GOLF : Suddenly, Mac’s Back Lets Him Come Back

Don’t tell PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman unless he’s sitting down. Mac O’Grady is about to launch a comeback.

The news was as startling to O’Grady, who was telling everybody a year ago that his days of playing the PGA Tour would end with the 1989 season.

It wasn’t because of burnout. Anybody who endures the PGA Tour qualifying school 17 times in 12 years has to love the game.

It wasn’t because of his confrontations with Beman. O’Grady has built immunity to some of the threats of fines through years of feuding with Beman.

It wasn’t because he didn’t make enough money in 1989 to keep his PGA Tour card. O’Grady, like any other former winner, can compete in any event with a sponsor’s exemption. And as long as he’s willing to donate a percentage of his winnings to a sponsor’s charity, there would never be a problem playing a full schedule.

No, the reason Mac was retiring was because of a career-ending condition known as spondylolisthesis, a displacement of a lumbar vertebra upon the bone below it.

O’Grady would endure bolts of pain in his lower back while swinging a golf club.

He soon discovered, however, that it does not bother him when he swings left-handed. O’Grady plays left-handed almost as well as from the right side. He even tried the qualifying school left-handed once.

But playing left-handed was really not a realistic option. Hitting 300-yard drives was one thing, playing PGA Tour pressure golf is quite something else.

“Look, to play as a virtuoso, I mean a real master of this game, even from one side, is something that happens once in 100 lifetimes,” O’Grady said by telephone from his home in Palm Springs. “To think somebody could switch and play from the other side and reach the same level, to try to reach Mt. Virtuoso again, is impossible. It’s rationally, logistically, intellectually, conceptually and intuitively impossible.

“Retirement and writing my book and putting together my instructional videotapes was all that was left for me to do.”

But visions of coming back as a left-hander would still pop into his head on days when he was playing particularly well from the left side.

“I was practicing that way eight to 10 hours, every day,” he said.

He said he was even going to change his name to Mac O’Grady II.

“That would have only been to confuse Beman,” he said.

O’Grady, who once was rebuffed from entering the Chrysler Team competition because he wanted to be his own partner as a left-hander, has always felt he should be considered an amateur from the left side. If it was possible, he would enter the U.S. Amateur as a left-hander.

“The USGA doesn’t consider me an amateur (left-handed) either,” he said.

The comeback dream nearly died until the Monday afternoon in June when he clicked on his television set and saw something that startled him.

“It was the playoff for the U.S. Open,” he said. “Mike Donald and Hale Irwin were playing for the U.S. Open championship. Donald and Irwin? I couldn’t believe it. It was as if a guardian angel had come down to tell me not to give up.”

That was enough to get him out of his chair and across the street to the Canyon Country Club.

Then another thing happened to change his practice habits. He received a driver from Jumbo Ozaki, the same kind that added distance to Jack Nicklaus’ drives. It was a right-handed driver, however.

“I tried it anyway,” O’Grady said. “The first thing I noticed was how great it felt to swing right-handed again. Then I noticed there was no pain. Then I noticed how far I was hitting the ball. We’re talking hydrogen bombs here.”

O’Grady phoned his physician, Dr. Francis Oda, to ask him why it was possible to swing without pain. When the injury was first diagnosed in January, 1989, O’Grady was told that a spinal fusion might be necessary to correct his problem. He would be placed in a body cast with no guarantee it would work.

“He told me sometimes these things can heal themselves naturally through corrective exercises,” O’Grady said. “I’m hoping that’s what has happened. I can’t believe how great I feel again. I’m running every day in this heat and just can’t wait to start playing again.”

O’Grady expects to get a sponsor’s exemption from the International Tournament at Denver, the week following the PGA Championship at Shoal Creek.

“If I can get into enough tournaments, I can make enough money to get my card back,” he said.

He can if he plays like the Mac O’Grady of 1985-86-87. In those years, O’Grady was competitive on the tour and had what many considered a near-perfect swing. Many young players and several veterans would seek him out on the driving range for his theories on the golf swing.

Johnny Miller used to call him dial-a-shot. “There isn’t a better pure ball-striker than Mac O’Grady,” Miller would tell people.

Said O’Grady: “I felt like my career was ready to take off,” O’Grady said. “I won more than three-quarters of a million dollars (in three years) and was ready to start winning majors.”

