Crenshaw’s Victory May Signal End of a Slump

For the first time since the 1984 Masters, Ben Crenshaw won a golf tournament Sunday. It didn’t bother him in the least that he had to share the victory with Miller Barber. When a man is drowning, he doesn’t mind if somebody gives him a hand.

While most members of the game’s elite played in the World Series of Golf, Crenshaw and Barber teamed to win the $450,000 Jeremy Ranch Shootout in Park City, Utah. Each earned $30,000, which is almost twice as much as Crenshaw had won all year on the PGA tour.

Two weeks earlier, he was elated merely to make the cut in the PGA Championship at Englewood, Colo.

Standing over a 20-foot par putt on the 18th hole in the second round, Crenshaw wasn’t assured of that.

Crenshaw’s putter has been no more important to his career than, say, Merlin’s wand was to his, but the magic had been missing this year.

Jeff Burrell, Crenshaw’s caddy, stared at the grass under his feet, afraid to watch.

Crenshaw’s girlfriend, Julie Forrest, crossed her fingers.

When the putt fell, just as all of Crenshaw’s 20-footers seemed to do before this year, he kissed his putter.

“We’re working on the weekend,” Burrell told him. “You get a paycheck.”

“ You get a paycheck,” Crenshaw told him.

“You need it as much as I do,” his caddy said, laughing.

It was the second straight week that Crenshaw made the cut. The way he’s played this year, that amounts to a hot streak. In his previous 10 tournaments, he made the cut in only two. In one of those, he was disqualified for signing an incorrect score card. He went eight straight weeks without earning a paycheck.

“It’s been an emotional roller coaster, most of it down,” Forrest said. The week before the PGA, Crenshaw made a double bogey in all four rounds of the Western Open. Some players go an entire year without making four double-bogeys. Still, he made the cut, finishing in a tie for 55th.

After returning to his hotel to pack, he watched the final holes of the tournament on television. As amateur Scott Verplank sank another putt on his way to the victory, Crenshaw said: “That’s 21-year-old nerves for you. When I was 21, I’d stand over a putt and see the hole opening. I don’t have that confidence anymore.”

In his youth, Crenshaw seemed invulnerable.

It was not only that he won three straight NCAA championships at the University of Texas, but the hitch-up-his-pants flair with which he won them. As a sophomore, Crenshaw needed a 35-foot putt on the 18th green to save par and tie his teammate, and rival since their high school days in Austin, Tom Kite. When Kite heard the roar from the gallery around the green, he knew he had been victimized once again by Crenshaw’s putter.

“I don’t ever remember Ben missing a putt from the time he was 12 until he was 20,” Kite once said.

At the NCAA tournament a year later, the University of Florida’s Gary Koch thought he had broken Crenshaw’s spell. Leading by a stroke on the back nine, Koch hit an approach shot to within three feet of the hole. The next player to hit was Crenshaw, whose approach landed on the green and rolled to within two feet of the hole. A shaken Koch missed his putt and settled for par. Crenshaw made his birdie putt and never looked back.

“He wasn’t cocky, but he had an air about him,” said Brent Buckman, Crenshaw’s former college roommate and still a close friend. “He believed he could do anything with a golf club in his hand.”

Later in that summer of 1973, Crenshaw earned his PGA tour card with a 12-shot victory over the rest of the field. In his first tournament as a professional, the Texas Open at San Antonio, Crenshaw shot 14 under par and won by two shots over Orville Moody. Two weeks later, Crenshaw finished second to Barber in the 144-hole World Open.

The golf world settled in to watch Gentle Ben challenge the Golden Bear.

There are a number of theories about why it hasn’t happened. The death of Crenshaw’s mother in 1974, which deeply troubled him, and a turbulent marriage were contributing factors, but the bottom line was that the birdie-eat-birdie professional tour is too competitive for anyone to dominate.

That isn’t to say that Crenshaw became just another blond in the crowd. In his third full year on the tour, he was the second-leading money winner. He earned more than $200,000 in five different years. It took him only six years and seven months to win his first million, the same amount of time it took Tom Watson.

Realistically, Crenshaw accomplished everything in his first 10 years on the tour that he could have expected, except the thing he wanted most, a victory in a major tournament.

