| at riviera |
| I am a golfer—a game that cannot be explained to anyone who doesn’t play it. I watched the super bowl at the house of friends. There was a commercial and I asked them to punch up TNT— golf—the Mercedes from Hawaii. Ernie Els was studying a putt. A short putt, downhill, a curler. He studied it from behind the hole and then in front of the hole. He took a sideways look. He stood over the putt and took a practice stroke, then another. A pause. Now he strokes the putt, but too hard and runs it through the break and the ball slides by on the high side. Back to football. The quarterback takes the snap and drops back to loop a bomb downfield, the cornerback leaps, gathers in the pass, fakes out the safety and streaks for the end zone. Touchdown. The room went nuts. I looked at them and said: “In other words, this is more exciting than golf”. Last week the tour rolled into Los Angeles for the Nissan Open at Riviera. Riviera was the course OJ belonged to before the trial. Following the trial the wives of the members held a meeting and the result was an invitation for OJ to resign his membership. I have zero sympathy for OJ Simpson but I have to say—now that I have seen the course—It’s a cruel blow. It’s a different world out here. This is why you work hard to become rich-— to fork over $200,000 to join the club at Riviera. And worth every dime. Its paradise. I arrived and checked out the action at the range. The pros all share two things in common: 1) they hit the ball a mile, and 2) they are groomed to within an inch of their life. Somewhere in the world is a machine that presses the perfect pair of pants and every pro golfer owns one. I sat and watched for a bit. I already knew about these guys from TV. TV is sensitive about golf. The networks wont admit it’s a boring game-—TV-wise-- but they know it is a boring game and they are desperate for an angle—-any angle. This is how you come to know that: Jerry Kelly is a hockey fan. Joel Edwards’s wife was a biology major. Jonathan Byrd enjoys reading. Jerry Burns has a coaster collection. Etc, etc. The week kicks off on Monday with the Nissan people playing a round. Tuesday is a practice round for the pros and Wednesday is the pro/am. Tuesday is the day to catch some good action. I wandered about following some different guys. I followed Hal Sutton because I like his swing and he has been married 4 times. I followed Craig Stadler because I was curious to see, in the flesh, how a guy with so much flesh, 5’ -8” and 260 lbs, built like a giant turnip, manages such an elegant touch around the greens—the short game. I followed Angel Cabrera—an Argentinean. Even for these guys he hammers the ball. He is big, not tall but wide-—a bull. And he gets it all into the swing. I watched him tee off on 10. He smacks the shot and there is a particular sound at impact, like the rearrangement of molecules at the center of the ball, and there goes the ball up, up, up, and it disappears. It goes into orbit. I followed Robert Gamez. Gamez, another latino, from a modest background, broke in as a rookie in ‘91 and won playing his first tournament. He won another tournament the same year, was rookie of the year and on his way—or so everyone thought. He was young but no longer poor. The entourage made its appearance and he started to party. He partied on and his game floundered and he lost his card. He was banished to the Nike tour, the minor leagues of golf, to hack his way around there for a few years. But now he is back with a new attitude, a stoic attitude, and playing well. I visited the sixth hole and watched a few groups play through. Six is a famous hole-—a par 3, 199 yards. Its famous because a perfect shot, to the center of the green, dumps you in a sandtrap. The green is another problem. Take 6 poles of uneven length and drive them into the ground in random locations, then install a canopy that fastens itself to the poletips. What do you have—a model of the universe as conceived by Stephen Hawking? No— you have the sixth green at Riviera. It was here at six I watched Joe Durant hit an unbelievable shot. He yanked the tee shot left into the rough. He is left, the pin is right, he has a downslope type situation to contend with, also the famous bunkerbetween him and the flag tucked behind on the far side. He has no shot. But he finds a shot. He rotates himself 90 degrees from the flag and hits the shot. The flag is in the lower right quadrant of the green. He hits a pitch into the upper left quadrant-—an upslope. The ball climbs the upslope and veers right, traversing the back rim of the green, wide of