PGA Championship : Whether or Not Heat Gets to Them, Golfers Ready to Tackle Oak Tree

Golf and heat, two four-letter words, are paired in an uncomfortable twosome at the PGA Championship, the fourth and last of the major tournaments, beginning today in the heart of Oklahoma in the soul of summer.

Cooler heads will prevail.

Larry Nelson won the title last year while swinging his clubs in sauna-like conditions at Palm Beach Gardens in Florida. The setting this time is the Oak Tree Golf Club, where it’s sure to be so hot that it’s only fitting the best iron player should win.

“Obviously, Pete Dye’s golf course is more difficult than others,” said Bob Tway, the 1986 PGA champion, who probably knows as much about Oak Tree as Dye, the man who designed it. “You don’t really have to drive the ball great, but you have to hit iron shots extremely well. This is a very unique course.”

Of course, hot weather is not unique in August in these parts, where it’s a great place to be if you’re a cactus. Accordingly, the PGA has taken some precautions.

Huge fans hang from trees behind the 13th and 15th greens to circulate the air. That ought to help the players.

And on the course, the spectators are going to get some relief, too. Reusable cold packs, which drape around the neck, are on sale for $10. The cold packs are selling like hot cakes.

Nelson said he will use a very important strategy with him.

“You can’t beat the heat,” he said. “You just can’t let it beat you.”

So there you have it. Nelson will defend his championship while being hotly pursued by the likes of Curtis Strange, Seve Ballesteros and Greg Norman.

There is one notable absentee: Masters champion Sandy Lyle isn’t here.

Lyle, the tour’s leading money winner, withdrew from the PGA so he could play this weekend in the Benson & Hedges at Fulford, England, where he will be paid a 60,000-pound appearance fee. Lyle’s absence caused a mini-controversy among some of his peers, who thought he should be here.

“I can’t believe it,” Jack Nicklaus said. “But Sandy’s always kind of lived his own life and done his own deal.”

Norman said he doesn’t understand why Lyle would pass up a chance to win a second major this year.

“I can’t comprehend it in my mind,” he said.

Said Strange: “He ought to be here.”

While Lyle has a guarantee, the only guarantees at Oak Tree are that it’s going to be hot and nobody knows who will win. Tway might be a good choice, because Oak Tree is his home course and he’s familiar with it. Tway said he has played it about 200 times.

But the cold, hard facts are not in Tway’s favor. He is a new father and 2 1/2-week-old Kevin Tway has changed his dad’s priorities.

“If I don’t get any sleep and don’t play well, so what?” Tway said. “It’s funny. Sometimes you know how you’re going to play and you just go out and do it. I’m not real sure how I am going to play.”

But then, no one is quite sure how Oak Tree is going to play either. It’s rated as one of the United State’s toughest courses with it’s steep bunkers, multi-tiered greens, tiny putting surfaces and railroad ties that are Dye’s trademarks.

If there is no wind, Oak Tree won’t be as tough as usual, Tway said, but the par 5s are still going to be difficult to reach in two. Perhaps the key to beating the course is how well the golfers play around the green, which is where Nicklaus thinks the PGA will be won.

“It’s going to take someone with a great imagination . . . someone like Seve,” Nicklaus said. “This golf course was made for him. You’re going to need that type of imagination around the greens to play the kind of shots we’re going to have to make.”

By imagination, Nicklaus said he meant someone who could invent shots and imagine what the ball might do, when it would bounce and hop and where it would roll.

“Some golfers don’t have great imagination around the greens,” Nicklaus said. “I don’t think I do.”

But Nicklaus listed Nelson, Lanny Wadkins, Norman, Tway and Scott Verplank with Ballesteros as those who do.

Norman, however, is an unknown factor. He has not played since he withdrew from the U.S. Open because of a wrist injury. Norman took some lessons from Phil Rodgers during his seven-week layoff, but didn’t realize he was ready to play again until it came to him in a dream.

“Yes, I dreamt about golf, which I never had done before,” he said.

Ballesteros, who played a practice round Wednesday with Mac O’Grady, never dreamed it would be so hot or so difficult to get here. He left his home in Santander, Spain, at 8:30 a.m. last Saturday and flew to Madrid, then to New York, then to Dallas and then to Oklahoma City, covering five airports in 23 hours.

He didn’t sound as if he appreciated Oklahoma weather.

“In my very modest opinion, I think the PGA should move this tournament, maybe sometime in May,” he said.

If it reaches 100 degrees, as expected, there will probably be more than a few golfers in distress, voicing their agreement with “Mayday!”