Dylan Frittelli is the latest South African to crack his maiden win on the European Tour. And he’s unlikely to stop there, writes MICHAEL VLISMAS in Compleat Golfer.
Renowned sports psychologist Dr Jannie Botha refers to it as ‘staying in the tunnel’. Dylan Frittelli calls it ‘faith’. The grind. The journey. Blood, sweat and tees. It’s all part of that process every professional golfer goes through.
With his maiden European Tour victory, at the Lyoness Open in Austria, Frittelli made it through his own tunnel.
And he did it by reminding himself of the one thing even the best sportsmen in the world need to remind themselves: ‘I know I’m good enough.’
For the two years in which he suffered his first major slump – following a strong amateur career and then an impressive college performance alongside Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and this generation’s brightest golf stars – Frittelli tapped into the strategist within him to keep believing he was on the right path.
‘This is recognition of all that hard work,’ he says. ‘It’s recognition of keeping the faith, sticking to my process and trusting myself.’
This is exactly what Botha means when he talks about ‘staying in the tunnel’.
‘To be able to function at this level of golf, you need to be mentally tough,’ Botha says. ‘Young golfers often don’t realise how long the tunnel is to really make it. This tunnel is so long before you get a breakthrough.
‘A lot of golfers stop just before that. You need to keep on going. All golfers have the talent. The ones who make it are the ones who stay in that tunnel.’
From his victory at the Callaway Junior World Golf Championships, to his South African amateur titles, to making the winning putt that carried a Texas Longhorns team, including Spieth, to the NCAA Championship title in 2012, Frittelli was always going to be one of those who made it.
But to get here, he’s had to silence many voices around him. Even amid the 2012 triumph with the Longhorns, Frittelli had to silence the negativity. A month before he made that winning putt, when his final round of 76 at the Big 12 Championship cost him the individual title and the Longhorns the team title, he was roundly criticised by fans as not having what it takes.
Realising what Frittelli had done to silence his critics, Spieth said after their NCAA Championship triumph, ‘Whatever voices were in his head, today he’s stopped them.’
He’s also had to rely on the one thing that’s always been his greatest strength, beyond even his talent. Patience.
‘When I was young and played different sports, I was often the team captain because I used to really think about the game. I loved being the strategist. I’d watch football on TV and think how a player could do something better.
‘And I’ve had patience. I’m happy to take my time. My career has always been built around a slow and steady rise. I’m not a flash-in-the-pan kind of golfer.’
From the moment he left the Texas Longhorns and teed it up on the Challenge Tour, there was always a sense that Frittelli was quietly building towards something special.
He won in his first season there in 2013, won at home on the Sunshine Big Easy Tour and finished second at the Telkom PGA Championship that same year.
But then he hit the first real slump of his career. In 2014 he missed 15 cuts. In 2015 there was a slight improvement.
‘It’s really tough to keep on playing through that, but I felt it was the right thing to do,’ Frittelli says of his decision to keep working on his game in the tournament environment.
‘You get a lot of people telling you many different things. It’s easy to let your mind wander. When I was missing all those cuts, it hit home that I had to perform every week because I was running out of opportunities.
‘You start asking whether what you’re dealing with is mental or technical. To be honest, in that situation it’s everything. So I just had to keep trusting myself and my coach, and work through it.’
The questions, coming from his critics at college in 2012 concerning Frittelli’s ability to close out tournaments, surfaced in his own head again when he finished second at the Volvo China Open in April.
He was in a prime position to take the title after second and third rounds of 63 and 64 respectively. He found himself with a four-shot lead with only seven holes to play, but things began to go awry.
Frittelli still stepped on to the tee box of the 72nd hole with a one-shot lead. But he hit his second into the hospitality tent and closed with a 74. He then lost in a playoff to Frenchman Alexander Levy.
It was the young South African’s second playoff defeat after the 2015 Australian PGA Championship.
‘I’ll be honest, I felt a lot more comfortable in a similar situation now in Austria. In China I really felt the nerves. But I figured out that they will always be there. It’s natural. The trick is to find a way for the nerves to help you and not hinder you. You just need to deal with it and execute.’
Even the ultra-competitive Gary Player has admitted, ‘Everybody has the potential to choke.’
‘I learned a lot through all those trials and tribulations,’ says Frittelli, who believes the furnace of challenges he’s had to overcome is a critical part of his evolution as a golfer.
‘I think there is a danger in this game that you can win too early. For me it’s been about keeping that faith. I went through that slump, but in the back of my mind I knew I was good enough.
‘When you tick the boxes of your career as I have, being patient about moving from one phase to the next; that builds huge confidence. You know you can play and be competitive at every level in this game.
‘It could have been easy for me to look at the careers of Spieth, Justin Thomas or Cody Gribble, who I played with at college, and get frustrated and say, “But I played with these guys and often beat them.” But for me it’s just built my faith and confidence to believe I’m good enough to be one of the best in the world.
‘Now I’ve ticked this next box, and it’s set me up to start looking at World Golf Championship events and Majors on the horizon. Five years ago I played the Lyoness Open on an invite and managed to miss my second-round tee time, so I’d like to think it was a role reversal here and culmination of the hard work I’ve done in between those two periods. My 0-2 record in playoffs is not very good, so I didn’t want to have extra guys in the playoff. Hopefully this means big things for my career.’
Faith. Frittelli has always had it.
In his first few months at college, he wrote me a letter.
‘I’ve settled in pretty well this semester and have already played two tournaments. I won one of them. I played the final round with Rickie Fowler and was surprised at the small difference in our games. There is nothing much between us two, which gives me a load of confidence that I will use in the future.’
And that confidence just keeps growing.
DYLAN’S NUMBERS
0 Despite being ranked in the world’s top 100, he has never won on the Sunshine Tour
4.05 Average number of birdies each round played on the Sunshine Tour
8 Top-10 finishes on the Sunshine Tour
12 Best finish on the Sunshine Tour’s Order of Merit, in 2016-17
76 Career-high World Ranking after his win at the Lyoness Open on the European Tour
3.26m Sunshine Tour prize money in rands
– This article first appeared in the July issue of Compleat Golfer, now on sale