the bunker, over to the far side and now it begins to slip back, down towards the pin, down it comes, down, down, down and it continues to track and stops a foot from the cup. Unbelievable-—even for a pro. We go nuts. I wandered around. Over by the press tent a commercial was being filmed—a Nissan spot. The golfer was David Duval. I watched them rehearse the spot. I have seen Duval on TV before-—on Charley Rose. I watched him on Charley Rose for 5 minutes and that was enough. Can a dead man speak? No—but if he could he would sound like David Duval. I wanted to put a bullet through my head. The Nissan spot was more of the same. They ran through it once, then twice. Now the director gets up and goes over to Duval, throws an arm around his shoulder in a chummy way and reads the copy himself, by way of demonstrating how to breathe some life into this pitch. They take another crack. Better but not much. Its a problem without a solution-—like teaching the blind to see. I wandered off. The tournament began on Thursday. These days there are two kinds of tournaments: Tiger Woods tournaments and non--Tiger Woods tournaments. No one will admit to this, certainly not the PGA or the players either, but that’s the way it is. You need only check the TV listings. If Tiger is playing the match goes network. If he decides to pass it goes to cable. Nissan was a Tiger tournament. He committed at the last minute and on that day requests for media credentials doubled—from 150- 300. These are my thoughts on Tiger Woods. He has been called the new Michael Jordan but this is incorrect. He is the new Babe Ruth. I attended a press conference, following the pro/am, and as I stood there, with this kid five feet away, I felt something--the presence of greatness. Maybe not greatness as a human being but greatness nevertheless. I was moved. It was cool. He is smooth at these things as he has learned to be. He is reserved-—not an Arnold Palmer type. Palmer thrived on the media circus—the adulation. It was a drug. There is a story about Palmer, signing autographs, two or three hundred, and when he finished he went looking for more. He said: “Im just getting warmed up!” The other Palmer story is: he never had a conversation that wasn’t about Arnold Palmer. So it went. For a week I watched people hit golf balls—on the range, on the course, on TV in the press tent. I met some of my fellow golf journalists, not a bad job if you can master the interviewing of people who look at you like you’re covered with flies. There was something I wanted to nail down-—a story I heard about Tiger-–that he was cheap. Sammy Snead had the same reputation. Ben Hogan said: “Sam made a million dollars playing golf and saved two million”. I mentioned it to one of the stringers from the wire service who said: “Ive heard something about that but my question is: how would anyone know? When was the last time a guy like that was invited to pick up a tab?” We spoke of the course. Joe—the stringer—said: “You can have all the water holes with the railroad ties and sand traps up the kazoo and fairways that look like they have been trimmed with toenail clippers but its trees that make a golf course”. It was true. There was something about this place, a character that absorbs itself into the landscape over a period of time-—75 years. In high school I scored a D in Botany—a hard D. Nature doesn’t interest me. But now, thanks to Riviera and a guide to the horticulture of the course, this blind spot had been addressed. I know the difference between the Blue Gum Eucalyptus and the Red Gum Eucalyptus and the Silk Eucalyptus and the Sycamore, the Oak, the Meleleuca, etc. The pros agreed. They were raving. They play the best courses in the world and if something occurs not to their approval they are quick to point it out-—very. But this week—no complaints. The tournament began on Thursday and I wandered around for a few holes but by now I had been watching guys hit golf balls for 4 days and enough is enough—even at this level. Also--the fans were beginning to arrive. By Saturday the place would be a zoo. A mob is a mob—-golf or otherwise. I killed a few hours in the press tent watching on TV and left early to avoid the crush. I climbed the hill to the clubhouse and stood there looking down on the course. It was that time of day, mid afternoon, with the sun filtering through the trees drenching the course in this orangey light and it was awesome-- spectacular, amazing, gorgeous. I stood there soaking it all up and I had a thought. This was my story. Not the golf but the golf course. Riviera. Paradise. |
Hogan at Riviera