The South African Open threw this English pro a lifeline – and he’s never looked back, writes JAMES CORRIGAN.
As the seventh-oldest professional golf tournament in existence, it would be fair to surmise the South African Open has witnessed most things. But no, it had never seen celebrations quite like those on the 18th green last year. Not from a player finishing third, anyway.
Marcus Armitage holed a 20-footer for birdie at Randpark and promptly threw his hat to the ground, grabbed his caddie – a local bagman called Eric – and jumped and danced around. The tears proceeded to fill his eyes with such a surge that the mind harked itself back to victories at the British Open proper. Except this was simply another step in a long hard climb. A crucial step, however.
‘You’re damn right it was,’ Armitage says. ‘And that’s why I reacted like I did. There was plenty on that putt. I walked up the last knowing that a birdie, and only a birdie, would get me into that year’s [British] Open at Sandwich. And there was a right few quid in it too.’
Armitage was actually going to pull out from that Johannesburg event due to a lack of finance. But Robert Rock, a fellow Tour pro and burgeoning coach, lent him money for the airfare and the accommodation. It proved a wise investment.
‘I picked up about £70,000 and after all the deductions, like paying my caddie, paying the tax, etc, I’d take home about £40,000. I was about £90,000 in debt so that almost halved the deficit.
‘So yeah, it was big, but if you want to write that the week in January 2020 came in the nick of time as I must have been considering packing it in, you’d be wrong. I wouldn’t care how bad it got. Even if I’d reached 40 and was still struggling out here, I’d have kept trying. Because this is what I’m meant to do. It has been since I was 13.’
That was the year when his mother, Jean, passed away from cancer. It was also the year when he left school. ‘I hated it mate,’ Armitage says. ‘I am dyslexic in some form or other and back then it wasn’t picked up like it is now. So I’d just be staring out the classroom window. And I couldn’t just sit thinking “she’s dead”. So I went to the golf club every day and focused on hitting balls. Nobody from school said anything. Maybe they realised.
‘It was an escape, and gave me something else to focus on. At home it was just me and my dad [Phil]. It was hard but I’m not going to say, “Oh look how tough he’s had it.” Because I’ve been to places in South Africa and in their townships they’d hear my story and say, “You jammy bastard, you had it easy.” It all just depends from where you are looking at it.’
Armitage reached scratch by 15 without ever having a lesson. With funds short, he turned pro as a 19-year-old, scratching around on the mini-Tours. One of the most natural swingers on display, with a wonderful array of shots, Armitage nevertheless laboured for years – on the fairways to chase a dream and in the building sites to make ends meet – before graduating to the Challenge Tour (the main feeder league to the European circuit) and from there to the European Tour in 2017.
He first came to the attention of the golf world at large when he dared to stride up to Tiger Woods on the range at the Dubai Desert Classic and ask for a selfie. The next year he qualified for his first Major, The Open Championship at Carnoustie, and decided to tee it up despite tearing a shoulder muscle.
‘I was acting as if it was all only a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I’d never be back again,’ he says. ‘I needed to be more professional. I lost my card in 2017 and actually lost money on the year and went back to the Challenge Tour. That’s when Dave and I both set our stall to get on the European Tour – and stay there.’
Dave is Dave Coupland and just two years ago he and Armitage were sharing an Airbnb room at £25 per head at a lowly French tournament. England’s odd couple are glittering examples of the benefits of perseverance, although Coupland is still trying to match his friend’s success and gain that footing in the big league.
They are wildly contrasting characters. Armitage is the life and soul, the personality who never stops being personable, with a quip and a giggle for every occasion.
Self-belief is on draft. Coupland, meanwhile, is shy and introspective and while he clearly possesses a dry sense of humour, he is the type minded only to show it off on occasion. Coupland has to lean hard on that pump for confidence.
But in terms of grit they are remarkably similar and this shared trait of never giving up the chase is why they have bonded in their journeys. Armitage is 34, after 15 years as a pro and six visits to Q-School. Coupland is 35, after 10 years a pro and seven visits to Q-School. Late developers, maybe, but what an inspirational pair of pictures they are developing.
‘Yeah, we’ve both come a long way since that Open de Bretagne in 2019,’ Coupland, who finished third at this year’s British Masters, says. ‘That place we stayed in was in the middle of nowhere and I remember us being starving and going to a garage where all they had were bars of chocolate. So that was our tea. We knew where we heading, however.’
Armitage has made the most notable inroads and indeed earnings. Since the start of 2020 and that South African Open, the Yorkshireman has accumulated more than £700,000 and in June won his first European Tour title, the European Open. This time the silverware lived up to the tears, as Armitage recounted his personal tale of tragedy, grief and salvation.
‘Marcus’ story is incredible and uplifting and could be a film,’ Coupland says. ‘To come through what he has and be up there taking on the world’s best must be a motivation to everyone. He’s brilliant to be around, always smiling and he comes out with some brilliant one-liners and stories I could never tell a journalist. A right laugh. I’ve known him since the amateur days and we have the same manager. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t tried to tap into his optimism. Everyone should, really.’
Indeed, they should. Here is a man who found golf to sidestep the pain and from then did not look back, giving up the textbooks he never understood for the yardage books which offered him salvation.
‘Since I lost my mum, I’d think about it every day – about being a winner on the European Tour,’ Armitage says. ‘You have days where you think it might not happen, but I stuck at it. I’m sure she would be proud.’
His father certainly was. ‘Dad’s in a good place now and whereas before I was trying to make it big to cheer him up, I now appreciate that you have to do it for yourself. I want to go as far as I possibly can.’
Armitage knows what it will take. ‘If you put me on my best day and put the top golfer on their best day, I’d compete with them, but the difference is that I might do it one or two days a week, whereas Rory, Tiger, Brooks or Tommy will do it more like four or five times a week.
‘It’s just that level of consistency, what their clubhead does, how their mind works. Everything for me just needs to be a bit more consistent and that will take me up the World Ranking.’
In truth, the summit is still a peak on the horizon and he still has a huge fight to crack the all-important world’s top 50. Yet if rankings were based on popularity, Marcus ‘The Bullet’ Armitage would have a lifetime pass to the locker room.
The Tour’s marketing department would be bereft without him. Some of the promotional work for which they have enlisted him includes setting a new world record by hitting a ball into a moving car. The video went viral. Watch it and you will understand why.
With his broad accent, a rotund face quite befitting the frame thereunder and a self-deprecating sense of humour, Armitage cuts such a refreshing figure a few par fives removed from the norm. Take his moniker.
‘Someone said I should have a nickname, so I told my bag-maker to put “The Bulldog” on the side,’ he said. ‘When it came back I looked at it and said “The f***ing Bullet” – what’s that about? But it stuck and I believe everything is for a reason. That’s why I’m here.’
20 BEST FINISHES
2015: Tree Of Life Championship (1st)
2016: Foshan Open (1st), Volopa Irish Challenge (T2nd)
2017: Joburg Open (T5th), Open de Portugal (T10th)
2018: Yunnan Open (T2nd)
2020: South African Open (3rd), Alfred Dunhill Championship (T6th), Scottish Championship (T7th), ISPS Handa UK Championship (T7th), Italian Open (T10th), Cyprus Open (T12th), Qatar Masters (T12th), Cyprus Showdown (14th)
2021: Porsche European Open (1st), Austrian Golf Open (T4th), European Masters (T7th), Made in Himmerland (T8th), Kenya Savannah Classic (T10th), BMW PGA Championship (T30th)
– This article first appeared in the December 2021 issue of Compleat Golfer magazine. Subscribe here!
