Commentary : PGA Has Problem: No Star Appeal

Everywhere the PGA Tour goes, it is asked the same question. Where are the good young players, especially Americans, and when will they make names for themselves? Big names.

There is no more pressing, or aggravating, question in pro golf.

The answer, one that is a painful mixed blessing, is that such fine young players are everywhere: look in any sand trap. They’re standing right next to all the good-but-unknown veterans.

Golf never has been played so well by so many. Yet it’s also unlikely that any of these emerging talents will become charismatic stars or that very many will even be consistent champions.

Far too often the same cry goes up around the tour that has been heard at the Tournament Players Club at Avenel: “Get a broom. Sweep these bums out of here. Give us stars.”

What are men in their 20s like Ken Green and Bill Glasson, Jodie Mudd and Kenny Perry, Dan Forsman and Steve Jones supposed to do when they shoot under-par scores to make the cut, then hear themselves called the Ed Fioris, Bob Gilders, Mike Reids, Jay Haases and Morris Hatalskys of the future?

When quality performers like these--each of whom will probably end his career with more than a million dollars in tour earnings and at least as much in money earned on the side--are perceived to be little more than clutter, what’s a sport to do?

That’s golf as the 1990s approach, a game with a new kind of generation gap.

“It’s not going to get any better,” said Tom Kite, the third-leading money winner in golf history. “The trend started in my generation. More good players coming on tour all the time. Less wins to go around.”

Kite doesn’t think that the tour lacks a Ben Hogan, Sam Snead or Byron Nelson; he thinks there are three or four of each. He might even be one of the Hogan clones. The problem is that they’re all getting in each other’s way.

“I don’t see a lack of desire, interest or enthusiasm out here. It’s quite the opposite,” says Kite. “The players are more skilled than ever. I have trouble thinking that golf is the only sport in existence where the players don’t get better . . .

“We keep attracting more good athletes and bigger ones. When you have a $35-million game that’s as glamorous as the PGA Tour, you’ve got to be crazy not to want to do it. On top of that, we’ve got better equipment and better conditions for scoring.

“The result is that we are not going to see the emergence of any more ‘dominant’ American players until they have an easier arena in which to play. And that’s not going to happen. Let’s face it, the only reason the foreign players have won so much in the ‘80s is that they didn’t have to play the tour. They won against easier fields (around the world). That built confidence.”

What would it take for the U.S. tour to breed superstars once more? Kite has one answer: financial disaster. “This will continue until the tour goes through a recession and total purses go back down to $10 million,” he says.

That’s how much money golfers played for just 10 years ago. Can golf produce an elite class of stars in an age with an affluent, democratic money list? The egalitarian era of Commissioner Deane Beman, the wizard of marketing and promotion, has spawned a strange dilemma: a sport that may become increasingly difficult to market and promote.

The ‘80s have produced a stunning change in golf’s image. For decades, golf had stars with multiple major titles and scores of tour wins beside their names. For example, Cary Middlecoff and Gene Littler, who never were considered superstars, won 37 and 29 Tour events, respectively.

Has that changed.

At the moment, three groups of golfers share the public stage with considerable uneasiness. Call them the over-40 deities, the established brand names in their 30s and the infants who are finally blossoming as they reach their late 20s.

The great golfers of the ‘60s and ‘70s (who are now 45 or older like Jack Nicklaus, Ray Floyd and Lee Trevino) are mainly historical, not competitive figures. We get fooled in this area because of the ’86 Masters (Nicklaus), the ’86 U.S. Open (Floyd) and the ’84 PGA (Trevino, who was second in ‘85). Actually, those were great last stands.

Every sport loves to talk about its “young players.” Yet few people understand what age means in a game that may require 15 years of serious study to reach the top. Until you’ve dismantled both your game and your soul at least once, you are a golf child. You turn pro on talent and hunger. Then you learn to play. That can take another five years if you have blue-chip talent, patience and luck. Lack anything and you’ll wash out or just hang on making a modest living.

Few arrive at the top before the age of 28 and less survive past their very early 40’s. Your 30s are your prime as much as a man’s 20s are his salad days in the NFL. For example, Trevino finished in the top 10 in money 11 times between age 28 and 40; he was never in the top 10 before or after.

Players like Ben Crenshaw, Lanny Wadkins, Fuzzy Zoeller, Tom Watson, Craig Stadler, John Mahaffey and Larry Nelson--all 35 to 40--get sympathetic congratulations for not walking the course with a cane. Actually, they have 10 times the chance of winning they did at 25.

Looked at from this inverted perspective, golf may, in fact, have quite a few “young” stars. We just don’t grasp the fact that a 30-year-old golfer has most of his best years--perhaps all of them--ahead of him. Who’s 30? Sandy Lyle, Hal Sutton and Bernhard Langer. Payne Stewart and ancient Seve Ballesteros are (gulp) 31. Greg Norman and Curtis Strange are 33-perhaps less than halfway through their dozen prime years.