A golf historian, he would have liked nothing better than to have his name in the books he collects for his golf library. He was close more than once. Twice he was second in both the British Open and the Masters. He was tied for the lead on the 71st hole of the 1975 U.S. Open before hitting his tee shot into the water. In 1979, he lost in a playoff for the PGA championship.

Last year, he finally won a major tournament, the Masters. As far as he was concerned, the Masters was the major.

“It’s a sweet, sweet thing,” he said after his victory at Augusta National, the course designed by his idol, Bobby Jones. “I don’t think there will ever be anything sweeter for me.”

In a perfect world, that would be the best way to end Crenshaw’s story.

Unfortunately for Crenshaw, in the 16 months since he won the Masters, his personal life has gone into the deep rough, and his game, while it hasn’t hit bottom, has plunged him to 151st on this year’s money-earnings list, which is close enough to scrape the bottom.

In 22 tournaments this year, he has missed the cut in 12 and was disqualified in two others. Before the Jeremy Ranch Shootout, his best finish was a tie for 18th at the Hawaiian Open. His best finish in a major tournament was a tie for 35th at the British Open. Until Sunday, he had won only $16,337.28.

The decline has been most evident in his putting. Never particularly true off the tee, he always managed to compensate with his putter, a relic called Little Ben that his father gave him for his 15th birthday.

Even in 1982, when he had his only other off year and finished 83rd in money winnings, he led the tour in putting. From 1980 through last year, he was the tour’s third-best putter. During that time, he averaged fewer than 29 putts a round. This year, he has averaged almost 31 putts a round, more than 139 other golfers on the tour.

The stress has taken its toll on Crenshaw, 33. He has lost weight, as much as 20 pounds at one point from his 5-foot 9-inch frame that carried only 170 at its heaviest. He is smoking more. The swagger is gone.

“He’s not the same guy, confidence-wise, I used to know,” Buckman said. Sometimes, Crenshaw can’t even decide which club to use. “He’s worn out three bags this year just putting clubs back in,” said Dave Marr, a former PGA champion and another of Crenshaw’s close friends.

Crenshaw’s girlfriend, Forrest, said he still has moments of glory. The problem is that they’re on Memorex, not live.

“We watch the Masters tape all the time,” she said. “After seeing that, he comes out ready to play and all up for the game. Then he misses a cut and wants to shut himself off from everyone for the rest of the week. He says, ‘I’m no good. I can’t play anymore.’ He hates himself after he misses a cut.”

After he shot 78-72 and missed the cut at the U.S. Open, Crenshaw stormed into the locker room and, in a cry of despair, said: “I don’t deserve to play golf. I don’t deserve to play golf.”

In a decidedly better mood, Crenshaw sat in the players’ dining room at Cherry Hills Country Club after the second round of the PGA and tried to put his finger on when it all started to go wrong.

Oddly enough, he pointed to the 1984 Masters.

As an indication of the place that Augusta National holds in Crenshaw’s heart, he once described it as a “mystical, cathedral setting.” He said that when he was 10 and playing the municipal course in Austin, he would stand over a putt and dream that he had to make it to win the Masters. It was a fantasy that he carried through college and even onto the pro tour.

“The Masters is everything that’s best about golf,” he said.

Earlier this year, Watson told Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post: “In all sports, you see athletes attain a certain goal, and it stops them. There’s always a goal better than that goal, and you have to find it. If you don’t think that way, you’re in trouble.”

Crenshaw has been unable to find another goal.

“Some players get the monkeys off their backs and go on to greatness,” said Hughes Norton, Crenshaw’s agent from the International Management Group. “Look at Watson. He had the reputation of a choker in major tournaments, but he finally won one and that propelled him into winning others. But Ben’s not as driven as Watson. Winning the Masters did the reverse for him. It was a letdown.”

Crenshaw admitted as much at Cherry Hills.

“It was like the life was drawn right out of me,” he said.

If the letdown after the Masters was the beginning of the slide for Crenshaw, the avalanche was still to come.

The week before the 1984 Masters, he and his wife, Polly, decided, after several separations, to end their nine-year marriage. He said it was, initially, a relief. Not until several weeks later did he begin to realize how emotionally spent it had left him.

