The modern-day golf professional can often have the kind of vast battalion of support behind them that would make Napoleon’s Grande Armee look like a couple of fourballs at the Saturday medal.
Managers, agents, swing doctors, putting gurus, physios, psychologists, nutritionists, shamans, soothsayers? You name it, they’ll have it.
Golf may be a very individual game but it’s a team effort. Just ask Robert MacIntyre.
The 28-year-old is embarking on his second full season on the PGA Tour and is feeling as comfortable as a nice pair of baffies that have been warmed by the hearth.
This time last year, of course, it was a different story as MacIntyre was struggling to adapt to a new way of golfing life on the other side of the Atlantic. What a difference 12 months – and two PGA Tour wins – makes.
“Now I feel in an unbelievable place, with my golf game, my personal life and with the team I've got around me,” said the Oban lefty, who is currently sitting 14th on the world rankings and has been competing at this week’s Genesis Invitational at Torrey Pines.
“I feel like everyone is driving for the same goal and that's to get as high up the game of golf as we can and win the biggest golf tournaments in the world.
“And that's all I can ask for. If someone says, ‘jump’, I’ll say ‘how high do you want me to jump, man. I'll jump as high as you want’.
“It's the same across the team. I’ll ask my caddie Mike (Burrow) to do something. If he can do it, he'll do it. If he can't, well, he’ll give it his best shot.
“It’s the same with my coach, my manager, everbody. I was in the gym out here (in California) the other day with Kenny (MacKenzie, his fitness coach) and it's one o'clock in the morning back in Scotland and he's helping me achieve our dreams.
“The whole team is trying to achieve dreams.”
This one for all and all for one approach has certainly given MacIntyre a clarity and a contentment on and off the course as he continues his rise up the global order.
“As long as everyone tries their best, I can walk away at the end of my career, whether that career ends in two years or 15 years, and say, ‘you know what? I gave this everything I had and so did my whole team’,” said MacIntyre, who won the Scottish and Canadian Opens last season during a thrilling, emotionally charged rookie campaign on the toughest tour in the world.
“If I play bad golf, I’m not meaning to play bad golf. If my caddie gets the wind wrong, he’s not meaning to do that. If we can all keep doing our best, then it's going to be a decent career.”
This career has a few exciting things looming on the horizon. MacIntyre will return to the Masters at Augusta after a two year absence while The Open heads back to Royal Portrush, the place where he announced his arrival on the major stage with a share of sixth on his debut in the championship in 2019.
There’s also the small matter of a Ryder Cup on US soil to aim for. The transatlantic tussle will be staged at Bethpage Park and the notoriously hostile New York crowds should make affairs as fiery as a blast furnace.
MacIntyre, who made an unbeaten debut for a triumphant Team Europe in Rome two years ago, would love to be immersed in the heat of the battle again.
“It going to be rough, but you just have to enjoy it as much as you can,” he said. “In Canada last season, for probably 63 holes I had the Canadians on my side because I’m left-handed and a lot of ice hockey players out there play golf left-handed too. I was one of them.
“But when I got to the back nine on Sunday, it switched a wee bit. Someone got thrown out because of the stuff they were shouting at me. But I just think you can channel all that (hostility) and use it as fuel for the fire. Europe has some of the best players in the world and I just hope that we enjoy it.”
MacIntyre will certainly enjoy it if he makes it. And if he does, then it will have been another team effort.
