Stories written by Brian Hewitt
Not only was the 1986 Masters, by almost everybody’s reckoning, the “greatest” Masters. It was also the most “memorable.”
Television had a lot to do with that. Jack Nicklaus had even more.
Most of the highlights from Nicklaus’ 18th and final major championship victory are burned into the memories of those who played in it, attended it or watched it on TV. And there is very little that happened that week at Augusta National that hasn’t been hashed, re-hashed, written and re-written in the 25 years since the 46-year-old “bear came out of hibernation” at the 50th Masters.
But there are a few relevant stories, observations and recollections that have stayed mostly private. Until now.
Like, for example, Andrew Magee swearing at Nicklaus. Blasphemy, you say? Well, here’s how that one went down:
It was no secret that Nicklaus arrived at Augusta in poor form. He had missed the cuts at Pebble Beach, Honda and The Players Championship earlier in the 1986 season and had withdrawn at New Orleans. His most common complaint was that his aging eyes were starting to affect his focus.
Magee saw it differently. Paired with Nicklaus during a tournament round prior to The Masters, Magee was at once exasperated and awed when Nicklaus kept saying, “Where’d it go? Where’d it go?” after almost every shot. Finally, Magee turned to Nicklaus and answered him saltily with this observation: “Right at the bleeping hole, just like every other shot you hit.”
Magee later related this story to fellow PGA Tour pro Brandel Chamblee, who has since ascended to the top tier of televised golf analysis.
“Jack knew how well he was hitting it when he got to Augusta,” Chamblee said. “I mean who hits a 4-iron like he did on Sunday at 13? Who hits a 5-iron like Jack did at 16? … Mind boggling.”
The problem, said Chamblee, who watched the 1986 final round from a hotel room with buddies in Joplin, Mo., where he was playing in a mini-tour event, was that Jack couldn’t get the ball in the hole. Even during the Saturday 69 that brought him nearer the leaders, Nicklaus didn’t make many putts of consequence.
But by the time Nicklaus got to the par-3 16th Sunday, he knew exactly where he was (the first page of the leaderboard) and where his golf ball was going. It was his 28th Masters, and when son Jackie, on the bag, said, “Be right,” as his 5-iron was in the air, Nicklaus winked and without looking said, “It is.”
That story has since been handed down through at least one generation and into golf lore. But Chamblee didn’t hear about it until one week later when Jackie Nicklaus, still trying to make his own mark as a player, showed up at the TPA event in Arkansas. There, the younger Nicklaus was promptly and exhaustively de-briefed by his friends on that Tour.
The subsequent birdie at 16 got Nicklaus to 8-under par (he would win with a back-nine 30 for a closing 65 and a 9-under total) and it introduced much of the golf world to a young announcer named Jim Nantz, sharing that hole’s tower with Tom Weiskopf.
Nantz was on a short leash that week because he hadn’t yet earned the trust of the legendary and hard-nosed CBS golf producer Frank Chirkinian. Chirkinian recently succumbed after a long fight with cancer. And in the aftermath of his passing, Nantz shared, on Golf Channel, the intimate details of what was going on behind the camera when Nicklaus got to 16.
“It was a pretty weighty assignment and I can remember Frank whispering so gently in my ear and almost lulling me into a trance to where I felt like he was only talking to me,” Nantz said. “I had completely lost sight of the fact that millions were watching and we were sitting on one of the largest moments in the history of the sport. I would just love to be able to replay that whole interaction.”
CBS announcer Verne Lundquist’s exclamatory, “Maybe. . . . Yes, sir!” call of Nicklaus’ birdie on 17 has been replayed millions of times. Tour veteran Jason Gore had a copy made of the broadcast. And he pulls the tape out every spring.
Far fewer people remember that Greg Norman birdied 14, 15, 16 and 17 before a pushed 4-iron second on the 72d hole led to the bogey that kept him from a playoff with Nicklaus.
“No way he’s gonna birdie those holes and get back into it,” Chamblee says now. “No way Seve (Ballesteros) is going to snap hook it into the water on 15. But that’s the beauty of Augusta National: The holes are so close together that the roars affect the outcome. Jack’s birdie on 16 as Seve was playing 15 affected the tournament.”
Chamblee also took note when Norman “ran” off the green at 17. “You wondered how the guy could keep his emotions in check. Turns out he was as pumped up as the rest of us.”
And it cost him. Norman would finish in a tie for second with Tom Kite at 8 under. Almost no one remembers the gorgeous roll Kite put on his 10-foot birdie try on the 18th that would have gotten him into a playoff with Nicklaus. “He hit a great putt,” Chamblee says. “It just didn’t break. It was one of those putts nobody reads it correctly.”
Between them, Kite and Norman played in 49 Masters, posting a combined 21 top 10s and six seconds. Neither ever won at Augusta. Nicklaus played in 45 Masters, finished in the top 10 a remarkable 22 times and placed second on four occasions. He won The Masters six times.
Another occurrence lost on most observers was the Saturday 63 Nick Price signed for at the 1986 Masters. It tied the tournament record. More significantly, it showed anybody who was paying attention that a low number Sunday, when tournament officials traditionally soften the setup, was available.
Chamblee: “If you’re Jack Nicklaus and you see a number like that (63), you say, ‘Now wait a minute, I’m better than Nick Price.’ ”
Price’s 63 clearly figured into Nicklaus’ thinking during a Sunday morning conversation with son Steve when he predicted a 65 would win and a 66 would get him into a playoff.
“Just go shoot it, then,” Steve Nicklaus said.
Jack did. And won.
Doesn’t matter now that few remember the winner’s share of the purse was $144,000 or that Nicklaus complemented the victory with a subsequent T5 at his Memorial Tournament that year and a T8 at the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills.
For this one Sunday in April the sports world rejoiced unabashedly. Rick Reilly, working for Sports Illustrated at the time, called the story “too big to write.” Now, especially since the brakes got slammed on the bullet train that used to be Tiger Woods’ career, the 1986 Masters looks even bigger.
Last month, a 71-year-old Jack Nicklaus sat with a group of reporters near his Florida home. The 1986 Masters came up. Like it always does. And Nicklaus reminisced and amazed. Like he always does.
“I felt like when I birdied nine I was decent,” he said of the final day. “Birdied 10, started to feel better. I birdied 11 and I felt like I was in the golf tournament. That’s about the way I looked at it. And then I got out of the golf tournament at the next hole and bogeyed 12. And, of course, I birdied 13, and when I eagled 15, I knew I was in the middle of it.”
Could he remember what clubs he hit into the greens, somebody asked.
