Justin Walters had to go back to Qualifying School for the European Tour last year.
That’s never ideal for a good player – heck, it’s not ideal for any player – but with his typical doggedness, he regained his playing privileges. His opening 75 was a poor start, but he closed out the six-round marathon ever stronger with rounds of 71-66-69-67-67 to make the grade on the number at 13-under-par in a share of 26th place.
He followed that up with a share of 14th in the season-opening AfrAsia Bank Mauritius Open, missed out in the Joburg Open, but then finished in the money at the BMW SA Open, the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters and the Tshwane Open.
“Any time you can get points on the board helps, but being home feels like there’s a slight advantage for me because I spend a lot more time down here playing in conditions I’m used to,” says Walters of his start to the new season. “I would have like to have taken a little more out of the events I had down here, but overall it’s been pretty solid.”
Those were the European Tour events he played in, and he also had some Sunshine Tour business to take care of. He finished 26th on the 2017-18 Sunshine Tour Order of Merit. A missed cut at the Eye of Africa PGA Championship was not a great contributor to his cause, but a pair of ninth-place finishes in the Dimension Data Pro-Am and the Tour Championship certainly were.
Those finishes were vindication for the specific work he has been doing on his game.
“I’ve been working on up-and-downs, on proximity to the hole with the wedges and my putting from inside 10 feet,” he says. “In my last three events, I’ve only shot one round over par so in general, things are moving in the right direction. I just need to keep at it and put it all together and I’ll be right there.”
The theory is simple. “Around the green is where the money is made, I think. We’re all able to hit it pretty well and out in front of us, so when you get around the greens and in range for the wedges, if you watch the top guys in the world, they’re very, very effective around there. I need to improve on that, I’m aware of that, and I will,” he adds.
Hitting it well is a relative term these days of routine drives of well over 300 metres and more, of course. And, at 37, of course Walters has some thoughts about that. He is particularly effusive about the challenge offered by courses like Pretoria Country Club, where the Tshwane Open was played.
“I just think it’s the variety that the golf course offers,” he says. “Every day is a little different. You have to hit different shots on different holes and you’re not smashing driver everywhere. You’re hitting irons into places and they’re small greens that are firm sometimes, soft others – just a real mixture.
“It’s a good example that the game doesn’t always need to go for length. Making the misses smaller and the penalty for misses bigger shows that you don’t have to have long golf courses.”
His own statistics show he’s not entirely shabby off the tee, so his comments can be taken as heartfelt rather than tinged with a modicum of jealousy. He hits it an average of 313 yards off the tee on the European Tour so far this season. That’s substantially up on his best of 295.68 from last year. And, with the assistance of altitude, he’s sneaky long in South Africa too – 310.68 metres.
It’s almost seven years since the second of his two Sunshine Tour wins. He won the Parmalat Classic back in 2004 for his maiden title, and the Investec Royal Swazi Open in 2011. With the work he’s doing around the greens – and the extra distance he seems to have found – he will feel there is a chance he can add to his victory tally this year.
He might be driven in his career, but he is also keen to give back in the Birdies 4 Rhinos campaign.
Birdies 4 Rhinos is an initiative set up by Walters and Dean Burmester who wanted to give back and do their bit to save these great animals so that future generations will be able to enjoy these amazing creatures. By donating money for every birdie they make throughout the season they raise funds to help in the saving of this dying species from the hands of the poachers.
In the first year, they managed to raise over R140,000 Walters and Burmester invited more players to join them in raising money for the cause, including most recently the Olympic Champion and US Open champion Justin Rose.
“We’ve brought a few more players on board,” says Walters. “We’ve got a nice list of players who are really doing well. Chris Paisley came down and won the SA Open; Dean is an absolute birdie machine, so I’m trying to keep up with all those guys.
“We’re always trying to look to grow the list of guys but I think that growth will come now from more corporate backing and I think that’s when we can take it to the next level. This year, I’ll be trying to focus on that and try to extend our reach a little bit – try to help a few more charities. We’re still getting established, but I think the concept is really good. It’s taken off, it’s popular and it resonated with a lot of people and players. We’ve just got to grow it and when my career ends, I hope I can walk away and leave it in the hands of other players and leave something of a legacy.
“For now, we’re just trying to make a few birdies and do the little bit we can,” he adds.
He has also managed to spread the concept into women’s golf, and he has recruited Stacey Bregman and Nicole Garcia to the cause. “It’s not only about the money. Exposure is important. The women are on a different tour and they are in contact with different people, they go to different places. Obviously, with them on board, the contributions are great but they are bringing more awareness.”
With the kind of awareness he brings to the Birdies 4 Rhinos campaign, Walters is clearly a man who knows what he wants to achieve and how to achieve it. He has also shown that he has the ability to stick to a course of action once he has chosen one.
That’s almost certainly a recipe for renewed success on the golf course – sooner, rather than later.
