Don’t Say ‘Sweet 16’ to Simpson

Never mention rope in the house of the hanged. Never mention water in the house of the drowned.

And it might not be politic to bring up the 16th hole at Hazeltine in the household of Scott Simpson for a while. Water wouldn’t be too advisable, either.

Three days in a row, Scott Simpson came up to Hazeltine’s 16th with a two-shot lead on the field and the 91st Open in his hip pocket. Three days, he walked off there with his pocket picked, his head ringing, his lead gone, his second Open championship fading like the light. Waterloo was kinder to Napoleon.

The hole just hates him. Three days, he played it sloppily. Monday, he played it impeccably. No matter. The hole was not mollified. It still pushed his par putt resentfully off line and into a bogey. Something about Scott Simpson just ticks it off.

Conversely, the hole adores Payne Stewart. That’s why he’s Open champion today. All tournament long, he’s been running down these incredible putts along it to save par. Monday, he got one for a birdie. Now, when you make a birdie on No. 16 at Hazeltine, you should go immediately to Las Vegas with the deed to your house or the keys to your wife’s Mercedes.

The playoff between Payne Stewart and Scott Simpson was not something you’d want to paint or write songs about. It probably set Open golf back about 50 years--which is where the USGA wants it.

I have seen better golf in scrambles at public links. There were 12 bogeys. In 18 holes. They should have given these guys Mulligans. You half-expected one guy to say, “Oh, hit another!” or one to ask his partner, “What in the world am I doing wrong?!” Hustlers all over the country were probably slavering to get on their card. One guy shot a 75, the other a 77. You have to go back to the adolescence of golf to find playoffs with these kinds of numbers. Harding was President and shafts were hickory.

Payne Stewart is the U.S. Open champion today because Scott Simpson could never get the hang of playing the three finishing holes. He made nine bogeys on those holes in five days. Payne Stewart played them in one under.

You know, water on a golf course played by the pros is just there for cosmetic purposes. They don’t know it’s there unless it’s the Pacific Ocean.

Scott Simpson knows. He technically lost the tournament when he hit the ball in the water off the tee on No. 17--just after the TV announcer, Dave Marr, assured the world, “The water doesn’t come into play here.”

Oh yes, it does now. But for Scott Simpson, that was just the knockout punch. No. 16 had already bloodied his nose, blackened his eyes, put him on the ropes, rubbered his legs. He made four bogeys in five rounds on 16. He really lost the ’91 Open there.

Payne Stewart bought champagne for the press after the playoff. A shot-and-a-beer would have been more appropriate. The golf played was blue-collar, bowling alley stuff all the way. Payne Stewart didn’t so much win it as survive it. There was no reason the flower of golf journalism had to hang around an extra day to see this kind of hacker’s golf. Any night driving range will do. Why everyone had to wait 24 hours to see Scott Simpson hit the wall at Nos. 16, 17 and 18, when they could have just taken the act out there Sunday, is something for the USGA to explain, not me.

You know, cars don’t have cranks any more. Warships aren’t wooden. The electric light has been invented. Movies talk. Men are going to the moon.

But the United States Golf Assn. is still going around in a wig and a three-cornered hat. It’s always 1890 around the regimental-tie set. McKinley is President, and the Queen of England is Victoria. They are not stuffy, exactly. They’re beyond that. Embalmed comes to mind.

The world moves fast today. They got the 24-second clock in basketball, they got this seven-point tiebreaker system in tennis. They play extra innings in baseball, sudden death in football. Golf is the only sport that makes its participants come back and do it all over again the next day.

Not even golf, exactly. Just USGA golf. Even the venerable British Open, where they invented the damn game, has an immediate playoff. So does the Masters, which is about as stuck up an entity as a yacht club commodore.

But this is the only week during the year the USGA gets any attention from anybody besides its butlers, and they hate to get off stage. “We like an extra day of media attention called to our event and organization,” the former USGA president Sandy Tatum admitted.

The players don’t like it. The public doesn’t like it. Television doesn’t like it.

Payne Stewart wants sudden death. Scott Simpson prefers a four-hole showdown.

There’s almost never been a memorable playoff.

To give you an idea how out of it the USGA is, they feel they’re even lowering their standards to have only 18. They used to have a two-day, 36-hole playoff. A whole other tournament.

These things are anti-history anyway. Anti-hero. They’re like an Italian movie. The hero gets killed in the last act. Consider that Willie MacFarlane beat Bobby Jones, no less, in a playoff, and so did Johnny Farrell, and you get an idea how counter-poetic-justice these things are. Jones would have won six Opens if these guys had a decent respect for posterity.

But that’s nothing. Arnold Palmer lost three of these. Ben Hogan lost one. Jack Nicklaus lost one. So did Sam Snead.

It’s like Babe Ruth striking out with the bases loaded, Louis’ head hitting the bottom ring ropes. These things trifle with dreams.

It’s not only archaic, it’s often boring. Simpson-Stewart had its moments, but the usual pattern is for playoffs to be one-sided as a bullfight. Julius Boros beat Palmer, 70-76; Billy Casper beat him, 69-73. Fuzzy Zoeller beat Greg Norman, 67-75, and Curtis Strange beat Nick Faldo, 71-75. The 1990 playoff ended in sudden death anyway , making the previous 18 holes an exercise in futility.

They could have taken Stewart-Simpson directly to the 16th tee Sunday night--instead of tormenting poor Scott through the first 15 holes.

I yield to no man in my admiration for bogey golf. The 1991 U.S. Open came down to who could play 16, 17 and 18. They should have gone there at the end of 72 holes Sunday at a great saving of time, money, travel and anxiety. Why keep poor Scott Simpson twisting in the wind when you knew he was going to go over the cliff at 16. Just remember, 16 is not sweet in the Simpson household. You might not want to sing about cool, clear water, either.