He Cuts Quite a Dashing Figure

How fitting!

The British Open, the Queen’s Own, has a guy with a hyphen in his name among the leaders. A colonial, if you please, but his roots go back to Mother England.

Ian bloody Baker-Finch, thank you!

Hyphens are as British as the Tower of London or Ann Boleyn’s head, and even though Ian Baker-Finch is Australian--well, the sun never sets on the British hyphen.

Baker-Finch has this nice aristocratic ring to it. Sounds like the headmaster at a proper British boarding school where they talk in Latin and conjugate Greek verbs on the blackboard. But Baker-Finch is a golfer who is in the lead bunch at the 119th Open being played here this week at historic St. Andrews.

Baker-Finch’s trouble is not putting or his backswing or his bunker play, it’s his looks. You wonder how Hollywood passed this up. There’s this shock of curly black hair, the boyish grin, the dimples, the straight teeth and the dark romantic eyes. And the hyphen. He has the drop-dead good looks of the born matinee idol. They complicate his life.

For instance, he was at a hotel in Australia owned by fellow golfer Rodger Davis in 1986 when this unruly local took exception to the fact his wife was betraying a lively interest in Baker-hyphen-Finch, even though the golfer was dining with his own wife at the time. Baker-hyphen-Finch has that effect on passing females. They tend to gush when he comes into view. When you’re as good-looking as Baker-hyphen-Finch, you get used to it.

The husband in this case, who had been overserved at the bar, was not so used to it. The more he looked at Baker-hyphen-Finch, the madder he got. No telling what he might have done if he knew this handsome devil could also play international championship golf, but someplace between the salad and the after-dinner coffee, he unloaded a sucker punch on Baker-hyphen-Finch.

Ian never saw it coming, but it was a tooth-loosener and an eye-socket breaker. It was near-tragic. The blow damaged the optic nerve. A little harder and it might have cost the eye. Lots of guys wear glasses in sports nowadays. But the eye damage is usually congenital. It’s never brought on by a jealous husband of a woman the victim doesn’t even know, an attack for no reason by a man in his cups.

The wound healed, but the eyesight didn’t. Baker-Finch was playing at Augusta, Ga., this spring when he began to notice that the shadows of the pine trees on the green were making him squint to read the breaks.

He started wearing glasses. But only to putt. From tee to green, he toughed it out.

He did begin to notice, however, that even though the correction was minimal, the improvement was a revelation. He had the reaction of everyone wearing glasses for the first time. He was astonished at what he had been missing. “The trees had leaves in them,” he marveled. “Green leaves.” Colors were more vivid. The periphery was sharpened, and he could go all the way to the bottom of the eye chart.

“I didn’t really have that bad eyesight to wear contacts,” he explained. “I don’t need them off the golf course. Lots of guys with worse eyes than mine don’t even wear glasses at all.”

But lots of guys don’t have to read the breaks in British Open greens or try to spot the best way to drive across Swilcan Burn. Ian Baker-Finch did that well enough Thursday to shoot his way onto the leader board and take his place as a threat to win it all.

Ultimately, Baker-Finch was not even the low Australian. That honor went to his flashy countryman, Greg Norman. But Baker-Finch was in hot pursuit, only two shots away.

Almost everyone broke par at the British Open Thursday as St. Andrews was without its trump cards and came up hot and still. Baker-Finch was in a crowd shot of those posting 68s.

Although he won the Colonial Open in Texas and $235,309 on the American PGA Tour last year, Baker-Finch was one of a handful of name players non-exempt. When he missed the cut at the Scottish Open, he lost his last chance to gain exemption and had to endure the ignominy of shooting his way into the tournament in the qualifying rounds at Scottsraig Golf Club, where he was not one of the 91 invitees but one of the 60 who had to crash the party.

This was in the face of the fact that Baker-Finch had an extraordinary run the last time the British Open was held here. That time, in 1984, he put together rounds of 68-66-71 to tie for the lead with Tom Watson after three rounds, before he soared to a 79 in Round 4.

Baker-Finch was so mortified, he blamed his own poor play for Watson’s playing poorly, too, and he lost the tournament to Seve Ballesteros. He was so distraught, spectators remember Watson walking off the course consoling him , even though Watson had shot 73 and had lost the tournament by only two shots.

Bad play, like bubonic plague or athlete’s foot, does tend to spread, but Watson convinced Baker-Finch his bad play was his own idea.

It is the notion of those who know him best that Baker-hyphen-Finch is not only too good-looking for his own good, he’s too good for his own good. He has trouble going for the jugular when he has his quarry, the golf course, on the ropes and bleeding.

It is the notion of the ladies that this 6-foot-4, 190-pound hunk is wasted on a golf course, anyway, when he could be on a dance floor or singing under a balcony.

But the facts of the matter are, Baker-hyphen-Finch looks good with a golf club in his hand, too.

Ian Baker-Finch not only wasn’t the low Australian Thursday, he wasn’t even alone as the low Ian. Ian Woosnam shot a 68.

But one thing is for sure: He was the low hyphen.