{"id":303354,"date":"2025-12-07T14:21:05","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T14:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/303354\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T14:21:05","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T14:21:05","slug":"second-acts-global-golf-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/303354\/","title":{"rendered":"Second acts – Global Golf Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"\"A dejected Mark Roe of England addresses the media after being disqualified from the 2003 Open Championship. Andrew Redington, Getty Images<\/p>\n

Mark Roe\u2019s best-of-the-day 67 placed him among the leaders in the third round of the 2003 Open Championship at Royal St George\u2019s. What is more, the fact that he had spoken of \u201ca level of calm\u201d he had never known before was quite something from the European Tour\u2019s court jester.<\/p>\n

His post-round conversation with the media had moved on to how he would be playing alongside his great hero, Tiger Woods, the next day. And that\u2019s when a call came for him and Jesper Parnevik, his playing companion, to return to the scorers\u2019 hut.<\/p>\n

Straightaway, the 40-year-old Englishman was pretty sure that he knew what it might be about. With Parnevik having posted a shocker of an 81 to his 67, he thought he could have jotted the Swede down for a shot too many.<\/p>\n

\"\"Mark Roe celebrates after shooting a 67 in the third round of the 2003 Open Championship, shortly before he would be disqualified for signing an incorrect scorecard. Andrew Redington, Getty Images<\/p>\n

Parnevik had answered the official\u2019s call first and was walking out of the hut as Roe was on the way in. \u201cI\u2019m sorry if I made a mistake,\u201d Roe said, before suggesting where he could have gone wrong. The Swede stopped him in his tracks. \u201cIt\u2019s worse than that,\u201d he mumbled. \u201cMuch worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

The now 62-year-old Roe can still picture the scorers sitting at their table with the two scorecards turned around so he could read them. Straightaway, he realised that he and Parnevik had forgotten to exchange cards at the start of the round. And what that meant was that the 81 was under his name, and the 67 under Parnevik\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The result? Both players were disqualified for signing incorrect scorecards. R&A officials apologised but said there was no way to circumvent what most agreed was an unfair rule. (Three years later, Rule 6.6d was altered so that a recurrence of that day\u2019s error would never again result in disqualification.)<\/p>\n

Inevitably, the media were in a hurry to listen to what Roe had to say about the unfortunate turn of events and Roe, as per usual, was willing to help. First, though, he wanted a couple of minutes to think about how he would handle this sorry situation.<\/p>\n

It was maybe because his father had never been able to bring himself to say that he was proud of his only child that Roe lacked that extra dollop of confidence he needed to go it alone. Hence, in what was the lowest moment of his career, he was still inclined to tap the memory of this hard-to-reach parent for guidance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tournament goes on and life goes on. \u2026 Rules are rules and they are there to protect the game. I\u2019m not bigger than the game.\u201d
\u2014 Mark Roe<\/p>\n

The outcome was that he made no excuses and blamed no-one other than himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat can you do?\u201d Roe said at the time. \u201cI\u2019ve just played one of the greatest rounds of my life and I can\u2019t play tomorrow. I\u2019m usually very diligent. It\u2019s a freak \u2013 I\u2019ve never done it before in my life. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tournament goes on and life goes on,\u201d he added. \u201cI guess I feel a bit numb. Rules are rules and they are there to protect the game. I\u2019m not bigger than the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reflecting back now on the notion of a potential waiver of the rule that would have kept him in the championship, Roe says he wouldn\u2019t have accepted it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t have gone on with that hanging over me any more than my late father would have done if he\u2019d found himself in that situation,\u201d he says. \u201cDad was a great one for sticking rigidly to the book.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Roe was driving home that evening, he pondered on how no-one would have been expecting him to win, whilst simultaneously remembering that clich\u00e9d saying about golf being a game where the impossible is possible. That the little-known Ben Curtis, who had been touring round London in an open-top bus at the start of the week, would go on to win the 2003 Open was a case in point.<\/p>\n

Roe\u2019s wife at the time, Julie, was waiting for him when he pulled up outside the family house. She gave him the biggest hug before gently placing one of their twin daughters in his arms.<\/p>\n