“Every significant club,” he said. “I mean, I don’t remember what I hit at nine but I remember the putt certainly. I don’t remember what I hit on 10 but I remember the putt. I don’t remember what I hit on 11 but I remember the putt, and I hit a 7-iron into 12 and played a 3-iron into 13. I think I played 7-iron into 14. I hit a 4-iron into 15. I hit a 5-iron on 16. I hit a pitching wedge at 17 and I hit 5-iron at 18.
“But outside of that,” Nicklaus said, “I can’t remember.”
Fair enough and no worries. The 1986 Masters remains the one no one who saw it will ever forget.
ORLANDO, FLORIDA | Whether he wants to or not, it’s getting harder for Phil Mickelson to hide behind Tiger Woods.
At the height of on-the-course TigerMania – which, by the way, recedes farther into golf’s rearview mirror by the week – Mickelson invented the ironclad alibi.
“It’s Tiger’s world,” Lefty used to repeat to anybody who would listen, “and we’re all just living in it.”
It was a cute way of dodging the fact that Mickelson’s game and record couldn’t stand up to Woods’ on a regular basis. And it worked well with that sheepish-boyish-impish grin that is as much a part of Mickelson’s persona as his impossibly deft flop shots and inplausibly wild tee balls.
Anyway, when Woods’ “world” imploded off-the-course in late 2009, the whole dynamic of professional golf underwent an overnight change nobody saw coming. Among other things, it meant Mickelson needed to find a new explanation.
With this year’s Masters just a week away we’re still waiting to grasp the reasons why defending champion Mickelson has underachieved so egregiously since last April. “What will Phil do next?” has officially been replaced by the more relevant question: “What did Phil do last?”
He hasn’t won since Augusta 2010. And his world ranking has dropped all the way down to No. 6. It’s tough to gauge how much his bout with psoriatic arthritis has affected his game. He says he has the condition under control. And it’s difficult to know if the aftershocks from his wife’s recovery from breast cancer are still reverberating.
For better or worse, Mickelson’s struggles have continued to take a back seat to the erratic results Tiger’s work with swing coach Sean Foley have produced. But much of the light, in the next 10 days, will shine on Mickelson.
“Even though I feel like my game is there, I haven’t put the numbers on the board that I need to,” Mickelson said at the Arnold Palmer Invitational last week. His plan at Bay Hill, he said Wednesday, was to work on trajectory and distance control. Positive signs arrived Saturday when Mickelson birdied four holes on the inward half and signed for a 69. Sunday brought a one-over 73 and a finish outside the top 20.
This week Mickelson will go to Augusta on Monday and Tuesday before playing the Shell Houston Open, where he tied for 35th last year.
“I feel like the year kind of starts right about now,” Mickelson said late Sunday. “It’s an exciting time.”
None other than NBC’s Johnny Miller opined publicly last week that Mickelson doesn’t really care all that much about the events leading up to The Masters. To be fair, Mickelson won’t be the only player in Houston preparing, on the range and the course, for shots more appropriate to Augusta National than Redstone Golf Club.
And to be sure, there have been Masters’ weeks when Mickelson arrived in dodgy form and played well. In 2003 he insisted he got to Augusta without a clue. “One of the worst I was ever playing going into the tournament,” he said.
He finished third. Nice “worst.”
Actually, the record book shows Mickelson had four top-10s prior to the 2003 Masters. But he did miss the cut at the BellSouth Classic the week before thanks to a Friday 79. This year he has posted just two top-10s in seven pre-Masters starts.
And the more it becomes obvious that Woods – as television analyst Brandel Chamblee put it – is no closer to finding his game “than Miami is to Portland,” the more the scrutinists will focus on Mickelson. Tiger managed just one round under par at Bay Hill.
Woods has won four Masters, same as Palmer. Nicklaus did it six times. Mickelson has “just” three green jackets. But his consistency at Augusta National is off-the-charts good. From 1999 to 2006 he never finished out of the top 10. He has placed third four times. He has come in fifth, fifth and first in the last three.
“There is no place,” Mickelson said last week, “like Augusta.”
What he did last year was pretty special: A rock-solid Sunday punctuated by golf’s shot of the year, a 6-iron off the pine straw to the 13th green Sunday. By nightfall he had won his third Masters and his immediate future swelled with promise. Then, just as quickly, the trail went cold.
Now you get the sense that if one of the game’s (ital.) arrivistes (end ital.) – a Fowler or a McIlroy or an Ishikawa or a Dustin Johnson – breaks through at Augusta, it will officially be time to turn the page.
If that happens, it will be folly to suggest Woods and Mickelson won’t win again. But the likelihood of Mickelson ever ascending to No. 1 in the world ranking looks like more of a long shot every week.
Shakespeare told us, “Time is a bloody tyrant.” And if Tiger’s time as No. 1 is done for good, Phil will no longer have a built-in excuse for why he never got to the top spot.
PALM HARBOR, FLORIDA | If the thought didn’t occur to you that Matteo Manassero – all joy and wonderment and free-flowing talent – wasn’t supposed to remind you of a certain someone, the PGA Tour slapped your memory up side the head last week when it grouped the 17-year-old Italian prodigy Thursday and Friday with Spain’s Sergio Garcia.
A decade-and-a-half ago Garcia was Manassero. He was the heir apparent, the next big Iberian in the Ballesteros and Olazabal lineage. He was a world class professional golfer in his teens. He had the shots, the looks, the energy, the cars, the endorsements, the personality, the girls, and even a dash of incipient duende – that indefinable something so difficult to describe but so easy to recognize – that certain blessed athletes possess.
Garcia, more than any other, was the one who was going to force Tiger Woods into that extra gear that Woods insisted was why he worked so hard at his game.
Then a funny thing happened on the way to greatness. Garcia’s confidence on the greens eroded. Soon enough that light in his eye dimmed. And by the time he got to the Transitions Championship near Tampa last week, he was 31 years old, majorless and ranked No. 85 in the world, a full 30 spots behind Manassero.
Garcia hadn’t lost his game so much as he had lost his way to the top. And, suddenly, he found himself looking at somebody he used to see in his own mirror.
What he saw was a teenager from the Italian province of Verona, hailed by one and all on the Continent as a fine young gentleman. Manassero was the youngest ever to win the British Amateur, the youngest ever to win a European Tour event and the youngest ever to make the cut at The Masters.
“He’s a great kid,” Garcia said of Manassero. “He doesn’t miss a lot of shots. He can do with a little bit more distance.”
And, Garcia didn’t say, I hope he doesn’t wake up 14 years from now and find himself, like I did, dragging a decade of unrealized promise like a ball and chain.
For a while last week it looked like Garcia had found a way to make all the obvious comparisons to Manassero motivate him. Garcia sailed around the tough Copperhead Course at the Innisbrook Resort in 68-66. He was the only player in the field to avoid a bogey through 36 holes and he slept one shot off the lead Friday night. He was perfectly positioned for a weekend run at his first U.S. win since the 2008 Players Championship.
