Pocketful of Miracles, Pockets Full of Money

If I were John Cook, the golfer, I would go immediately to Las Vegas. Skip the crap table, head immediately for roulette. Don’t bet red or black. Put the house and car on a number--any number.

If you’re ever in a shipwreck, get in the lifeboat next to him. Find out what he plays in the market and invest all you’ve got.

Above all, don’t play cards with him. And, whatever you do, don’t play golf with him.

John Cook lost the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic several times Sunday. Let $198,000 slip right out of his pocket.

There was, for instance, the 18th hole in the regular tournament--the 90th hole. John was 24-under-par going into that long, treacherous par-five, tied with, it seems, half the golfing world.

John hit his tee shot where you don’t want to hit it--to the right behind some towering palm trees.

He took a wood out and tried to fade it around, through or over those trees.

Bad idea.

He hit one of them. The ball caromed off, shot right and plop! The most terrible sound a golfer can hear. A ball drowning.

There goes the tournament, right? Lost at sea. In a watery grave like the Titanic.

The world’s best golfers are coming up behind you with a chance to eagle or birdie that hole and you’re history. Some are in with 24-under, and you’re now lying three on a par-five hole.

If John knew it, he didn’t show it. Poker-faced, meticulously, he took his drop and played it out. He whipped it up on the green, made a par. With a ball in the water that’s miracle enough. But then none of the other golfers are able master that hole and jump over your score.

So, John Cook’s 24-under held up. Miracle II.

Now we come to the crowd shot. Five golfers make the playoff. One of them, Tom Kite, has won 15 times on tour. Another, Mark O’Meara, has won seven.

Cook has won three times, and of the others in the playoff, Gene Sauers has won twice and Rick Fehr once.

So, guess who drops out of contention right away? If you know golf, you know the answer to that one--the biggest winners, Kite and O’Meara.

It is a strange scene. Five golfers tied after a marathon tournament. Most golf clubs do not even permit fivesomes. It looks as if these guys will be playing forever. “They’ll play till Tuesday,” Bob Hope quips.

The playoff holes are Nos. 1 and 18. The survivors play each of them twice.

On the first hole the second time around, John Cook has once more lost the tournament. His remaining opponent, Sauers, is nicely on the green, in birdie range. Cook is off the green.

So, John does the only thing he can do. He chips in the hole. Miracle III. If you know golf, you know that a chip from off the green is the hardest shot in the game. That hole is only four inches wide, and you are hitting a sand wedge toward it.

You can’t steer a sand wedge. Unless you are John Cook.

The traveling show heads for No. 18 for the second time. This is the hole where Cook “lost” the tournament the first time an hour earlier.

Fearlessly, he takes the wood out again. Now, the 18th is the spectator hole. This means it is surrounded by bleachers. Cook wisely recognizes this. He doesn’t finesse this time. He slams the ball back into the bleachers like Henry Aaron on a fastball. It’s a legal backstop, an immovable obstruction, not part of the course. You get a free drop. You play this like a handball shot off the back wall. John is smart enough to know this. He is not going in the water with a legal billiards shot like this.

Cook’s opponent, Sauers, has settled his second shot nicely on the edge of the green. He is once again in the catbird seat--or so it would seem. He has a shot at an eagle. He certainly has a cinch birdie. Cook just has to get his 70-foot chip close to the hole.

He gets it so close it goes in. Miracle IV. Mother Theresa should have it so good.

Twice in two holes he chips in. If one chip-in a round is a shot right out of Lourdes, two of them on consecutive holes is changing water into wine. Sauers is so numb, he almost turns into salt. You check Cook for halos.

Now, John Cook played four playoff holes in three birdies and an eagle. That is some golf playing. John Cook can play this game. John Cook shot rounds of 65-73-63-69-66. That’s Ben Hogan stuff.

He’s a marvelous image for the game of golf. Collar-ad good looks, steady habits. Family man. He played this game for two years with a wrist so sore it was hard to eat with, never mind putt with--or drive with. He never complained or made an excuse.

But he won the Hope Sunday because he was harder to put away than Rasputin. He was like a fighter who keeps getting off the floor; a batter who gets knocked down by a close pitch, gets up, dusts himself off and hits a home run.

But, still, you have to feel your scalp prickle when you consider how it was done. He started his second round in this tournament hitting a ball in the water off the 10th tee at PGA West. It was, he says, “the worst shot I have ever hit as a golfer.”

But, that was only until the 15th hole. “There, I hit a worse one,” Cook says, smiling.

His 73 on the second day would have seemed to put him out of contention.

John Cook is never out of contention. He shaved 10 strokes (count ‘em) off his game the very next day.

He had more chances this week to pack it in and just go through the motions than Gorbachev. He wouldn’t stay dead.

I think he knew something the rest of us don’t. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to go and find out where his house is and dig. I’m sure there’s oil under it. Or gold.