BERNHARD LANGER : He Shoots Hole in One Theory: That Europeans Are Aloof

Professional golf is a quiet, nonviolent sport that needs stars to sell it. Arnold Palmer once sold it the way Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Robert Redford and Paul Newman could sell a bad movie.

Nobody has ever matched Palmer’s clout at the gate, but every few years or so, a new star appears who, either through the force of his personality or the quality of his game, draws attention to the tour. After Palmer came Jack Nicklaus, then Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson and Seve Ballesteros.

Miller, who once won eight tournaments in one year, no longer attracts the attention he once did, but if you put on a golf tournament today, you’d like to have all the others.

The folks who run the MONY Tournament of Champions, which starts today at the La Costa Country Club, got four of them, and almost had five. Ballesteros also qualified for this unique tournament--only champions for the past 12 months are allowed in--but he had a prior commitment to play in the Italian Open.

However, the sponsors came up with an added attraction: Bernhard Langer of Anhausen, West Germany. In fact, Langer, the Masters champion, probably is the most attractive player to join the tour since Ballesteros left Spain and the European tour to try his luck in the United States.

Of all the new faces among the 289 players listed in the PGA’s 1985 media guide, Langer, 27, seems to have the best game and personality. He reminds you a little of Bjorn Borg, although his blond, curly hair is not quite as long as Borg’s, and he speaks English a lot better than the Swedish tennis star.

Langer is not a big fellow. He is slightly built, in fact, at 5-9 and 155 pounds. His upper body and arms are well-muscled, however, and he is surprisingly long off the tee.

He also handles interviews well, replying to questions in almost flawless English and with a great deal of humor.

Langer, in fact, is a confident, gifted fellow. Whereas Ballesteros is reserved and seems, to some reporters, to be carrying a chip on his shoulder, Langer is outgoing and banters patiently with reporters. So far, he said Wednesday, he likes the U.S. media, and he showed he had a good idea of how some American reporters operate when he added, with a smile, “But some of you write what you want.”

It was reported in the Washington Post the other day that Langer went to a fast-food restaurant in Augusta the day after he had the Masters and nobody recognized him. “It was just a small restaurant, and there were only about 10 people there,” Langer said. “And three or four did recognize me.”

German reporters, he said, are less professional than the Americans and British.

“I’ve had some bad experiences in Germany,” he said. “They just want some big headlines. Some of the things they write about have nothing to do with golf. They want to know the color of my underpants. That’s none of their business. I like the American and British press because you write about golf.”

Not many pros will agree with Langer, of course. Most of them don’t think sportswriters know much about golf.

Although Langer is suddenly getting a lot of recognition as a result of his Masters championship, he is no rookie and, in fact, has been playing splendid golf for four or five years. He is well known in Europe and Asia, where he has won 16 tournaments, and last year he was the European tour’s leading money winner. In 1981, he was the first native German to win his country’s Open. He has twice been runner-up in the British Open.

Golf in Germany is not to be likened to soccer, or probably even dueling. Florida has more courses. Palm Springs almost has. There are about 200 courses west of the Berlin Wall, and all but one of them are private.

Langer says there are about 130,000 golfers in the country. He is the best. The second-best, Langer told reporters at Augusta, is Tony Kugelmuller. “Good luck with the spelling.”

Langer, the son of a bricklayer, started as a caddie at the Augsburg Country Club in his hometown of Anhausen when he was 9 to earn a little pocket money. His father was taken prisoner by Soviet soldiers during World War II but escaped while being transported to the Soviet Union by jumping off a train and walking back to Anhausen. Asked where Anhausen is, Langer replied, “It is near Augsburg, which is near Munich.”

He learned to play golf during the seven years he caddied, practicing on the driving range until he was good enough to play on the course. He also acquired some muscles, he said, “pushing and pulling the trolleys” and riding a bicycle for an hour a day to and from the course. A trolley is a golf cart Germans pull around a course.

Completing his standard schooling at 15, Langer went off to Munich to become an assistant pro at the Munich Country Club. At 18, he started playing the European tour.

And how did he learn to speak English so well? In the first place, he said, all West Germans must take English lessons for five years, starting at age 10. Besides, to become a golf professional in Germany, one must be able to speak the language. And when he went onto the European tour, he said, “I had to speak English because nobody spoke German.”

Langer has an odd putting style. Inside 20 feet, he usually putts cross-handed, placing his left hand below his right. Outside 20 feet, he putts the standard way. There have been reports that he once had a bad case of the putting yips, an uncommon malady for someone so young.

“It wasn’t really the yips as you know it,” he said Wednesday. “I played on slow greens in Germany and never had a putting stroke. I hit my putts.”

The change when he started playing fast, undulating greens was drastic, he said. “I handled it badly and developed the so-called yips.”

Langer was accused of playing too slowly when he joined the U.S. tour, and he was fined $500 for taking too much time at the Tournament Players Championship this spring. Tour Director Jack Tuthill said Langer has since improved. “He made a concerted effort to speed up his play and did,” Tuthill said. “The results have been so good, there has been no need to talk to him.”

Although a few of the customers in that Augusta restaurant might not have known him, Langer is back in Southern California to play in the Tournament of Champions for the first time as a genuine and recognizable star. He has been inundated with messages from all parts of the world and besieged by requests for interviews since winning the Masters, his first major championship. He even made the front page in some German newspapers, he said. “And that’s really unusual.”

German television carried an hour’s telecast of the Masters the Monday after he had won the tournament, and a German television crew rushed over to film him. “I get recognized now everywhere I go,” he said.

How is he holding up?

“I’m feeling good now, but I was tired last week and the week before that,” he said.

He has been so busy for the last two weeks, he said, that his “off-time” has been cut to a minimum. That time is the three to six hours a day he usually spends with his American wife, Vikki.

The interviews and hoopla that followed the Masters have not interfered with his game. “I can protect that,” he said.

So far he has. Many players have a letdown after a victory in a major tournament, but Langer won the Heritage the week after he won the Masters.

He has not become rich off his Masters championship. “I hope I will, but I haven’t yet,” he said. “There have been a few phone calls for deals, and I’ve had to, how do you say it, turn some down.”

Anhausen is still his principal residence, but he and Vikki have lived part of the time in Florida the last two years. After the tournament here, he will go home to West Germany and remain until he returns for the U.S. Open in mid-June.

Anhausen will celebrate when he returns. He is sure it will be something special, he said, because “the Masters was my biggest success.”

Langer, 26 other regular-tour champions and nine senior champions will tee off today, starting at 10:30. Langer & Co. will play for $400,000, while the senior citizens will shoot for $100,000. The last-place finishers will receive $4,900 and $3,300, respectively.