Forget the Tea, Just Show Him to the First Tee

You usually think of the guy who has won the British Open as this kind of lofty gentleman who wears a monocle when he’s not on the course, dresses for dinner and carries a furled umbrella and is a duke or a marquis in real life. At least, an O.B.E. He calls an undershirt a “singlet” and spells honor with a u . He wears a regimental tie and, maybe, striped pants.

Even the ones who weren’t out of Burke’s Peerage had a certain elegance and charm. There was suave and debonair Walter Hagen, who sometimes showed up on the first tee in a tuxedo and who elevated the lot of the professional golfer by the sheer magnitude of his personality. There was the courtly Bobby Jones, full of Old South chivalry. There was no more beloved figure.

There were the likes of Harry Vardon, Gene Sarazen, Henry Cotton. They knew which fork to use, which tie to wear.

There was Arnold Palmer, who personally restored the Open to past glory by sheer charisma. The sun had set on the British Open when Arnold led a new charge of American golfers to the auld country. Jack Nicklaus yielded to no one in his respect for and worship of a British Open.

Then, there is Mark Calcavecchia, the current “holder” (defending champion).

Mark, you would have to say, is not awed by the British Open. Mark would probably not be awed by the Sistine Chapel.

Mark Calcavecchia is probably your pure American golfer. Mark wins Honda Classics and Nissan Los Angeles Opens. Mark wins tournaments that have automobile names in front of them or are “classics” sponsored by beer companies. Mark is not your basic bowler-hat, bench-made-shoes type. Mark boasted in an interview that winning the British Open had not changed him, he still came on the airplane in jeans and jogging sneakers. And probably an old baseball cap.

The players who came in the press tent at St. Andrew’s this week were, by and large, full of wonder at finding themselves surrounded by all this history. Calcavecchia brushed it off. “I know this course is hundreds of years old but I’m not into that,” he shrugged.

Mark was more impressed with what winning the British Open had done for him financially. Mark confessed to being rather startled to find himself now in a position to command sizable appearance money--i.e., fees paid to a player for just showing up--in the Irish and Dutch Opens. “I told my wife, who are we to say, ‘No,’ to offers of money to play? She said, ‘I wouldn’t give you that kind of money. I wouldn’t give me that kind of money.’ ”

Appearance money is outlawed by the American PGA Tour. The Honda Classic would hardly command much anyway.

Mark Calcavecchia is a new experience for a British Open. You would never mix him up with Walter Hagen. Or Walter Burkemo, for all of that. Golf is what Mark is all about. Putt for dough and all that jazz.

Mark is one of a kind. His own man. The word birdie was invented in America to describe the kind of golf Mark plays.

Mark does not have your male-model good looks or figure. Mark would look silly in peroxide hair. His clothes look slept-in. He does not even have the Brigham Young or Wake Forest look of today’s cookie-cut players. Mark is not your hard-belly, V-torso Adonis. Mark looks as if he just stepped down from the cab of a beer truck, to tell you the truth. He looks more like a teamster than a golfer. He doesn’t look much like a guy who worries about who is Secretary of State.

He was a typical, brash, young Yank golfer the first look he got at St. Andrews. “I thought, ‘What the hell is this!?’ What did they do with the goats? Where were the sprinkler heads? What in the world were they doing with two flags on one green?” When Mark found himself on one a long way from the hole, he scandalized the Scots by using a wedge on it this week. It’s perfectly legal, just not very sporting.

When Mark showed up at the British Open press tent this week, his biggest lament was the two-shot lead he blew at the Hartford Open. The Hartford Open? The Brits didn’t even know it existed. Jack Nicklaus probably never played in it.

But Mark Calcavecchia is the pure article-- Golferus Americanus . Hartford Opens are what he’s all about.

But don’t get him wrong. He can play. Whether the pin is flapping from the North Sea gales or hanging limply from a Palm Springs calm, Calcavecchia shoots for birdies. And usually makes them. No matter how old the real estate is, the hole is still 4 1/4 inches across.

Mark is staying in a hotel jutting into the 17th fairway at St. Andrews this week. As he looked out his window and saw some of his competitors--Payne Stewart, Ben Crenshaw and their foursome--toiling down the rough, he had to resist the temptation to grab his British Open trophy and hold it out the window and shout, “Is this what you guys are looking for?!”

Calcavecchia’s got it. He’s just as much a British Open champion as any Earl of Sandwich who ever took a cleek to a gutty, or screwed in his monocle and yelled, “Fore!” at the Prince of Wales, or Auld Tom Morris or his son, Young Tom.