Former ‘idiot’ Ogilvy evolves

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Beware the unheralded Aussie.

Geoff Ogilvy enters this week’s 72nd Masters as the second-hottest player on the planet. Of course, given the total Tiger eclipse that has settled over the golf world, that’s a little like being Mycroft Holmes or Dom DiMaggio.

In his last two starts, Ogilvy broke Woods’ stranglehold on the winner’s circle with a victory at the CA Championship at Doral and then finished runner-up in Houston last week to move to fifth in the world rankings. The 30-year-old has a stroke average of 69.13 over his last four starts, representing the second best form in the field at Augusta National.

And yet nobody seems to have noticed or cared.

The greencoats didn’t deign to invite Ogilvy to the media center for a pre-tournament interview. And even Woods overlooked Ogilvy when cataloguing the list of elite players seemingly peaking for the season’s first major.

“I think most of the top guys are playing well this year,” Woods said. “Vijay [Singh], Phil [Mickelson], [Retief] Goose[n] is starting to play better. Ernie [Els] is playing better. Jim [Furyk] is starting to turn it around a little bit, and Adam [Scott] is playing well.”

Though his name was absent from both that list and the interview roster, Ogilvy perceives no slight:

“Not at all. Tiger has won nine times in his last 11 starts,” he said. “He’s an even-money favorite on a course perfectly suited to his game where he’s won four times before. Why would he or anyone else want to talk about me? I’m just not that interesting.”

Quite the contrary. Ogilvy is among the more interesting personalities ever to play the game at an elite level. He’s introspective and perhaps the most well-read player since Augusta National founder Bobby Jones. Asked at last year’s U.S. Open where one might find the defending champion, countryman Adam Scott replied, “Have you tried the closest Barnes & Noble?”

Said Ogilvy: “That would be a fairly accurate assessment. I do tend to spend a good deal of my travel time in bookstores. I’m not real fond of hotel rooms.”

There’s a reason for that. When Ogilvy first arrived on the PGA Tour in 2001, there were no questions about his talent. Though he lacked Scott’s ball-striking brilliance, Ogilvy had a superior short game and a sublime gift for posting birdies in bunches. He also had a reputation as one of the game’s most volatile players. Nobody could get his mad on like Ogilvy, who kicked bags, chucked clubs and cursed his way through his first four pedestrian seasons in this country.

“I was miserable,” Ogilvy said. “I’m sure I distracted everyone else and made other players uncomfortable, but it affected me most of all. I was a master of self-loathing. I used to go back to my hotel room after a bad day, stand in front of the mirror and curse myself out for being a useless idiot. It just became exhausting.”

Though there was no cathartic moment, Ogilvy gradually learned to let go of his mistakes by channeling that energy into other avenues. He immersed himself into books, learned to play guitar and began dating his eventual wife, Juli. In 2005, he won his first PGA Tour event (Tucson Chrysler Classic). The next season, he won the prestigious Accenture Match Play Championship and then scooped up the U.S. Open title at Winged Foot in the wake of the Mickelson/Colin Montgomerie meltdown.

Last year in just his second trip to Augusta National, he pulled within two strokes of the lead through 14 holes on Saturday before drowning a pair of Titleists — and his title chances — with a quadruple bogey at the par-5 15th.

The old Ogilvy might have impaled himself on his misbehaving lob wedge.

But, the new Ogilvy claims to have forgotten the debacle by the time he reached the players’ parking lot.

“I took a lot of positives away from last year,” said Ogilvy, who led the field in sub-par holes (16 birdies and one eagle) but finished tied for 24th. “If I par those three holes, I’m in a playoff. Birdies are everywhere out there, but the key to winning here is avoiding those train wrecks. Aside from those three shockers last year, I played really well.”

This season he arrives at the 7,445-yard, par-72 layout in far better form than last year. His above-average length, high-ball flight and masterful short game are all perfect matches for Augusta National, which plays long and soft given the cool, wet weather. After decades of near-misses, perhaps this will be the week when an Australian walks off with a green jacket.

“Obviously, we’d all like to see that, regardless of the winner,” said Scott, one of a record nine Aussies in the field. “If you go on present form, Geoff would probably be out front with our banner this week. There’s no question that he’s got the proper sort of game for this place.”