Former Nigeria international on starting in slippers, hoping to inspire African golfers and that attempt to join QPR
t’s unbelievable,” says Peter Odemwingie. “I never thought I could get so obsessed with this game.” On a cloudy Tuesday afternoon in the affluent northern suburbs of Birmingham, the former West Brom, Stoke and Nigeria striker has just ripped a drive well beyond 300 yards down the third fairway at Sutton Coldfield golf club.
There is no shame in losing to Odemwingie given that he qualified as a PGA professional at the end of June, even if I have been playing for nearly 20 years longer. Remarkably, he had never picked up a golf club until a pre-season tour in the United States with West Brom in 2012, when curiosity finally got the better of him.
Odemwingie became a regular at Aston Wood, where he would hit balls on the driving range until it closed at 9pm “even when it was snowing”. But it was after his retirement in 2018 that he started to think about golf as a potential career. Odemwingie initially did some media work and considered becoming an agent before he realised “it wasn’t my calling – I was often on the phone and even my kids were noticing it”.
“I’m pretty fit and can still swing as hard as some of the younger players,” he says. “I still make some high numbers but there are times when I can make three or four birdies in a row. If I keep working hard on my swing and course management then you never know what can happen. But you need to be consistent.”
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