Second Fiddle Isn’t the Way Tom Kite Plays

Don’t look now, but Tom Kite is in a groove. Everything’s working perfectly. The swing is compact, fluid. The putting stroke is smooth. The ball is drawing satisfactorily in the heavy air. All the signs are right.

He’s going to finish second again.

Kite does this better than anyone on the tour. He’s got it down to a science. Some guys drive farther, hit straighter, have better short games. His specialty is coming in second. His theme song should be “Second-Hand Rose.”

Tom is consistent. He’s durable. He can really play. There is very little doubt he is in the top five playing the game today and belongs with the top who ever played the game.

Kite has won $4,342,413 playing golf. Only two players have won more. But he’s won only 10 tournaments. Lots of players have won more. Comes to $430,000 a victory for Tom.

But Tom Kite has finished second 17 times in the last 7 years. Hardly anybody can top that. Jack Nicklaus was second 58 times in his illustrious career. But he won 71 times. Tom Kite is golf’s silver medalist.

It is not a statistic that thrills Tom Kite.

If you drew up a profile of a guy who finishes second all the time what you would come up with is a guy who would see an ink blot of a butterfly as a dragon, a guy who might fold a winning hand rather than see a raise, a guy who’d stand on 16.

In golf, you figure he goes for the fat part of the green, not the spot where the flag hangs over a sand trap or an alligator pond. He tries not to 1-putt if it might lead to 3 putts. He plays away from trouble and he finishes second because the alternative is either first--or ninth.

You have to be a tremendous player to finish first or second 27 times, but the golf public figures he’s a guy who tried to clinch with the course instead of throwing rights at it. A bolder player, they’re sure, might reverse the 10-17 ratio.

Actually, Kite may be an overachiever. When he came out of Austin onto the Tour in 1973, the eyes of Texas were really upon fellow townsman Ben Crenshaw.

Kite was considered to have a nice little country-club game. Expectations were not high. He would be a cheery little fringe player.

Crenshaw, on the other hand, won the first tournament he played in as a pro. He was widely regarded as a combination of Billy the Kid, Wyatt Earp and Ben Hogan.

Kite plodded along with hardly anybody noticing. He got better every year. He began to win a tournament a year. He wasn’t long, he wasn’t strong, he was just usually standing on a green, pushing his glasses up his nose and saying sweetly to someone, “I believe it’s you.”

He was so steady, it was frightening. In 1981, he teed it up 26 times and finished 21 times in the top 10. He was the leading money winner that year and had the lowest stroke average of any player in the country. He usually leads or is close in scoring average every year. Tom Kite knows the short way around every golf course he ever played.

All of a sudden, he wasn’t the other golfer from Austin any more. He and Crenshaw were an entry. Like Crenshaw, he seems to stay young on a golf course. The owl-like spectacles, the orange-red hair, the jaunty step and cheery expression make him one of the most recognizable players on a golf course where there aren’t many anymore.

So what’s wrong here? This is not the profile of a guy who ends up as a worthy opponent. This is the profile of the guy who ends up “Winner and still champion!”

So why does he go through life as first runner-up? Why is he the guy of whom the wags say, “Kite? Bet him to place!”

Tom Kite thinks the emphasis should be on the fact that he’s the one to beat, not the one who is beat.

He is not defensive on a course, he insists. He goes for the flag with the best of them.

“I have to, or I wouldn’t even be second,” he says.

The reputation, he feels, derives from his style of play.

“I’m not 6-2, 220,” he explains. (He’s 5-8, 155.) “When a player isn’t 6-2, 220, he has to play within his limitations. And he tends to look to the public as non-aggressive. A player looks aggressive when he reaches the par-5s in 2--or when he even tries to.

“Well, I can’t reach the par-5s in 2. I’m not given the opportunity to play what appears to be aggressive golf. My average drive last year was 259.8 yards. That made me, like, 75th in driving distance. but I was fourth in driving accuracy.

“I’m really a fairly aggressive player. I don’t give in to a golf course. But I’m not a stupid player. You don’t last out here making dumb mistakes.”

Kite adds: “I think the strength of my game lies in the fact it has no weaknesses. It’s not a power game. I can’t bust the ball 290 yards. But I can bust it straight. I’m a good putter. Not the best but in the top 25. I’m not the best sand player. But I’m No. 9. There’s not a shot I can’t play.”

He doesn’t lead the world in eagles, chip-ins or 60-foot no-brainers in the hole. Tom Kite is steady.

But he keeps coming into focus as a guy who has to try harder. Tom Kite’s current image is a guy who lost the Nabisco $2-million tournament in a playoff at Pebble Beach last fall and the AT&T; at Pebble Beach last week. Two putts cost him $209,000.

“People come up and say condolences,” Kite notes. “Condolences for what? I shot 10 under par on three of the toughest courses in the world last week and I had a guy birdie the last hole on me. But I put all that behind me. Do you realize how good you have to be to finish second out here?”

In the case of Tom Kite, very, very, very good. Look at it this way--anybody can finish first.

Kite’s 73, shot in the wind-raked first round of the Nissan Los Angeles Open Thursday, was a long way from second place. But you don’t beat Tom Kite in an opening round. Sometimes, it takes you clear to the 72nd hole or even the 73rd or 74th before you can shove him clear back to second place.