A Player in Good Standing

Golden-oldie golfers, Jack and Lee and Gary and such, are shooting in the 50s now, and Arnold recently turned the Amen Corner of 60. Their head covers are turning gray, which leaves some of us in the junior tour PGA gallery hunting for a familiar fellow to follow, a guy with whom we have shared some history, a guy we would like to see burning up the golf course again, if only to remind us of different days, different strokes.

Craig Stadler is only 36, hardly doddering. His game is in decent shape, and so is he, although traditionally the golfer who bears the nickname Walrus has been built more along the lines of a bag than a club. Fourth last week in San Diego, third the previous week in Hawaii, Stadler is playing quite nicely, thank you, and takes good-natured umbrage at any suggestion that he is not.

“Oh, I’ll never be able to make a putt again,” Stadler said, somehow keeping a straight face, before Thursday’s opening round at the Nissan Los Angeles Open at Riviera. “I’ve just lost it.”

He even voluntarily brought up a sore old subject, one with which he undoubtedly has become bored, before anybody could beat him to it.

“I’m hitting about five feet less without my towel,” he said.

Nobody’s fool, Stadler understands that he has gotten more notoriety over the last five years from being penalized for kneeling on a towel during one shot than he has for any of the many fine things he has accomplished standing upright--among them finishing 25th on the tour’s earnings ranking for 1989. Damn that dumb towel, anyway.

It cannot escape a golf lover’s attention, of course, that Stadler, the same guy who had the golf world in his glove in 1982 when he won a wild Masters and finished first on the year’s money list, has not won a tour event since the Byron Nelson chicken-fried clambake of 1984.

Stadler hasn’t fallen on hard times--he was second in one event last spring, third at Augusta in 1988--yet he hasn’t held up one of those huge cardboard paychecks for the TV cameras lately, either.

Stadler makes a lot of jokes about TV cameras.

“I did make a putt on TV last week, from about 15 feet, which nobody saw,” he said. “Unfortunately, whenever I do something right, it’s usually just before the telecast comes on.”

Trust him, though, he’s playing some good golf. He went to Australia a few weeks ago and chalked up a fifth-place finish.

The L.A. Open marks the seventh consecutive weekend Stadler has spent playing golf, which is fairly unusual for him. The Walrus was always one of the guys who made fun of the players who ran off to New Zealand or South America or someplace every week, just because they were invited.

“I can still remember playing 10 Mondays in a row,” he said.

Those were the days, my friend, he thought they’d never end. When a young golfer was eager to qualify, desperate to qualify for any event, rainy days and Mondays always got them down. Stadler was a hotshot from the day he stepped off campus courses, back when he made the USC coaches crazy by competing in sandals and jeans. Like anybody else, still, he had to earn everything he got.

Stadler eventually took the tour by storm, and, although he never won the L.A. Open, he often finished strongly here, closing with a 69 as far back as 1974 to tie for sixth place. He closed with a 66 in 1981, with a 68 in 1984, with a 66 in 1985, always serving notice to the leaders not to count their checks before they hatched.

He also knew life from the other side. There were tears streaming down Stadler’s cheeks in 1979 when the 12th hole of Augusta National, the last fork of Amen Corner, ate him alive on the final day, costing him the green jacket and leaving him sitting forlornly on a flowery hillside, his face in his hands.

Three years later, it nearly happened again, when an almost certain victory came undone and Dan Pohl was given a shot at denying Stadler in a playoff. Stadler blew up to a back nine of 40 that day, and saw a lifetime’s ambition slipping away. Came the playoff, though, and Stadler saved himself, putting that scar-faced putter of his in Augusta’s glass trophy case for posterity.

Greater fame came his way, even if greater fortune did not. A Masters championship was supposed to mean big, big bucks to a player in extracurricular endorsements and such, but when Stadler heard that, all he could respond was: “Who says it does? Arnold? No one came knocking on my door with a check for a million.”

Still, it made him a more appealing, more popular player, known for more than the walrus-puppet head covers on his clubs. It made Stadler the sort of big galoot galleries could go for in a big way, including L.A.’s.

When he isn’t playing with other pro golfers, Stadler often plays in Los Angeles with other pro athletes--specifically, the hockey players of the Kings, with whom the Walrus has developed an icy kinship. He takes in their games whenever he can, enjoys watching his kids get occasional skating tips from Coach Tom Webster, even attended King playoff games in Canada last season.

His one regret: “One of my playing partners isn’t around anymore. He’s in New York.”

Stadler recently spoke, in fact, with Bernie Nicholls, and told him how much he missed having him around.

Wherever the Kings are after the first round of this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs, Stadler said, “That’s where you’ll probably find me.”

Until then, you can keep looking for him on leader boards, keep watching him in person or on TV. Keep in mind that seconds before you turned on the telecast, he probably sank a putt.