He’ll Be Good If He Doesn’t Learn the Rules

The thing about Corey Pavin as a pro on the golf tour is, he doesn’t belong there.

First of all, he looks happy all the time.

If you know golf at all, you know this is a no-no. Golfers could give lessons to morticians on looking unhappy. It’s the second thing you learn, right after, “Keep your left arm straight.” Shift your weight and frown.

It’s not that Pavin is professionally cheerful on the golf course. He’s not as chatty and full of one-liners as Lee Trevino or Fuzzy Zoeller. But neither does he go around looking, like most pros, as if he just heard Paris fell.

Then, there’s the way he plays. Fast. This may be an even bigger violation of the pro golfers’ code. If you think golfers play fast, you just don’t know golf.

A golf field moves just faster than a glacier. It can look in poor light like the Bataan Death March. You’re supposed to proceed after your golf shot as if it’s the last thing in the world you want to do. Guys going to the electric chair move faster.

Corey Pavin kind of gallops after his shot, as if he expects to find something wonderful when he gets to it. Like a kid hurrying downstairs on Christmas morning to a new bicycle.

You’re not meant to do that. There’s no pony underneath your golf shot. Just poison ivy. You’re meant to approach your golf shot as if it were ticking or as if it were an inoperable tumor.

Golfers are trained from birth to fear the worst. Never trust a golf ball. Golf balls are Communists. Golf balls hate golfers, you soon learn.

None of this seems to have made much of a dent in Corey Pavin. He’s never been known to throw a club, to criticize the greens, complain about the crowd noise, fire caddies, duck the press. He just goes around shooting 67s and looking as if he’s smothering a laugh.

Maybe he just doesn’t understand the situation.

No. He’s not one of those blond kids from BYU who think every shot has to land in the middle, every putt has to drop.

Pavin found out very early that the golf ball was not necessarily his pal. That was when he failed to get his tour card the first time he tried to qualify.

When that happens, the would-be golfer has two options. He can try the perilous, low-risk mini-tour. Or he can try the more testing European tour. That is like playing a guy with his own deck, but Corey Pavin took his smile and his clubs abroad and immediately won the South African PGA, then the German Open and the Calberson Classic in France.

It soon turned out that Pavin was in violation of another of the cardinal rules of golf. In addition to playing fast and staying cheerful, he hit the ball straight.

No one ever learns to do this in golf. You learn to hit the ball far. You learn to hit the ball hard. You learn to make it back up, go forward, have backspin, overspin.

You learn how to hit the ball left to right--the fade. You learn how to hit the ball right to left--the draw. You learn how to hit the cut shot--an open club face, outside-in trajectory.

You learn how to hit the knockdown shot--the low semi-smother. You learn how to feather the shot. You learn how to hood the club and open the club. You learn how to swing flat and how to swing upright.

No one bothers with the straight shot. Hogan was the last one who really worked on that. Maybe Calvin Peete.

Corey Pavin brought it back. He didn’t mind hitting a driver where the rest of the field was preferring a 3-wood. He didn’t mind a long iron where his playing partners chose the wedge. He aimed for the middle of the fairway, not the horizon. He knew he could keep it straight.

No one ever thought of that before. Not lately at any rate. While the practice ranges were full of guys trying to work the ball right to left, up and down, in and out, Pavin worked on straight ahead.

It’s surprising how many tournaments it wins. When Pavin came home from Europe--with $75,000 in his pocket--he got his qualifying-school card and promptly won more money than any other first-year tour player ever had, $260,536. He came within one shot of winning the second tournament he ever entered on the tour, at Phoenix.

He has already won two tournaments this year. That makes six he has won in only a little over three years, an extraordinary debut.

In spite of his revolutionary approach to the art of playing the game and hitting the ball, Corey Pavin is one of the favorites in the Los Angeles Open at Riviera this week.

Playing with Lanny Wadkins, who also approaches a round as if the meter was running or the sheriff was on his tail, Pavin completed a round of 69 in just under four hours Thursday.

He worked the ball from center to center, as usual, and even his putts were straight and dropping.

It probably won’t last. If you know golf, you know what will happen. Some day, Corey will be minding his own business on the practice tee, lining shot after shot out there on a clothesline, when someone will drop by and murmur, “Wouldn’t it help you some to work the ball a little out there? If you were to learn to draw the ball a little, you’d get yourself 20 more yards. Here, let me show you.”

The day that happens, you’ll see Corey Pavin playing the same game as everyone else. The little half-smile will disappear. So, occasionally, will a 1-iron flung in the lake. He’ll learn to play the game at a scowl. The way the good Lord intended it to be played. Or, at least, the Scots when they invented it in the first place.