First published in Compleat Golfer January 2024 edition
He was there. And, slowly, steadily, he was there less and less. Eventually, he wasn’t there anymore.
For a couple of years, Haydn Porteous looked like one more of the next big thing kind of players who was emerging from South Africa in 2016 and 2017. Together with Brandon Stone and Christiaan Bezuidenhout, amongst others, Porteous seemed ready to make the world his oyster. In 2015, he won on the Challenge Tour in Kenya, beating Stone in a play-off. In 2016, he won the Joburg Open, took the lucrative Investec Cup in South Africa, and had a maiden win in Europe in the D+D Real Czech Masters in 2017. He reached 166th on the Official World Golf Ranking list.
While there was not the kind of progress he would have liked from that point on, things weren’t all bad. He retained his DP World Tour card in 2018 and 2019, but the signs were there that all wasn’t well, as he had just two top 10s in that period while finishing 108th and 112th on the Race to Dubai in those two years.
It was after that that things began to go south, certainly in terms of performance. It became hard to watch as the kid who won the Joburg Open so spectacularly in 2016 slid down leaderboards, mostly disappearing before weekends, and his eligibility in Europe ebbed slowly away.
“Yeah, it’s been a very, very strange time,” he says. “I think what kicked it off was COVID and then getting onto a repatriation flight to the Netherlands and then not being able to see family and friends for the best part of two years. That was tough. I also went through some health issues, and then on top of that, the golf was not where I would have liked it to be. Things kind of compounded. And they say, if you’re not happy off the course, then it’s going to be difficult to be happy on the course.
“So I lost my playing rights in Europe and I think the most important thing is to accept that. It was quite a tough, tough pill to swallow, having been out there for seven years. I’ve also lost my Challenge Tour card. I’ve accepted that. It was a dark time for me to be honest because I just wasn’t sure if I wanted to play the game anymore.”
It’s something the average weekend hacker can both identify with and just simply not understand. Golf is both endlessly infuriating and endlessly beguiling – at all levels.
“Yeah, it’s a double-edged sword,” agrees Porteous. “I started playing the game out of love, and I want to keep it there. And I want to keep it in a place where I can still enjoy it and I can still love it because at the end of the day, if you enjoy what you do, you never work a day in your life. That’s where I’m trying to find myself now.
“I found I was doing a lot of guilt practice just because it was the thing to do as a professional golfer and I felt like I was banging my head against the wall. For 10 years I’ve been playing 30-plus tournaments a year and I think I need just a little bit of time for myself to be honest.
“I would say I’ve practiced enough since I first picked up a club. And sometimes it’s not necessarily all about practice. I find that when things are not going according to plan on the course, it’s tough to put your shoulder to the wheel and carry on trying to hit good shots. For a long time I was doing things for my golf and not necessarily doing them for myself. I found myself going to the gym for my golf and not for my health. I became obsessed with it. And I just lost the love for the game. I felt like I needed to do everything for my golf rather than just for myself. I never put pressure on myself growing up to become better. I just sort of let it happen.
“So right now happiness and contentment are what I’m looking for and I’m starting to see that within my golf as well. And that’s where I’m at right now where I just feel like I’ll practice because I enjoy the game, I love the game and I want to carry on loving the game. But where I was, it’s difficult to love the game because I saw it as work rather than something that I love. It was a strange period to be honest, really strange.”
Getting back is tougher than many of us can imagine. “I’ve tried lots of options and I find that everyone has their own way, and I think it’s more about finding what works for you,” he says. “I’ve tried different methods. I’ve tried playing an instrument to just quiet my mind, I’ve tried reading, I’ve tried meditating. And I think it’s more the conscious effort of just saying to yourself it’s okay to think these things, it’s normal to think these things. I do judge myself quite a lot and quite harshly and I think that sort of inner chatter needs to just be calmed down.
“I’ve started being my own friend again rather than my worst critic. I think everybody is a little bit too hard on themselves, but that’s who we are. We want to be better and be better people to other people. But sometimes we’re actually not that bad. So I’m trying to just get myself into a place of contentment, really.”
Contentment is not enough on its own in professional golf, however, and he must stay technically sound. “I’m kind of trusting the people who are closest to me to give me that judgement,” he says. “My parents, they’ve watched me play my whole life, and they can often help me with that. I’ve got some close friends who I used to play with, they’ve seen me play. And I’ve always been close with a lot of coaches that have taught me over the years. We still stay in touch and, at the end of the day, my swing doesn’t really stray too much.”
Being back home in South Africa and on the Sunshine Tour, where it all started, is part of being in that contented place. “I’ve really enjoyed the last few weeks that I’ve been out here and seeing some good friends that I grew up playing with,” says Porteous. “It’s always a friendly tour to play on and I’ve also really enjoyed being back at home.
“I think the Sunshine Tour has become so attractive because it’s become a big stepping stone towards getting to where every player wants to get to. And I think that’s attracting a lot of players from overseas. We play some incredible golf courses, and we see some incredible places.
“And I think the sponsors that are involved in the Sunshine Tour have stayed true to the tour, and they really support the development of South African golf and we’re starting to see the fruits of that. Especially over the last three or four years you’re really starting to see a lot of South African boys playing on the DP World Tour and on the Challenge Tour and on the PGA Tour. People who can win on the Sunshine Tour can win anywhere. There’s a lot of guys who can sort of prove that… Brandon Stone, Thriston Lawrence, Eric van Rooyen, I mean the list goes on.
“And on top of that we’re actually a good bunch of dudes as well. It’s really been nice to come out and be a part of the Sunshine Tour again. Obviously, the goal is to get back into Europe and potentially back into the US. But the Sunshine Tour has made some incredible strides. I haven’t been out here much and I’m actually a bit just sorry about it because it’s a great tour, it’s got a great structure, we go around the country playing some amazing places, we get lots of different conditions and it’s a great tour to sort of hone in my skills and learn the game and enjoy it again.”
In doing that, he can lean on a sort of institutional memory that his victories have given him. “That really does motivate me,” he says. “And I must say, over the last few months or so, these kinds of things are starting to really come up in my mind, because just like anybody, you know, I wonder if I am good enough. Am I still good enough? Have I lost it? These are questions that I constantly ask myself. And, you know, over the last couple of months I have started to reminisce on these events. And I consider myself quite lucky in the fact that I know that I’ve achieved these things and I know that I still can achieve them. And I know that because I’ve done it, and I think that’s a big sort of peg in the sand that I can always kind of anchor myself to. I’m just going to carry on using that.”
