Now Here Is a Golfer to Admire

I like to watch Lanny Wadkins play golf for the same reasons I liked to see Bob Gibson pitch, Rocky Marciano fight or Fred Astaire dance. I like guys who just do it. Like the others, Lanny does it quickly, aggressively, stylishly, with a minimum of posturing, capering, temporizing or delaying. Lanny gets it over with. He acts like a guy who is double-parked and on the lam.

You never see Lanny walking ahead of his ball or pulling out a notebook, calibrating distances, conferring with his caddy, waiting for a ruling or doing any of the things so favored by other players. Lanny gets on with it. Lanny simply squints down the fairway, pulls out a club and slashes at the ball and runs after the shot. He is in the great tradition of Doug Ford, another exponent of fugitive golf who always played as if the sheriff were after him. Like Arnold Palmer, Lanny doesn’t play a golf course so much as he hunts it.

He goes for the jugular. Lanny never tries to jab a course to death. He goes for the knockout. He hurries after each shot like a guy chasing a bus. When he’s on his game, it looks as if it’s raining golf balls.

You’re happy to see Lanny win golf tournaments because it gives the right message to every 20-handicapper in the country.

Look. Don’t you hate to see the pitcher in a drawn-out game star-

ing at the batter, or taking a stroll around the mound or conferring with the manager before finally releasing the ball? Like to see a fighter skipping around the ring, falling into a clinch, spinning and whirling and never throwing a punch? Get tired of seeing a team or a player stalling for time, stopping the action, boring the gallery?

Golf is not brain surgery, but golfers, as a class, act as if they are in a life-or-death operation where, if they wait, all conditions will improve, nerves will be calmed, the grass will grow to optimum length and Jupiter will be in Neptune’s house and all putts will be short and lies playable. They are like a general who must wait for all the reserves to pull up before he can muster the attack. Some guys stand over the ball till they gather dust. Still others, such as Cary Middlecoff, used to fidget so much they looked like someone in the final stages of St. Vitus Dance.

Golfers hate to do anything in a rush. They are conservative, cautious, deliberate. They do not have an impetuous bone in their bodies. They spend their whole lives in slow motion. They walk slow, they talk slow. They even eat slow. It is said that if a golfer fell off the Empire State Building it would take him a week to hit the ground. He would be checking the yardage all the way down.

On a golf course, he acts as if the thing he dreads most in the world is hitting a golf shot. He will do almost anything to avoid it--wipe his club, hitch his trousers, confer with his caddy, throw grass into the air, stare at the sky, growl at photographers--then step up to the ball and waggle his club to death before launching a swing. If he had any mail, you’re sure he’d take it out and read it.

He has hit probably 10 million golf shots in his career, but he acts as if this is the first one he’s ever hit. He has hit this shot probably 50,000 to 100,000 times. There’s nothing new about it. Even if he went into a trance, his muscles would probably remember exactly how to shoot it for him. Yet, a film will come over his eyes, his breath will get short, he will button and unbutton his glove. You would think he was going to the electric chair.

Not Lanny Wadkins. Lanny is a gimme-the-damn-club-and-stand-back player. Lanny disdains all the theatrics. Lanny walks up to the ball and swipes at it like a guy swatting a fly. Usually, it sails unerringly up to a green and settles uncannily in one-putt range, and Lanny merely snaps his fingers and chalks up another birdie and steps quickly to the next tee.

That is why a lot of us were glad to see Lanny doing so well down here at the Infiniti Tournament of Champions this week. Golfers imitate success. If a guy made birdies standing on one leg because his ankle hurt, by the weekend, every golfer in the state would be playing on one leg.

If Lanny wins playing fast, you can bet every hacker in the country will start copying it. Which will be a good thing for golf.

If Lanny were merely the fastest player out here this week, it would hardly be the story. But he may also be the best.

If he wins here, he becomes the winningest active player on the tour save for Tom Watson and Raymond Floyd. Victory here would give Wadkins 20 victories on the tour. Only 28 players in history have won more.

It’s not necessary to play slow to win on the tour. One of the players tied with Wadkins at 19 career wins is Doug Ford, who couldn’t have played any faster if he were on fire. If Wadkins and Ford were in a twosome, they would be at best a blur and at worst a rumor.

Lanny couldn’t move fast enough Saturday to keep the field at bay in the 39th Tournament of Champions, an event he has won twice. The cold round that attacks all players for one of the 18 holes came on Lanny. But Lanny didn’t start studying his nails, studying putts from 17 or more angles, backing off approaches, stalling for time, throwing clubs, glaring at spectators. Lanny charges at 73s with the same skill and enthusiasm as he does 65s.

He lost his lead but not necessarily his momentum. Fred Couples caught him, Tom Kite passed him. But only on the scoreboard. If they paid off on speed as well as numbers, Lanny would make the world forget Ben Hogan. Or, at least, Doug Ford. Jack Nicklaus won 19 tournaments in a little more than four years. But Lanny Wadkins won 19 in an elapsed time of a little more than 60 hours. If the 24-second clock ever comes to golf, Lanny would be harder to beat than four aces.