The Golf Gods Abandon Crenshaw

The trouble with golf is, no one ever really wins a golf tournament. Someone loses it.

It says here, T.C. Chen won the 61st Los Angeles Open at Riviera Sunday.

No, he didn’t.

Ben Crenshaw lost it.

Happens all the time in golf, which is a sport for the Marquis de Sade. Just look at its history. Hogan lost at Olympic to Jack Fleck in 1955. Arnold himself, America’s Team, lost to Billy Casper in 1966. Jack Nicklaus probably should have won a dozen more tournam1701737587hex.

T.C. Chen was fortune’s cookie this week. But, his turn will come.

This was Ben Crenshaw’s turn in the barrel.

Another thing you ought to know about golf is, it always strikes down its most popular heroes. And probably no one commands more affection from the world of golf than gentle Ben Crenshaw. He’s like everybody’s kid brother. He smiles a lot, he loves the game, he’s a student of it. He’s not just another money-grubber out there. He’s interested in history, not checks. He’s a buff, is what he is.

You have to understand what Ben Crenshaw did to win the L.A. Open at Riviera. You have to understand what Ben Crenshaw was .

Before this week, or, at least, before this year, Ben Crenshaw was this kind of wild-swinging, hard-hitting young attacker of the golf ball. He went at a course like Dempsey went at a man on the ropes. He had this wild 380-degree swing where the club looked as if it went around four times like a ship’s propeller and Ben had trouble stopping it.

Ben was never short in his life. He was either at the pin--or 12 miles past it. Sometimes, 12 miles west of it. The first Open he ever played at Riviera, he knocked two balls out of bounds o1847619438The horizon was the target when Ben teed it up. As a result, he usually made a 2--or an 11.

Ben won a lot of tournaments that way. He also lost a lot.

This week, Dr. Jekyll showed up in Crenshaw. This was a new Ben. The swing was nice and compact. Controlled. Manageable. Not very exciting, perhaps, but not one of those that looked from lo1852252260either.

It must have been hard for Ben. He had to play this patient game which is foreign to his nature.

Riviera was just sitting there begging to be ravished. But Ben knew the old bawd had plenty of fight in her.

He tiptoed around the course Sunday, striving not to alarm her. He got the obligatory birdie on No. 1, a hole that’s a par-5 in name only. Then, he weighed in with 16 straight pars. If you think that’s Ben Crenshaw golf, you don’t know Ben Crenshaw. Every muscle, every nerve ending must have been screaming to let out the shaft, to pull out the driver, to call in the bellringer swing.

His opponents, and the duo he had to beat to win the championship, Danny Edwards and T.C. Chen, kept making birdies, bogeys, playing elevator golf, going for the jugular, firing, falling back. Ben knew better. Ben just kept playing the cards he had, he kept resisting the temptation to hope for aces. It was a leopard changing its spots, the wolf wearing grandmother’s clothing.

Ben kept hitting the ball in front of the hole. Uncharacteristically. He never once sought out trouble, never tempted the golf fates, never tried for a two and got a dozen.

It looked as if he would get what conservative golf usually gets you--third place--that way. Still, he waited. Like an old man waiting for a bus.

It finally began to pay off. On No. 15, Danny Edwards tried to cut a driver the short way to the hole. He hit a tree. He made bogey. He lost a shot off his two-shot lead.

Crenshaw still didn’t take the machine gun out. Crenshaw still bided his time.

On No. 17, Edwards came back to the field. He three-putted. Then, T.C. Chen missed a highly makeable putt. The threesome went to the 18th hole all tied.

The old Crenshaw would have been long gone by then. But the new one has been told for years, “The way you can putt, Ben, all you have to do is keep the wheels on and you’ll be in a good way to win. You don’t need all those miracle shots.”

The old Crenshaw never listened--not even when he was on his way into the deep rough hoping to find the ball under the hay some place.

But, this year, Crenshaw had not made a bogey in 36 holes, very unaccustomed play for him. And he played the 18th so methodically that he found himself facing an 18-foot putt on the last hole Sunday to win the tournament. He ran it right in.

The tournament should have been his. His new style of play had hit the jackpot first time out. Golf lore dictates, in cases like these, that the remaining players try too hard when one of them is already in the clubhouse, so to speak, with his bird. And Danny Edwards missed his putt badly.

But, then, T.C. Chen, unaccountably, made his 16-footer. The game went into overtime.

Then, and not until then, did Ben Crenshaw turn into Ben Crenshaw. He couldn’t take the waiting any more. On the first extra hole, he watched as Chen semi-skulled his drive to the right behind a sand trap. Crenshaw smelled blood.

Ben Crenshaw forgot that the old strumpet does not respond to caveman tactics. He abandoned the conservative approach that had served him so well, the approach he knew you had to take when romancing Riviera.

He decided to belt the ball down the left side, and thus leave the course and Chen for dead.

He left himself for dead. He pull-hooked the ball badly. It ended up on a hardpan road, the kind of lie that would bring sparks from your club as you swung through it.

The conservative approach would have been to take a free drop, then baby the ball up to the green as he had been doing all day, taking the local instead of the express.

By now, Mr. Hyde had taken over. Ben flailed a 3-iron. The ball flew off at right angles, into a bunker. Crenshaw country of old.

Meanwhile, back on the fairway, Chen had struck a career 4-iron shot to within 15 feet of the pin.

Crenshaw came out of the trap to within 4 feet.

When Chen missed his birdie putt, Crenshaw, the world’s best putter, had only this tap-in to send the match to the next extra hole.

But, by now, the gods of golf were fed up with Ben. He had gone away from what got him there. He missed that putt. Unbelievably.

Now, 16 times out of 16, Ben Crenshaw makes that putt. You might as well give it to him, in fact.

But, you see, golf also owed T.C. Chen one. T.C., you will recall, is the golfer who was winning the U.S. Open at Oakland Hills two years ago when he hit a ball so badly out of the rough he had time to hit it again before it got fully airborne. This inspired some press box wag to dub T.C., “Two Chip Chen.” It also inspired Chen to take an eight and then bogey the next three holes. Even then he only finished one stroke behind.

Then, at the Kemper Open in 1985, T.C. had the tournament locked up going into the last two holes of the tournament. He double-bogeyed, then bogeyed, to put Fred Couples into a playoff which Couples won.

Confucius would probably have something to say about a golfer who dropped the waiting game, the conservative approach, at just the wrong time. Confucius would say “It is written, even on extra hole, you dance with the one what brung you.”