EVERY court needs a jester, every team a man around whom they can relax and be entertained. Remember the role of the Fool in King Lear? Thomas Levet is the man who fulfils that role in the Europe team. At times of stress or high humour, Levet can be relied upon to do a turn. He might pull out a putter, put a ball on the head and then balance the club on his chin, he might do card tricks.
While he is doing either, he might talk to his audience in the English, French, German or Spanish that he speaks fluently, the Italian of which he has a good command, his schoolboy Latin and the Swedish he knows a smattering of. Or it might be in Japanese. He is learning that, too.
A coincidence unites the Europe captain with this engaging rookie. Soon after Bernhard Langer won the Masters in 1985, he flew to France to give a clinic and play an exhibition round. Langer probably did not pay any attention to the young man who, as France’s leading amateur golfer, was given the honour of carrying his bag, but Levet has not forgotten it. He talks about it to this day.
It has been noticeable here in Detroit how worldly wise the new members of the Europe team are. In the cases of Paul Casey and Luke Donald, it is because they left homes in England to attend university in the United States.
In the case of Levet, who was 36 this month, it is because he comes from a sophisticated family who have a strong bent towards medicine and sport. His father is a doctor in Paris, his mother a schoolteacher. His father-in-law, his sister-in-law and his brother-in law were or are doctors. “Oh yes, and I have an uncle that is an anaesthetist,” Levet said, ticking them off on the fingers of one hand.
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The sport bloodlines in his family are strong, too. His father was a hockey and tennis player, his mother played volleyball, one grandfather was a professional cyclist. Levet’s first loves were tennis and hockey until weak knees forced him to concentrate on golf, at which he became France’s leading amateur and then his country’s leading professional.
A good driver and solid iron player, Levet suffers from a weakness on the greens. In his time he has missed a putt of six inches. Now he putts with his left hand below his right. “When I putt well, I win,” he said, citing his victory at Loch Lomond on the eve of the Open, when he took only 25 putts in his final round. “If my putting was at the same level as my long game, then I’d be ‘King of the Mountain’ .”
Levet said yesterday that the anti-French feeling directed at him at the start of the Iraq war had long gone. At this event, he said, he was buoyed by the support of many French Canadians who had come to cheer him on. He looked relaxed and ready and, for a moment, anything but the court jester.