For Openers, a Strange Lapse of Memory

Strange guy, this Curtis. Wins back-to-back U.S. Open championships and thrives on pressure, yet doesn’t love reporters.

Met the media horde gathered Tuesday at the site of the 1990 U.S. Open and said he’d played Medinah Country Club just once in his life, a just-for-fun outing last fall with some of the boys from GOLF magazine. Said he didn’t remember any of the holes, particularly, or much else about it.

“Shot 74,” he said. “Think I lost a couple of dollars, too.”

What a coincidence this is: A guy with the same name wrote (and presumably reported) a first-person article for the June issue of the same magazine titled, “Monsters of Medinah.” In it, that Curtis Strange analyzed in depth the five holes at the suburban Chicago venue that he predicted “will be key in deciding the U.S. Open champion.”

“Here’s how the holes play,” the introduction went on, “with some of my ideas (I can’t give everything away) on how to conquer them -- or at least come away with par.”

That Curtis Strange sounds like a quick study. Bet he took a couple of bucks off those boys from GOLF, too. But wait, there’s more.

In another first-person story in the same issue -- “Medinah on My Mind” -- Strange said he’s consumed with the idea of becoming the first man in 85 years to three-peat in golf’s grandest test.

Toward that end, he said he would shut off the phones at his home in Virginia for the month of June and wouldn’t take calls at hotels on the road where he is playing in tournaments either. Imagine that.

He also let slip that he will shoehorn in a practice round or two before tournament week begins by sneaking onto Medinah’s exclusive grounds to practice some morning at the crack of dawn, “but I won’t tell you when.”

“All this pre-Open stuff, the attention and everything, adds to the pressure a little bit, but once I hit that tee shot Thursday (June 14, the start of the Open), I’ll be OK.

“That’s where I’m most comfortable. There, I’m in my office,” he continued, breaking into a grin, “and I can shut all of you out.”

One gets the idea that he is awfully enamored of the big silver cup (not to mention the money) they give the U.S. Open champion every year. And that it is, having been lodged in his home for two years now, an integral part of the interior decorating scheme.

It is a reassuring thing to take down from the shelf and look at and hold when the blinds are drawn, hefty, an immeasurable comfort to the one-time brilliant amateur who expected to set the golfing world on fire and spent a long time learning to strike the competitive match.

Strange is said to be a funny, charitable man away from the course, but his concentration on it remains trance-like and he does not hesitate to run over over anybody--photographers, officials or the occasional fan--who crosses his tunnel vision. It may hurt his image, but it is the secret of his success. He needs focus, not more questions from reporters.

Curtis Strange never forgets that he failed on his first run at the tour’s qualifying school, that he failed on the first run he ever made in a regular PGA event, and then did it yet again in the first major tournament in which he was a legitimate contender.

Five years ago, Strange started the final day of the Masters with a three-shot lead, went for the green of the par-5 13th in two and came up wet. Bernhard Langer won that year and many people -- most of all, those damned reporters -- said he might never recover. And now, every time that splash ripples through his memory, he can grab the large looping handles on the silver cup and keep himself from slipping under again.

“You come out on the tour as a 21-year-old hotshot,” Strange recalled in one of his more reflective moments Tuesday, “and you think you can do no wrong.

“But after you’re finished with your amateur career, you go from the top of the totem pole to the bottom. And it’s a big blow to your self-esteem to find out you can’t compete for everything like you did just a day earlier.”

He went two years on the tour before he won his first tournament, the Pensacola Open in 1979, and his game has refined itself ever since. Far from the longest player out there, Strange instead became one of the most accurate. It is a trait that, combined with considerable grace under pressure, makes him a threat in every major tournament and the closest thing to a lock on the narrow, unbearably penal layouts on which U.S. Opens are staged.

Having fulfilled that promise twice now, he is in position to do what none of the greats alongside whom he played -- Nicklaus, Palmer, Player, Watson, Trevino -- could manage: to win a third.

Last year, Strange joined the short list of golfers who have won back-to-back--it has only five names, the last being Ben Hogan almost 40 years ago--and over tight, tree-lined Medinah later this summer, he can segue onto the short-short list.

It has just one name: Willie Anderson, who turned the trick 85 years ago. “Don’t know much about Willie Anderson,” Strange said.

Which probably means he’s got a book in the works.