For his part, Manassero hung around with a pair of 68s, just two back of Sergio. His announced goal at the beginning of the week was not to show up Garcia. It was to climb five spots in the world rankings and secure his return invitation to Augusta.
And, of course, he was eagerly awaiting his 18th birthday and the procurement of his driver’s license, which would allow him, he said, to buy the BMW that was going to serve as his training wheels for the Ferrari he would eventually own. It was all so Sergio.
“We started very young, both of us,” Manassero said. “We turned professional very young. It’s kind of similar … yeah, absolutely.”
But Manassero was careful to make one thing clear. He admired Garcia. He thanked his countrymen, the Molinari Bros. – Francesco and Eduardo – who are still showing him the professional ropes. But his idol was the great Ballesteros.
Ask a tour pro, and he will tell you one of the last things he wants to be near is another tour pro with putting issues. Which circles us back to Sergio. After birdieing his first hole Saturday, he made three bogeys in a five-hole stretch and dropped five shots back of the lead and into a tie with, yes, Manassero. Two of those five dropped shots resulted from missed short putts.
It got worse Sunday when Garcia bogeyed the fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth holes to disappear into the pack. Manassero, meanwhile, climbed all the way up into the top 15 before bogeying the last two holes for a disappointing and rankings-costly 70.
Politely, Manassero met reporters. “It was a tough final round because I made it tough,” he said. “At least I kept fighting to the end.”
When Garcia’s name came up he looked surprised. Did he think Garcia would get back to the top one day, he was asked.
“Absolutely,” Manassero said.
Privately, Manassero had to have seen, in Garcia, a bracing vision of what his future could turn out to be. But wisely he will be keeping any of those thoughts to himself.
“Sergio and I have played a lot of golf together,” Manassero said late Sunday. “You always learn something from him.”
And he left it at that.
Mike Davis doesn’t even know how a bow tie works. His predecessor, David Fay, wore one to all the proper functions.
Fay also loved the game of baseball to the point of avocation and he wasn’t afraid to tell the blue-blazered Executive Committee members at the USGA that he was a registered Democrat.
Davis, a man without pretense, officially replaced Fay as the USGA’s executive director last Wednesday. He said his first day on the job was a little overwhelming. “Almost like drinking from a fire hose,” was the way he put it.
He said he had been “apprehensive” taking the position and that he was “humbled.”
Asked about the contrast between himself and Fay, Davis said he is playing more tennis lately because that is his eighth-grade son’s sport of choice. He did not reveal his political leanings. And he said that when he wasn’t attending to family or work, what he enjoyed most was either playing golf or just walking courses and studying architects’ intentions.
“Mike Davis,” said USGA president Jim Hyler, “is the consummate golf person. It’s all about the game for him.”
If only the same could be said of the men in charge of running all the golf associations and organizations – large and small – around the world.
Mike Davis, a native Pennsylvanian, educated in Georgia and a resident of New Jersey, is the right person in the right place at the right time. Of this, there is a consensus rarely reached in any sport.
He is just the seventh executive director in the USGA’s 116 years. He was strongly influenced, he said, by a private meeting in late January at which Fay urged him to seek the job Fay had left voluntarily in December.
Fay navigated the USGA through stormy seas and safely into the 21st century and left behind a huge war chest and a fleet of initiatives. Davis made his bones in rules and competitions. And he made his USGA mark, with Fay’s blessing, by transforming the U.S. Open from a forced march into a national championship that was at once a fair test and a wild ride.
He did it without once puffing out his chest, or grabbing a microphone or passing blame if a mistake had been made on one of his watches.
The good news here for golf is that Davis will still be an integral part of the inner workings of the U.S. Open. He will still be the final say on course setup, which will mean, among other things, that we can almost always count on at least one drivable par 4, a reachable-in-two, risk-reward par 5 and a par 3 that forces the world’s best players to pull out a long iron.
“We would be idiots,” Hyler said, “if we extracted Mike Davis from U.S. Open activities.”
One other highly placed USGA source told Global Golf Post that Davis got the job because he “enjoys the respect of the players.”
“It was important that he be a golf guy as opposed to a business guy,” the source said. “It was important that he understands the core values of the USGA”
The fact is, the members of the USGA selection committee would have been idiots if they hadn’t persuaded Mike Davis to be its next steward.
Davis, 46, came to work at the USGA in 1990. He grew into that rarest of administrators, who drills down fiercely on details but isn’t opposed to leaving his office door open or returning phone calls.
I first encountered him in 2006 at the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. I had arrived determined to catch up with the guy who had replaced the controversial Tom Meeks as senior director of Rules and Competitions. I hadn’t been on site more than an hour when he found me first. Until that time, I hadn’t met Davis or spoken with him and didn’t even know what he looked like.
He said he had wanted to meet me and called me over into a conversation he was having with architect Tom Fazio. I would later learn that I wasn’t the only member of the media Davis sought out this way. If you cared about the game – not the business of the game, not the gossip of the game, not the glitz of the game – and if he believed you were responsible in your opinions on the game – even if they didn’t match his – he wanted to know you.
(Here’s a little secret about influential sources and golf writers: If you suck up to them, they will write about you but they won’t trust you. If you treat them like ink-stained wretches, they will write about you but they will resent you. If you treat them evenly, they will write about you and they will respect you.)
Davis never needed to be told this. Nor did he have to figure it out. It came naturally. The people he will lead at the USGA who don’t already know it, will find him to be this person as well.
Now that Mike Davis is running the USGA, the rest of the golf world is about to discover that the “consummate golf person” is smart, fair, honest, tireless and dedicated to the game.
They are in for a treat.
The fact that the LPGA is struggling isn’t even a “worst-kept” secret anymore. And, no, this is not a case where misery loves company.
The best women golfers in the world take no solace from the news that the greedy NFL may suffer a work stoppage; that the floundering Tiger Woods may be washed up; that the bumptious Keith Olbermann is “out” at MSNBC or that the insufferable Sarah Palin doesn’t have friends left in Arizona.
The experts on Wall Street tell us the “recovery” has finally arrived. But the smart guys in the golf industry are quietly resigned to the realization that the business end of our game will continue to lag behind the overall economic bounceback. So this is not a good time for schadenfreude, which is a fancy word for taking perverse please at the misfortune of others.
All of which brings us to LPGA commissioner Michael Whan and one of the two or three best ideas anybody in golf has come up with in the monetarily-challenged 21st century.
Actually, it brings us to the resistance among certain prominent LPGA players to Whan’s idea.
I’m talking about you, Morgan Pressel. And you, Paula Creamer. And you, Suzann Pettersen. And you, Cristie Kerr.
