It’s tipping down, but those Green Jacket memories only come flooding back once I spot this dapper, purposeful, almost pixie-like figure marching towards me across the foyer of his La Quinta hotel.

Smart, neat, medium-height and medium-build, Mike Weir makes a point of blending into his surroundings. On this occasion, he’s visiting the world’s wettest desert for his annual tilt at the Bob Hope Classic—a five-round, pro-am tournament he won in 2003, less than three months prior to the highlight of his career (to date) as a PGA Tour pro.

It’s hard to believe that nearly seven years have elapsed since the playoff victory over Len Mattiace at Augusta National that lifted him into golf’s most exclusive inner sanctum—the one to which only major winners need apply.

And it’s equally hard to believe that Canada’s outstanding male sportsman of the past decade—the personification of clean-living, timeless, optimistic youth—will turn 40 in May. Remarkably, he shares his birthday—12 May 1970—with, another of the bedrocks of the Tour, Jim Furyk.

His smile is friendly and sincere, and his conversation open and refreshing. Then again, this sweet-swinging left-hander has much to talk about, not least about how he blossomed into a hardy perennial in the world rankings with 14 titles and ten top-10 finishes in major championships.

Mirroring his tendency never to waste shots out on the course, Weir is impressively succinct in summing up his career.

“I learned to play at Huron Oaks Golf Club on the south banks of Lake Huron. We moved across the street from the course [a few miles east of Sarnia, where he was born, to Brights Grove] when I was 13 and we took out a family membership. It was a three-hour drive from Niagara Falls but only one hour from Detroit. My Dad [Richard] was a chemist in the rubber industry while Mum [Rowie] stayed at home to look after me and my two older brothers [Jim and Craig]. Steve Bennett, the head pro at Huron Oaks, took me under his wing and is still a good friend.”

Bennett treasures his memories of Weir growing up. “I always knew he’d make it,” he said. “I knew he had it in him. I’ve never met anyone with his level of determination.” Indeed, Bennett was so confident he introduced the newly professional Weir as “Canada’s next great golfer” in 1992 during a fundraiser at Huron Oaks which yielded $10,000.

But Weir was confident in his own ability from a much earlier age. “The moment I realized I could do something in this game came when I was 13. Until then my best score had been 79 and I was desperate to beat it. Then I played in a junior tournament at Seaforth [Ontario] which at the time was a nine-hole course. First time round I shot 36, so I was getting nervous about setting a new personal best, but I needn’t have worried—I went round again in 34 for a 70. I was only an average player at the time, but I improved a lot as a teenager and I had a summer job at Huron Oaks cleaning clubs. I was off scratch at 15 and by then I was hooked. My first national victory was in the Canadian Juvenile [16 and under] Championship at Windermere G&CC near Edmonton.

“I won the Ontario Junior Championship in 1988 and the Ontario Amateur in 1990 and 1992. I never won the Canadian Amateur, but I was second in 1991 [at Royal Ottawa] and 1992 [at Riverside CC, Saint John, New Brunswick].”

Weir was named Western Athletic Conference Player of the Year and a Second Team All-American in 1992, the final year of his studies for a bachelor’s degree in recreation management at Brigham Young University. The Utah city of Provo is a long way from Canada, and he isn’t a Mormon, so the obvious question arises—why did you go there? “I was quite heavily recruited—three or four colleges were after me. The Brigham Young golf team played in a tough conference with a good schedule and Karl Tucker, the golf coach, was also a ski instructor. He made me feel at home the moment I got out there. Perhaps the key was that several older Canadian players—including Richard Zokol, Jim Nelford and Rick Gibson—had been there. Also, being a religious college there were not so many parties or distractions.” Sadly, Tucker, who built BYU’s golf program into a national power and sent dozens of players to the PGA Tour, including Johnny Miller, Bobby Clampett and Mike Reid, died just a few days before this interview at his home in Orem, Utah, aged 83.

Utah clearly struck a chord with Weir, not least because in his sophomore year he met his wife Bricia, a Mexican who grew up in Los Angeles. “We still live in Utah, in the foothills of the mountains. I love the outdoors—skiing, fly fishing and river rafting. And it’s a great place to bring up our two daughters [Elle, aged 12 and a keen soccer player, and Lili, nearly 10 and an ice skater].”

Draw a straight line from Los Angeles to Ontario and it goes through Utah, so the decision to live there had practical as well as sentimental reasons. But Bricia, a former tennis player, is no stranger to visits north of the Border. She was one of the keynote speakers—along with Bennett—when her husband was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame at Huron Oaks towards the end of last year.

