BERNARD LANGER
MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Early life

I was born in Anhausen, near Augsburg in Southern Germany, on 27 August 1957, the third child in the Langer household. How the Langer family came to set up home in Anhausen is something of a story in itself.
My father's family had farmed an area of Sudetenland, a German-speaking region later to become part of Czechoslovakia, for a hundred years or so. My father, Erwin, would in all probability have spent his life on the family farm but for the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1938 he was conscripted to the German army.
In 1945 he was captured and held in a prisoner-of-war camp. When a group of prisoners were told that they were to be sent back to Czechoslovakia, now under Russian control, my father was not excited by the prospect. How could he be sure that the destination would be Sudetenland rather than Moscow or even Siberia?
They were put on a train. As the train slowed down on a hill just on the German side of the Czech border, my father and a number of other prisoners decided to jump off and make a run for it. They made good their escape. During the next few months Erwin Langer scraped together a living by working on farms in the area.
In April 1946 he wrote a letter to his parents, telling them what had happened to him and where he was. A few weeks later he got a reply, saying that things were hard with them and the Russians were taking over their farm with no compensation. They advised Erwin to stay in Germany. A few months later he heard from his parents that they had moved to a village called Anhausen. In September 1946 Erwin rejoined his parents.
Erwin Langer became a bricklayer and found work building houses in the area. The following year he met a local girl, Walburga or Wally. In 1949 they were married, and after a few years they started a family. Their first-born was also named Erwin. Then two years later my sister Maria came along and finally, three years later, I was born.
My childhood was a happy one. I had wonderful parents and a happy home, but it was not easy for my parents. Money was always in short supply. We did not have a family car. I never received any pocket money and had to wear my brother's hand-me-downs.
My father worked hard to support the family and my mother also did odd jobs to supplement the family income. I didn't lack any material things at the time and was just happy playing with friends and being out in the natural world. Ironically it was the lack of money at home that set me on the road to a career in golf.
My father never made much of his wartime experience and only told the story when asked. He clearly had extraordinary strength of character and determination. I think I have inherited some of those characteristics, which stood me in good stead when the odds against me making it in golf seemed high.
I was very fortunate to grow up in a religious family. My parents believed in God and I went to church every day, not just Sunday. I was an altar boy at seven years old and that really laid the foundation for my Christian belief later on. All my life I have believed in God.
I followed the rules and was very religious but I didn't realise my need for a personal relationship with God. By religious, I mean that I tried to keep all the rules, such as not eating meat on Fridays, going to church as often as possible and going to confession. All of these things are good but, according to the Bible, they will not get you into heaven.
My parents managed to finance the basics for the family but there were very few luxuries. As they could not afford to give us pocket money, we had to earn it. My brother and sister, Erwin and Maria, had discovered that there was money to be made at the local golf club, caddying for the members.
At the age of eight and a half, I followed Erwin to the Augsburg Golf Club, five miles away in the village of Burgwalden. I received lengthy and detailed instructed from my older brother on how to caddie - what to do, what not to do. Erwin had assured the club that I was well versed in the game of golf and the duties of a caddie. The procedure was then that you waited at the caddie shed until a member came along wanting a caddie. That day I experienced one of those lucky breaks that sometimes happen through just being in the right place at the right time.