You don’t get it. You don’t even sense it. And you are threatening to undermine the most brilliant PR opportunity the LPGA has been afforded in decades.
You are so wrong on this that you will get what you deserve if, some day soon, Whan throws up his arms in frustration, walks out of the commissioner’s office and into a job where his energy, prescience and dedication to the tasks at hand are appreciated.
Here’s the quick background:
Not long ago, Whan hatched a plan whereby the first 2011 LPGA event in the States would be different. The players would earn $1.3 million in official money and world ranking points at the RR Donnelley LPGA Founders Cup in March in Phoenix. But there would be no actual paychecks, just $500,000 turned over to the LPGA Foundation and its LPGA-USGA Girls Golf program, which impacted more than 6,600 young girls in 2010.
This was a no-brainer and it gained immediate support from the LPGA’s rank and file – i.e. the players who aren’t yet independently wealthy. Corporate America loved the notion that an association of professional athletes would be signing over their paychecks rather than depositing them into numbered bank accounts. Sports bosses all over the world sat up and took notice. Many of them privately wished they had thought of Whan’s idea first. The positive spin currency that flowed from his Founders concept was powerful and impossible to measure in dollars.
Then came the blowback. Pettersen, ranked No. 3 in the world, said she was skipping the Founders. Kerr, ranked No. 2, said she wasn’t sure the plan had been well thought out. Pressel, ranked No. 8, issued a statement in which she said: “I feel that the event belittles all other events that donate similar numbers to charity and still provide a full purse.”
So, all of a sudden there was an odor. And the best guess here is the stench from the bad breath of the advisors who were effectively telling Pettersen, Kerr, No. 11 Creamer and No. 17 Pressel that this couldn’t be a good idea – probably because it hadn’t come from them.
The LPGA, in good faith, acknowledged the RR Donnelley was getting its title sponsorship at a discount and offered an additional $200,000 in purse money for the top five finishers at the Founders Cup to donate to the charities of their choice. Yani Tseng, Angela Stanford, Kristy McPherson, Brittany Lincicome and Natalie Gulbis, among others, quickly committed to play in Phoenix.
Creamer said Founders was a “great cause” but added she was struggling with the “structure and format.” She said she would be more on board if Donnelley was on the hook for $1.3 million.
If Whan didn’t bite his lip, he should have. Maybe Donnelley doesn’t have room on its budget for $1.3 million. Many former golf-friendly corporations have slashed golf from their spending agendae altogether.
This much is clear: Now was not the time or the place for any LPGA players or their agents to go against the grain of a solution that will engender the kind of momemtun-producing goodwill that could eventually re-stock the bare LPGA schedule back up to the 30-35 events that used to be the norm.
Kerr told GolfChannel.com, “It’s a great idea, but went from concept to an event on the schedule too quickly without enough input from the players.”
Of course, Kerr is entitled to her opinion. But she’s missing the point by about three fairways. This is a generational opportunity, not a time to pick nits or endanger solidarity.
The women of the LPGA, as a group, are hard-working and deserving of better than they have gotten compared to other sports leagues. The Whan solution here is the golf equivalent of a home run with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth in the seventh game of the World Series.
It’s an eagle on the 72nd hole of the U.S. Women’s Open to win by a shot.
ORLANDO, FLORIDA | By the time the first threesome of Amanda Blumenhurst, Mindy Kim and Giulia Sergas – bundled, as they were, in relative anonymity – got to the first tee Thursday morning, it was cold.
The wind-chill factor at the LPGA’s season ending Tour Championship stubbornly hovered in the mid-30s. The breeze at the Grand Cypress Golf Club was stiff. And a 7 a.m. December sun was still hours away from warming anybody’s competitive soul, much less a world class player’s hands.
“Arctic,” was the voluble Christina Kim’s one-word description.
What better time to take the temperature of women’s professional golf?
The only thing missing was frost. And if you listen to the focused and energetic Michael Whan, that’s a start. Whan is the LPGA’s commissioner, and he believes his Tour’s days of being greeted with icy stares and chilly receptions are thawing.
“It was always strange,” Whan told me last month, “to start conversation and hear, ‘Are you limping?’ We don’t get that anymore. We’re not at any kind of risk.”
Make no mistake, Whan is an optimist. But he is not a cockeyed one. After one year on the job in a lurching economy, he can pronounce and spell the word “reality” without shivering. Asked if the recent mid-term elections in the U.S. that showed overwhelming support for America’s Republicans – historically the more golf-friendly political party – Whan said this:
“I don’t know.”
You don’t know?
“I’ve heard more than a few CEOs tell me that, ‘Hey, this election can really help,’ ” Whan said. “And they probably grasp that better than I do. I’m not an economist.” At least not in the sense that John Maynard Keynes, Adam Smith or John Kenneth Galbraith were economists.
But Whan is the LPGA’s chief executive in charge of growth. And as such, he lays the groundwork in the ongoing courtship of title sponsors. He designs and/or approves the plans and he oversees the stratagems.
“We call it the ‘incubator,’” he says. “We’ve got eggs in the incubator. Some of them are about to hatch and some of them are just growing for the first time. I’ve got a lot of eggs at the end of the incubator cycle. But now we’ve got to hatch a few more.”
The best American player of the moment, Cristie Kerr, warns it won’t be easy. “We are not in 1994 where we we had, like, 40 tournaments,” Kerr said on the eve of Sunday’s final round. “It’s hard. The economy, real estate … all of that stuff is not coming back for a long time.”
But for their part, Kerr and her fellow LPGA competitors are weathering the front. And they genuinely appear to be closing ranks in the face of persistent criticisms that range from: The American women need to become more dominant to the Korean women are too dominant.
Six players teed it up at the Tour Championship with a shot at ascending to the No. 1 spot in the Rolex world rankings. Two of those women are Korean. The four others are American, Japanese, Norwegian and Taiwanese.
One of those six, Na Yeon Choi, the best player you may never have heard of, donated a check Wednesday for $30,000 to LPGA-USGA junior golf. Choi’s initials are NYC. Her nickname is “The Big Apple.”
Nice.
What isn’t disputable is the fact that the LPGA will remain the home to the best female golf worldwide. To a woman, the players insist it’s (start ital.) for (end ital.) the best if they play against the best on a regular basis, regardless of from where those players come. At a pre-tournament press conference, Tour officials gathered the top six at a single podium at the same time. The respect each showed for the other was clear and without grudge.
“We all love to win,” said Kerr. “We all hate to lose. And we all work very hard at our games.”
Hall of Famer Annika Sorenstam recently made it known that she would welcome the LPGA making Orlando the home base for a regular event with her name on it, in much the same manner that Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill tournament is a staple for the PGA Tour.
