Enlarge image Martin Kaymer blasts a drive on the first day of the 2011 US Open in Bethesda. (© picture-alliance / dpa) About golf, the 19th century player Harry Vardon once said that “to play well you must feel tranquil and at peace.” This makes sense in a game where gusto and bombast are met with disapproval, at best, and at worst with bemusement. And this makes sense in a game whose objective is to do less than your opponents on a course of six to seven miles where success is measured out in inches.

This game is, however, one for Germany's Martin Kaymer, a cool customer on the course, the former world's number one-ranked player and, at 26, owner of nine victories and a major championship. His unaffected distance from anxiety will be tested this week at the US Open being held at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland. In the pre-championship press conference, where the nerves around a tournament of this magnitude start getting riled up, Kaymer stressed patience during majors. A stellar round is great, “but it's more about, you know, playing your way along, waiting for your chance.” Because, “it's nothing that you can push or try to force. It's just a waiting thing.”

Arriving at an event like the US Open is a bit like walking into a theater while the actors are getting dressed onstage. Everyone is figuring things out, most are a bit on edge and all of this is open to see. The vibe around Bethesda is tense, fetid, confined. On the one side there are the impeccably dressed players, their caddies, assistants, hangers-on; on another the hundreds of workers trying to pull this thing off; and finally there are the spectators. Only the latter have an easy part in this anxiety play. And this will heighten as the tournament begins on Thursday. By the time Sunday rolls around, and there are only a few players left in contention with only a few holes to go, each man will be deserted on an island of his own nerves.

An athletic child, Martin grew up in Düsseldorf, Germany. He played many sports, including basketball and soccer, but decided to focus on golf, whose popularity in Germany, while rising, was still not comparable to what other friends were playing. Indeed, where soccer is king, even newly crowned NBA champion Dirk Nowitzki does not hog attention in Germany. And Martin doesn't even believe he would get the recognition of Dirk: “I believe that, yeah, he's more popular than me,” he said on Monday. “People would know his name better than my name, you know. If you asked a hundred people in the street who is Dirk Nowitzki and who is Martin Kaymer, they would know him better than me. But I'm working on it.”

Enlarge image (© picture-alliance / dpa) But Martin isn't jealous. Although he has never met his countryman, he said that “that would be one of my goals to next year, or maybe even this year.” Still, he continued, “it's a little bit unfortunate that he doesn't get the recognition in Germany that he deserves.”

Martin feels, however, that interest in golf in Germany is on the rise, and he is trying to spur that growth. His win at the PGA Championship last year helped, he said, “... and now I'm trying to bring golf and make golf a little bit more like bigger in Germany to bring it closer to the German public and to introduce the German public more to golf.”

In this, Martin again sees parallels with his basketball-playing countryman. “And for me he's [Nowitzki] a big role model. That's the way I am, as well, a little bit. I'm not very outgoing, so I can compare myself a little bit to him.”

With one major, the PGA Championship, in his bag and the US Open approaching, there is one non-major win that sticks out a bit more than others. On June 22, 2008 he won the BMW International Open in Munich with a round of 15 under par. Besides being the only German to ever win this tournament, Kaymer's mother was very sick at the time. If you watch his acceptance of the trophy on YouTube, you will see a sea of German flags cheering on their victorious countryman; and you will also see a clearly tearful Kaymer accepting the trophy.

Enlarge image The huge practice green at Congressional Country Club with a view to the back side of the famous clubhouse. (© picture alliance / landov) She died two weeks later. Martin said in a Golf Magazine interview this year that following his mother's death he was able to play “freer,” unfastened from undue frustration on the golf course and with a bit of a new mentality.

That his new, “freer” attitude on the golf course was determinant in his win at the PGA Championship in 2010 is a likely oversimplification. But in a major championship – without the steadying hand of experience on such a stage – Kaymer had to play three playoff holes against American Bubba Watson to win. He says he was cool as a fan.

The end of the Harry Vardon quote above goes so: “I have never been troubled by nerves in golf because I felt I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.” It is too early to know whether Martin Kaymer is so untroubled as Vardon was, but as another test approaches the 26-year-old German looks like the steely personage that may just take golf home with him.