Blandy’s life Lessons: Defending Sr. PGA champ talks golf, career and inspiration from brother

Richard Bland just spent a grueling week competing at the PGA Championship, where he made the cut at Quail Hollow and finished tied for 37th. This week, he’s defending his Senior PGA Championship title. Then it’s back home in England for a few days, followed by a quick weekend trip to Oakmont to prep for next month’s U.S. Open. Followed immediately by LIV Golf Virginia presented by Maaden. Then the U.S. Open the second week of June.

Then finally, a week to rest. Or maybe not, considering he and his wife are in the process of moving into their new house. It’s their forever home, about 15 minutes from their current residence in Surrey in southeast England.

“A little quieter,” Bland said of his new neighborhood. “I’m getting old now, so I can’t handle the hustle and bustle.”

He’s 52 years old and the schedule is grueling but he’s having the time of his life. Winning two senior major championships last summer provided exemptions into the two regular majors. And while he won’t defend the U.S. Senior Open title – it conflicts with his LIV Golf commitment that he wants to honor – this week’s Senior PGA gives him a chance to add to his growing legacy as the rare professional golfer who’s playing his best late in his career.

Becoming the oldest first-time winner on the European Tour when he won the 2021 British Masters at age 48 – in his 478th career start – certainly launched that fame. But Bland has proven it wasn’t just a fleeting moment. It wasn’t a matter of catching lightning in a bottle that week.

Less than a year later, he moved inside the top 50 of the world rankings. Then in the summer of 2022, he joined LIV Golf as an original member and has maintained his status by finishing in the top 24 Lock Zone in each of the first three seasons as Cleeks GC’s most consistent performer. He’s on pace for another Lock Zone result again this season, currently sitting 17th in points at the halfway mark of the 14-event schedule.

Oh, and he’s won the only two senior starts of his career and will enter this week’s defense at Congressional as one of the favorites.

Bland recently spoke to a collection of golf writers about his inspiring journey and why he’s been able to remain so competitive the last few years:

“To win your first event at 48 years old is not the conventional way, I guess,” he said. “But I guess I've never done anything conventional.

“The British Masters was a huge springboard for me, a huge confidence boost, self-belief boost going forward. The one thing I'm most proud of is that after that first win, I didn't kind of just sit back and go, right, I've kind of fulfilled a dream of winning on the DP World, and at that age just to kind of drift away – which is very, very easy to do at that age. My standard stayed very high, and I was able to crack the top 50 in the world at 49 years old.

“Then obviously when LIV came along, it was an unbelievable opportunity for me, and I still say it's made me a better player playing against the caliber of players you're playing week in, week out.

“I have to play my best golf to have a chance of competing against Brooks [Koepka] and Jon Rahm and Bryson [DeChambeau] and those guys. I can't just sort of amble around and, OK, I've played OK today and expect to beat them. That's not going to happen. So, it forces me to raise my game.

“I think that was a huge contributing factor to me winning the two majors last year. Because of the standard of golf that I'm playing against, some of the best players in the world, it just elevates my game, and I think that showed in the two majors.

“Obviously I still have to play well. I can't just amble around in the Senior PGA and expect to compete. I've got to bring my best stuff just to have a chance. But when you're in that mindset the whole time, it just helps. Hopefully it'll be good enough again.”

Asked how he would explain his success so late in his career, Bland focused on a single word.

“A lot of perseverance. Just never give up. If you feel like you're on the right road, just believe in it, stick to it, and if you work hard enough, good things will come, whether it's sooner or it's later.

“I know that day, I guess the golfing gods were looking down on me at the Belfry and go, ‘You know what, this guy has served his time; let's let him certainly have one,’ and I'm thankful for that.

“But I always believed that I could do it. Certainly, I remember that day at the Belfry on that Sunday that, OK, I just never really got too far ahead of myself; I can't control anything more than the very next shot that I'm hitting. I know it's very cliche. We all talk about it.

“But that's all it was. It was just all about the very next shot. It wasn't about, oh, you've got this hole coming up or you've got this to deal with in a half-hour's time. I can't control that. I can only control that when I'm there.

“Whenever I'm in contention now, I kind of double down on that, those thought processes. In every round, you can only control the very next thing you're about to do, and whatever that is, you then have to deal with it and go and do exactly the same again, and hopefully at the end of the day you sign for a good score.

“But yeah, I would just put it down to a lot of perseverance.”