And Whan confirmed that representatives for future Hall of Famer Lorena Ochoa are in talks with San Antonio officials that could produce, as early as 2012, a long-term agreement with the LPGA in that Texas city.
Women’s professional golf has a pulse. But there’s always room for improvement.
If you root for the LPGA, you couldn’t help but notice the lack of a title sponsor at the Tour Championship. Kerr mentioned last week the need for more domestic (read U.S.) LPGA events. And if you walked the fairways at Grand Cypress, it was impossible not to wish the Tour policed slow play a little more effectively.
But there is an LPGA TV deal in place. There is no shortage of good young talent. And Whan says a meaningful international team event to complement the Solheim Cup (which is limited to Europe vs. USA) is “coming soon.”
So despite the wintry mornings last week in Florida there is reason to hope that global warming for the LPGA is more than just talk about the weather.
One of the biggest storylines of what passes for golf’s off-season will now center around what Tiger Woods’ newest teacher, Sean Foley, tells him; how well Woods listens; and just how much of Foley’s eclectic gospel Woods converts into swing religion by 2011.
But to whom does Foley, the intriguing Canadian, listen? Just who are his influences?
Actually, lots of people. The list notably includes a little-known biomechanical engineer from rural New York named Chris Welch and a Greek philosopher named Zeno, who preached, among other things, that motion was impossible.
“I would love to sit there with him for two months every single day and shadow him,” Foley says of Welch. “That would be the ultimate.”
But the story gets ahead of itself …
**********
Turns out the significant answer to the question: “What do Woods, Greg Norman and Anthony Kim have in common?” is not the one you might have imagined.
The significant answer has nothing to do with dalliances, nightlife or social transgressions, perceived or otherwise. It has everything to do with getting better at golf, inarguably a much more difficult sporting pursuit.
Facilitating that pursuit is the goal of a high-tech, low-profile, 3D motion capture company/concept called ZenoLink that is poised on the game’s biomechanical cutting edge and ready to add a different layer to golf’s conventional wisdom.
ZenoLink, says teaching pro Adam Schriber, whose clients include Kim and Morgan Pressel, “is one of the best-kept secrets in the business.”
“We are kind of in an open field right now,” adds Welch, ZenoLink’s creator. “Kind of, first to market.” But he is not going unnoticed by the sport’s learning pioneers unafraid to use the words “science” and “golf” in the same sentence.
Historically, maximizing golf potential at any age or on any stage has always been daunting. But these days keeping up with the relevant technological advances important to that end is downright dizzying. The scolds and purists, meanwhile, have always scoffed at anything new in golf learning that doesn’t directly trace its roots to traditionally comforting names such as Ben Hogan, Harry Vardon, Percy Boomer, Harvey Penick or the non-related Joneses –Bobby and Ernest. To be sure, Butch Harmon probably never uttered the phrase “clinical application.”
Into this historically rich but notoriously parochial and crowded climate comes ZenoLink. The company is based in the small, south central New York village of Endicott, not far from where “Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling was born. So cue the spooky background music, because ZenoLink’s proponents swear its principles are scary good.
“It’s a big part,” says Schriber, “of how I built Anthony Kim’s swing.”
Foley has voraciously read up on all the classic golf teachings. And he embraces them. But the mind of the game’s most sought after young teacher is also wide open to new ideas and fearless of future shock. Which is why Foley is currently numbers himself among ZenoLink’s vanguard. Almost certainly you will soon be hearing more about all of this – especially if Foley fully convinces Woods, his prize pupil, of ZenoLink’s complex methodology but basic premise.
Which is…?
In its most elemental form, says Welch, ZenoLink is a “measurement.” Its role, he says, is to “facilitate.”
“It’s not a swing philosophy,” Welch emphasizes. Rather, it is a data-measurement system that not only seeks to help a golfer improve his or her core stability, it also promises to aid in the coordination of that stability with strength and speed. Without the kind of 3D measurement ZenoLink can provide, Welch adds, even the best players in the world are just doing guesswork.
“It’s like trying to build a house without a plumb-bob,” says Welch. “You’re going to have a cockeyed house.” Welch isn’t the first to rely on “motion capture” to provide swing and body data. But he is the first to simplify it for instructors. (see story on p. xx)
According to one source, ZenoLink played a key role in Norman’s preparation for the 2008 Open Championship at Royal Birkdale where Norman was the 54-hole leader at age 53. Welch declines direct credit for that remarkable Norman week. But he says he first measured Norman with ZenoLink as early as 1995 at Norman’s Medalist Club in Florida and again prior to the U.S. Open at Congressional in 1997. Not surprisingly the data showed Norman to be freakishly fit and flexible.
Norman was still in his prime then and, says Welch, “He had one of the most efficient kinetic links I had ever tested for a golfer.” Working closely with Norman’s trainer, Pete Draovitch, Welch says they developed a specific regimen, “way before anyone considered this kind of training for golfers.”
Now, more than 15 years later, ZenoLink is dipping its toes into the the mainstream. Its technology also has served as the basis for the swing mechanics that have allowed Kim to become, when healthy, one of the world’s most confident top players. And few who know him will be surprised anytime soon if Foley convinces Woods this stuff can help him return to his perch as world No. 1.
Welch, has been moving quietly in and around golf’s inner circles for close to 20 years. Sources also say he has, more recently, obtained new backing, added financing and a fresh marketing outlook. Schriber figures it’s just a matter of time before Welch’s ideas go viral.
ZenoLink is, among other things, the latest pure science application to show up, for public consumption, on the golf scene. And it is accompanied by the same basic 3D principles that drove millions of people into movie theaters this year to see a film called “Avatar.”
The game’s old guard – the scolds and the purists, too – might be happy to know one of the beauties of ZenoLink is this: It isn’t trying to replace the art of teaching golf. It is trying to enhance it.
“A lot of it has to do with muscle learning and being able to fire in a certain pattern,” says Foley. “Obviously mechanics and technique have to be aligned so you’re not expending or wasting energy.” For the record, neither Foley nor anyone else is getting paid to endorse ZenoLink.
But right about now you’re excused if you are rolling your eyes. You have been told forever that nobody owns the golf swing. It has been handed down from on high that there is no “secret” to the game of golf even though dozens of writers have insisted Hogan found one. A perfectly straight shot, Hogan said, was an accident. There’s nothing new under golf’s sun. And yadda, yadda, yadda.
“I think he’s legit,” says David Leadbetter of Welch. “If I had to criticize anything about ZenoLink, it would be that it’s more theoretical than practical. But Chris Welch is a stand-up guy. He knows his stuff and he’s very good, especially in the area of how energy is sourced and delivered. He was one of the pioneers of biomechanics in golf.”
