Having learned to act watching his salesman father, Dougray Scott has been driven to do his very best on screen … and on the fairways, writes Lee Randall
THERE'S a moment in Mission: Impossible II when the screen fills – not unpleasantly – with Dougray Scott's face. In his deep green eyes dance the orange flames of a conflagration. As a metaphor for personal intensity, this will do, because the one about coiled springs doesn't fit the tan, lean, jean-clad gentlemen before me.
Friendly and relaxed, Scott has nevertheless perfected the five-second delay that allows one to engage brain before opening mouth. Some withhold information because knowledge is power and they don't want you to have any. Others are reluctant to squander themselves. I'd say Scott was the latter.
His answers are thorough and thoughtful, but occasionally I feel he's staring inwards and I'm observing a man conversing with himself. Only once am I hit with a blast of wide-eyed full-on intensity, when he flashes me an endearingly wide grin and says, in that sex-god basso profundo of his: "I'll be completely honest with you. I'm a golf geek!"
But of course! For this is the Old Course Hotel in St Andrews, where today marks the start of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, with a £5 million pound prize going to one of the seasoned professionals who are also playing in teams with celebrities such as Scott, Don Felder, Ronan Keating and Hugh Grant.
Scott beats me to the first question by asking where I come from (it's the confusing American accent) and where I live now. Eventually, I pounce on the news that he loves reading and ask whether that extends to books about golf? Cue true confessions and a face radiating pure happiness.
"I'm a huge Ben Hogan fan, so I've read his Five Fundamentals, but there's also a great biography. Hogan's life is all about survival, from watching his father commit suicide, when he was ten, and (living through] extreme poverty, to his obsession with golf and his determination to be successful. He spent years being a jobbing tour pro with no success at all and then, suddenly, it clicked. He started to win and win and win.
"Just when he started to win he was involved in a horrendous car accident. He saved his wife's life by diving over her but, in the process, both his legs and his hip were broken. They didn't think he would survive and said, 'No way are you ever going to play golf again,' but he did. Reading it, one is filled with the most amazing amount of inspiration. It's about a man who refused to be beaten. His big expression was 'Dig it out of the dirt', which is really an analogy for life. If you want to get something, you have to go after it."
Like his hero, Scott works hard to get what he wants out of life and it's paid off pretty spectacularly. His career spans action movies, indie films and a stint on Desperate Housewives. Yet a teacher once dismissed his acting ambition, saying he was better suited to manual labour. What fuels his tenacity?
"Bloodymindedness! A lot comes from fear. I think, 'My God, if I can't do this there's nothing.' It's an inability to see any other alternative. Therefore failure was not an option. It still isn't," he laughs, "so every day one strives to improve every aspect of life. You can make mistakes – everyone does – as long as you don't keep making the same one again and again."
One of his most influential mentors was his dad, who died 11 years ago. He was a travelling salesman, hawking fridges and freezers around Scotland. It was through him that Scott cottoned on to the idea of roleplay before he realised it was a vocation called acting.
"I used to follow my father around, watching him be a salesman. He'd get up in the morning and he had a ritual. He'd come down in his vest and he would shave and he would wash and he would sing and slowly put on his clothes, like putting on the uniform for the day, his suit and his hat. Personality was incredibly important.
"Salesmen have to make customers feel like a million dollars, because if they feel great they'll go, 'Oh, I like this guy, I'll buy something from him.' To be likeable you have to come in with a certain energy, which is unthreatening. I'd watched him do that for years and thought wow, he's acting, before I even knew what acting was."
His dad also endowed him with great love and respect for golf. "Dad used to take me out from when I was five or six. He was incredibly patient. He taught me how to play and all the etiquette of the golf course. I played with adults from a very early age because he thought that was the best way for me to learn. (Today] I don't like it when golf clubs marginalise juniors.
"You've got to develop and encourage and welcome young players. They should play with adults, because they'll learn how to behave – that they should play quickly! That's another bugbear of mine. Five and a half hours, six hours to play a round of golf? It kills me, the amount of time people take. They feel they can procrastinate for ten minutes over a shot. They should just get up and hit it. That's my philosophy. Arnold Palmer says that. They asked, 'How do you play golf?' and he said, 'Well, I hit it and then I go find it and I hit it again.'"
The golf course is where Scott goes to escape: when he can't do that, when the cares of everyday life creep alongside him on the greens, he plays badly.
"Golf is you, your clubs, the ball and the course. It's incredibly satisfying when they're all synchronised and it flows smoothly." He chuckles. "It doesn't happen very often, but it happens."
How much does he enjoy golf's social aspect? "I like playing with my friends. I'm told I'm not a great talker on the golf course." He shrugs as if to say well, I'm not there to talk, and then laughs, probably realising that the very tone of our conversation proves he's not big on chit chat. "I have played quite a lot on my own. The only problem is, once, in Spain or Portugal, I got a hole in one when I was playing on my own."
Aaargh, no witnesses! "Nobody to see… but I had another hole in one when I was 17 and my friend was with me. I've only had two. Golf is really about rhythm. It's a great mental workout, where you use your mental strength to overcome anything that's going on in your life. And physically I love walking a golf course. I hate taking buggies. You walk for two and a half hours – not five and a half – and it's great being out there."
Cementing a family tradition, he now revels in taking his ten-year-old son Gabriel golfing, and says he finds himself mimicking his father's behaviour out on the course. "I'm really patient. I say, 'Just enjoy it; there's plenty of time to work on the swing.' And I'm teaching him it's about respect and being gentle and nice to other players. I'm a stickler for traditional behaviour on the course. At the same time, I do think golf has to evolve in order to attract young people. One has to look at dress codes and things, though I, personally, like wearing a nice sweater, polo shirt, dress trousers. I guess because my dad used to dress up like that."
Somewhere during his description of a beloved Sam Sneed hat I zone out, and it occurs to me that it's time I let this man get out on to the course.
A LOVE OF LINKSLOCATION shoots mean Scott plays all over the globe, but he ranks Scotland's courses, especially Carnoustie, among his favourites. Since the Dunhill tournament celebrates links golf, I asked the 6-handicapper what's different about a course situated between the farmland and the sea?
"It's often undulating, sand-based and hard-running, meaning the ball runs a long way, unlike American or our parkland golf courses, where the grass on the fairway makes the ball not run as fast. The greens are really hard so you can't often fly the ball all the way. And often it's windy so you learn to play different shots; into the wind, playing the low shots. It's more of a challenge, very testing but great fun. I love it!"
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Read Dougray Scott's blog from the Dunhill Links Championship