Menu
Russ Cochran invites me to sit for lunch, and I ask him how he’s been playing. It turns out that he’s won $200,000 so far this year, but has not played well in recent weeks. I ask him whether or not he likes to take time off when he’s playing poorly, or if he would rather play his way through it. “I don’t really know,” Russ replies. “Sometimes I think I need to keep on playing and just grind it out, and others I just want to withdraw and go home. It’s hard to figure out just what to do.” And this is from a guy who’s been on Tour for 15 years. Russ has four kids, all boys, all of whom play golf. The oldest, 14, is showing signs of real promise. “I’m trying to teach him,” Russ says, “not so much about the mechanical stuff, although we work on that too, but on the mental side. I want so much for him to be tough, and not give up. He gets down on himself, and I tell him that if you play golf you’re going to spend a lot of time being disappointed. It’s hard to get it across. I guess I really feel what that is, because it’s the only thing I’ve ever known, that struggle. You just have to pick yourself up and keep going.” There’s one thing you can be sure to find at a PGA Tour stop: a lot of daddies who miss their kids. Russ shoots 72 the first day, then withdraws.
Bobby Clampett is one of those daddies. I run into Bob on the range as I am leaving Avenel on Friday. He was at one point in his life a phenomenal golfer, with a future as bright as Tiger Woods. When he was 18, Bobby may have been the best golfer on the planet. Recently, Bob went two years without hitting a single ball. His swing, since his debacle in the British Open in the early eighties, had mutated to the point that he simply couldn’t bear it anymore. He is now a commentator with CBS. While he stayed away from physically swinging, he thought hard about what he wanted to do with his motion. Now he’s back hitting balls, and when I see him on the range, I sense that he is as intense as ever. My immediate comment to him is, “Hey, Bobby. That swing looks almost normal. What happened?” (Bob has a good sense of humor). “You always were a funny guy, Defran.” When one of the range volunteers comes over and asks for Bobby’s name, I inform him that “that’s Bobby Clampett. Once he was the next Nicklaus. Now he’s the next Pat Summerall.” Bobby loved that one.
The PGA Tour is red carpet all the way. Nowhere is this more evident than on the driving range. The average guy who drives out to White Flint for a $10 bucket of rocks (no offense, White Flint; all ranges serve up rocks, some with dimples, some without) has no idea what it would be like to smack a few buckets of brand new Titleists off pristine, real live grass as short as he is used to putting on. Having a problem with your clubs? Here, try this driver with that shaft, or perhaps that driver with this shaft. Why don’t we check the lie and loft on those irons, maybe reshaft them while we’re at it. (While you wait, no less.) Need a new wedge or two? How about a different putter? Can we pay you to use them? Any Tour pro who says he is having trouble finding clubs he is comfortable with is either a head case or is suffering from too many choices.
Everything that surrounds the participant in a Tour event is designed to provide the player with the best of all conditions for him to find his game and play well. Everything, that is, except the fact that millions of dollars are on the line, and if you play even close to mediocre you get nothing and like it. I’m out there with stars in my eyes. I appreciate this nirvana in which I find myself. But find a regular Tour player who has missed 4 or 5 cuts in a row and you can bet that the novelty has worn off. This is a job, and these are the working conditions. When you are judged solely by your performance it is difficult to continue to look around to see how lucky you are just to be out here. The last thing the struggling Tour pro feels is lucky. He’s out there bleeding from the eyeballs, trying so hard that the end of each day finds him totally exhausted with the internal effort it takes to squeeze out the shot or two that is the difference between making the cut and heading down the road. Nowhere else can two rounds of even par on a difficult golf course be cause for so much self-flagellation and self-loathing. But if the cut is one-under, those two even par rounds may as well have been a pair of 80’s.
All the guys long for the day when making cuts is no longer a concern. My playing partner Thursday and Friday, Glen Hnatiuk (pronounced “Natchick”) recounted to me, during one of our many first-round delays, the round he played this year with Tiger Woods. “He has an incredible game”, Glen says. “But the most amazing thing about playing with him is the way he hits his putts from 3-5 feet, especially downhill. I would be dying them into the hole, not wanting too much coming back if I happen to miss. He absolutely smashes them into the hole. You’ve never seen anything like it. There’s no fear at all. He’s not trying to make the cut. He’s trying to win. I never knew how different it was to have that security.”
Glen is one of the nicest guys I have played with in the Kemper. Tall, good-looking, even-tempered, possessing a classy, precise action that strikes the ball with consistency, Glen is the perfect example of what some moronic golf writers would call the excess baggage of the Tour, the guys no one wants to watch because they aren’t big stars yet. Well, where do the stars come from? They have to start somewhere. Glen played a 69 into a 74 on Thursday with some horrendous putting, but turned it around on Friday with an easy 67 that brought him in at one less than the cut. While we sat on the 3rd tee Friday I asked him how he kept so calm all the time. “I, don’t know,” he replied, “I’ve just always been like that. But I will tell you, I’m burning up inside. Sometimes I wish I could do something just to let it out.”
Playing in one of these things a year, I feel like a local act in a traveling circus. The tents will be picked up and taken down the road to the next town; I’ll go back home to my wife and kids and get to work for my 8:30 lesson on Saturday morning. No matter, when I’m out on the course I’m bleeding with the rest of them, because that’s the only way I know how to play. Any time a Club Professional makes the cut in a Tour event it is a major accomplishment. I have made three cuts in these things in my life, two in the Kemper (1983 and 1992) and one in the PGA Championship at Riviera in 1995. Undoubtedly, making the cut in a major championship, especially at a course with the history of Riviera, is what I consider to be my greatest accomplishment as a player. My goal this week is simple; shoot even par and play on the weekend.
Alas, it is not to be. Poor iron play on Thursday puts me behind the eight-ball with a 75, and an even par round of 71 on Friday is respectable, but barely sniffs making the cut. I’m O.K. with it, though. I feel as though I have shown the type of game that is still competitive at this, the highest level. That bodes well for me as I continue to try to improve and take my game up against my peers in Section and National Club Professional tournaments. I have also learned a bit more about the game., about competing under pressure and about taking swing keys out onto the course, which, of course, is of great interest to the young, aspiring players that I teach. And I am, after all, a teacher who plays, and if I remember that I will always enjoy every second of my time out on the Tour.