For more in the way of consolation, the positive impression Roe left with his response to the scorecard disaster yielded something unexpected. Within days, he was fielding calls from TV companies inquiring about his interest in becoming a commentator when his career with the European Tour drew to a close. He said yes to Sky Sports and felt a tad less miserable because of it.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, messages were pouring in from all over the world. One that Roe mentions had come from a gentleman who said that the way in which Roe had behaved was in keeping with everything he so loved about golf: \u201cIt\u2019s why I encouraged my son to play,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

More than two decades after the scorecard episode, Roe occupies a visible place in the game as a Sky commentator and well-regarded short-game coach. His successful second acts followed a two-decade run as a European Tour player that yielded three victories and a jokester\u2019s reputation but no shortage of angst.<\/p>\n

The psychology books tell how comedy and creativity can alternate with depression as they \u201cgo down the same brain path.\u201d As Roe would say of himself towards the end of a recent interview, there came a stage when he was only happy every other week when he was full-time on a home tour where he played a total of 524 events.<\/p>\n

Plenty of others would no doubt say much the same of golf\u2019s away-from-home demands, only in Roe\u2019s later years there was that extra pang attached to his Open experience. Not for the first time, he returned to how he would have played with Tiger on the last day: \u201cI was in a great place; it was a perfect time to be alongside him. The \u2018never knowing\u2019 lingers. I was denied the opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI saved me and golf saved me.\u201d
\u2014 Mark Roe<\/p>\n

Asked if he had access to mental-health help after that catastrophe, Roe answered in the negative. To him, mental-health problems have turned into almost too much of an issue in recent years and, by way of an example, he said that he doesn\u2019t necessarily approve of players asking for extensions \u2013 i.e., being allowed to hang on to their tour cards for longer than they otherwise might have \u2013 \u201cbecause they want six months to sort their heads out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet Roe confesses he could probably have done with some help when he left his first wife, Jane, for Julie.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, which I always am, I hated myself at that point,\u201d he said. \u201cI hated how I was upsetting Jane. I loved them both but I eventually decided that Julie was the one I loved the more. I was hurting to the point where I was on the verge of going ahead with something daft.\u201d<\/p>\n

At that point, he told himself that what he had in mind was not the answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saved me and golf saved me,\u201d he continued. \u201cI was in my 20s at the time and, thank God, it struck me that everyone\u2019s life must have its ups and downs, its good times and its bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Mark Roe\u2019s parents, Gordon and Phyllis. Courtesy Mark Roe<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just in golf that Roe suffered the worst of sporting mishaps. At the age of 9, he had been third in the appropriate county age group for diving, and he was 13 when the time came for him to try his first twisting dive from the high board.<\/p>\n

The takeoff was perfect, only when this would-be Olympian was in mid-twist he lost his sense of feel and landed on the side of his head. \u201cHitting the water was like hitting cement,\u201d he remembers. The experience left him badly concussed and with a perforated eardrum.<\/p>\n

So lengthy was the recovery process that he started caddying for his father, Gordon, a 17-handicapper at the Hallowes Golf Club near Sheffield, their hometown. And thus began what Roe describes as \u201ca fabulous journey,\u201d one that changed everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was diving, my whole life had been about getting bruised in the diving pit,\u201d he said. \u201cIt had called for hour upon hour of hard graft in a pretty miserable setting. In golf, on the other hand, I had walked with my father into this world of blue skies, trees and shades of green. I was in love with the game from the start.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Roe progressed as a golfer, his father, who had worked in the car industry, lost a caddie but took over from his wife, Phyllis, as their son\u2019s chauffeur. Just as Roe\u2019s mother had taken him to the swimming baths every day and read a book until his training session was over, so his dad would take him to the golf club on his way to work and pick him up at dusk. \u201cOnce we were home,\u201d Roe said, \u201che would subside into his armchair and drink himself to sleep. He was quite a heavy drinker. \u2026 Seeing your dad drinking too much was a tough part of my teenage years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Mark Roe (center), with fellow commentators Ewen Murray (left) and Bruce Critchley, joined Sky Sports after his playing days ended. David Cannon,Getty Images<\/p>\n

