He Plays Golf at Higher Level

I don’t know what it is they’re playing down here in the desert this week, but it ain’t golf.

You and I know what golf is--punishment for our sins, a day at the rack, Torquemada’s revenge. Four hours of internal bleeding, silent screaming. The last stand of capital punishment in our time.

It’s diabolical. It’s a game that should be played in a haunted house, a place where the eyes move on the portraits, wolves howl, the host sleeps in a casket and wild laughter rings out from an upstairs window. A thunderstorm should rage.

Instead of that, it’s played in a garden of Eden. Trees flower, birds sing, brooks ripple. That’s what makes it so fiendish. It puts you in paradise--and then you make an eight or shoot 90 and the landscape might as well be North Jersey.

The game was supposed to have been invented by the Scots, but we know better. It was invented by the Gestapo. It is the athletic equivalent of getting your fingernails pulled out.

“Four” is a good score in the game you and I know, right? I mean, the Scots geared their whole game around shooting level fours. Par-for-the-course and all that, right?

Let me tell you something: Somebody shoots four in this tournament down here this week and he wants to go cut his wrists. His face is contorted in a grimace of hate. He may want to throw his clubs. Or his caddy. Drown his bag. Himself.

There have been five 63s and a 62 shot in the first four days of the Bob Hope Desert Classic this week and eight 64s. Bear in mind, 63 is the best score ever shot in a U.S. Open. And there have been only three in its 100-year history.

One hundred and fourteen golfers broke par the first three days. That’s not golf, that’s pocket pool.

Let me ask you--a par-five to you is what? A drive, a four-wood, a five-iron, sand wedge, a chip and three putts, right?

To these guys, it’s a drive and an eight-iron.

They are playing a game we are not familiar with. There are supposed to be places on a golf course, where, if you hit the ball there, you automatically make bogey. There is no such place in the desert this week. These courses are so magnificently smooth, you could go for a birdie from an iron lung.

You know how, on most courses in most tournaments you look at the scoreboard and you see an occasional eight or nine or even double figure? Not here. A big number here is a five. Golfers call an “8” a “snowman.” There are no snowmen in the desert this week.

The courses are defenseless. A round of golf is Tyson-Spinks. The fairways are like Oriental carpeting, the greens are pool tables. They are flat. You don’t need a putter, you could kick it in.

You figure heaven looks like this.

Ben Hogan must be sitting some place banging himself on the side of the head. Harry Vardon may be in tears. Gene Sarazen must want to look at these scores and ask, “Are these guys playing all the holes?”

For Tom Kite, it has been a walk in the park. It isn’t a tournament, it’s a parade. And he’s the grand marshal. He was an obscene 25-under-par through 72 holes of this 90-hole marathon Saturday. You want to check to see if he’s walking across the water hazards.

Think of it. Twenty-five under par--with 18 holes to play. I don’t know about you, but I doubt if my whole career adds up to 25-under-par.

The extraordinary thing is, it will probably not do Tom any good. Tom Kite makes Rodney Dangerfield look like America’s Sweetheart. He’s as taken for granted as a butler.

Tom Kite has a chance to be the best player in the world today. But, don’t tell anybody. They might laugh at you.

Tom Kite has won 17 tournaments and more money on tour than anybody. When he won the U.S. Open last year, it was as fitting as Wade Boggs winning a batting title.

But, for some reason, for years, Tom Kite comes into focus as the faithful sidekick, not the star. No one’s ever been able to figure out why. He plays this impeccable, mistake-free, solid tee-to-green game. He has this perpetually cheerful countenance like a guy who just found his wallet in the sofa.

He has this wholly undeserved reputation as a guy who is always going for the fat part of the green, the flat part of the fairway and for always playing the high-percentage shot. But this is because Tom Kite does not play the game one shot at a time. Kite plays position golf.

He is one of the best strikers of the ball on the tour today, but the headlines--and the galleries--go to John Daly, Greg Norman, Fred Couples. Nobody ever called Tom Kite “Boom Boom” or “The Hawk” or “The Shark.” But, it’s surprising how often he fits the description, “Among the leaders in the clubhouse were . . . “

When he came out of Texas, a flame-haired, owl-eyed collegian with a jaunty walk and an uncommonly straight, but not spectacular game, most of the golf press regulated him to the journeyman role. He would be what they call in the fight game, strictly an opponent. A contender. But not a portrait at Pinehurst.

Kite fooled everybody. Like that battery commercial, he just kept going and going. He made the most money anyone ever made in a lifetime, and he made the most money anyone ever made in a year ($1,395,278). If you were looking for Tom Kite, try the fairway.

He got a reputation as a guy who would win the Kemper Opens and Dorals and Nestles, but find a way to lose the majors. But, it was a bum rap. Kite was second in a Masters, second in a British Open and he came within one tee shot of winning the 1989 U.S. Open. He was hard-knocking, ubiquitous, always saying sweetly, “I believe you’re away.”

The field, as usual, is following Kite down the yellow brick road that is the Hope this week. Kite is quite clearly playing the best week-in, week-out golf of anybody on the tour.

But, you would still think he plays in a mask. Kite is the defending U.S. Open champion. He played in 23 tournaments last year. He won two of them, was in the money in 22 of them and in the top 10 in 9 of them. That’s Hogan stuff. He has been in two tournaments this year and finished second in one of them.

But, the Sony world ratings came out and Tom Kite is ranked--are you ready?--10th. He trails Nick Faldo (ranked No. 1 in the world), which is all right. But he also trails Ian Woosnam, Jose Maria Olazabal, Greg Norman and Bernhard Langer, which is not so all right. He is, however, comfortably ahead of Masashi Ozaki (13th) and Seve Ballesteros (14th). Seve did win the Balearic Isles Open last year, to be sure. It was not, it should be noted, at Pebble Beach.

Kite must wonder if he has to change water into wine, or part the seas.

On a tournament where it takes 10-under-par to make the cut, he may not be able to hold off the oncoming hordes of eagle-shooting golfers.

On the other hand, he just might. But, if he does, don’t look for rockets. The prevailing ho-hum will be, “Oh, it’s just Kite--again!”