As usual, the man to blame for the distorted perspective is the colossus: Nicklaus. He won the U.S. Open at 22 and, by 26, when most future stars are still unknown, had six majors, including every grand slam title. No wonder many tour pros will say, under their breath, that the biggest favor Nicklaus could do pro golf would be to retire so we could start to forget him a bit.

Believe it or not, any visible player who is under 27 is a rare and precious prodigy. Davis Love III (24), Sam Randolph (24) and Gene Sauers (25) constitute the entire current list.

The real golf babies are fellows in their late 20’s who have already shown genuine promise: Perry (26); Mudd, Steve Pate, Mark Calcavecchia (27); Paul Azinger, Bobby Clampett, Keith Clearwater, Fred Couples, David Frost, Glasson, Corey Pavin (28); Green, Larry Mize, Bob Tway (29).

To show how little we grasp the nature of golf maturity, players such as Clampett, Pavin, Tway and Couples sometimes are discussed as though they already have peaked. If we looked at the wild boom-and-bust career rides of Crenshaw and Wadkins, we might assume that these players can have a resurgence, or more than one such rebirth, in the 1990s. They still are in their formative years.

“I won twice last year,” said Clearwater, “but I didn’t know how to play.” So, he has changed his game, flattened his swing plane, tried to get rid of his hook-under-pressure tendencies. Is Clearwater in a “slump”--another early burnout--or is he just doing the spade work necessary for golf greatness after 30?

As another example, take Glasson, who won the Kemper in 1985. “I didn’t deserve to win. I wasn’t a good enough player,” he said. “I just wanted it more than anybody . . . and I knew how to score . . . Now, I’m learning how to swing the club well enough to deserve to win and stay out here for a while . . . It’s an old story. Guy wins a tournament, then he changes his swing.”

The victory, and the cash, can offer a player the security to face the need for a fundamental improvement in his play. In addition, the all-exempt tour, where the top 125 players now keep their playing cards (rather than the old top 60), means that a one- or two-year slump for the sake of a new swing is not likely to be disastrous to a career.

Perhaps the sport needs to do a better job of educating itself and its public on the true nature of the game’s late-blooming but long-lasting careers. Strange, at 33, is not a failure because he only has 13 Tour wins in 12 seasons. Instead, maybe he’s halfway to winning 27 events--the same number as Trevino and Walter Hagen.

“Players develop later all the time,” said Glasson this week. “It just takes so long to learn everything you need to know to win out here.”

Some in golf even think that the modern emphasis on judging a player by his major championships may be an excessively tough standard. Norman, for instance, has had three majors snatched from him by the narrowest of margins; does that mean we have to see him as a disappointment?

“You know, Nicklaus started a lot of that emphasis because he wanted to cut back his own schedule,” says Labron Harris, a former tour player and a long-time tour official. “You didn’t hear that talk about majors nearly so much 20 or 25 years ago.”

“Not many guys point for the majors as much as they did,” says reigning U.S. Open champion Scott Simpson, who’s one who does not. “It’s so tough out here that they’re all big wins now.”

In the Avenel locker room, John Mahaffey, 40 years old and approaching $3 million in winnings, proud owner of PGA and TPC titles, is talking to Chris Perry, 26. Mahaffey is winding up his glory days. Perry, son of pitcher Jim Perry and collegiate player of the year in 1984 is dreaming and learning. When you break Nicklaus’ Ohio State record for wins, then cash $197,593 on tour at 25, you get noticed.

“It’s a complete misconception that guys out here don’t play to win and are not aggressive,” says Mahaffey. “I can hardly name one guy who, when he’s in contention, wouldn’t try to win, even if it meant finishing fifth.”

“There’s plenty of money out here for everybody. Why not go for it when you’ve got a chance?” says Perry, agreeing with the brave approach. “I just wish I knew how to be a little more aggressive at those times.”

“I know what you mean,” says Mahaffey. “Every day, there are always five or six ‘sucker pins,’ that you’re crazy to shoot at. Miss and it’s bogey or double bogey. But I learned a lesson from Lanny Wadkins. He told me he didn’t care about the ‘greens in regulation’ stat because several times a round there are pins that look too hard to shoot at, but they really aren’t. If the pin’s tucked, but the punishment is just ending up in the fringe 25 feet away, that’s when you go for the perfect shot. If you miss, you have an easy up-and-down. Got to trust your short game.”

This seems to interest Perry. It is one of golf’s thousand fine points, subtleties, mind games, illusions. It also is part of an almost interminable rite of passage to being a star.

Or, in these altered, improved, yet somehow diminished golfing days, becoming one of many minor stars.