Scott Simpson Is a Typical Open Winner

When Peter Jacobsen gives a clinic with trick shots, jokes and impressions, Scott Simpson plays the straight man. “And now,” Jacobsen will say, after the crowd stops laughing, “this is how you should do it.” And the tall, slender, precise Simpson will exhibit a simple, relaxed, one-piece swing that is just the effortless, understated sort the average player should use as a model.

When you see Simpson in an airport cafeteria line, he stands erect and patient beside his wife and children, unruffled by any delay, yet firm with the kids. Nobody recognizes him and he wouldn’t expect it of them. If you do happen to know him and congratulate him on his latest top 10 finish, he’s genuinely upset if he can’t recall your name. Simpson expects that of himself.

When Simpson appears at a PGA Tour interview, as he often does because he always seems to be near the lead, yet seldom in it, he downplays his chances of winning, yet points out that he has a few titles: the 1980 Western, ’84 Westchester, ’87 Greensboro. If the breaks go right, he says, he can win.

Simpson enjoys the crazy guys, the temper cases, the comedians, like his college teammate Craig (The Walrus) Stadler, who would play matches in shower clogs and snap clubs in a fury. But about as far as Simpson can go himself is to dress in lots of striking black outfits, sometimes set off with pink, which make him look devilishly tall, dark and handsome with his mustache and graying temples. That effect lasts until he opens his mouth. Then you know he’s on the All-Nice varsity and his Bible study group is a can’t-miss date.

The world can’t have too many Scott Simpsons. We all know that. So why is it that we want to pull our hair out when one of them beats Tom Watson by a stroke in the U.S. Open? You can’t hate ‘em. You actually like ‘em. But it drives you nuts when they leave the comfortable shadows of fourth place and have to figure out a victory speech. Especially one like this: “There sure are some great names engraved on this trophy. It’s hard to believe my name’s going to be on there, too.”

Yes, it is hard to believe, despite the fact that it happens most of the time in the U.S. Open. When are we going to wise up and realize that, year after year, the Open selects cautious players, and stoic people, like Scott Simpson? When are we going to admit that what is supposedly the “greatest” championship is inherently tilted away from the most charismatic stars like Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, Seve Ballesteros, Gary Player, Ben Crenshaw and Greg Norman?

Look at the record since World War II and the data bears only one interpretation. The phlegmatic, slow-moving, imperturbable and sometimes downright dullest players in the world are those who win the Open. Hale Irwin, Andy North and Cary Middlecoff won twice each. Julius Boros and Billy Casper, twice. The machine-like, frozen-faced Ben Hogan four times. The exception who proves the rule is Lee Trevino, a comic in personality, but the granddaddy of safe percentage players.

When the Open provides us a “surprise,” it’s almost always Ed Furgol, Dick Mayer, Gene Litler, Orville Moody, Larry Nelson, Lou Graham or David Graham. Have any of these guys ever worn a lamp shade for a hat?

The perfect contrast to the Open is provided by the Masters, the golf playground of extroverts. The Open champs mentioned above (with a total of 24 Open titles among them) have only won three times at Augusta (two by Hogan).

Now, reverse the coin. Snead, Palmer, Watson, Ballesteros, Player, Jimmy Demaret and Byron Nelson -- the guys with the twinkle in their eye and an aura of the breathtaking about their games have won 19 Masters -- but only four U.S. Opens. When the Masters surprises us, it’s often with emotional types with outgoing personalities like Crenshaw, Stadler or Bernhard Langer.

There are exceptions to this pattern, like Fuzzy Zoeller and Ray Floyd who’ve won one of each. Still, the pattern is overwhelming. Even Jack Nicklaus, who bestrides categorization, has taken six Masters and threatened to win many more, while winning four Opens and contending seriously in only a few others.

A large part of the reason the Masters champs are more appealing as a group is that rough-less Augusta National favors swashbuckling competitors -- men who like to take out their drivers and beat their foes with birdies. The punitive Open, laid out by the blue-blazered U.S. Golf Assn. with its omnipresent rough, loves the plodder, the ascetic, the straight-arrow follower of par.

The Masters and Open often isolate two different stances toward games and toward coping with crisis. Watson and Simpson represent each admirably.

Watson, the Stanford psychology grad, wants to face the burden of competition directly and bear the full weight of defeat if he loses.

“The final round of the Open is a lot more about courage than it is about skill,” said Watson on Saturday night.

That’s probably why Watson came out nervous, missed a three-foot par putt at the first hole and made three quick bogeys. “But I had a calm underneath the nerves,” said Watson. And it emerged.

As a nation of fans, we tend to prefer Watson’s attitude. Watch the scoreboard. Look your foe in the eye. Admit that somebody wins and somebody loses and that you care deeply about the difference. If there’s no scoreboard, why play, why root, why care?

“I had to win to prove I’m back,” said Watson, laying the maximum possible burden on himself. “That is the name of the game. Second place is no good.”

Simpson denies all this. He never looked at the scoreboard until the 16th hole, after he’d made his three winning birdies at Nos. 14-15-16. He truly had no idea what was happening around him. He was simply walking through the cypresses playing an internal game of “Do the best you can.”

As for fear of losing, Simpson had immunized his vulnerability with theology. “I’m a born-again Christian and that was a big help today,” said Simpson. “I was secure in the Lord no matter what happened. I wasn’t worried about whether I lost.”

Watson and Simpson just represent two basic ways of dealing with great stress and high hopes -- head on or back turned.

As Mac O’Grady put it, after going down in flames as soon as he got to the lead, “This time my narcissistic desires will not be fulfilled. ... That’s golf. It’ll slay you and mutilate you.” When the stakes are that high, the dangers that great, all’s fair, even pretending there are no stakes and no scoreboards.