FOR PRIDE : Ryder Cup Spots Offer Extra Goal for Americans at PGA

These are the best of times for Raymond Loran Floyd.

On the eve of the 71st PGA Championship at Kemper Lakes Golf Club, Floyd’s passion, the Chicago Cubs, are leading the National League East by three games.

Floyd says his golf game is sharper than it has been in weeks. And later this year, PGA officials will induct him into the World Golf Hall of Fame at Pinehurst in his native state of North Carolina.

And next month Floyd, a two-time PGA champion, will captain the United States Ryder Cup team against Team Europe at the Belfry in Sutton Coldfield, England. The Ryder Cup is held every two years, matching the top 12 American pros against the dozen best from Europe.

Floyd, 46, has played on six Ryder Cup teams. And even though he has said he won’t play on the Ryder Cup team even if he earns an automatic berth by winning here this week, he can’t wait for the matches to begin.

“I’m excited about being captain of the 1989 team because the losses in 1987 and 1985 have brought such an awareness among the American players,” Floyd said Wednesday. “This awareness is very healthy for golf.”

Four years ago, the Europeans won, 15-13, at the Belfry. Two years after that, the Europeans successfully defended the Cup for the first time in the 52 years of the event. The result was a hole in the collective ego of American professional golf.

And now the Americans are eager to go back. The Europeans, they will tell you, gloated too much after each of the last two victories. The British golf fans, they will tell you, are among the rudest in the world.

“I’ve heard they will step on your ball in the rough,” said Fred Couples, one of the six Americans who has already earned enough points to qualify for Floyd’s team. The five others are British Open champion Mark Calcavecchia, U.S. Open champion Curtis Strange, Chip Beck, Tom Kite and Paul Azinger.

The PGA is the last event this year in which a player can earn Ryder Cup points. And as it stands, 10 other golfers have a chance of earning one of the five automatic spots. Floyd gets to fill the 12th and last spot with a golfer of his choice unless this week’s winner is already among the top 10 point earners. In that event, Floyd will have two wild-card selections.

So while most of golfing world watches the scoreboard this week, Floyd and a select group of players will be watching the scoreboard, the point standings and each other.

It’s this way every two years. The PGA becomes a tournament within a tournament.

Players seven through 11 on the current point standings are, in order, Payne Stewart, Ken Green, Mark O’Meara, Mark McCumber and Steve Pate. Next are Joey Sindelar, Bruce Lietzke, Ben Crenshaw, Scott Hoch, and Lanny Wadkins.

The winner of the PGA earns 125 Ryder Cup points. But that number is meaningless because of the automatic berth the winner receives. Second place at the PGA is worth 90 points. The system is complicated, but there is nothing confusing about the red, white and blue visor Floyd wears. “Bring Back the Ryder Cup,” it reads.

He will tell you about the goose bumps, “the size of Titleists,” he got when they raised the American flag before his first Ryder Cup match in 1969 at Royal Birkdale in Southport, England.

The feeling is contagious. Calcavecchia, No. 1 in Ryder Cup points, said this summer that he would rather win the Ryder Cup than a major championship. Then Calcavecchia went out and became the first American since Tom Watson in 1983 to win the British Open.

Only two Europeans finished among the top 11 at the British. Six of the top 11 were Americans.

“We took a bit of a bashing at the Open,” said Masters champion Nick Faldo, who, along with Spain’s Severiano Ballesteros, Wales’ Ian Woosnam and West Germany’s Bernhard Langer, will lead the European team.

“I was thrilled by the British Open,” Floyd said.

But most of the time he’s pretty serious about such things. Tuesday, he called a meeting of the top 16 Ryder Cup point getters to date.

Also serious is the PGA, which for the first time has hired a small staff to handle Ryder Cup matters.

Calcavecchia, whose wife gave birth Tuesday, didn’t attend the meeting. The only other no-show was Green, who has criticized the Ryder Cup format. Calcavecchia will not return from his Arizona home for this tournament.

Floyd declined to discuss the content of the meeting. Nor will he discuss the “research” he has done on past Ryder Cup matches regarding who plays better with whom in the alternate shot and better-ball portions of the competition.

He acknowledged that he has strong ideas about whom he will select as his wild card or cards. And he says the names of Watson, Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino are on that list. So, he says, are five to seven others. But he doesn’t have to reveal his selection or selections until next Tuesday morning.

“Everybody’s ready to win the Ryder Cup this year and play well,” Strange says. “You can feel it.”

Ray Floyd can taste it.

PGA Notes

Kemper Lakes is long (7,197 yards), relatively new (10 years old), and only the fourth public course to serve as host for this tournament. Length and accuracy off the tee will be crucial because of the yardages and the long and wiry rough. On the 16th hole Wednesday, former PGA champion Larry Nelson, playing a practice round, skull-shanked a short chip into the stands when the rough grabbed the face of his wedge on his downswing.

The 18th at Kemper Lakes is a 433-yard, par-4 dogleg left with water all the way up the left side. The tee shot invites golfers to cut off as much water as they choose to gain a shorter second shot. But players such as Greg Norman have eliminated the water completely by driving the green. That’s a 300-yard carry.

Last April, officials installed three 20-foot honey locust trees between the tee and the green, on the green side of the water, to discourage Norman and the other long-hitters. Now, Norman says, “(Trying to drive the green) is a big risk with a lot to lose.” Masters champion Nick Faldo, not as long a hitter as Norman, said, “I’d probably land the ball on some poor bloke’s head if I tried that. It’s a touch out of my range.” During his practice round Wednesday, Norman hit his drive over the trees and landed five yards short of the green.

The PGA Championship has its critics. Mainly, they say, a tournament that includes 40 club pros shouldn’t qualify as one of the four major events. Severiano Ballesteros, who has never won this tournament, disagrees. “The PGA Championship is one of the four best golf tournaments in the world, and deserves to be in that elite class,” he said. . . Other prominent players never to have won the PGA: Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson.