His Worst Enemy Is Defeated

The lesson for today is, how do you play 72 holes of tournament golf at Riviera without a bogey?

The answer is, you don’t. You can’t. As Dr. Gilmer B. Morgan, the golfing optometrist, found out on the 65th and 67th hole at the Nissan L.A. Open Sunday.

The good doctor was bucking a very tough wheel. You don’t get dealt aces every day. You don’t make 70 straight passes at the craps table.

Sooner or later, the house wins.

The law of averages caught up with Doc Morgan on the 11th hole Sunday. He was leading the tournament by one shot over Fred Couples at the time. Couples, who had shot nine under par on Saturday, was one over par for nine holes on Sunday and looked like a guy hunting for the exit.

There’s really no reason for a pro to bogey the 11th hole at Riviera. It’s a par five and the pros don’t bogey par fives. They consider a five a bogey, to tell you the truth. A six is almost a double bogey to them.

Gil Morgan made 6.

The circumstances are peculiar to golf. You have to understand golf is not a physical game. It’s not played with the hands and heart, it’s played with the head.

Gil Morgan missed a par putt on 11 simply because Fred Couples had already made his birdie putt.

It happens all the time in golf. There’s no other way to explain a player of Morgan’s caliber missing a 1 1/2-foot par putt, particularly taking into account he had not missed a par putt for 65 straight holes.

He missed this one. And that was the old ballgame. The two-shot swing put Couples back in the lead.

The 13th hole at Riviera is a eucalyptus-fringed knothole. Hit it to the right and you need a doctor. Hit it to the left and you need the coroner.

Dr. Morgan hooked the tournament out of bounds on this hole. He had scrambled back after the mini-disaster on 11 to birdie 12 and tie the match. He had the honors on the tee at 13. When he smother-hooked it in the stand of trees, it slammed into the trunk of one and ricocheted straight out of bounds.

Another axiom of golf is that you never win a tournament, someone loses it.

So, while Fred Couples didn’t exactly inherit the 1990 L.A. Open, neither did he walk out there Sunday and drag it by the hair to the cave with him.

Fred Couples has a (somewhat deserved) reputation for doing something rash in the closing holes of a tight tournament. There are balls in the water from Phoenix to San Diego to attest to his proficiency at that. He has that shot.

Gil Morgan took it right out of his bag with his double-bogey. Fred Couples was able to play commercial golf the rest of the way.

Not that he did. Fred Couples being Fred Couples, he didn’t take the safety route. He sank birdie putts on 16 and 18 when a lag putt was called for. But he won going away.

The L.A. Open being the L.A. Open, the surprise was the tournament was won by a recognizable silhouette on the golf tour. This is a tournament which specializes in victors who are winning their first tournaments ever (and, sometimes, their last). The list is long: Tommy Bolt (1952), Fred Wampler (1954), Frank Stranahan (1958), Charlie Sifford (1969), Pat Fitzsimons (1975), Tom Purtzer (1977), David Edwards (1984), T.C. Chen (1987) and Chip Beck (1988).

It appeared as if 1990 would be Rocco Mediate’s turn in this barrel. An engaging, cheerful player who manages to look as if he arrived at the tournament on the back of a beer truck, this golfing Rocky seemed to be having the time of his life this week. He kept Fred Couples firmly in his sights waiting for midnight to strike Freddy as usual.

It struck for Rocco instead. On the 15th hole, straining for the extra edge a long drive would give him, he duck-hooked it into the gum trees on the left. When his approach shot hit an overhanging branch, Rocky turned into a pumpkin instead of Freddy. Too bad. It would have been a nice part for Stallone.

Couples deserved the tournament. He beat the golfers he had to beat, one of whom was Fred Couples. Before the last round started, Couples acknowledged that he knew it was no walk in the park. He had to wonder whether the Fred Couples who could shoot 62 with a bogey would show up--or the Fred Couples whose swing could turn into a spasm-ridden blur without warning. Freddy thought so unconfidently he talked his wife out of flying from Florida overnight to be on hand for the final round. “Now I wish I’d told her to come,” he said ruefully in the press room Sunday.

But he couldn’t be sure Gil Morgan would be the one to hit it off the golf course--or that Rocky would knock himself out with, so to speak, a left hook.

But, just in case any of these things happened, he was ready. “I talked to my caddy before we started out and we agreed we would slow everything down,” Couples said. “I played really edgy golf on the front nine when I lost my lead, but when I sank a putt to save my par on No. 10, a putt I had to have, I just felt the tension leave.

“I’m not saying I played like Ben Hogan, but I hit the ball solid and straight all the rest of the round. I really felt this was my tournament to win. If I hadn’t, I don’t know what it would have done to me. “

Fortunately, he doesn’t have that problem. “Maybe they won’t ask me abut those tournaments I lost anymore,” he said.

In a sense, he won a playoff. Once he beat that other Fred Couples, the other 143 players in the tournament were easy. From here on, the game may be as easy as Fred Couples sometimes makes it look.