He’s Just Real Late Bloomer

No one hit the golf ball with more purity and authority when he first came on the scene than Bruce Fleisher. The swing was as smooth and pure as new snow, the irons crisp, and some of the putts were right out of Lourdes.

He was going to be one of the greats. One of the ones you would have to beat to win a U.S. or British Open, Masters or any other tournament that counted.

He had all the tools. The background was impeccable. He came up the classic route all the legends took. He won the U.S. Amateur. He had every trophy you could get playing for nothing. He was a Walker Cupper. The first Masters he played in, he was low amateur.

Life looked like all fairway and greens. Birdies and eagles. Green coats and greenbacks. Big money.

You have to understand this was the route of champions. U.S. Amateur champions included Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gene Littler, Lanny Wadkins, Jerry Pate, Craig Stadler. The heavyweights of the game.

Bruce Fleisher was on course and on his way. When he turned pro, everybody else would be playing for second money. He would be part of a Big Three.

It never happened. The Littlers and Wadkinses and Stadlers went on to win 25 tournaments, 20, 10. Palmer won 62, not counting British Opens, Nicklaus 70.

The heir apparent, Fleisher, won none.

Golf is no respecter of reputations. You don’t hit the ball with your press clippings. No one says, “That’s good!” on tour. Fleisher more often heard, “You’re away.” You can’t make up for bad holes on the pro tour. You don’t get it in the leather, you get it in the hole.

No one thought the transition would affect Fleisher.

It is curious but in the little world of golf a national amateur victory is a “major,” i.e., a victory on a par with a British Open, Masters, PGA or U.S. Open.

Yet, it doesn’t exempt you on the pro tour. It doesn’t get you out of qualifying in that torture chamber known as “Q School,” a diabolical exercise in human torture wherein nearly a thousand hopefuls play 108 holes for 50 places.

Bruce Fleisher missed qualifying in a playoff. He missed out on getting his card by a shot. It was catastrophic. His swing atrophied, followed shortly by his confidence, his aggressiveness, his game generally. “I sat out a year and it hurt me mentally,” he admits ruefully.

He eventually got his card at a later qualifying school, but the Bruce Fleisher who went on tour bore little resemblance to the dramatic striker of the ball who decimated amateur fields. “I don’t know what happened,” he says. “The Q school I went through was, God knows, tough enough. It had Tom Watson, David Graham, Lanny Wadkins, Steve Melnyk. I got my card playing those guys but I just had little or no success on tour.”

The game was as baffled as he was. But he never won on tour. “I had little success,” he admits. “You know, a lot of guys hit the ground running. They’re successful right off the start--a Corey Pavin, for example. Others of us never get untracked. We try everything--new swings, new strokes, new clubs, old clubs. It only gets worse.”

After floundering around, struggling to make cuts and having only two seconds to show in 13 years on tour, Fleisher decided in 1984 to step off this road to nowhere. He decided to come home to spend more time with his wife and daughter. It’s one thing to spend your life on an airplane or on a golf course if you’re making millions. Bruce Fleisher made as little as $8,347 a year in his touring years.

He became just another Florida golf pro. It was a living but so is reading meters.

Fleisher wanted to hear the cheers again. He set out to play on the Hogan Tour, that proving ground for younger players--and older players who feel there’s still good golf in the bag.

It upset his boss who gave him the ultimatum: no golf or no job. Fleisher told him he was sorry but he just had to stand over a birdie putt that meant something once again.

It was with some trepidation, he went home to tell his wife, Wendy, he lost his job. She told him she’d rather have him happy than home.

The story has a Disney ending. Fleisher had just played a Hogan Tour event in New Haven and flew home to Miami Beach to find a phone call waiting. Professional Bobby Cole had just withdrawn from the million-dollar New England Classic tournament, and as alternate, Fleisher could draw in. He recalls: “I told Wendy, ‘I’m not sure I’m ready.’ And she said, ‘Are you crazy? That’s a million dollars up there.’ ”

Fleisher teed it up at Pleasant Valley in Massachusetts and began striking the singing woods and humming irons he was famous for all those years ago. “I played a practice round,” he says, “and after three holes, one of the young kids on tour turned and said, ‘Who’s that?!’ ”

The old-timers knew who he was. The fellow who had them saying, “Whatever became of old Bruce Fleisher?” over the years. The man who had the meteoric disappearance. The man who was going to be one of the greats.

It all came back to him. He shot an opening round of 64, then had a 67. On the third day, he faltered and shot a 73--and Ian Baker-Finch, Gene Sauers and John Daly rushed past him into the lead.

It appeared to be over till Fleisher shot a closing-round 64. He tied Baker-Finch, and they had a seven-hole playoff, the year’s marathon showdown, before Fleisher won.

Twenty-three years after he won the Amateur, 21 years after he turned pro, Bruce Fleisher won his first tournament.

Tears flowed on the telephone that night. He won more than the $180,000. He won the right to tee it up, exempt, for two years on the PGA Tour. It gets him back in the Masters. It gets him back in the game.

Fleisher is one of the signature players in the 90-hole Bob Hope Chrysler Classic this week. He opened with a respectable 70. He is back where he has always longed to be--a member in good standing in the fellowship of traveling pros. He had to share the comeback-player-of-the-year award with D.A. Weibring but, to my mind, it’s not only the comeback of the year, it’s the comeback of the decade. Two decades, in fact.

LIKE OLD TIMES: Arnold Palmer, making a rare PGA Tour appearance, shoots 66 in the first round of the Bob Hope Classic. C5