Laird Shepherd interview: Amateur on how Tesco call centre stint helped drive Masters dream

Matt Verri6 April 2022

Whatever start Laird Shepherd gets off to on Thursday at the Masters, he’s unlikely to be fazed.

The 24-year-old followed in the footsteps of Sergio Garcia and Jose Maria Olazabal last summer when he won the British Amateur Championship and in doing so earned a place at The Open, the Masters and the US Open.

Those two Spaniards donned their Green Jackets at the Champions Dinner this week but even they would have been proud of the astonishing nature of Shepherd’s triumph at Nairn, made all the more improbable by what came before.

Faced with a string of injury problems and long spells away from the course, he was 846th in the amateur rankings and considering his future ahead of the championship.

“I was at a bit of a cross roads,” Shepherd says. “The week before I had been speaking to my Dad about potentially going back to university.

“Since 2017, I had spent time struggling with injuries. I had almost the whole of 2019 off. Then Covid hits and it felt like I’d lost out on four years of development. You’re suddenly 23-years-old and you were 19 what felt like a few weeks ago.

“You don’t want to be wasting years on something that ends up not working, but then I’d put a lot of my life into pursuing golf. It would be nice if that had some reward.”

Spending lockdown listening to customers complaining about their grocery deliveries certainly focused the mind.

“I got a job in a call centre for Tesco, trying to earn some money,” Shepherd says.

“That experience was a really good one - it made me realise that I didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life.”

Any struggles were not on display last summer though as Shepherd played his way through the draw and, five days and seven rounds later, into the 36-hole matchplay final against Monty Scowsill.

Was he able to stop himself dreaming of the Major rewards on offer?

Getty Images

“It was on my mind, it’s about not giving it too much energy or you’re going to start freaking out,” Shepherd says.

His start to the final would have helped bring an abrupt end to those thoughts. He found himself eight down after 17 holes, with a double bogey from Scowsill that gifted Shepherd the final hole of the morning doing little to make lunch taste any better.

“I was only thinking about how long my car journey that night was going to be,” Shepherd admits.

“It was just about pride and damage limitation for me.”

By the time the players reached the turn in the afternoon, Shepherd was still four down and that remained the deficit as he stood on the 15th tee.

A birdie gave him that hole though and he won the three that followed, too, to take the final to an unlikely play-off. His focus was no longer on the journey home.

“I went back to having something to lose,” Shepherd says. “There’s pressure on having come from so far back, you don’t want to then not finish the job.

“Not many golfers are going to have a situation where you’re in a play-off to be in three majors. Having a five foot putt to keep that dream alive, I was playing to survive.”

Two extra holes is what it took for Shepherd to seal the extraordinary comeback and earn his place at the 149th Open, his first professional tournament, less than a month later.

He missed the cut by a couple of shots at Royal St George’s, but the experience of mixing it with the world’s best is one he hopes will stand him in good stead at the Masters.

Getty Images

A visit to Augusta National in January gave Shepherd the chance to get any sightseeing out of his system.

“I think that was a good thing, there’s an aura about the place and it takes a day or two to settle into being there,” Shepherd says.

“It’s like Disneyland - it’s so pristine and everything has an almost mystical feeling.

“You’ve watched so much golf being played there on TV, every single hole I can remember certain shots from certain years.”

Shepherd has a practice round with Webb Simpson pencilled in but he won’t be too selective when it comes to who he gets tips from.

“The good thing is whoever you end playing with, they’re going to be pretty decent at golf!” Shepherd laughs.

“Anyone I get the privilege to play with, it will be great to try and pick their brains.”

Of the 21 players to win the British Amateur this century, just two have made the cut in their Masters appearance the following year.

Adding his name to that short list would be a remarkable achievement but Shepherd won’t be spending too much time looking at the leaderboard, and whatever happens on the course, he will have plenty of familiar faces waiting to congratulate him off it.

“I have family and a few friends coming over for the week, that will be one of the best parts about it,” he says. “It will feel like Christmas having everyone in the same place.

“You’re told by everyone to just have fun and enjoy it. There’s a high chance it might be the last Masters I ever play.

“At the same time, I want to do the best I can. I won’t enjoy it as much if I don’t play well.

“I’ll judge myself on my score, me against the golf course, rather than how I stack up against anyone else.”

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in