The Best Part Is That He Doesn’t Fit Image

In sports reporting, you have these recurring fantasies: An old codger arrives in Louisville, leading a pinto pony by a rope. He sleeps in a stable and on Kentucky Derby day, he unties his colt, who goes on to smash the Derby record and win by 30 widening lengths.

Or, you picture a guy in an old blanket, sockless, broke, who just climbed down from a freight train. He steps into a ring as a substitute for a contender who broke his hand in training--and he knocks out the heavyweight champion of the world. Ham Fisher got rich on the cartoon character, Joe Palooka, he fashioned out of this fantasy. Sylvester Stallone made Rocky I through IV.

They’re nice myths. But they seldom come true. The Kentucky Derby is won by a proper thoroughbred with the correct bloodlines and dosage index. Heavyweight champs come up through the ranks and don’t step out of the crowd at a carnival.

But Walt Disney would have to love golf.

Consider that only a year ago, a young towheaded golfer from Arkansas, who had never won anything and who had this big booming tee shot and not much else, drew into the field at one of the four “majors,” the PGA, and proceeded to dismantle one of the best fields ever assembled in that august tournament.

John Daly became an instant folk hero. Crowds followed him wherever he went. Galleries trampled past twosomes that included past Open champions to cluster around a tee where young Master Daly obliged them with prodigious tee shots that didn’t always stay in the fairway, but nobody cared.

Then, this last weekend, the most improbable champion of them all emerged.

You couldn’t invent Larry Laoretti. Here’s a golfing grandfather who looks like every guy you ever found loitering around a first tee at a municipal track looking for a sucker with a loop in his swing and a bunch of 20s in his wallet.

We all know Larry Laorettis. There’s one in every club. He has a game that’s part hustle, part Hogan. They don’t make them like this guy anymore. They all come from Wake Forest or Brigham Young or Oklahoma State and they play this nice little drive-and-an-eight-iron game. They never putted for $1,000 of their own in their lives. They’re putting for AT&T;’s money, or Centel’s, or somebody’s.

You look at Larry Laoretti and he has this big cigar in his kisser and a plantation hat and you know right away you didn’t get enough strokes on the first tee. You can tell Larry is one of those guys who can shoot two strokes fewer than you, no matter what you shoot, 85 or 69.

He even smokes those cigars, doesn’t just chew on them. He’s 53 years old, a grandfather and he goes around in a cloud of smoke and he has been a pro for 32 years but never teed it up once on the PGA Tour.

But you have to think he teed it up in a lot of matches where just as much was at stake for the Laorettis. Lee Trevino once said pressure is not putting for $100,000 of Bob Hope’s prize money, it’s putting for $20 when you only have $2 in your pocket and your opponent talks through his ears and you have reason to fear he may be connected.

Larry Laoretti got into the field for the senior tour’s most prestigious event, the senior Open, last week at Bethlehem, Pa. This star of Bethlehem had only to beat Jack Nicklaus (70 tournaments won, 20 majors); Gary Player (one U.S. Open, two PGAs, three Masters, three British Opens); Arnold Palmer (one U.S. Open, two British, three Masters, 60 tournaments), and the flower of senior golf.

They said he’d choke when he went into the lead after three rounds.

Laoretti just smiled and lit another cigar. Choke? Why? It wasn’t his money. He wouldn’t have to sell the mobile home to pay off if he missed a few short putts.

Besides, look at his mug. Does this look like a choker? Laoretti looks as if he’s smothering a laugh.

Cigar smokers don’t choke. Look it up. Churchill was a cigar smoker, right? If he didn’t choke, no one ever should. The last cigar smokers on the pro tour were Charlie Sifford and Joe Campbell. They never choked, either.

Larry Laoretti just went out and played as if it were a $100 Nassau four ways on Sunday--and he had the strokes. All he did was hit 17 consecutive greens--and the fringe on the 18th. He ran home a putt on 18 that he himself described as a “no-brainer.”

It’s a major victory for the common golfer. I expect every pro shop in the country to be emptied out as those other grizzled old guys who have spent their lives giving lessons to housewives and auto dealers will want to find a part of the driving range for themselves and see if they can get that right-to-left game working with that little hooky hustler’s swing.

This shows you don’t have to come out of the NCAAs and have blond hair and pastel slacks to win at this game. You don’t have to be brought up on a fairway home in Palm Beach or Shinnecock. You can come out of a caddie shack or a driving range. You don’t have to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth. Putting a cigar in there instead might be a good idea, though.