Welcome to Golf’s Nightmare

Ah, Pebble! Murder in your heart, dagger in your teeth. Refugee from a King’s noose. Heartless wretch. Scourge of the coasts of golf.

Robert Louis Stevenson would love you. You should wear a cocked hat, a peg leg, a parrot on your shoulder and be wanted by every captain of a golf club in the world.

You are 7,000 yards of malice. I love every tuft of unnavigable rough, sand trap, par-three with the ocean on the left and rear. I love every rotten ocean carry you put up. It’s about time these guys find out how the rest of us play the game all of the time. Let them find out what it’s like to stand on a tee with your knees knocking, hair tensed, teeth gritted, heart pounding, fingers clenched and nails bitten to the quick. Let them say, “Anybody see where that went?” or “Not over there, God!”

Tough, huh, fellows? Didn’t know it could happen to you? Welcome to golf. Welcome to Pebble.

Think of the worst places in the world you would want to be--Dracula’s castle, Frankenstein’s laboratory, Gestapo headquarters, the deck of the Titanic, a barrel going

over Niagara Falls--and any golfer in the game would rather have been there than on Pebble Beach this Saturday afternoon.

It was Torquemada’s rack. Little Big Horn. It was a debacle.

Golf at its worst? Naw. At its finest. Where does it say this game has to be a drive and an eight-iron? Where does it say the course has to be the piano on which the artist gives a recital? The golf course doesn’t usually get a mention. It’s only the scenery. The backdrop.

Pebble was no backdrop Saturday. It was a participant in this drama. The lead.

Like Rocky, it came off the ropes fighting. It had been taking a standing eight-count. Suddenly, this tournament went from Tyson-Spinks to Dempsey-Firpo.

Here was the situation on this fog-kissed Monterey Coast golf course for this third round of the U.S. Open. A journeyman pro from Oklahoma, the non-practicing eye doctor, Gil Morgan, had been treating Pebble as if it were an old palooka who had seen better days. He was punishing it. He had birdied three holes. He was making a mockery of not only Pebble but the U.S. Open. No man had ever been 10 under in an Open before, but Morgan was 12 under par. He had a seven-shot lead. Everyone else was stumbling around Pebble, hollow-eyed, talking to themselves, like boot-camp Marines being marched into a swamp.

Now, what you do, if you’re a canny old pro, in a situation like this is, play it cagily, hit for the fat part of the green, tee it off with an iron, lay up on the par-fives. Play customer golf. Smuggle your big lead into the clubhouse.

Morgan is no wide-eyed rookie. He knew this. He has won $3.5 million on the golf circuits. He knew what his play was: Don’t make waves. Don’t be a hero. Never mind the Open record. Play for par.

You see, in 1966, Arnold Palmer, who never knew this play-it-safe game, had thrown away a seven-shot lead with nine holes to play in an Open. Arnold knew only the cut-and-slash, take-out-the-wood game.

But Morgan, in spite of his heady start, is not Palmer. He knew you couldn’t attack Pebble Beach. You defended yourself against it. Clinch, hold, run, move in and out. Protect yourself at all times.

The old-timers such as Morgan can usually do this. If, say, a Raymond Floyd has a seven-shot lead, the tournament is over. Like wily old jockeys, the savvy golfers won’t let you by. And no one is going to throw a final-round 63 at Pebble as Johnny Miller did in an Open 19 years ago at Oakmont.

But Morgan lost the blueprint. Or, maybe, Pebble doesn’t respond to the caress approach. Come under its balcony soothing it with love songs with a guitar and a rose, and it will dump a pail of water on you.

Morgan suddenly found himself in a Hall of Horrors. Nothing he did turned out right. “I thought I was hitting good shots,” he said later. “I felt I hit only two bad shots--at 14 and 10.”

His round was right out of Freddy Krueger--Nightmare On 17-Mile Drive. He made five birdies. But he made four bogeys and three double-bogeys. He went from 12 under par to three under on one stretch of seven holes. That’s slash-your-wrist golf.

It came right as we were beginning to think this was going to be one of those Opens where one player had the key to the course while no one else could make the cut. In 1970, the Brit, Tony Jacklin, won the Open by a modern-record seven shots on a track where, among others, Jack Nicklaus shot an 81.

We thought an equally implausible scenario was building here. Morgan went around as if it were a Saturday morning best-ball at Denver Municipal.

Here was a guy sailing along at a stunning 12 under par on a course where 23 rounds were in the 80s and one guy shot 92. The legends of the game were missing the cut. It wasn’t a tournament, it was a massacre.

And then, Pebble Beach woke up. It shook itself, found Morgan taking these liberties, and, in effect, said: “Wait a minute! What do you think you’re doing?!”

Dr. Morgan joined the rest of the patients. He joined the silent screaming. He let about 20 guys who had thought they were only going through the motions back into the tournament.

That’s what an Open is all about. That’s where a golf course is not only part of the act, it’s the star. As Willy Loman said, attention must be paid.