He became a professional in 1981 and earned his card in his fourth attempt at the European Tour\u2019s qualifying school. In 1989, he won the first of his three titles, the Catalan Open, edging Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Olaz\u00e1bal, Colin Montgomerie and Gordon Brand Jr. by a single stroke. He went on to win the \u201992 Troph\u00e9e Lanc\u00f4me and \u201994 French Open.<\/p>\n

As might have been anticipated, that French Open feat prompted media memories of how, at the previous year\u2019s instalment, he had been fined \u00a3100 for throwing spaghetti over one of his professional pals.<\/p>\n

There were players who would get mildly irritated with Roe\u2019s fun-loving side but, for the most part, they enjoyed having a mood-lifter in their midst, as do his current television colleagues. At this year\u2019s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in St Andrews, Nick Dougherty, the former European Tour pro and leader of the Sky commentary team that Roe had preceded him in joining in 2007, remembered a day when they were all staying at the same hotel at the Omega European Masters in Crans Montana, Switzerland.<\/p>\n

The hotels in Crans are bedecked in colourful flower baskets and boxes and what did Roe do but carry the ones from the windowsills of their establishment to the bedroom given to fellow commentator Richard Boxall. Once there, he lined the blooms up on every inch of the floor, the bed, the bath, and the wardrobe.<\/p>\n

Then again, there came a night when Dougherty was heading off to dinner with his girlfriend. Roe gave them a cheery wave as they went, but, by the time they came back, the bed had disappeared. It was standing upright in the bath.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis interpretations are great \u2013 and the same applies to his humour. I love the way it comes into his commentary.\u201d
\u2014 Laura Davies<\/p>\n

\u201cThe girlfriend walked out on me, but I liked Mark\u2019s pranks even if she didn\u2019t,\u201d Dougherty said.<\/p>\n

\u201cApart from being funny,\u201d he continued, \u201cMark is the kindest person I know. In 2008, my parents enjoyed a great week following me at the Masters, only for my mother to have a heart attack and die a few days later. Everything in my life had revolved around my mum but Mark took me under his wing. He knew what it was to lose a parent and he couldn\u2019t have been more thoughtful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dame Laura Davies, the Hall of Famer and four-time major champion who joined the Sky commentary team when her golfing confidence began to slip, said that Roe is so knowledgeable that she listens and learns from everything he has to say. \u201cHis interpretations are great \u2013 and the same applies to his humour. I love the way it comes into his commentary,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Seldom can there have been anything to match Roe\u2019s live report on the day the now 21-year-old Lottie Woad won the 2024 Augusta National Women\u2019s Amateur.<\/p>\n

As Woad holed one putt after another, he burst forth with an exasperated, \u201cYou\u2019ve got no right at 20 years of age to be so calm in that situation. \u2026 You\u2019re being watched around the world, you\u2019ve got a crowd of Masters patrons yelling from around the 18th green and still you\u2019re managing to hang in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\"\"Edoardo Molinari (right) is one of many professionals who have turned to Mark Roe for help with their short games. David Cannon, Getty Images<\/p>\n

Though Roe\u2019s arrangement with Sky could have been down to the golfing gods making amends for that past misjustice, he had another lucky break at the 2007 Scottish Open. The latter was born of a conversation he had with Lee Westwood.<\/p>\n

The moment he came off air, he had complimented his old friend on his long game. Westwood, in turn, had replied with the thought, \u201cBut if I could chip like you, I\u2019d be the Open champion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you could chip like me,\u201d returned Roe, \u201cyou\u2019d win three Opens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy don\u2019t you teach me then?\u201d pursued Westwood.<\/p>\n

