The Golfing Gods Have Little Respect for Skill, or Beauty

It is well established that golf is far and away the most frustrating of games that people play. Life is not fair, but golf is ridiculous.

Its role is anti-history all the way. It is the Dracula of sports. You can hear its mocking laughter echoing over the sand traps and water hazards long after the golfers have slammed their spiked shoes into the lockers and cursed the fate that made them take up the game in the first place.

Golf is totally unsentimental, perverse, no respecter of reputations or even skill. It’s as unforgiving as Caligula.

Take the 1939 U.S. Open. Samuel Jackson Snead, the sweetest swinger ever to darken a fairway, stood on the 71st tee needing only two pars to win the Open by three shots. Two bogeys and he would have won it by one shot.

Now, Sam Snead should have been one of the golf gods’ favorites. Sam had color, charisma, presence, personality. They should have lavished their favors on him for the good of their game.

Sam went 5-8 on those last two holes. There are parts of Sam Snead scattered about the landscape and sticking to the trees and bushes of that Open course. Sam was never to win a U.S. Open, a historic injustice, an athletic equivalent of the burning of Joan of Arc.

We dissolve now to two weeks ago at Mesa Verde in Orange County. Laura Baugh has a four-shot lead with four holes left to play in the Uniden women’s professional golf tournament. She needs to par in to win.

Now, Laura Baugh is not the best player on the women’s tour, she’s the prettiest. I mean, we’re talking “Charlie’s Angels” type looks here, and everything that goes with it. The blonde hair, the blue eyes, the perfect skin, the dimples. You figure Helen of Troy looked like this.

Laura is so darn cute they never let her learn to play golf. I mean, the tour has lots of people who can shoot 68s. But, they don’t look like Laura. Laura looked like something out of a chorus line, but when Laura came along the rest of the tour looked more like a chorus of prison matrons or tugboat captains. Some of them even wore felt hats and smoked cigars.

Laura never won a pro tournament but that never bothered anybody--excepting possibly Laura. How could she? There were all these fashion layouts, appearances on TV, “The Today Show,” “The Tonight Show” and everything in between. The magazine spreads, program covers.

“I’ve got to break 70 to get my picture in the paper and all she’s got to do is smile,” a rival pro once complained.

By and large, the tour didn’t mind. The tour actually became frillier and less Amazonian by the year.

But the people who thought Laura Baugh was just another pretty face were startled to look up and see Laura not only on the leader board but on the verge of winning a tournament, her first ever.

All golf held its breath. So did the press, radio, TV and the sponsors.

And so, alas, did Laura Baugh. The ball began to slide sideways, roll into cuppy lies, fly over the greens.

Golf was working against its enlightened self-interest, as usual. The gremlins were busily at work pushing tee shots to the right, riding pitch shots onto air currents, shadowing the breaks on the green.

Meanwhile, they were stepping aside to let Mary Beth Zimmerman’s putts roll into the hole from off the green. They held her tee shots on line, gave her nice straight putts and brought all 6-iron shots safely down before they flew the green. Mary Beth had won one tournament before but Channels 4 and 5 weren’t waiting for her, and magazines weren’t hungry for an excuse to put her on the cover.

Laura had finished second before--nine times. She had even been in a playoff--once. But she had never carried a four-shot lead into the final four holes before. By the time she was through, though, Mary Beth Zimmerman was in the press tent.

And Laura Baugh was in tears.

The Minnesota Vikings will probably never win a Super Bowl, Snead will never win an Open, Rod Carew may never make a World Series.

But nowhere is a sport punished more by an absence from its honor rolls than golf is by lacking Laura Baugh. Still only 30 after 13 years on the tour, she still has the stunning complexion, dimpled cheeks and blue eyes, the 5-foot-4, 100-pound silhouette that remade the image of women’s golf a decade ago.

She has such magazine cover looks and figure that a lot of people were surprised to find Laura still putting for a living and not having long since disappeared into the fashion salons or ad studios or model agencies.

Instead, she is still chasing that elusive first win. Playing in the GNA/Glendale Federal Classic this week at Oakmont, Laura has learned to laugh at her misfortune of two tournaments ago. With golf, you might as well.

“I wasn’t nervous, just excited,” she said. “I hadn’t been there in a while. I’m a better player now than I was. People look at me and don’t realize how strong I’ve become. And I love to play golf. Winning that first one is hard. Not as hard as I’ve made it--but once you’ve won it who’s to say you won’t win lots?”

Who, indeed? One thing is sure: We’ve got the calendars ready. If the gods of golf would just lighten up once.