The first person to ask for a caddie was Manfred Seidel who, I was to discover, was the club champion, with a handicap of three. He was very patient with me, as I am sure I did a lot wrong on that first day. Erwin's assurances that I had a thorough knowledge of golf could hardly have been further from the truth! Manfred was sufficiently satisfied with my performance to ask me to caddie for him again and so my association with the game of golf started. The 2.50 DM that he gave me at the end of the round probably meant more to me than any winner's cheque I have received since.
While Erwin saw caddying as just a way of making money, I was quite soon hooked on the game of golf. I watched the members closely and tried to learn everything I could about the game. School finished at noon and, as soon as I was free, I was off to the golf club, munching an apple and a sandwich as I cycled there. At weekends I would spend almost the whole day at the golf club.
In the summer holidays I would sometimes camp close to the course to avoid the five-mile cycle ride there and back. I became a popular caddie and gained a reputation for always being able to find my employer's ball, earning the nickname of 'Eagle Eyes'. As I got older I would sometimes double my income by carrying one player's bag while pulling a trolley for another, or pulling one trolley and pushing another.
There were eight boys from our town who caddied on a regular basis. Out of those eight, three became golf professionals.
I enjoyed having a little money to spend on myself, and saving the rest. At the same time, as I watched players on the course, my desire to try playing golf for myself was growing. As a caddie I was allowed to use the driving range, provided I did not inconvenience the members. The caddies had a collection of odd clubs, hand-me-downs from members. I spent hours on the practice ground, seeing what I could do myself.
The kids at school laughed at me when I told them I was going to be a golfer, because golf was not 'cool'. They had never heard of anybody going straight from school into professional golf and could not relate to me, a bricklayer's son, going into what was, at that time in Germany - and still is to a large extent - a rich man's game.
One of the club members gave us four old clubs, which all the caddies shared. There was a two wood, a three iron, a seven iron and a putter with a bent shaft. Maybe that's where all my putting problems came from!
As the clubs available did not include anything more lofted than a seven iron, I had to improvise. Learning to chip and pitch and play bunker shots with a seven iron may seem to have little relevance to playing tournament golf with a customised set of clubs. However, I am convinced that I have reaped great benefit throughout my career from the experience. Learning the art of shot-making and getting the ball close to the hole under difficult circumstances were useful skills that have stood me in good stead throughout my career.
There was a procedure for caddies to play on the course. You had to be able to play to a certain standard and be assessed by the professional. Three months after I had set foot on the golf course for the first time, and still a month short of my ninth birthday, I plucked up the courage to ask the pro, Sooky Maharaj - from Trinidad - to assess me. He told me to meet him at the practice ground early next morning. After I had hit about ten balls, he said I looked as if I could play on the course without doing it too much damage.
The first competition I ever played in was the annual caddies' championship. I did well without ever winning it, finishing in the top three several times. When I was fourteen I thought I had a great chance to win it and shot a seventy-three, only to be beaten into second place by a shot.
That I was able to go round in seventy-three showed how I had progressed during my six years at the club. I had never had a lesson during that time and, in fact, my only learning aid was an eight-frame sequence of Jack Nicklaus's swing, a copy of which had been stuck up in the caddie shed. I tried to memorise this sequence and put it into practice on the range and the course. However, I am not sure that Jack would have recognised his swing in the scrawny teenager!
After four years of caddying, I had saved enough money for my first set of golf clubs, which were Kroydons - and boy, was I proud of them! They got polished and taken care of as if they were made of gold and diamonds.
I went to our local school where four grades were all in one room. After fifth grade, my parents decided to put me in a high school where I had to study all day so that I would have the same opportunity as my brother and sister. But I was so captivated by golf that I intentionally failed English and mathematics so I would be sent back to the school in our town. This meant I could continue going to the golf course every afternoon. Even then I had my priorities right!
At the age of fourteen, the end of my school life was in sight and I had to decide what I was going to do with my life. I was obsessed with golf and I wanted to be able to continue to play. However, as golf was at that time very much a game of the rich, if I found a normal job in Anhausen, there was no chance of my being able to afford membership of the club. It seemed that the only way I could remain in golf was if I could make golf my job.
In these days of dedicated golf channels and TV coverage of so many tournaments, it may be hard for the reader to understand how little I knew about the game in the late 1960s. There was no golf on television. Very occasionally I found a golf magazine, in English. I had heard of Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer but scarcely anyone else.
When I told my parents I wanted to follow golf as my career, they thought I was mad and, not surprisingly, wanted me to have a proper job. My brother had gone to work as a tax advisor, my sister as a hotel receptionist. When I said I wanted to be a golf professional, my parents were against it. They thought I would make very little money and maybe, after two or three years, have no job at all. My father wanted me to get a decent job!

In my last summer as a caddie I earned enough to buy myself a new bike for 250 DM. That impressed my parents and perhaps encouraged them to let me consider golf as a career.
Another passion of my teenage years was football. I played for the Anhausen team and was a goal-scoring centre-forward. I began supporting Bayern Munich, an allegiance I have retained ever since. As I grew older, golf and football were increasingly competing for my time. Football matches were on Saturday or Sunday, which were also the days on which I could earn most as a caddie. When I had to choose, more and more frequently I chose golf.
As I approached the time when I was to leave school, the idea of a job related to golf still really appealed to me. I went to the institute of job placement to see how they could help me with my career in golf. Eagerly, I stepped up to the placement officer's desk.
'What do you want to do?' he asked.
'I want to be a golf professional,' I replied.
'I've never heard of that,' he said as he walked into the next room to see if he could find any documents on such a profession.
I think I sat in the room for twenty minutes before he came back. He had a ruffled look on his face. 'There's no such thing as a golf professional,' he said. 'I would strongly advise you to find something else to do.'

