On a first perusal, it looks like a hair-raising quotation.
"If I was allowed to have it, I'd have it the way Miguel has it," suggested Paul Lawrie. Surely the Aberdonian is not growing a pony tail like the hirsute Mr Jimenez? Not quite. He's still got four years before he reaches his half century but with the big 5 0 looming ever nearer, the 46-year-old Lawrie is mulling over a new chapter in his sporting life on the Senior Tour.
He may not suit Jimenez's tumbling riot of locks but Lawrie wouldn't mind copying one aspect of the veteran Spaniard's style. "Miguel is still competitive on all the tours," added Lawrie, as he pondered his future career on a variety of golfing fronts. "I have a one year exemption from my Open win so my plan is to play on the Champions Tour in the US quite a bit but come back and play a few European Senior Tour events and some regular European Tour events like he does."
In this game for all the ages, Jimenez remains extremely nifty at fifty. A year past April, the cigar-chomping man from Malaga won on his debut appearance on the lucrative Champions Tour. A few weeks later, he returned to the front line of the regular European Tour and became the first player over the age of 50 to win on the circuit when he captured the Spanish Open.
Jimenez will defend that title in Barcelona this week in a tournament that Lawrie is also contesting. The Scot has not had a top-10 on the European scene since he shared seventh in the Volvo Golf Champions event back in January 2013. At that point, Lawrie was 29th on the world rankings. These days, he is 347th. It's a position Lawrie is eager to rectify. While he is focussing on improving his results in the present, the 1999 Open champion is also looking to the future. "I'm going to keep playing and try to keep myself competitive so that when I get to 50 I'm ready to go," he said. "I'm past the stage of taking a wee break and getting back into it. That would have had to have been when I was 42 or 43. It's too late to take time out now so I just have to keep going. With the distance I hit the ball now, the Seniors Tour could play into my hands a lot. Look what Monty (Colin Montgomerie) did? He kept playing and kept competitive and as we all know he won two majors on the senior circuit last year. I still feel I have the game, I'm competitive and I'm hitting it longer than ever. It's not as if I'm losing stuff by getting older. But it's not been great the last couple of years, we all know that. The results have not been what I wanted but one week can turn it around and off you go."
Justin Rose certainly knows all about turning things around. The Englishman missed the first 21 cuts of his professional career but is now a major winner and recently maintained his impressive record of winning at least one event on the PGA Tour every year since 2010. Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler may be stirring the senses in the world of golf but Lawrie remains a great champion of Rose. "If he putted a little better he'd easily be the best player in the world," suggested Lawrie. "He's got the talent and he certainly has the work ethic."
For Lawrie, the work continues. All being well, he's still got a few golfing years ahead of him yet.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article