“I’ve always been a searcher rather than an acceptor,” said golfer Wayne Westner.
His relentless pursuit of meaning and purpose and perfection in life led him to study Zen Buddhism and quasi-religious movements such as Scientology, the science of the mind, the inner game and new-age ideologies before aligning himself with the born-again Christian movement.
Westner also loved the bush and would often go off by himself and live rough for up to two weeks at a time.
He said communing with nature and living off the land wherever and whenever possible was just another way of seeking answers.
“Searcher rather than acceptor”. Those seemingly prophetic words were said way back in 1990, and did Westner ever find peace? Probably not.
And that’s possibly why the 55-year-old shot himself on Wednesday in front of his wife, Alison, in Pennington on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast following a domestic dispute.
He was at times a troubled man and his search for harmony in the relationship obviously wasn’t working. In desperation he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. It was such a tragic end to a man who was so talented at golf, a game in which he strove for perfection, sometimes to his detriment.
He was as close as anyone could be to a “natural”, and perhaps, according to some of his fellow professionals, he would have been even more successful had he not become over-analytical about his swing and just “simply hit the ball”.
Be that as it may, in a stellar career he did win 14 professional tournaments, including two South African Opens at the Durban Country Club, a course he adored, the World Cup of Golf alongside Ernie Els, and the lucrative Dubai Desert Classic when he outgunned Retief Goosen and a charging Seve Ballesteros.
The latter was golf’s ultimate swashbuckler and there was something of Seve in Westner’s own go-for-broke style of play.
Westner was also immensely powerful. In the early 1990s when grip-it-and-rip-it John Daly led the driving distance stats on the US PGA Tour, Westner was No 1 in Europe. In fact, in 1992 his average drive was longer than Daly’s.
It was this ability to hit the ball prodigious distances that allowed him to use a one-iron off the tee instead of a driver en route to winning the 1988 SA Open at Durban Country Club. This safety tactic increased his chances of staying out of the thick coastal bush lining the fairways.
In the third round, in which he carded a sensational seven-under-par 65, he used a one-iron on 13 of the 14 driving holes. The only time he used a wooden club, a No 3, was at the 306m 13th, where he promptly drove the green and two-putted for birdie.
“I’m dying to win,” he said and he did just that the next day, closing with a 71 for a 13-under-par 275 aggregate.
Westner loved KwaZulu-Natal, which might explain why he played much of his best golf in the province.
Three years down the line he again emerged victorious at the country club, this time with a 16-under-par total of 272, which broke the great Gary Player’s record score for a win at the club set 22 years earlier. In an explosive finish to his final round, Westner birdied the last four holes for a 68 to prevail by two over Tony Johnstone and England’s Mark James.
Westner would go on to capture a third big title at Durban Country Club, the 1996 FNB Players Championship which formed part of the European Tour. This time his par-busting heroics were even more impressive, as he finished on 18-under 270.
His SA Open triumphs loom large when detailing his career, but so was the 1996 World Cup victory alongside Els at Erinvale in the Cape.
Remarkably, the two golfing gladiators posted identical scores of 68, 72 and 65 over the first three rounds. Els then closed with a 67 for 272 and Westner a 70 for 275. They finished first and second in the individual stakes, and their 29-under-par 547 aggregate was a whopping 18 shots better than the second-placed US team of Major winners Tom Lehman and Steve Jones.
In 1998, during the pro-am ahead of the Madeira Island Open, Westner tore ankle ligaments after falling two metres when a railway sleeper crumbled under him. He played only once more that season and was never the same.
Always fascinated by the mechanics of the golf swing, and the mental side of the game, he turned to coaching and for nine years ran the Wayne Westner Golf Academy in Ireland. He then returned to South Africa and up until his death was heading a similar golf school on the South Coast, after inventing a revolutionary training machine for golfers which he and his son were planning to promote in the US.
Meanwhile, tributes to Westner, who was popular with his fellow professionals, have been pouring in on social media.
“Sad day our friend Wayne Westner passed today. Great memories; thank you my friend,” tweeted Els. Joburg-born English professional and US Open winner Justin Rose tweeted: “So sad. A true gentleman of the game.”