passion.
I play golf for the fun,
and for all the thrill that it brought me.
But as well to try to pass something
and make sure that, you know, some youngsters are gonna be interested
by the game and...
But, you know...
that fills me up. When I see that, that makes me super happy.
Magnificent.
I think he is somebody to be admired.
He's shown, through the years,
the type of person that he is
by the things that he devotes himself to,
like UNICEF.
Hello!
Good afternoon, mister!
I do believe that you really need to
try to make the difference that you can make.
Even if it's very small, it doesn't matter.
Every small difference is positive.
Uh, and this is exactly what I'm trying to do.
Bye!
We all encounter adversity and I think, you know,
he's a stunning example
of how to behave the right way when things go wrong.
- Am I dreaming? - Ooh!
Okay.
You told me you watched it again last night?
Didn't want to make a mistake, or what?
No, in fact, I remember the beginning, middle, end and all that.
But what's important is to see your face again.
Leave my ball alone.
You always have to leave golf where it should be.
The time it took to find a new Claret Jug
without your name engraved on it.
It's a game,
it's a sport, and there's nothing more and nothing less.
We ruined this one, engraved "Van de Velde" on it.
Give it to him, anyway.
A society cannot make do with only talking about victory.
We always say that we learn more from defeat than from victory.
So, if we learn from defeat,
we should pay a bit more attention to those who lose.
I will be remembered by the generation who've seen me.
The generation who now play golf
who are 20 years old and are on tour,
they have no idea who I am.
And that's the way it should be.
Can you tell me who won The Open Championship in 1907?
Do you remember?
Here you go.