One of the Augsburg golf club members used to go to Munich for lessons from a professional called Heinz Fehring at the Strasslach Club. One day the member told me that Heinz Fehring was looking for an assistant.
I telephoned Heinz Fehring. He seemed quite positive on the telephone and invited me to come to see him. I persuaded my parents to come with me to meet Heinz and the club president. The interview went well and they offered me the job. More importantly, they impressed my parents. The club found me a room with a family who lived close to the golf club and my mother also noticed that there was a Catholic church near by. In the end my parents agreed that I could take the job and pursue my dream.
The contact I signed was for three and a half years and my monthly salary was 350 DM a month in the first year, 400 DM the second and 450 DM in the last year. I had lessons from Heinz and played with him, watching him closely. I was, effectively, an apprentice professional and would start by learning my trade. I was still one month short of my fifteenth birthday so I was young to be leaving home - I was a boy embarking on a man's world. There were many times in the early days when I felt homesick. However, my dream was to be a golf professional and I was determined to give it a go.
That was August 1972. It was hard at first to leave home and live on my own in a rented room, but generally I had a great time, working in the golf club during the day and playing a lot of golf.
At first a major part of my duties was serving in the club shop. I had to go to the business school one day a week to study aspects of business. It was part of the final assessment of the golf professional to undertake an examination in English so I had to fit in English lessons as well.
However, to the credit of Heinz and his senior assistants, I was always given time to play a few holes or at least to hit some balls. After six months I was allowed to start giving lessons myself - maybe fifteen lessons each week - and some playing lessons on the course.
When I started as a professional at the age of fifteen, I had never had a lesson. Heinz Fehring immediately detected a number of faults. My grip was too strong. I needed to show fewer knuckles. I also had to work on my leg action as I was swinging round myself.
Heinz Fehring was like a second father to me. He helped me a lot with my golf game but he also helped me with my life. Away from home for the first time, I had no experience of life and little knowledge of how to conduct myself socially. He helped me to settle in and to develop as a person. It was also Heinz who introduced me to Willi Hoffman, who has been my coach for twenty-six years.
While I was at Munich I often played matches for money, with the more wealthy, low-handicap members of the club. Before one such game, I hit some practice balls. The first swing shanked the ball. I put down a second ball, prepared to swing again and shanked that too. Incredibly, I shanked all fifty balls in the bucket. You can imagine the state I was in as I stepped on to the first tee! My first shot flew off the middle of my driver. I never looked back, went round in sixty-nine and won the money. Why did I suddenly shank and why did it disappear so quickly again? I wish I knew.
Never having been an amateur, I did not have an official handicap. I would think that the standard of my play when I started as a professional was about one or two handicap. My game benefited, not only from Heinz's tuition, but also from the opportunity to play regularly on a good course, often in competition with the low-handicap members.
As I approached the end of my apprenticeship and my seventeenth birthday, Heinz asked me a very interesting question - in which way did I want to progress in my golf career? Did I want to become a club professional or a tournament pro? Of course, I knew it was a risk and I could not tell if I would be good enough, but I said that I wanted to be a tournament professional. I wanted to earn my living by my performance on the course. Heinz gave me every encouragement and altered my duties to give me more time to practise.
Shortly afterwards I was asked to play for Munich in an inter-club competition. It was a competition between four clubs, each represented by a team of amateurs and professionals. I was up against twenty-five of the best German professionals. I was only sixteen, but I managed to beat the other professionals to win the first prize of 500 DM. This was my first experience of tournament golf, and I was excited by the fact that in two days I had earned considerably more than in a month as an assistant club pro. It was a further indication that this was the route I should go.
I had my Golden Goose, centre-shafted putter stolen that year. It had been given to me by a member of the club, and was stolen by another member. I knew who had it but could not prove it, so I never got it back.
When I put my ball down on the first tee in the first round of my first German National, I was so nervous that I could hardly swing. I played a terrible shot, slicing the ball into the trees. My playing partner was a very experienced German amateur and he came over, put his arm around me and told me to relax and to try to enjoy it. I chipped sideways on to the fairway and then took the eight iron and holed the ball! I am not sure who laughed more - me or my playing partner.

In 1975 the turning point came. In the German National Open at Cologne, I finished first equal with the World Cup international Gerhard Koenig and another bright youngster, twenty-year-old Manfred Kessler, and then won the play-off at the first sudden-death hole. I was the youngest-ever winner of that event.
Jan Brugelman, later to become president of the German Golf Federation, was watching that day. Heinz had told him that I was keen to try the European tour. Jan spoke to me about it, seemed interested and asked me to contact him again if I was going to play the tour.
I called him and he asked me to go and see him,. I did so and he offered me a deal. He would pay me a monthly sum of money and I would give him 50 per cent of my prize money. I was very grateful and very excited.
When I finished with my apprenticeship and received my diploma as a head professional, I decided to try my luck on the European tour. Until then, no German had ever had any kind of success on the tour, and I really did not know what to expect and what kind of competition I would be facing.