Certainly, there’s the physical aspects of competing against younger players who don’t have the same amount of wear-and-tear on their bodies. At LIV Golf, Bland is more than 30 years older that the league’s youngest player, 21-year-old Caleb Surratt.

There’s no big secret to maintaining good health, he said. It’s just being smart.

“At my age, I have to listen to what my body is telling me a lot,” Bland explained.

“If I'm feeling not that great in my body, then maybe I'll only go work on my short game and my putting, that kind of stuff. There's still stuff I can do. But as regards my long game, obviously my body needs to be feeling good to be able to do that. It's very, very easy to slip into some bad habits, some bad swing thoughts if your body is not feeling how it should when you're hitting golf balls.

“There's stuff I can still do. There will be plenty of mobility work to do, gym work, that kind of stuff, trying to get my body back to where I want it to be as quick as I can so I can prepare the best I can.

“That's kind of the way the game is now. Doing mobility work, stretching, that kind of stuff, that's working on your game now. I think probably 20 years ago that wasn't the case. Nobody kind of considered working in the gym as actually that's working on your golf game. But because everybody does it now, that's how it seems.

“Even if you're not actually hitting golf balls, you can still work on your game, and that's what I'll be doing.”

And then, of course, there’s the mental side. Bland is grateful to have made golf his profession, and he doesn’t take his success for granted. Asked to provide advice to other grinders as well as amateurs, he replied:

“Just enjoy the game. Just enjoy it. If you can stay fairly fit and mobile, that's always going to help you because as we get older, your body slows down, aches and pains. Of course, we all get that. But if you can kind of look after yourself – but more than anything, just enjoy the game.

“The guys that go work 9 to 5, whatever work they're in, they look forward to their golf at the weekends or whenever it is they go play. If you can't put the time into working on your game, you can't expect a huge amount out of it. It would be the same in any job. If you didn't do your research on an article that you're going to write, probably the article is not going to be that great because you might get your facts wrong or you might misquote something or whatever.

“It's the same with us. If we're not prepared when we stand on that first tee … I've always been a firm believer, you kind of don't deserve to play well. You might play well, but you've got to earn it. It's the old-fashioned way. You've got to go out and earn it.

“But for the amateurs, just try and enjoy the game as much as you can. Of course, it's a hugely frustrating game no matter what level you play at, but if you can enjoy it the best you can, more than likely your scores will be better than if you don't enjoy it and you get uptight over it or whatever.

“So, the more you can enjoy it, I think the better you'll be.”

A year ago when Bland won the Senior PGA at Harbor Shores in Michigan, he dedicated the win to his brother Heath, who is battling cancer. Heath now possesses the replica trophy at their sister’s house in Southampton, England.

“That's probably one of the only times I played a golf tournament where I had kind of an ulterior motive to win,” he said. “Obviously he'd just been diagnosed with cancer for the second time, and I only found out about three, four days, I think, before I was due to leave. Yeah, I wasn't sure whether I was even going to go.

“But I'm thankful that I did. The first time that we saw each other was very emotional. Unfortunately, I couldn't give him the replica at that point. It was probably another maybe six, seven weeks before I got that. But as soon as I had it, he came up to the house and got it. He lives with my sister as he's been going through his treatment and what-have-you, so it's in her house. It sits proudly there. It always will.

“Very, very special to be able to do that and dedicate that win to him. But as I said, when we won the U.S. Open – the PGA was for him, but the Open was for me. He wasn't going to get his hands on that one. That was for me.

“I know he's supported me the whole way, which means a huge amount, and being able to do something like that for him, yeah, I'm sure helped him through his battle. Fortunately, he's pretty much come out the other side of it now, which is huge, but there's still road ahead of him. The stuff that he has to go through every day – he'll never go to the toilet ever again, that kind of thing. He has two stoma bags. So to see him having to wrestle with those every day when he sits down and he goes to sleep and he has to connect himself to another one, that's his life now.

“But he never got down about it. He's never complained about it. That's hugely inspiring. No matter how bad life you think gets because of your golf, as we all say, there's a lot of people a lot worse off than what I am, and it gives you a lot of perspective.

“Sometimes you lose sight of that on the golf course, but the quicker I can come back to that kind of perspective, usually the better I am on a golf course. He's never that far away from my thoughts. Even though, like we say, he seems to be getting healthier, getting stronger, he's back working a little bit, every day is a battle for him, and he squares up to that battle.

“Every day he's won it, so it's something he should be proud of, and we're all proud of him. Hopefully I can do it again.”