Welch, Foley and a growing number of ZenoLink followers, including the instructors at at least one Advanced Nike Junior Golf Camp aren’t trying to convince anybody that everybody else is wrong. And they don’t consider themselves revolutionaries. They’re just trying to show their methodology makes it easier to confirm what is right.
According to eyewitnesses, the top juniors at the Boyne Golf Academy in northern Michigan this summer were willing sponges when exposed to Welch’s biomechanical approach. “They were very receptive and very much looking forward to starting their programs,” said Brian O’Neill, the director of golf at Boyne.
Part of that receptivity owes to the simplicity of the testing. Advances in 3D now allow ZenoLink video to pick up a Z coordinate to go with the standard two-dimensional X and Y coordinates. That, in turn, allows six degrees of freedom (not to be confused with six degrees of Kevin Bacon). And simply put, it allows ZenoLink’s cameras to film and digitize how the nervous system initiates muscle movement without having to attach sensors or wires to the golfer.
“AK doesn’t even know I’m testing him for ZenoLink when the camera is running,” says Schriber. “He just thinks I’m filming a few swings.”
Pressed for specifics on individual players, many instructors are hesitant to share. Asked to target one area where ZenoLink measurements directly influenced Schriber’s development of Kim, the teacher responded with one word: “sequencing.”
Not all of this is new. TaylorMade’s MAT-T club-fitting system has been using 3D technology for years (see story on p. xx). And the earliest 3D imaging of any kind dates back to 1807.
But the buzz generated by “Avatar” and recent Masters and PGA Championship broadcasts, available on a limited basis in 3D, have greatly accelerated the interest curve. It was recently reported that by 2012 Sony, Samsung and Philips are projecting more than 50 percent of their new sales will be 3D TVs. The cutting edge, like a scalpel of progress, is about to surgically invade our living rooms.
Brad Dean, the director of instruction at Crystal Mountain Resort, in Thompsonville, Mich., learned about ZenoLink from Schriber, who used to teach on Dean’s staff at Crystal Mountain. Schriber also has worked extensively with Morgan Pressel. Dean quickly realized something radical was in the wind. “The golf instructor focuses on angle and plane,” Dean said. “There’s no set way we are taught how to teach how the body works. ZenoLink gives us the ability to change how the body works and integrate swing mechanics with body motion.”
If you are wondering why you have not seen a ZenoLink (which costs less than $200 a customer) infomercial on TV yet, it is partly because Welch is more of a scientist than a marketer and partly because explaining ZenoLink doesn’t lend itself to catchy sound bites. But that has not stopped the word of mouth from spreading, particularly at the junior level. And that buzz doesn’t even begin to get into how far ZenoLink’s applications go beyond golf.
Consider the world’s fastest human, Usain Bolt. Or Washington National Stephen Strasburg, the baseball pitcher with arguably the world’s most “live” arm. To hear Foley and Welch tell it, neither Bolt’s records nor Strasburg’s injuries are accidents.
“Usain Bolt doesn’t get faster by practice,” Foley says. “He gets faster by applying.”
In August, Strasburg suffered what was described by his team as a “significant tear of his ulnar collateral ligament.” It abruptly ended a spectacular rookie season during which he was blowing away major league hitters with numbing regularity. In early September, Strasburg underwent “Tommy John” surgery and isn’t expected to return to the Nationals’ active roster until 2012.
“Can you throw at those velocities and not have severe arm damage?” Welch asks. “Yes. If you coordinate effectively, you can throw at those velocities and not completely destroy your arm. Efficiency in movement not only produces velocity, it minimizes the risk to joints.”
So where does the little-known Welch get off opining on baseball players. Well, for starters, he is currently doing initial testing for the Detroit Tigers, who think enough of ZenoLink’s principles to use them to protect the arms of their best young talent. And it turns out the 42-year-old Welch didn’t just fall off the golf turnip truck, either. He has spent significant time theorizing with Norman, Leadbetter and, as long ago as the mid-90s, Raymond Floyd. He has also worked with the diving coach at Duke University integrating ZenoLink principles on that campus.
For his part, Foley is a big believer in incorporating knowledge from other disciplines into his golf teaching. In an interview for this story he referred to Welch with unmistakable respect and affection as a “mad scientist.”
“I would love to sit there with him for two months every single day and shadow him. That would be the ultimate.”
Meanwhile, inquiring minds want to know from Foley if Woods has undergone ZenoLink testing. The answer: Not yet.
“I haven’t used it on my guys yet,” says Foley, whose “guys” also include PGA Tour pros Hunter Mahan, Sean O’Hair and Justin Rose. “But that’s a goal.” Foley, himself, has been tested and so have many of his junior players.
Basically, he says, it is hard to get the top players to sit still long enough (even though the testing doesn’t take more than 30 minutes) to go through the process. “I would like to see it get to the point where the technology would be good enough that if you came for a lesson and we were working on the first part of a kinetic link and we were doing a drill – you could hit a shot and go right to the computer and see if it had changed. People want information right away.”
Welch compares providing that kind of instant feedback to “taking an X-ray of a broken bone, then another one a few minutes later hoping to see it had healed.” But, he adds, “We do now have the ability to process the ZenoLink data exactly the way it is within 15 minutes and, if necessary upon request, we can process it during a lesson so the information can be used immediately.”
Tiger, are you listening?
Meanwhile, to the uninitiated, listening to a conversation between Welch and Foley is a little like reading Lewis Carroll’s poem, “The Jabberwocky,” for the first time. The language is English, but many of the words and concepts are foreign. Fortunately, both Welch and Foley get that.
“We’re not faking it,” Foley says bluntly. What they are doing is exploring a frontier in the pursuit of better golf. What they are not doing, blessedly, is trying to convince and convert everybody that all the other existing methods are wrong while insisting theirs is the only true way.
“What we provide is objective, scientific information,” Welch says. “But the application of that information is anything but black and white. It’s very gray and it’s very much an art form. Most of what’s out there is research. Ours is truly clinical application biomechanics.”
In other words: Welch and his small staff are providing the plumb-bobs. Golf’s teaching professionals still have to build the houses.
And, Welch adds, the doubt in the teaching and medical communities is beginning to subside. “Five to 10 years ago resistance (to ZenoLink) came from pretty much everywhere because it was brand new and physical therapists and strength people saw it as an encroachment on their territory” he says. “For the most part today, we have acceptance across the board.”
“It’s just a matter of time now,” Schriber says. “I’ve been teaching a lot of this stuff for 15 years and people thought I was on crack.”
Now there are smart people in golf who are starting to think that ZenoLink may have, instead, begun to crack the code.
FIRST GUY: Man, that stretch limo was long.
SECOND GUY: How long was it?
FIRST GUY: It was so long … the driver got to the casino 15 minutes before we did.
BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI | We have arrived at the Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport under the cover of darkness on a Monday night in October. And we are rolling to Beau Rivage in a freshly-minted Lincoln that’s longer than a William Faulkner novel.
“Three weeks old,” says the driver.
Beau Rivage, french for “beautiful shore,” is the luxe hotel and casino in this region’s post-Katrina world. And in its own way, it is every bit as stylized as the locally iconic Faulkner’s prose.
Tomorrow morning we are teeing it up, 12 miles north, at Fallen Oak, which to name-drop a point of reference, is about as far away – philosophically, culturally and geographically – as you can get from Bandon Dunes. But the bucket-list buzz of this Tom Fazio layout has drawn us to the gulf coast to see what all the quiet fuss is about.
Meanwhile, on this evening, the big screen in Beau Rivage’s casino sports bar is jumping with images of the Jets and the Vikings. Minnesota quarterback Brett Favre, like Faulkner, a native Mississippian, has a sore arm and he is losing. None of which has affected the traffic at the blackjack tables. It is brisk. Actually, it is very brisk. Lots of sound and even a little fury. Signifying something.
“It’s starting to pick up,” says one of the hotel’s most senior officials. Nearby, the lobby of Beau Rivage’s adjoining hotel fairly bustles with guests.
It’s starting to pick up here from Katrina’s devastation five years ago, too. And it’s starting to recover from the BP PR oil disaster earlier this year. Picking up so nicely that the concept of a high-end, high-roller, $200-a-round golf course for hotel guests only doesn’t feel conspicuous right now so much as it feels an integral part of owner MGM Mirage’s attempts to recreate the dream it bought when it purchased The Mirage and Shadow Creek in Las Vegas from Steve Wynn earlier in this decade. Part of what you get for your Fallen Oak $200, you guessed it, is roundtrip limo service.
The esteemed Fazio designed Shadow Creek to international golf fanfare in 1989. His work at Fallen Oak is still a bit of a secret but it is becoming less well-kept by the day. The purists, of course, will sniff at the idea of stretch Lincolns to and from the clubhouse. But to them I say this: Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Besides, there’s plenty of steak to go with the sizzle once you get to the golf course.
In early May, the PGA Tour’s Champions Tour played its Mississippi Gulf Resort Classic at Fallen Oak. The reviews were overwhelmingly positive.
“It’s right in front of you.” Paul Azinger said.
“Honest,” Ben Crenshaw called it.
“You could hold a major championship on this course,” Loren Roberts added.
From the tips, Fallen Oak plays to 7,487 yards. Nestled next to the DeSoto National Forest on a 510-acre tract of land it has lots of bells and whistles but they are mostly muted. Like Tom Doak’s work at Old MacDonald in Bandon, Ore., there is plenty of room off most of the tees. The front nine moves more from side to side. The homeward half introduces elevated tees and plays more up and down. But like most of Fazio’s best work, there are no holes on the course that aren’t brothers, sisters or first cousins of every other hole.
The backdrop is all tall magnolias, pecan groves, wetlands, streams, lakes and ancient live oaks. The greens are tiff eagle bermudagrass; the fairways are 419 bermuda with zoysia grass flanking the bunkers and bahia grass bordering the course. The requisite SubAir drainage system alternately heats and vacuums moisture from the greens.
It is not necessarily easy, says one Fallen Oak official, to spend $50 million “and make it look like it has been there forever.” But they have pulled it off.
Fallen Oak has also managed to build a 12,000-square-foot clubhouse that doesn’t intrude. The choice of architecture – Acadian-style Southern Mansion – was important that way. The 70-seat clubhouse lounge offers Kobe beef sliders, still-warm chocolate chip cookies and a signature infused Bloody Mary that has landed Fallen Oak a spot on Golf Digest’s “50 Best 19th holes.”
Even better: No waiting.
“A busy day,” says Fallen Oak general manager David Stinson, “is 40 players.” And, philosophically, the MGM Mirage brass is fine with that.
The rooms back at Beau Rivage are luxuriously appointed, even if the televisions aren’t yet HD. The workout area is state of the art. The spa staff is helpful. The masseuses are skilled and soothing and there are enough of them to handle the late afternoon rush.
So what’s for dinner?
Well, just off the casino are several upscale restaurants, including B.R. Prime, a steakhouse that will cook your 10-ounce Kobe ribeye however you please. And it will only set you back $115.
SECOND GUY: $115 seems like a bit of a stretch for a steak. Just sayin’
FIRST GUY: Hey, they gotta pay for the Limo somehow.
SHEBOYGAN, WISCONSIN | There’s a special new person in Tiger Woods’ life. No, not that kind of person.
Canadian Sean Foley is, right now, the hottest teacher in golf. He is confident enough to dictate his own terms. He is quirky enough to have a little “stack and tilt” DNA in his swing methodology. And he appears to be perfectly poised to lead Woods out of his prolonged professional funk.
The upside Foley brings to the world No. 1′s immediate playing future is as big as it is important. But the devil will be in the details if Woods and Foley are to agree to agree.
The 35-year-old Foley, who not all that long ago was giving lessons to juniors at Glen Abbey near Toronto, won’t ask, “How high?” if Woods says, “Jump.” And if he and Woods hammer out the particulars of an ongoing player-teacher relationship, it won’t be until both sides have made critical working compromises.
According to people close to both camps, there are issues.
Not the least of them is that Foley – whose stable includes rising stars Hunter Mahan, Justin Rose and Sean O’Hair – won’t take on Woods without a contract. And he never teaches for free.
“When they make money,” Foley has said of his players, “I make money.”
All of which makes the potential pairing of the two that much more intriguing. It’s not that Butch Harmon and Hank Haney were pushovers. Hardly. But Woods’ leverage isn’t what it once was. And those who know Foley, say this won’t be lost on him.
Meanwhile the pervasive and persistent fogs that delayed each of the the first two rounds of PGA Championship last week were more than just obvious metaphors for the low-lying clouds Tiger has been living under all year.
Woods, in case you’ve been locked in a dark room somewhere watching Merv Griffin re-runs, arrived at Whistling Straits hip deep in months of unshakable off-course controversy and lost in a mist of disappointing on-course failures.
Then the sun came out.
Four holes into Thursday’s round, Woods had three birdies to his name and, temporarily at least, a perch on the top of the first page of the leaderboard.
“Everything,” he said, “was better.”
No, he wasn’t talking about his personal problems. Those won’t be lifting anytime soon. Woods was talking specifically about the recent trail of wreckage he had left behind at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in Ohio where, on one of his favorite courses, he had played the worst golf of his life.
The end result in Round One at Whistling Straits was an encouraging, 1-under 71 that few had seen coming. Then it was off to the range for a very public post-round session with the unofficially official Foley.
