It begins with a wall. This wall — an imaginary one — spans the left side of the fairway at the 15th hole at Medalist Golf Club near his Florida home.
In the mind of Matt Wallace, it helps to define his golfing fortunes. The target is always the wall from which to fade it on to the fairway.
The only problem as he stood on the tee in recent years, try as he might he could not find it. Where once the ball would land flush on the fairway, instead it was met with a splash of water or a shower of bunker sand.
Recently, he returned to the same tee not long before dusk at a deserted course and lined up 15 balls. With 14 of them, he once more found his target. “I’ve got my wall shot back,” was his takeaway as he packed up his clubs.
This wall can be relocated and rebuilt. On Sunday, it was shifted to the 18th of Corales Golf Course in the Dominican Republic for his final tee shot of the Corales Puntacana Championship.
Hitting into the wind, he shook off the nerves of being tournament leader to find the wall from which he made par for a one-stroke victory, a first on the PGA Tour and a first title of any kind for nearly five years.
The initial sensation was one of relief before a quick call home to his parents, two beers and half a cigar in celebration before a nine o’clock bedtime, shattered by the week but also years leading up to his victorious re-emergence.
Before turning off the lights, he looked back at a video he recorded of himself at last year’s Houston Open he promised to show himself if and when a victory ever came.
“In it, I was saying how disappointed and tired I was, how negative everything had been and how hard I’d been working and not seen the results,” says the 32-year-old. “It made me realise how far I’d come.”
He knows the bad times could come as soon as this week when he tees off on Thursday in San Antonio. Golf can be mental torture even for the best players in the world.
Eleven tournament wins, including four on the European Tour, a top-three finish at a Major and a world ranking once on the edges of the top 20 attest to his status as that.
But he clearly remembers those times on the tee at Medalist and beyond with zero confidence in his own driving ability. Myriad missed cuts followed and he tumbled down the rankings.
I hadn’t been playing well for two or three years... I just wanted to feel comfortable with my golf again
“It’s terrible,” he says of the darker days. “You’ve played s*** and need to sort it out, then you’re itching to get to the next tournament and opportunity.
“I hadn’t been playing well for two or three years. It wasn’t my golf equipment’s fault but the person wielding it. It’s hard once that gets in your head. I just wanted to feel comfortable with my golf again.”
Prior to last week, the signs had been there that his game was going in the right direction, notably a seventh-placed finish at the £6.6million Valspar Championship in Florida.
His demise before this current rebirth was such that he got precariously close to losing his PGA Tour membership, that open to just 125 players.
He ended 126th but survived thanks to some absentees above him courtesy of the banned LIV rebels. “I feel fortunate I kept my card and still have a job,” he says.
And he has worked hard to keep it. From February to August each season, he relocates to the United States for the guaranteed good weather and golfing days.
Living on his own, the weeks outside the tournaments can be incredibly lonely. “There’s no family or friends over here to shoot the breeze,” says the Hillingdon-born golfer. So instead the tournaments act as his social life, and when the golf isn’t going well, that’s tough too.
“Golf shouldn’t dictate how you feel,” he says. “But I’ve gotten into that before, if not playing great I’m in a downward spiral and, if I’m playing well, I’m happy.
“At times, I didn’t want to grind as my energy and my head were elsewhere. Then my game went to s*** because I wasn’t improving.
“Now I’m in a space where I want to improve and want to play golf like I know I can and keep grinding and competing. That’s what wakes me up in the morning.”
Much like Wallace, golf also finds itself at a crossroads with the ongoing civil war between LIV and the PGA and DP World (formerly European) Tours.
Good friends with players such as Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood, he backs their decision to join LIV but not necessarily their desire to also continue on the DP World Tour.
“Poults and Westy have given so much to the European Tour,” says Wallace. “They’re stalwarts but they knew the potential consequences when they signed. When you do that, you’ve got to take it on the chin. You can’t fight that corner and say we deserve this or that. You don’t deserve anything from this game.”
Where that battle finally ends, Wallace has no idea and is anyway more preoccupied with himself. While most people in sport aim to avoid hitting the proverbial wall, he is relishing his reunion with it.