But he started feeling pain in his back in January, 1988, and a year later, when it was almost unbearable at times, he received the news about his condition.

Of course, even without the back pain, O’Grady has one more battle to wage before he can start thinking of being a virtuoso golfer again--with his putter.

“What makes golf so fair is that it doesn’t discriminate against the small players who can’t hit the ball 300 yards,” he said. “Concentration and finesse take over when you get close or on the green. I’ve got the short game, but it’s my putting that is suspect.

“But I’ve matured by being away from the game for almost one year. Away from the system. Away from Beman. And away from the voices inside my head that tell me I’m going to push, pull or miss the putts. I’m going to start making putts because I’m going to stop listening to those voices inside my head. I’m just going to listen to the voice of silence and let my intuition guide me through every hurricane on the putting green. I’ve got to find the eye in that hurricane.”

Golf Notes

Pebble Beach Co., which owns four golf courses, two resort hotels and hundreds of acres of undeveloped land in Monterey, is going to be sold for $400 million to Cosmo World Corp., a Los Angeles-based subsidiary of a Japanese conglomerate, according to reports appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle and Monterey Herald. According to the report, a tentative agreement has been reached for Cosmo World to purchase as much as 49% of the golf course company in a deal that includes a three-year operating agreement with the current owners, after which Cosmo World would take over as sole manager. Before the transaction is completed, Cosmo World must get financing and complete a review of the Pebble Beach Co. assets, which are reported to be about $780 million.

Smokey Robinson, Pat Morita and Jim (Mudcat) Grant are among the celebrities playing in H.B. Barnum’s second “Adopt-a-Senior” celebrity event at California Country Club Monday. Funds raised will benefit the “Adopt-a-Senior” program, which provides hot, home-delivered meals to low-income seniors. The $75 entry fee includes green fees, cart, tee prizes and an awards luncheon. Guest tickets for lunch and entertainment only are $20. For more information, call 213-485-4884.

The purse for the 19th Queen Mary Open has been increased to $115,000 for the Aug. 13-19 event. Tournament director Doug Ives, who also operates the Golden State Tour, has added a Seniors division and a pro-am. Proceeds in excess of $20,000 will be donated to child abuse prevention and other youth programs.

Valencia Country Club is hoping the Senior PGA Tour takes notice when considering future sites for an event. This is what Uniden, the Japanese corporation that purchased the public course and turned it private in 1985, had in mind when it started a five-year redevelopment plan. The development, which includes a 45,500-square-foot, 600-locker clubhouse as well as a $2.5-million irrigation and fertilization system, is complete. The course, always among the best in Southern California, now has the amenities to attract a professional tournament.

The price to play 18 holes of golf on a municipal golf course in Los Angeles has just increased by one dollar. The weekday rate moved from $9.50 to $10.50, and the weekend rate went from $13.50 to $14.50.

More than $5,000 was raised for junior golf on the municipal courses recently. Golfers were asked to donate $3 to try to hit tee shots into a circle on par-three holes. Golfers landing in the circle would get a sleeve of golf balls. More than 800 golf balls were won, as well as a camping trip for junior golfers.

The California State Open will be held Aug. 6-10 at the Old Course at Mission Hills Country Club, the Westin Mission Hills Resort Golf Club and La Quinta Hotel Golf Club Dunes Course, which will serve as host course. The field will consist of 258 professionals and 30 amateurs competing for $75,000. The first two courses also will be the site for the western regional qualifying school for the LPGA, Sept. 18-20. A field of 212 will play each course the first two days, then the low 70 and ties will play 18 holes at the Mission Hills Palmer course.

Arnold Palmer has committed to playing in the Seniors tournament at the Ojai Valley Inn & Country Club next year, and Charles Crain, president of the sponsoring GTE West Area, is also hoping to get Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino into the field. Skip Whittet, who was the head pro at Oakmont Country Club in Glendale for 14 years, returns as the tournament director.

Twenty private country clubs in California have been staging qualifying tournaments to get into the Peugeot 405 Yards Golf Trophy Final, Oct. 29, at Sandpiper Golf Club in Santa Barbara. The winning team and their pro will play in a similar tournament in Spain. The Southern California Golf Assn. has invited member clubs to enter four-member teams to enter a junior championship event. The best three 18-hole scores of the four players will count toward the team total. The field is limited to 36 teams. For more information, call Pat Chartrand, 213-326-7731.