You search online for a video of Louis Oosthuizen swinging a golf club and inevitably get sucked in. After watching mesmerised for five minutes or more, you ponder one of golf’s great conundrums – how could so simple, unhurried and just plain calm a swing propel the ball quite so far? Harry Vardon may have been the first to possess such elegant power. Bobby Jones had it. Sam Snead possibly had more of it (whatever “it” is) than anyone. And then came players such as Tom Weiskopf, Tom Purtzer, Payne Stewart, Fred Couples, Steve Elkington and Ernie Els.
Oosthuizen is not a big man by any means. His PGA and DP World Tour profiles put him at 5ft 10in and 12.9st (80kg). He does not appear to exert much effort and yet he has averaged 300 yards or thereabouts off the tee every year since first playing a full schedule on the European Tour in 2004.