Golf : One of Last Year’s Big Winners Is Hardly a Household Word

For those who don’t follow golf as closely as, say, Deane Beman, it was quite a surprise to open the June issue of Sport magazine and see that Fulton Allem made more money playing golf last year than anybody else in the world except Seve Ballesteros.

Even Allem’s handlers thought the magazine had made a mistake.

They said their golfer’s name should have topped the list.

Fulton Allem?

The South African earned $163,911 as a rookie on the PGA Tour last year. He earned another $100,000 by winning a tournament in Palaborwa, South Africa. Then, last December at Sun City, South Africa, he more than quadrupled his yearly earnings by winning the $1-million first prize at the Million Dollar Challenge.

Allem, 31, grew up on a ranch near Viljoenskroon, South Africa, which is about a 2 1/2-hour drive from Johannesburg. His uncle, Fardel Allem, is Gary Player’s best friend.

“I changed his diapers once,” Player said of Fulton.

He also watched Allem develop his game on the driving range and putting green Allem built for himself on his family’s ranch.

“He’s beaten a lot of balls, that guy,” Player said of Allem, who finished second two years ago in the World Series of Golf, his best finish on the U.S. tour.

Player calls Allem a “very, very talented young man,” but says that the 5-foot-11, 220-pound Allem would do well to lose a few pounds.

“He’s a very big eater,” Player said. “I’d like to see him lose some weight, which would make him a lot more supple and last a little longer. He’s got so much talent.”

Allem showed that at Sun City, where in 1987 he squandered a five-stroke lead and finished fifth.

“I guess I got a little overwhelmed as to where I was and the occasion probably got bigger than I did,” Allem said. “I didn’t rise to the occasion.”

He rectified that last December, when he birdied two of the last three holes to win by a stroke over Don Pooley of Phoenix.

Needing a par-4 on the final hole, Allem used a two-iron to hit his second shot over water and bunkers to a tucked pin.

“I hit just an absolutely perfect shot and ended up about 15 feet from the hole,” he said. “It was an unbelievable shot--a career shot.”

And what a time for it, too.

Allem putted to within six inches of the hole, then quickly tapped in his final shot to win golf’s richest prize.

“I knew that if I stood there and thought about it, there was a good chance I would miss,” he said, laughing at the memory.

How to describe the experience of playing for so much money?

“It’s the most unbelievable feeling in the world to think that you can play four rounds of golf and earn $1 million,” he said. “When I played that last hole, I didn’t know what I was doing. It was purely memory that guided me through.”

A past winner of the South African PGA tournament, Allem maintains a home in Johannesburg, but lives in Heathrow, Fla., and plays full-time on the tour.

“This is where it’s at,” he said.

Allem’s presence on the tour, he said, has drawn few protests from those who oppose his country’s system of apartheid, or racial separation. Allem is white.

“We sportsmen have no say in politics,” said Allem, who is among the tour’s few South African-born players. “I never chose to be born in South Africa. That just happens to be the way.

“If they want to discriminate against me because I’m South African, then it’s probably just as bad as the South African government discriminating against black people. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Which player on the tour comes closest to reaching his potential? Nick Seitz, editorial director for Golf Digest, makes a pitch for short, bespectacled Tom Kite.

“Who (else) gets as much out of himself?” Seitz asked in the magazine’s June issue. “At 39, Kite still looks like a kid who bags your groceries. His friends joke that he is the worst athlete they know, and can barely hit the backboard playing driveway basketball.

“Tom Kite is the best golfer in the world today, given what he’s been given to work with.”

Tom Watson indicated in an interview with Golf magazine that poor shots tend to affect him more now than when he was younger.

“Some golfers are tougher than others,” he said. “They don’t let a bad shot ruin a round. But over the past few years I’ve fallen prey to that attitude.

“I’d go the practice tee and not hit one solid shot and then, after the first bad shot in the round . . . well, my caddie, Bruce Edwards, would say I’d go into my ‘Aguirre funk’ (which is named for Mark Aguirre, the temperamental forward who plays for the Detroit Pistons of the National Basketball Assn.). That’s a deep funk.”

Aguirre’s former coaches would attest to that.

In a survey of college players conducted by Golf Digest:

--Only one of the 45 surveyed said he is not planning to play golf for a living. And that one said, “I’m not sure.”

--Few could identity the winner of last year’s LPGA Championship tournament. Said one: “Greg Norman?”

It was Sherri Turner.

--More than 60% named the Masters as the major tournament they would most like to win. Only one, Dave Stockton Jr. of USC, named the PGA Championship.

Stockton’s father is a two-time winner of that tournament.

Golf Notes

The Toshiba Microcomputer charity tournament June 5 at Industry Hills will benefit the Starlight Foundation, which grants wishes to critically, chronically and terminally ill children. For details, call (714) 587-6313. . . . The NutraSweet tournament May 8 at Riviera Country Club raised about $100,000 for the Los Angeles chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, organizers said. . . . Jerico Trianna, who won the tournament two years ago, is entered in the 66th Los Angeles City women’s championship and handicap tournament, which will be played Tuesday through Thursday at Griffith Park’s Wilson and Harding courses. Last year’s winner, Donna Watson, is not entered. . . . Entries for the 72nd L.A. City men’s tournament, which will be played during the weekends of June 3-4 and June 10-11 at the Sepulveda and Griffith Park courses, will close Saturday. . . . The Los Angeles chapter of the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame is hosting its 25th annual charity golf tournament Monday and Tuesday at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas. There will be a double shotgun start at 8 a.m. and 1 p.m.