The Nick Dougherty story pt 1: How I nearly blew my golfing dreams

Jul 17 2007 by Mike Torpey, Liverpool Echo

NICK DOUGHERTY is the most successful professional golfer to come out of Liverpool in more than a century and goes into this week’s Open Championship brimming with confidence. So he should – not many British players have led the US Open and partnered Tiger Woods with a chance of pinching one of the sport’s greatest prizes from under the nose of the world’s greatest golfer. In Part One of this fascinating interview, Dougherty talks about his childhood, his early years in the game and how his golfing dreams all but imploded.

To hear the first in a three-part interview with Nick Dougherty, click here

FRIDAY night and the lads were in high spirits. The champagne was flowing in just one of several swish London bars visited that evening.

The tab came to a staggering £5,000 and Nick Dougherty paid it with barely a second glance.

But then this sort of excursion had become the norm, and having won £370,000 in his first season on tour, the 19-year-old from Liverpool could comfortably afford it.

Nights on the town were becoming increasingly more regular, a certainty if you had missed yet another cut in that week’s tournament.

Dougherty’s lifestyle had turned full circle, from a strict, discipline-led boyhood to the classic kid let loose in a sweetshop situation, and it almost cost him his career.

Nick was born in Fazakerley Hospital – the family lived in Bootle’s Bailey Drive – and from the age of four was accompanying his dad, Roger, to the golf course.

“I remember following dad round Bootle Municipal, a great, strong golf course. He was a good player, two or three handicap and I remember us queuing up to play on a Saturday morning and buying balls from the lads in the car park.”

The youngster was quick to show potential and because he really needed to join a club, and couldn’t get in anywhere locally at the time, Roger bought a house at the entrance to Shaw Hill Golf Club near Chorley, where he played regularly anyway with his contacts in the motor trade.

And it didn’t take long before the trophies started to stack up in the family display cabinets.

“I remember winning the Scottish under-14 Championship at North Berwick. I was six at the time,” Dougherty reveals, “and we were standing there afterwards next to all these older kids of 12 and 13.

“But the recorders didn’t look very far down the list of age group winners for the overall prize because they didn’t expect a little boy to win.

“So they missed my score completely and actually presented the trophy to a lad of 13. The next day when the organisers realised, they had to make another presentation to me.”

Even at that stage, Nick didn’t twig that he could be a star in the making.

“It wasn’t until I was a bit older that I realised I was very good. I started playing for the full Lancashire men’s side at something like 13.

“My handicap was scratch at 14 and I was off plus 1 on my 15th birthday.

“I was a full men’s England international before 16 and when you go to events like the world junior, like I did in Japan, you realise it’s a bit special.

“I knew I was good because everyone else was so much older yet I was beating them and winning lots of tournaments.”

This run of success led to the point where Dougherty became known, for a spell at least, as Little Nick in reference to his mentor Nick Faldo.

“Winning the Faldo Junior Series was a very big deal,” says Dougherty. “So far as British golf goes, Nick Faldo is a superhero.

“I couldn’t believe that first year I won it to be playing with him the next day as part of the prize.

“After that he gave me some tuition as well and I went on to win three of my next four events, and they were big ones too. I won the series at 15, 16 and 17.

“Things moved very quickly from there. It means a lot when Nick Faldo is saying nice things about you.

“The series was also broadcast on Sky and I really got a taste for it all and realised that this was what I really wanted to do.”

A lot of good things happened for Nick in those amateur years up until 19 when he turned pro.

He captained his country, won the British Strokeplay Championship, and lots of tournaments, including on five continents.

It was all capped off perfectly at the Walker Cup in 2001.

“That was probably the best Walker Cup side Britain has ever had,” says Nick. “There are only about three guys who aren’t now fully exempt Tour players in the US or Europe.

“About four of us have won on tour, it was a great team. For us to go there and tonk the Americans 15-9, which had never been done, was fantastic.

“I won my singles match on the 18th hole on my last day as an amateur and I turned pro and signed with IMG the next day.

“I went to Tour School that November, came third, got my card and because of the strict way my dad had brought me up it was all very simple. I had such belief that I would get my card.

“In my third event I had my first top ten finish and in my seventh I came second behind Adam Scott in Qatar.

“I finished 36th in the order or merit and was rookie of the year, so that first year was a fantastic one for me.”

That’s when the good life started to take its toll, the next two years proving far more difficult as Dougherty chased a breakthrough tournament victory.

“All of a sudden I had this money floating about. I had some great deals, especially for someone who has just come on tour,” he says.

“My profile was so high from amateur golf. I was a young lad and English as well, so some of the deals were fantastic.

“In addition to that I made 370 grand in my first year on tour in prize-money and I thought: ‘let’s get out there and spend some of that.’

“Before you knew it I was enjoying the benefits of earning that sort of money rather than going out and competing in tournaments.

“I was also partying a lot, completely went off track and suffered for it.

“Over a two-year period from 19-21, I’d be spending four or five grand on champagne on a night out.

“I’d be taking a bunch of my mates out, there might be ten of us, and we’d be going through a lot of vodka, champagne, lording it up, we’d only go to the best places in London.

“And if I missed the cut I’d be out that Friday night. I’d see which of the other lads had also missed it, and there were a lot of us, about 15, doing it.

“It’s amazing now when I look at it because young lads don’t do that now.

“The third year on tour I was staring down the barrel of losing my card at one stage. I had a good finish in Germany, sixth there, and finished 97th in the end.

“I finished that season and went out to the States to work with David Leadbetter. I was fed up of being an also-ran, because that’s what I had become.

“I went out on tour as the next big thing, the next Nick Faldo, the guy that could bring British golf back to the forefront and it had all gone wrong.”

Even his close friend, Danish golfer Thomas Bjorn, had difficulty convincing Nick that he was wasting a huge talent.

“I was getting by, just going through the motions,” says the 25-year-old.

“I would finish 15th and people would say ‘good week, well done,’ but that was never what it was all about – I had not been brought up that way, and it hit me really hard.

“I completely turned things upside down to be honest.

“I actually had a period where I didn’t have a drink for five months, so obviously I wasn’t going out either, started training and practising particularly hard and that very next year I went fourth, first in my first two events.

“If I miss a cut now, I’m off home.”

To hear the first in a three-part interview with Nick Dougherty, click here

TOMORROW: Going head to head with the greatest player ever to tee up a golf ball - Tiger Woods.

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