Birdies Are Seen, Not Made

There it is. The Enemy. Public Enemy No. 1. The Rack. Murder Incorporated. Jack the Ripper. Al Capone. Himmler. Torquemada. Eighteen holes of silent screaming.

The enemy in other sports is, like as not, some tattooed scowling rogue with hair on his chest and murder in his heart who’ll hit on the break and fight dirty--rabbit-punch you, thumb you in the eye, maybe bite in the clinches. Or he’s a scowler on the mound looking in to decide whether he’s going to throw this fastball over the plate or over your ear. Maybe he’s a homicidal bull with dagger horns and hatred in his soul who hooks left and right, hoping to disembowel his tormentor with one wicked thrust.

A golf course is all of the above. But it doesn’t look the part. Jack the Ripper probably didn’t either.

A U.S. Open golf course looks like something a poet would sing about. Birds chirp, trees rustle, katydids hum, daffodils grow. Wordsworth would love it.

He didn’t have to par it.

To Longfellow, it might look like the place where Hiawatha paddled. It’s just another par-three over water to the touring pro. Beauty to a golfer is a red number on a white scoreboard. Everything else is weeds. The Taj Mahal in the moonlight would just remind him of a scorers’ tent.

It’s always amusing to watch the young golfer try an Open for his first time. It’s like Little Red Riding Hood meeting the wolf. The stranded motorist knocking on Dracula’s castle door.

They play this pool-table game--a drive and an eight-iron--all year long. All of a sudden, they’re in this haunted house where you may need the two- and three-iron, the cut shot out of the trees, the long hook, the run-up.

You need to be able to play golf the way they did before sprinkler systems, top-dressing, tractor mowers and runaway agronomy. The way Dutch Harrison, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead had to play it. This is no palm-strewn bowling alley, this is a golf course. Bring all 14 clubs.

This is not pitch-and-putt golf. This is not one of those tournaments that, if you make only a birdie on a par-five you want to bury your putter in the ground or heave your driver in a lake.

Some years ago, a young player named Larry Rinker delivered himself of the opinion that the Open was just another tournament--a pussycat dressed up in a gorilla costume. Then Larry went out and shot 77-76. He has played in five Opens. He has missed the cut in three.

Golf is no longer a formful sport. Winners come out of the woodwork. There is hardly any star system. Today you’re in the chorus, tomorrow your name is in lights.

Still, the Open clings to its charter. As the USGA’s Sandy Tatum once explained, “We’re not trying to embarrass the world’s greatest players, we’re just trying to identify them.”

It doesn’t always work that way. Some years, they end up identifying Andy North as the world’s greatest player.

But an Open has identified Ben Hogan, Jack Nicklaus and Bobby Jones as the world’s greatest players--four times each. It’s a tournament won three times by Hale Irwin, which is acceptable.

You usually have to pay your dues to win the Open. You have to have been out there long enough to know putts don’t have to drop. Good shots can hit trees and the water is not there just for the alligators.

Billy Andrade is the toast of the tour just now. He has won the past two tournaments. Twenty-foot putts are gimmes for him. He lags seven-irons. He lives on the fairway.

You get a measure of the flinty nature of a U.S. Open when you know that Billy Andrade had to shoot his way into this one at Hazeltine. It’s a hard club to join. The $231,362 he won on the golf course last year cuts no ice with the Open. Get in line, son, and play nice. Wipe your feet.

Billy Andrade is a fine young player. Nice, compact swing, smooth putting stroke, even temperament. He comes from Rhode Island, which is not exactly your basic golf incubator. He is not one of your household tour names. Ten years ago he was Fuzzy Zoeller’s caddie.

It has been 13 years since anyone was able to win three tournaments in a row. No one was ever able to make the Open his third victory in a row.

Billy Andrade, 27, does not expect to be the first.

“I was on ‘Good Morning, America’ this morning with Hale Irwin and they asked me if I thought I could win this week and I told them, ‘Hey! I’m here with Hale Irwin and he’s won more Opens than I’ve won tournaments!’ ”

The U.S. Open is not the Kemper Open, Andrade warned reporters.

“At the Kemper, you tried to make birdies,” he said. “You had to shoot 21 under just to tie and make the playoff. At the Open, a birdie is not necessarily needed.”

At the Open, a birdie is not necessarily expected. A younger Billy Andrade made an Open grid once before--in 1988, when he shot his way into the field at Brookline, hard by his family home at Bristol, R.I.

“I shot a million!” he groaned. (He shot 79-74.) “I couldn’t wait to get off the golf course.”

He didn’t have to wait long. He missed the cut.

Jack Nicklaus, no less, has a word of advice for the Andrades in the field.

“An Open is not really only a measure of how you handle a golf course, it’s a measure of how you handle yourself--how patient you are, how experienced you are,” he says. “You can’t expect to shoot a 65 in a U.S. Open. A 74 or 75 will be a pretty good score around here.”

A U.S. Open is like the choirboy who turns into an ax murderer. The neighbors can’t believe it. “He seemed so nice! He was so polite, good to the children, kind to animals!”

A U.S. Open has one thing going for it: It hates golfers. It punishes them for all those birdies and eagles and one-putts and 62s. It’s dark and dirty work. But somebody has to do it.