And so began Roe\u2019s career as a short-game coach. Westwood never did win the Open but he was second in 2010 besides finishing second in the Masters the same year and tied second in 2016. Rory McIlroy, Francesco Molinari, Paul McGinley and Dougherty have been among Roe\u2019s other pupils. Indeed, when Molinari and his brother, Edoardo, won the Omega Mission Hills World Cup in Shanghai in 2009, Roe said it had given him as much of a buzz as if he had won it himself. By then, he had become a go-to expert on anything to do with the short game.<\/p>\n

Dougherty says that Roe made a big difference to his touch on and around the greens and, in turn, his results. (He won all three of the Caltex Masters, the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship and the BMW International Open between 2005 and 2009).<\/p>\n

\"\"Mark Roe married his third wife, Veronique, after meeting her at a funeral in 2013. Courtesy Mark Roe<\/p>\n

To return to Roe\u2019s personal life, it so happened that, after 18 years, wife No. 2 gave way to wife No. 3. With Roe being the offbeat fellow that he is, it came as no surprise to learn that he had met the twice-married Veronique at a funeral in 2013. \u201cA case of \u2018Four Weddings and a Funeral,\u2019\u201d he suggested, before throwing in the fact that Veronique had fallen in love with him as she walked through the chapel door.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the thing about Roe; gods and all cannot but like him. Yet when it comes to the commentary work he so loves, he is oblivious to whether the golfing public make admiring remarks or the reverse: \u201cI don\u2019t do social media so I don\u2019t have to know what they think. If Sky are happy, that\u2019s all I need to hear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roe\u2019s daughters, Alex and Emily, are now 24. He\u2019s never quite sure what these free spirits are up to but he says to them what his parents used to say to him \u2013 \u201cYou must go with your heart.\u201d The girls have been his best friends from the start; he is the first person they turn to if they have a problem. \u201cIt\u2019s as it should be,\u201d Roe said. \u201cIt\u2019s what you want from a father.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much though he had loved his father, he clearly didn\u2019t want his children to have to wait for as long as he did for an answer as to whether or not he was proud of his offspring.<\/p>\n

\"\"Mark Roe says he is best friends with his twin daughters Alex (left) and Emily. Courtesy Mark Roe<\/p>\n

Yet strange though this might sound, he had that endlessly nagging question answered shortly after his dad\u2019s death at the age of 64.<\/p>\n

\u201cExplain this,\u201d he said, by way of prefixing the story he was about to tell \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a day when my mother asked me to take all his clothes and shoes to a\u00a0 charity shop. So that\u2019s what I did. But there was this handsome tweed jacket \u2013 a DAKS one, I think \u2013 which I decided to keep. It was the jacket he used to wear at the golf club. \u2026 I thought I could wear it myself.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when I came to try it on, I found a bulky parcel in the left-hand pocket. I pulled out whatever it was and there, to my utter astonishment, was this roll of Mark Roe press cuttings, all of them neatly cut out with my name and the date penned across the top. I never had the faintest idea that he was doing any of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sat down and I sobbed. It was one of those moments which will stay with me forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Family apart, Roe is mighty proud of his three European Tour victories. He loves it when people ask what he\u2019s won. \u201cWhenever it happens, I\u2019ll tell whoever it is that if anyone were to offer me a million pounds for my European Tour trophies, I\u2019d turn the offer down,\u201d he says. As for a question he gets asked on rather more of a regular basis, we all know what that is.<\/p>\n

Back in 2010, when Doug Sanders was over in St Andrews and was asked about the 3-footer he had missed on the 72nd green to win the 1970 Open, which he eventually lost to Jack Nicklaus in a playoff, his well-honed and humorous reply was that he was over the worst of it. \u201cNowadays,\u201d he said, \u201cI only think about it every five minutes.\u201d For Roe, it\u2019s not so very different.<\/p>\n

Like Sanders, he has a riposte at the ready. If, say, he is playing in a pro-am, he will go straight from introducing himself to his playing companions to a cheerful,\u00a0 \u201cWhatever you do, don\u2019t put me in charge of the scorecard!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2025 Global Golf Post LLC<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A dejected Mark Roe of England addresses the media after being disqualified from the 2003 Open Championship. Andrew…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,121730,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-303354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-mark-roe","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}