Expect This Rising Star to Be Around for a While

Usually, when a golfer no one ever heard of jumps into a lead in a tournament, the golf Establishment holds its head and groans: “Oh, no! Not another mystery guest! Not another boost to the senior tour. Why are they doing this to us?”

They turn in irritation to the marquee names of the tour. “For God’s sake! Go, get that guy!” they urge.

But when young Robert Gamez vaulted to a runaway lead in the final round of the Tucson Open last week, there wasn’t a teeth-gnashing or a muffled cursing in the house. Nobody silently rooted for him to shoot a whole bunch of double bogeys, knock it out of bounds, hit it in the water or misread a flock of seven-foot putts. Arnold Palmer never had a more adoring gallery.

Robert (Don’t call me Bob) Gamez is the most exciting thing to happen to the tour since the young Seve Ballesteros. When he won, hats flew into the air, TV ratings climbed, drinks were hoisted in the clubhouse and the story moved on the A wire.

Robert Gamez is not your basic blond, white-sweatered, blue-eyed young swinger out of Brigham Young or Wake Forest. Robert didn’t exactly come out of the caddie shack, but Dad wasn’t a pro, either. Dad was a custodial employee at a casino in Las Vegas, and Robert learned his golf the same way the young Ben Hogan did, teeing off a muni track by dawn’s early light, putting by flashlight, playing anywhere he could with any set of clubs he could put together.

He had a club in his hands at the age of 2, he was shooting par when he was 8 and he was good enough to get a full scholarship to the University of Arizona by the time he was 16. He had an ideal build for a game that puts a premium on being close to the ball, and he had the best temperament since the young Gene Littler.

Kids usually walk into the game with a swing so loose and whippy it goes around twice before impact, and they sport a hot-headed approach to the game that requires club-throwing, ball-washer-kicking and on-the-green cussing that would do justice to a Teamster in a traffic jam.

Robert was as cheerful as sunrise, as approachable as a guy selling hot watches.

Word of his prowess spread before he even showed up for the pros. He shot a 63 in an NCAA tournament, he won the Porter Cup, he was on the Walker Cup team and he was a quarterfinalist in the U.S. Amateur. He was a semi-star before he ever went to the pro qualifying school.

To the surprise of no one, he passed there and, even though his 42nd finish was not Palmerian, it should be remembered that is the tournament that holds forth the keys of the kingdom of heaven for the young player, the most important tournament, probably, most of them will ever play.

Legend will have it that Robert won the first pro tournament he ever entered, but this will not be so. He had played in a Southern Open, a Texas Open and a B.C. Open (making one cut) before he teed it up at Tucson last week.

But his play in the Tucson Open focused the attention of all golf. It was a tournament in which one player, David Frost, shot a 60; three others shot 64 and almost everybody shot 65. One guy shot a 62 and finished 47th, and par missed the cut.

Gamez walked through this hail of eagles and birdies like a monk telling beads.

“He acted like a guy who’s been out here 10 years,” runner-up Jay Haas told the press.

Everyone knows what comes next for the tour phenom. The pressure is subtle--but persistent.

It begins with the older players coming around on the practice tee, watching silently for a few minutes, then asking innocently, “Have you always had that left hand so far over on the shaft, kid?” They wonder if he’s bending his left knee too much, if his take-away is too abrupt.

Privately, they assure interviewers, “He’ll never hold up with that grip--it’s gotta cost him sooner or later.” His swing, they will find, is too upright--or too flat. They will wonder if he keeps his head still enough over the putts.

Robert Gamez knows all this. It is an established pattern in golf. The new young rising star comes out of the chute, dazzles the tour. Then, suddenly, he hits the wall of pain three to four years out.

“You just have to steel yourself not to listen,” he says. “You go back to your own teacher.”

You don’t fix what ain’t broke. You stay with what brung you there.

The swing is not Snead’s, the grip not Harry Vardon’s. But Robert’s goal is not four 60s, it’s consistency. Every shot isn’t for the ages. It’s for the green.

When you win a tournament at the age of 21, would-be instructors aren’t the only ones ringing your phone. Money managers, press agents, business agents all flock to the scene. Mark McCormack’s secretary calls. Corporate outings are in the wings.

Robert isn’t listening to them, either. He feels he has 20 years yet to cash in. But, he’s already finding that celebrity is not without its price. Microphones are thrust in his face as he walks off a tee down here in the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic. He has gone from “Robert Who?” to “Which one’s Gamez?”

He handles it better than anyone since the young Palmer. See him now as he pars his way around Morningside in the Howard Cosell Day With the All-Americans tournament. A pest approaches. He wants to know if he should buy some new titanium shafts. He acts as if golfer Gamez was a clerk in a sporting goods store, not a golfer in contention.

The pest all but talks on his backswing. He is persistent, ubiquitous, oblivious to the fact Gamez is playing in a tournament. Gamez is patient, tolerant, all but excusing himself apologetically to make a shot.

The round is not the U.S. Open. So Robert puts up with the intrusion. He comes up to a long par 4.

“What’s the shot?” he asks his 18-year-old caddie, his brother, Randy.

“It’s 176 yards to the front of the green,” Randy tells him.

“Six-iron,” Robert says.

“Don’t be afraid to hit it,” Randy tells him.

How does it feel to go from a nobody to a magazine cover overnight? Robert grins.

“I don’t mind the attention,” he admits. “We’re showmen out here. Distractions are part of the price. We’re doing something we like. Nothing’s free.”

You get the feeling golf has got itself a lasting hero here.

“Aw,” grumble the old-timers, “he doesn’t know how tough a game this is yet.”

Maybe. And maybe golf doesn’t know how tough a Gamez this is, either.