Square Meets Flair for 18 More Holes

Well, it wasn’t Hogan-Snead, Palmer-Nicklaus, Dempsey-Tunney. It was more like Lehigh-Susquehanna.

Whatever it was, we are going to get another look at it today.

Mr. Vanilla vs. Mr. Billboard. Scott Charisma vs. a walking pompon.

We already know how it comes out. This will be a rerun. Like an old Carson show.

Scott Charisma and Payne And Aches played an 18-hole playoff--or what amounted to it--Sunday. And they each shot 72. Level par.

Figures. Scott Simpson always shoots even par. It doesn’t win much else, but it can win a U.S. Open.

You wind up Scott Simpson and he shoots you a 72. I think there’s a button in the back.

Payne Stewart is a little more complicated. Payne doesn’t shoot 72s as such. He starts to shoot 68s--and then makes some colossal mistake somewhere along the line or his attention wanders. He keeps his registered psychologist with him in the house during major tournaments, to give you an idea.

Whatever these two offer in the way of dramatics already has been asked and answered. We saw exactly what to expect on a glorious mid-June day in Minnesota Sunday. Not much.

In prizefighting, they would call it a gavotte. An agony fight. Not boring, exactly. Predictable. It was a draw.

It was the 16th hole at Hazeltine, that diabolical piece of real estate, spawned in hell, raised in a witches’ caldron, that finally sent the thing into galling inconclusiveness. You could almost hear its mocking laugh as Scott Simpson, cruising in his steady, monotonous fashion, came up to this fiendish corner of Hades in late afternoon Sunday. He was two shots in the lead and sitting pretty with only three holes to play.

No. 16 took care of him. He slapped a one-iron into ankle-high rough. There, he had a tough decision. He could try to flail it up to the green--a chancy proposition in which he might jerk it left--or he could push it back out on the fairway and play for a one-putt par. He unaccountably chose the risky option.

He barely made five on the hole. He was lucky to do that, but Payne missed the first of three birdie putts on the incoming holes, which left him one stroke behind.

A playoff was as inevitable as sunset.

One out of three U.S. Opens end in playoffs--15 out of the last 45--and two out of the last three (and three out of the last four). By and large, they are as anti-climactic as a blind date in Bridgeport. Lou Graham vs. John Mahaffey, Gary Player vs. Kel Nagle, Dick Mayer vs. Cary Middlecoff did not exactly bring the country to a standstill or inspire office pools. Hale Irwin vs. Mike Donald last year was not exactly Broadway.

Scott Simpson vs. Payne Stewart is hardly prime time, either. Who vs. What?

Scott Simpson is a very nice young man who plays a nice steady workingman’s game of golf. I mean, he doesn’t dazzle you. He simply hits two shots and then hits two putts. No 61s, no exciting charges, simply plodding workmanlike golf. Arnold Palmer, he is not.

If he were a pitcher, he would be known for his control. He wouldn’t walk anybody. But he wouldn’t strike out anybody, either. He’d throw ground balls and win, 5-4, scattering 10 hits. In football, he would be the punter. In tennis, he would lob a lot.

He is likable, even admirable. He says things such as: “I feel I’m pleasing God if I do my best. If it worked out that I lost, well, I did my best. I’m not overly upset about it.”

Then, he giggles. I mean, what’s not to like?

You kind of wish his shirt would hang out some time. Maybe he would even make a 12. You know--get a life.

He simply stands there making those damn pars.

Payne Stewart is another case. Payne is a little less predictable--no, he’s a lot less predictable. He shows up decked out in the gaudy colors of a football team. He started to wear knickers, which hadn’t been seen on a golf course since Gene Sarazen--or Harry Vardon. Stewart revived them. Some day, God will punish him for that.

Stewart’s golf game is, like him, a little less predictable. He has been known to get distracted. In the 1986 Open at Shinnecock, for example, he had a one-shot lead going into the last five holes when he remembered he got “intimidated” by the eventual winner, whatever that means. Raymond Floyd stared him down. Hogan wouldn’t even have known Floyd was there.

Payne is not Arnold Palmer, either. But he does have some flair. He had putted off the fringe of the green Saturday on No. 18 with the toe of the putter. Nobody--not too many, anyway--ever thought of that before. You don’t exactly have to hide him when company comes, but Payne is not as house-broken as Simpson.

Simpson epitomizes a certain oddity in the world of sports. Certain players own certain other players--.220 hitters could hit Sandy Koufax and Willie Mays couldn’t. Jab and run artists gave Joe Louis fits. Guys who stay on the baseline used to drive a Bill Tilden--or a Bjorn Borg--bananas.

And some guys who don’t figure at all can drive the U.S. Open crazy. Andy North, who has won only one other tournament, has won two U.S. Opens. Hale Irwin is a fine player--he has won 19 tournaments--but he seems to have the sign on U.S. Opens. He has won three. (Palmer, who won 62 tournaments, only won one U.S. Open. Sam Snead, with 84 victories, has won none.)

Scott Simpson seems to fit this company. Somebody computed that, if he had come up with a few decent final rounds, he would now be after his fourth or fifth U.S. Open title.

We don’t know whether his temperament fits the Open or whether the Open’s temperament fits his. Maybe the Open is like this fastball pitcher who doesn’t know what to do with a guy who stands there with his bat on his shoulder and makes him throw strikes.

We know one thing: if par will win it, bet Mr. Charisma. If it’s going to take a 67, bet the guy with the personal psychologist.