It’s a Long-Playing Day for Kite--He Shoots a 78

It wasn’t a tournament, it was a Death March. About half the field of guys playing out the 89th U.S. Open came down the last 18 holes like guys going to the electric chair.

Curtis Strange didn’t win it, he inherited it. Tom Kite left it to him in his will, so to speak.

It was the coldest, slowest, wettest Open in the recent history of the USGA. But not the dullest.

Oak Hill, familiarly known to the wet-shoe set in the press tent this week as “Soak Hill,” gave as good as it got from the world’s finest golfers. It went toe-to-toe with them and sent most of them out on a shutter before the final bell rang.

You don’t win an Open. Somebody loses it. It was Tom Kite’s turn in the barrel.

Listen! You remember the Spring Mill “blow-up” of 1939? One of the great golf course disintegrations of history when Sam Snead exploded all over the golf course to leave the championship to Byron Nelson?

Well, Tom Kite was six-under par and was leading the championship by three shots Sunday when the wheels started to come off. The way they do in an Open. The way they did on Arnold Palmer that day in San Francisco in 1966 when he threw a seven-shot lead to the winds, the way they did for Hogan when he slipped on the 18th at Olympic in 1955 and snap-hooked the ball into a hayfield it took him three shots just to get out of and back where he could hand the championship to Jack Fleck.

Well, move over, fellows, and make room for Thomas O. Kite. You couldn’t bear to look after a while. How does a triple bogey, two double-bogeys, and two ordinary bogeys--on the last round of a U.S. Open--grab you?

How would you like to fritter away nine shots in 14 holes in an Open you could have won just by shooting two-over-par? You would think they would lock the upstairs windows on Tom for a while.

They say it’s best never to mention a rope in the house of the hanged. Well, keep Oak Hill out of the general conversation if you find yourself sitting next to Tom on an airplane in the near future. Keep the dialogue on China or how the Dodgers are doing.

Tom shot a 78 Sunday. Tom hit two balls in the water and a lot of balls in the trees. Tom Kite doesn’t do that. Tom Kite doesn’t make triple bogeys. Tom Kite doesn’t hit balls in the water on a course that has only a meandering creek, not the Pacific Ocean bordering its holes.

But, Tom Kite did Sunday.

You have to understand an Open to realize what this would mean to a player playing in the twosome ahead of Kite.

Curtis Strange started out the day trailing Kite by three shots. When Kite birdied No. 3, the margin was four shots. Strange was having some difficulty producing birdies. He was to go 35 holes without producing a birdie in this Open.

But, when he looked over at the leader board on on the sixth hole and saw where Tom Kite had made a seven on a par-4, Curtis Strange suddenly realized this was the Open, not the Centel Classic, and par golf was not the despised entity it is in most tour tournaments.

Golfers in most tour events disdain par. Par is for ribbon clerks. Real players go for three’s. Maybe, two’s.

It’s not Curtis Strange’s character to aim for the middle of the fairway, the middle of the green and a nice safe two putts per hole. That’s like a guy with aces saying, “I’ll just call.” It goes against the grain.

But, as Strange was to say later, “When Tom made that triple bogey, I felt like it played into my hands. I felt like making pars, putting it in the fairways, making the greens. I had to have patience.”

Patience--and pars--win more U.S. Opens than daring and devil-may-care.

Curtis Strange won the U.S. Open shooting par. He had 16 pars, one birdie and one bogey. Par might not make the cut at the Georgia-Pacific Atlanta Golf Classic--in fact, it didn’t last year--but it won the 1989 Open. By a shot.

Tom Kite was not the only one to feel the sting of the rain-slickened Oak Hill course. The tournament ended with the world’s best golfers hitting the ball around the premises like a bunch of drunks at a driving range at midnight. You would have thought you stumbled on the truck driver’s flight at Rancho.

Even when Kite was making triple-bogey, the rest of the field was letting him back in the tournament. It was the most silent tournament in recent history. Most of the time, the only sound you could hear would be “Fore on the right!” They release this as a silent film.

You have probably seen better shots on a rubber-mat course in Texas. There were 21 under par at the end of Thursday’s first round but only four at the end of the tournament.

It was Curtis Strange’s second straight Open win, the first repeat since Ben Hogan did it in 1950-51. Any time you can get mentioned in the same breath with Ben Hogan, you are doing something right. It was Curtis’ 17th tournament victory. Which leaves him only 45 behind Ben lifetime.

It was Tom Kite’s 18th failure to win the tournament and 16th straight. He showed up in the press tent, hollow-eyed, pale around the mouth. He looked like a guy who had just spent the night in a coffin in a haunted house.

It seemed like sticking pins in a butterfly just to ask him questions. I mean, would you ask Napoleon to go over Waterloo hole-by-hole? Take the captain of the Titanic back to when he first noticed the air was getting cold?

Kite struggled manfully to maintain his composure. “There’s not much you can say about it,” he said, his eyes misting. “It’s just a U.S. Open, is all. It’s where these things happen. Today, every missed shot, I just got killed. I hit the ball to the right--the only place there’s water, to the right, and every missed shot penalized me. I got the full penalty.”

But, it happened to a nice guy. This is another thing an Open does. Whacks out more good guys than the Dalton gang. Curtis was deserving enough. But the course didn’t have to hit Kite over the head, kick his shins, and then pull his hat down over his ears. A triple, two doubles and two regular bogeys is pouring it on.

A U.S. Open is like a football coach who goes by “Close-The-Gates-Of-Mercy” Schmidt. It doesn’t know where to stop. But, if Curtis Strange can take pride in the fact he joins Hogan as a double-winner, Kite can note he takes his place with Snead, Hogan and Palmer, guys who have felt the wrath of this hallowed tournament and left bits and pieces of themselves all over the golf course. Golf is not a happy game. As the Scots, who invented it, say: “It was nae meant to be, laddie!”

BACK-TO-BACK WINNERS Winners of at least two consecutive U.S. Open championships:

Golfer Years Willie Anderson 1903, 1904, 1905 John McDermott 1911, 1912 Robert T. Jones Jr. 1929, 1930 Ralph Guldahl 1937, 1938 Ben Hogan 1950, 1951 Curtis Strange 1988, 1989