“Tenacious, competitive and relentless in his pursuit to excel at golf,” she said. “One of the main reasons is, in his heart of hearts, nothing is more important to him than putting Canada on the golf map. If you ever want to push one of my husband’s buttons, tell him he’s not Canadian because he doesn’t live in Canada. He never forgets that he is Sarnia’s own, and Canada’s own, Mike Weir. And the town of Sarnia has always been number one in supporting him and believing in him. I’ve never seen anyone—with the possible exception of Tiger, maybe—carry the weight of one country on their shoulders.”

Weir certainly does bear the brunt of Canada’s golfing expectations and it surely won’t be long before he increases his tally of PGA Tour titles, currently standing at eight—the same as his late countryman George Knudson. But it took a long time before the good times started to roll.

“After turning pro [at the end of 1992], I’d play five or six tournaments each winter in Australia and the Canadian PGA Tour in the summer [he was rookie of the year in 1993]. I missed out on my PGA Tour card six times at the Qualifying School—I’d make it through the first stage but the second stage was always my nemesis. I knew how to score back then but I was still figuring out how to swing the club properly. I kept going out of determination and perseverance, I suppose.”

He eventually won his card for the 1998 season, but after finishing 131st on the money list it was back to school again. This time, though, he finished top of the class over the Weiskopf Private and Dunes courses at La Quinta, and the corner was turned for good. Not that he was worried, you understand.

“My goal was to somehow get on the PGA Tour. When it finally happened, that was a huge hurdle to get over after six years struggling, trying to make ends meet, living out of my car, in and out of different apartments, staying with friends. But it was pretty much set in my mind from an early age that I’d be a golfer. My back-up if golf didn’t work out was teaching—I love kids. Also I could have become general manager of Huron Oaks—it’s not just a golf course, it’s a recreation center with tennis and squash courts and a gymnasium [remember, his degree was in recreation management].”

Another corner was turned in 1996 when Weir was introduced to Mike Wilson, an instructor at the David Leadbetter academy in Palm Desert (20 minutes’ drive from where we’re sitting). Together, they mapped out a plan to improve his game and Wilson remains a key member of Team Weir to this day.

“I had a hiatus from Mike for a couple of years but I’m back with him now. I come down the week before the Classic for a fine tune with him. I’m not one of the shorter hitters—I’d say I’m mid-range, I can move it out there.

“Perhaps a dozen years ago, he got me to groove a drill into my pre-shot routine—taking the club halfway back along a defined plane before addressing the ball to make my full swing—and I’ve stuck with it ever since. The idea is to keep the clubface more open on the way back. Before, it tended to be a little shut at the top of my backswing.”

As methods go, Weir’s routine has stood the test of time and gathered a few disciples along the way. Of greater concern, though, was how to handle pressures and challenges that were, in the main, entirely new. “When I got out on Tour, Zokol was like a sounding board for me. In the same way, I can now help younger Canadian players like Graham Delaet and Chris Baryla who are starting to make their way. I hope they look to me if they have questions and are seeking advice. But ultimately this is a sport in which you have to find your own way. Hopefully the guys coming through now look to me as an example: Small town, small club, not the greatest climate for golf, but I made it. I hope it motivates them.”

Weir’s breakthrough victory on the PGA Tour came in the Air Canada Championship at Northview G&CC, Surrey, British Columbia in 1999. “It was huge and gave me the security of a two-year exemption. I remember holing my second shot at the 14th for an eagle and that gave me a two-shot cushion over Fred Funk. The timing was perfect and it really lifted my confidence: It was only my second year on Tour and three weeks beforehand I was tied for the lead with Tiger going into the final day of the PGA Championship at Medinah and had a bad last round [he shot 80].

“My next win was at Valderrama [in southern Spain] in the WGC-American Express Championship. That was my first big one because I beat the best in the world. The following season I won the Tour Championship in Houston, beating Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia and David Toms in a playoff—not a bad trio of scalps for my first win in the U.S.! That’s another top event because only the top-30 money winners can play in it.

“But every PGA Tour win is big. The Bob Hope Classic win was important because I’d had a similar off-season then to now. I’d taken time off to work on my technique [having dipped to 78th in the PGA Tour money list in 2002]. Being Canadian, I’m used to long winters and when I come back out I’m fresh mentally. In addition, I’ve always played well in pro-ams. I find them more relaxing, that’s why I always play here and at Pebble Beach.”

