“I told my parents that I was going to do the same thing and they laughed,” he said.
They aren't laughing now.
His mother Danielle, a photographer, and father Patrick ,who used to run a family business back home in Brussels, are seeing their son escalate to unprecedented heights in golf. But his golfing career has not always been this smooth.
“Everything came pretty easy,” Colsaerts said of his early years on the European Tour. “I got my card for the Tour on my first go-around when I was 18. Everything fell into place so easy that I never really had to think about how to prepare and how to train.”
Colsaerts admits that he was too much into the party scene in Brussels, only played fifteen tournaments a year, and lost all focus as he fell to outside the top 1,000 in the world rankings.
“All of the sudden I had no tour to play on and I had to find something, he remembered.”
Colsaerts spent a couple years at the International Academy of Golf in Brisbane, Australia, where he was in need of an “electrical shock” to wake up his drive for the game.
He came back to Europe and in the early part of 2010, at the Dubai Desert Classic, and joined forces with the easy-going Australian caddie Brian Nilsson.
A central piece to Colsaerts’ eventual Ryder Cup selection was a win, with Nilsson on the bag, at the 2011 China Open in Chengdu.
Nilsson says that Colsaerts is a true competitor and that watching him during the high-points of the Ryder Cup was revealing. “He showed the world how good he was,” Nilsson said. “It was the best week I’ve ever had on a golf course.”
Colsaerts agrees and is already looking forward to Gleneagles in two years time.
“After playing on the Ryder Cup once you feel like you don’t want to miss out on any other ones,” he said.
With the tall Belgian earning his cards for both the European and PGA Tours it will be hard for fans to miss out on seeing him compete on golf’s greatest stages in the months ahead.
Pages
Click here to see the published article.
