Learning Hard Way Is Par for Course

Experience is important in anything. But no place does experience count for more than in golf.

Golf is a game you only think you know at age 20. You haven’t begun to understand it, let alone solve it.

Golf is not a game, it’s an education.

Consider that Ben Hogan never won a U.S. Open till he was over 35 years old. Then, he won four of them. And was in a playoff for a fifth. And was second in a sixth. All this within an eight-year span.

That is a typical scenario for golf. The game resists impetuous youth.

A Jack Nicklaus wins his first pro tournament and it is a U.S. Open at age 22. But that’s Jack Nicklaus. Normal standards don’t apply.

Precocious youngsters occasionally jump up and win a tournament or two in their golfing infancy. Chances are they have faded and have forgotten how they did it within a very few years. Happens all the time. Bill Rogers comes to mind, not to single him out--there are more where he came from--but he was a British Open winner in 1981. And looking for a sponsor’s exemption several years later.

It’s the toughest game there is. The single toughest thing to do with a stick and a ball is to hit a one-iron 250 yards into a guarded green over water. Ted Williams holds out for hitting a curveball with the bases loaded. But you get three chances to hit the curveball. You get one to hit a golf ball. And, as Sam Snead has said, if you fouled it, you go out and play it.

Even Nicklaus had to learn a hard way. In 1960, he played in the U.S. Open as an amateur and was paired with Hogan. Arnold Palmer won, but Hogan told reporters, “I played with a kid the last day (Nicklaus) who, if he had a brain in his head, would have won by three strokes.”

You have to learn patience, guile. You have to romance, not attack, golf. Youth is impatient, guileless. In golf, your opponent is yourself. And if you have an impetuous, reckless, get-it-over-with partner in yourself, sooner or later, you crash and burn.

When John Cook first came on the PGA scene, he looked like the man on a white horse the game had been looking for. He had already won a “major,” the U.S. Amateur. He had the blond good looks, the gorgeous swing, the no-nerves putting stroke. Look out, world, here he comes.

He won the Crosby after barely a year on tour. He wondered how long this had been going on. Then, he won the Canadian Open.

And, then he hit that wall of pain that all golfers run into. It’s a time in your career when you first notice 10-foot putts don’t have to drop, tee shots can land in the rough--or in the water--and trees you never noticed are suddenly in your line.

Everybody who ever played the game finds himself in this uncharted territory. You go in one or two directions from there: You fold, lose your self-esteem--or you bow your neck and decide to learn this game. Even Hogan had to do it--take himself off the tour for a year and get rid of a troublesome hook once and for all.

John Cook hit the wall. Hard. He went almost 10 years without winning a regulation tournament. He made money, not headlines. Enough money to keep going, not enough to buy his own plane. He was one of the pack. He fouled up his wrist trying to get back in the action.

He was finding out what a tough game he picked to master, what a demanding mistress he picked to woo.

But he learned his trade. The trouble shots, the recovery shots. He learned to shrug off the disappointments. He learned when to take chances, when not to. He became a pro. He became a survivor.

He sat in a press tent down here at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic the other day and pondered 10 years of hit-and-miss, give-and-take, slice-and-hook and admitted that it is a game that does not respond well to taking orders. It is a contrary, perverse, rebellious, sometimes malevolent game that delights in humiliating you.

“When do you really start to know what you’re doing out there?” Cook is asked. He smiles. “Not till after a long while. Not till you’re in your 30s,” he admitted. “You have to learn patience.”

And deal with adversity, which is golf’s stock-in-trade.

John Cook is defending champion in this year’s Hope Classic, a tournament that has had only one back-to-back winner (Johnny Miller) in its long history.

But John Cook won last year because he had paid his dues. The setting was the 18th hole on the final day of the tournament. Cook, going for the win in regulation, boldly went for the green the short way--over water, through a grove. He hit a tree. The ball dropped in the water.

His tournament is over, right? Five years before, yes. John Cook admits that John Cook might have slashed angrily at the next shot, gone through the motions and made, maybe, seven on the hole.

The new John Cook kept his cool, his deliberation--and parred the hole. And made the playoff. And won the tournament.

Few people really comprehend the career season John Cook had after that. He had won the Hope, then won at Hawaii and then at Las Vegas.

But, almost as important, he finished second in the British Open. Then, he finished second again in the PGA. He came within a few shots of winning five tournaments, two of them majors.

He had a two-shot lead in the British Open after the 70th hole. But he missed an eagle putt by inches on the 71st. Then he missed the “gimme” (2 1/2-foot) birdie putt. Crestfallen, he bogeyed the last hole. Canny old Nick Faldo knew what to do with this crack in the door. He parred in to win the tournament by a shot over Cook.

Golf does that to you to get your attention. But the point is, John Cook is now a pro’s pro, a man to beat in every tournament he enters.

And, if he gets to the 70th hole with a two-shot lead in any other British Open--well, just get the trophy ready.