“It’s the best decision I ever made,” he said of the divorce. “We were both miserable. But actually doing something about it is so difficult, so emotional.”

While in the process of dividing their assets as part of the divorce settlement, Crenshaw had a couple of financial setbacks in real estate deals. He said he hoped to overcome that with the endorsement bonanza that he had been led to believe would come with winning the Masters, but that failed to materialize.

“I didn’t sign one contract,” Crenshaw said.

His agent, Norton, said that is because Crenshaw is too particular about the type of product he will endorse.

“Everything came crashing down at once,” Crenshaw said. “Then I started to not play well. That’s what’s really been eating at me. I’ve had such a feeling of embarrassment. I need a good score or a couple of good rounds to boost my confidence. But you need to see the results before you can get that confidence.”

Whenever Crenshaw’s game deteriorated in the past, he usually was able to correct it with a visit to his longtime teacher, Harvey Penick, the pro at the Austin Country Club.

But Penick turned 80 this year and is semi-retired, leaving Crenshaw to search for another source of advice.

“It’s been an unbelievable year,” Crenshaw said. “I’m pooped out mentally. I wish I could wake up and it would be 1986.”

One positive for Crenshaw this year has been his relationship with Forrest, who was raised in Arcadia. They met in 1984 at the Los Angeles Open at Riviera Country Club and began dating last summer.

“She’s seen the worst this year,” he said. “But I’ve got somebody now who I know is going to be there whether I’m playing well or not.”

Forrest said: “There’s been a lot of strain, but we’re still together. If we can make it through this year, we can make it through anything.”

But even that silver lining has a dark cloud. Crenshaw’s family and some of his friends disapprove of the relationship, believing that he should not become involved again so quickly, particularly with someone as young as Forrest. She is 21.

“Ben’s a very sensitive guy,” Norton said. “When he’s standing over a putt, he’s probably letting that bother him.”

Crenshaw’s sensitivity is one of the personality traits that has made him such a popular player with other golfers on the tour. But his friends say it has hurt him this year because he’s been overly concerned about letting other people down because of his poor play.

“He pays too much attention to what people think of him,” Marr said. “He can’t be perfect. He’s just got to be Ben Crenshaw. What’s wrong with that?”

As a golfer, Marr is frustrated by Crenshaw. As a friend, Marr is sympathetic.

“He needs to come to grips with all this stuff, whatever it is that’s bothering him,” Marr said. “I once said he should start making history instead of reading it. Some of his friends got mad at me, but I meant it in a nice way. I love the guy, but we can hire a tour librarian. I don’t know whether to hug him or slap him around. If you’ve had children, you understand.

“Maybe he has let people down. But people sincerely want him to succeed. I’ve never seen anyone on the tour who people have pulled so hard for. Ben’s good for the game. Heck, he’s good for life. He’s the kind of guy, you smile when you see him coming.”

When a friend at this year’s Masters suggested that Crenshaw should see a psychiatrist, he seemed offended by the idea.

But as his game continued to deteriorate, he finally agreed to see Dr. Richard Coop, a sports psychologist from the University of North Carolina.

“I’m getting my life sorted out,” Crenshaw said later. “I’m prone to having dark periods, and the doctor knows that. These things all came together and just added up.

“Dr. Coop asked me everything, like how I felt about my parents. I told him I respect my father and love him to death. I lost my mother in 1974. I was always a mama’s boy. I put her on a pedestal. I leaned on her. I’m sure she could have solved some of my problems.

“He told me to take some of the pressure off myself and attack my problems one at a time. I feel better about myself already. I’m more relaxed than I’ve been in a long time. I’m more purposeful.

“It’s a start. He told me to go out and believe in myself and I might surprise myself.”

On the final hole Sunday, Crenshaw’s 20-foot putt died just short of the cup. Instead of winning in regulation, he and Barber went into a sudden-death playoff against Gene Littler and John Mahaffey.

But Crenshaw’s 255-yard two-iron shot on the first extra hole landed 14 feet from the hole. Crenshaw didn’t miss this time, sinking the putt for an eagle and the championship.

“It feels good to finally do something right,” he said.