Michael aims to Block out negativity

The US PGA Championship used to be known as Glory’s Last Shot, a rather ungrammatical reference to being the final major of the year.

But while the new tag of ‘This is major’ is not much of an improvement, the tournament itself does throw up some interesting stories.

For example, who would have thought Colin Montgomerie, who has not played in the event since 2010 and made the cut just twice in his last nine appearances, would qualify by winning the Senior PGA Championship?

Or that one of his playing partners in the first two rounds at Valhalla would turn out to be one of his biggest fans?

Bizarrely that is the case this week, with Montgomerie paired with 38-year-old American Michael Block, a PGA professional who won the National PGA Championship to qualify and usually spends his time giving lessons as the head pro at Arroyo Trabuco Golf Club in California.

“I grew up watching the Golf Channel every morning about 5am, I’m an early bird,” Block explained. “Right before I go to work and before I would go to school, I would watch the European Tour on the Golf Channel.

“Colin was always just dominating. I mean, I must have watched Colin play hundreds of rounds of golf on TV and to now be teeing it up with him is pretty surreal, and I’m also very honoured to be playing with a former PGA champion, Shaun Micheel.

“Just being around the people I watch on TV and the people I idolise and the people I’ve been seeing forever, such as Colin Montgomerie.... the guy has been in my life my whole life, yet he doesn’t know it and I’ve looked up to him. I’ll make sure I don’t tell him that when I play with him!”

Block, who qualified for the US Open at Oakmont in 2007, but missed the halfway cut, has also been impressed by what he has seen from the game’s hottest player at the moment, world number one and Open champion Rory McIlroy.

“I was just watching Rory hitting some of the most unbelievable bunker shots,” he added.

“I’ll tell you what, that guy is on fire. I don’t spin the ball like Rory when he hits the green. It’s pretty amazing.”

Block’s last round on the PGA Tour was an 86 in the Farmers Insurance Open earlier this year, but he is taking a very positive mindset into this week.

“In about 2006 I was a very frustrated golfer, as many are,” he explained. “I would get very frustrated on the golf course and I didn’t want to demonstrate this to my boys whatsoever. I wanted to be a good role model to my children so I actually started writing happy faces on my golf ball just to try to get me in a good mood, even when I did not execute a shot.

“The happy faces were kind of weird, so I got off that pretty quickly and I went straight to question marks. One of my main things over the golf ball is full commitment and the only way you’re going to have full commitment is if you have full confidence in yourself in executing the shot.

“The way I do that mentally is thinking ‘why not, why can’t I execute this shot perfectly, why can’t I make this shot, why can’t I make the cut in a Tour event and why can’t I compete in a major championship’?

“Now I take that mentality into every event by having the words ‘Why not?’ imprinted on all my golf balls.”