By the time Woods left the grounds Thursday there was a palpable sense that just maybe there was a new and real light at the end of the tunnel.
And quicker than you can say “new lead” the assembled media at the year’s final major were googling, texting, tweeting, posting, phoning, hustling and straining for dish on Foley, the heir-transparent to Harmon and Haney.
It was learned that when a Woods’ associate approached Foley at last month’s British Open, Foley said, yes, he would look at Woods if asked. Foley also told Global Golf Post senior correspondent John Hopkins that one condition of his contract with Rose is that Rose live in or near Orlando, Fla., where Foley teaches. Rose resides next to Orlando in Lake Nona.
The proximity thing is significant because Woods is expected soon to move from Orlando to his sprawling new Jupiter, Fla., estate. Jupiter is several hours, by car, from Orlando.
This could be one of those issues. Loyalty could be another.
Asked if he was looking forward to having Woods as a stablemate, the personable Rose was polite but less than enthusiastic. “Maybe,” he said. “I guess.”
And who could blame Rose if the thought of sharing more of Foley’s time with a high- maintenance player like Woods wasn’t the best idea he’d ever heard? Mahan’s reaction was softer. “I think it will work fine,” he said.
Or will it? Foley is not shy about talking to the press. Woods likes his people quiet and private.
This much is certain: Foley’s players love his approach that includes bringing off-the-course information and philosophy onto the range.
“He’s fun to be around and he’s well-read.” Rose said.
“He knows how to talk to us,” Mahan added.
The chatter over whether Woods and Foley will be a good fit rose in volume Saturday when Woods finished at 3 under after 36 holes Saturday morning and spent more range time with Foley during the break before going back out for the third round.
There was an air about Woods’ body language that said something was changing for the good.
Meanwhile, the picture that emerges of Foley is one of a no-nonsense guy who can talk more than just golf and is comfortable inside his own skin. It looks to be clear that for as long as his relationship with Woods lasts, Foley will be telling Tiger what he thinks, not what he thinks Tiger wants to hear.
And by the way, who would have thought a year ago at this time that Tiger Woods would be needing a guy named Sean Foley more than Sean Foley needs Tiger Woods?
It was the singular Charles Barkley, who at the height of his corpulence and charm, famously claimed he had been misquoted in his autobiography. That was never going to happen to Paul Azinger in “Cracking The Code,” the Ryder Cup book he co-authored with Ron Braund that is excerpted in this issue of Global Golf Post.
Besides having an infinitely better golf swing than Barkley (who doesn’t?), Azinger has a superior eye for specifics. Or, as he put it over the phone to me last week, “I micro-managed every word.”
In this case, Azinger’s keen attention to detail has produced a compelling inside look at the 2008 Ryder Cup. In “Cracking The Code,” the man who captained the Americans to a wildly exciting victory over the favored Europeans in Kentucky, literally gives us chapter and verse on how and why.
Azinger had a game plan. He sold it to the bosses at the PGA of America. And they selected him over Corey Pavin, who now has the unenviable task of duplicating Azinger’s Ryder Cup heroics against Europe this fall in Wales. Hard to imagine Pavin being any more prepared than Azinger was. “I micro-managed that part, too,” Azinger says.
But after the Monday team meeting at Valhalla Golf Club, Azinger smartly pulled back the reins. “This book is not an arrogant, ‘Oh, look at what we did,’ “ Azinger says now. “All a captain can do is create an environment and get out of the way. It’s just common-sense business principles.”
In the book, Azinger reveals these principles, in the greatest detail yet, while explaining the “pod system” culture he created. He carved out three distinct four-man groups from his 12-man roster. And the result was a shared sense that everybody had at least three guys that had their backs at all times.
There was the “aggressive” pod of Phil Mickelson, Anthony Kim, Justin Leonard and Hunter Mahan. There was the “steady/supportive” pod of Stewart Cink, Chad Campbell, Ben Curtis and Steve Stricker. And there was the “encouraging” pod of Kenny Perry, Boo Weekley, J.B. Holmes and Jim Furyk.
Tiger Woods, you may remember, was still recovering from reconstructive knee surgery and unavailable to Azinger at Valhalla. Given the checkered history between Woods and Mickelson, I couldn’t resist asking Azinger what pod he would have placed Woods in if Tiger had been on the team.
“The encouraging pod,” Azinger said without hesitation. “Three guys in that group had a tendency to get down on themselves, which is why I put Furyk in with them. If Tiger had been on the team, I would have moved Furyk to another pod and told Tiger the same thing I told Jim: encourage them.”
Meanwhile, there are a few things you should know about Paul Azinger you might not find in his book:
Azinger has always been a “what you see is what you get” guy. He showed up on Tour unannounced and unannointed in 1982 with a strong grip and a hold-on swing they don’t teach at any of the fancy golf academies. He hadn’t been able to break 40 until his senior year in school.
But he worked and he prepared. And he was tough. He won a major, the PGA Championship, in 1993. He took 1994 off to beat lymphoma. He produced laughter and tears with his unforgettable eulogy at close friend Payne Stewart’s funeral in 1999. And he was a force as a team room leader in five Ryder Cups as a player.
He respects the controversial Johnny Miller on television because Miller prepares and because, Azinger says, “Johnny still cares who wins.” But, Azinger adds, “He’s a polarizing influence. I want to be positive.” None of which means Azinger can’t be sharply candid.
For his part, Azinger has learned to work “with” the sometimes-difficult Nick Faldo in the TV booth. Azinger even once said of the flinty Brit, “He’s a good dude.”
But Azinger won’t hesitate to remind you there is no “i” in team while recalling what Irishman Padraig Harrington relayed to him about the message captain Faldo gave the Euros in Kentucky. “Nick told the team to practice and prepare as individuals,” Harrington said.
Azinger remains baffled why Pavin hasn’t spoken a word to him since Valhalla. Others say it’s because Pavin, an assistant captain in 2006, thought he should have been the captain in 2008. If that’s true, Azinger wonders why anybody would consider that to be his fault.
Azinger told me he “absolutely” won’t captain the U.S. team again. But in the next breath he added, “I suppose 10 or 15 years down the road I might do it. I hate to give a definitive no. But I’d go about it differently.”
Just like at Valhalla, though, he would keep the details private until after the matches. In Kentucky, he said, “the players bonded with a secret. They were empowered.”
The rest is in the book. “Cracking The Code” hits the stores in the U.S. Tuesday and is also available through Amazon.com.
Meanwhile, if Pavin eventually contacts Azinger, this is part of what he will hear: “Experience is overrated. Confidence trumps experience. What you did two years ago isn’t going to have a lot to do with your golf now. That’s my belief.”
And you can quote him on that.
