PGA Championship Looks Like a True Test of Professional Talent

There are significant numbers of professed golf fans in this country who have a couple of problems with the Professional Golfers’ Assn. Tour these days.

First, they think it somehow has become illegitimate because Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson haven’t won lately. Second, they think the Tour’s theme song should be an adaptation of an old Judy Collins hit--”Send in the Clones.”

That’s their problem.

I would suggest only that those suffering from such misconceptions steer clear of Cherry Hills Country Club in Denver this week when it plays host to its fifth major tournament, the 1985 PGA Championship.

Nicklaus, Palmer and Watson will be there, and although they haven’t been at the top of their games recently, their chances of winning might be better than at the garden-variety tour stops.

They are more conditioned to the pressures of golf’s major events, and they are experienced practitioners of the full variety of golf shots that the governing body of American professional golf tries to draw out of competitors at its annual championship.

In addition, the lure of one of their sport’s Big Four--the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open and PGA--gets the blood pumping even in these decorated battle veterans.

That surely will be true for Watson and Palmer, whose combined 92 tour wins and 15 major titles don’t include a single PGA Championship. That’s right, Zero. Zip. None.

Winning the PGA probably isn’t a realistic goal any more for Palmer, whose last regular tour victory came a dozen years ago.

That’s not the case with Watson, certainly. This tournament is one he gears up for as he tries to add that elusive title to the one U.S. Open, five British Opens and two Masters championships in his resume. Defending 1984 PGA winner Lee Trevino, for one, thinks Cherry Hills will be well suited for Watson’s game this week.

If those storied names don’t end up atop the leader board Sunday, however, it is not because the grand old game has slipped from the hands of greats into the clutches of a swarm of faceless, colorless practitioners of unmemorable golf.

I submit that a short time spent in the gallery at the majestic old course this week will convince most observers that there remains a hearty streak of individualism among today’s touring pros.

Those who see no further than a general appearance by which they try to lump most of the players (you know, blond clones with double-knit pants and alligators on their chests) simply don’t care enough to learn more about these golfers who, as much as any group of athletes anywhere, are a breed of Renaissance men who survive only if their playing skills permit. No guaranteed contracts, no pension plans, no strike votes against owners.

Their golf games may be similar in ways, but that probably is more because of the modern, vastly improved condition of the courses on which they compete than because they are products of some secret assembly-line system that turns out batches of Ken dolls equipped with drivers and 9-irons.

And in terms of skills, it is ludicrous to try to dismiss the 150-man field that will test Cherry Hills this week as some sort of amorphous athletic mass unworthy of the championship they will pursue.

In fact (and the game’s best players past and present are quick to point it out), the depth of talent today is greater than at any time in the history of professional golf, both in the United States and abroad. The top players from other eras still would be standouts, the Nicklauses and Palmers will tell you, but the competition they would have had to beat is of a far greater scope than ever before.

With that in mind, and given the all-professional entry requirements of the PGA Championship (versus those in golf’s other three majors), the field that will tee off at Cherry Hills starting Thursday is, from top to bottom, arguably the strongest ever put together--anywhere.

Delightfully, that field will be put to the kind of rigorous test of golf that the PGA of America annually arranges for its most talented practitioners.

One of the things the PGA has done best in its championships is avoid the mistake that the sponsoring United States Golf Assn. for so many years insisted on making with its U.S. Open courses: Toughening them to the point that they figuratively took clubs, particularly the driver, out of the players’ hands.

The quality of the Cherry Hills course makes it the kind of layout that requires the use of almost every club in the player’s bag. Otherwise this event wouldn’t be in town. And if it is prepared the way it should be this week, it will be demanding to the point that it will reward good golf shots and penalize bad ones.

That will be true for shots that find the fairways, as opposed to those that stray off into what probably will be dense but consistent four-inch rough. It will be true, as well, for approach shots that find the portions of greens from which birdies can be attempted, versus those that land in spots where a curving, downhill roll on the equivalent of green glass makes bogey more likely.

What we have here, then, is the makings of a terrific championship. And the only clones to be found will be those in the cantankerous crowd that thinks tournament golf has gone to hell.