Next stop, of course, was the Masters. “It was tough the way that tournament unfolded. I was either leading or near the lead every day. Then in the final round Mattiace set a target one and a half hours ahead of me. I had five holes to play and no one else on the course had a chance apart from me. I got a couple of birdies at 13 and 15, and almost birdied 16. Then I holed good putts at 17 and 18 to get into the playoff.”

Only minutes after donning his Green Jacket, Weir received a congratulatory phone call from the Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, but his thoughts have remained with the player whose dreams he confounded in that playoff.

“Len seemed to fade away almost immediately after that. I know he had a lot of bad luck. He went skiing the next winter and blew both knees in an accident. He’s such a great guy and I always look for his score and wish him well. When I last heard he was playing on the Nationwide Tour. It could easily have been me—after all, it all boils down to a single shot here and there.

“I’ve not had many injuries in my own career. But there was one which was nagging me for a couple of years. I had two compressed discs in my neck. It all happened at the 2004 Canadian Open at Glen Abbey [in Toronto]. I’d just birdied 10 to take a one-shot lead when this drunken fan grabbed me and wrenched my shoulder. I wasn’t thrilled at the time and nor were the security guards who threw him out. We don’t normally have drunks at our golf tournaments, but Team Canada was playing that night in Toronto and I think he was a hockey fan getting tuned up. Whatever, the injury affected my form and I didn’t do a good job in assessing it. I got it X-rayed, but only about a year later when I had an MRI scan was it properly diagnosed so I could get the right treatment.”

Talking of hockey, was Weir once a puck wizard? “I played a lot of hockey from four years old. My brothers and my dad are right-handed, but I played hockey left-handed—I suppose the slap shot is similar to the golf swing, it’s a natural move. When I was young my best sport was baseball. I was a left-handed pitcher. I’m right-handed really but, along with golf, everything I do overhead I do left-handed. In tennis, I serve left-handed then play the rest of the point right-handed.” Roger Federer, are you listening?

Famously, he wrote to Jack Nicklaus as a kid, asking whether he should switch to right-handed play to make it in golf. Fortunately, the word came back to stick as he was.

In 2004, he set up the Mike Weir Foundation and soon afterwards the Mike Weir Estates Winery. “The PGA Tour has a tradition of charity work and over the years I’d visited a lot of hospitals in different

cities. We’re lucky our daughters are normal and healthy, so we decided to support children with mental, physical or financial deficiencies. It started when we helped raise $5 million from 14 golf events for the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. One event alone in Saskatoon raised $1 million in a day and half, largely because the Saskatchewan government kicked in as well.

“All the proceeds from the winery go to the Foundation. It’s still a small winery—only supplying Canada and a few smaller markets in the U.S. But it’s growing and we’re up to nearly 50,000 cases a year. Its potential is 100,000 cases a year maximum because maintaining the quality is important. It’s based at Whirlpool near Niagara Falls. Chateau des Charmes, where the wine is bottled and then distributed from, is about 20 minutes away. Whirlpool is home to a lovely old parkland golf course designed by Stanley Thompson, Canada’s greatest course architect, back in the 1930s. Also, we’re looking to get bigger in British Columbia by opening a vineyard in Kelowna.

“We produce Merlot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Noir, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and ice-wine. Ice-wine is when you take the grape off the vine when it’s frozen so it comes out sweet. It’s ideal for a dessert wine or even a white port. The Niagara region is well known for it. The ice-wine retails typically at Canadian $45 a bottle whereas most of the bottles retail between Canadian $19-25.

“Me? I don’t drink wine during tournaments, but in the off-season I do. Barry Katzmann is the company President and he works with my brother Jim. My other brother Craig works on the Foundation and our website, mikeweir.com.”

Weir spends plenty of time in his homeland despite living in Utah. “I go back perhaps half a dozen times a year, to see my family and parents mainly.” He also enjoys spending time with his sponsors, particularly the Royal Bank of Canada and Thomson Reuters, the worldwide news agency with whom he signed a five-year agreement in 2008.

Despite nearing 40, he hopes to add plenty of victories before his Canadian Golf Hall of Fame plaque can be signed off. “It’s been a lot of hard work over a lot of years,” he said at the Huron Oaks ceremony. “I don’t feel like I’m being put out to pasture, but it’s a great honor. I definitely feel like there’s a lot of business to take care of in the years going forward.”

Talking of business, once the rain eased at the Bob Hope Classic he finished a respectable sixth-place with four 67s and a 66 for a 26-under-par total. Not bad first time out, you might think. As Bricia says, “sport is an obsession. Athletes tend to be obsessive about trying to get better and better.” Mike Weir is no exception, come rain or shine.