His Patience Is Virtue Here

Question: why does Nick Faldo win so many “majors” (five in six years)? Answer: Because par is a good score in a major.

Q: Why is watching Nick Faldo play golf like a night at the opera?

A: Because you know it’s art, but it puts you to sleep.

Q: What else is a round by Nick Faldo like?

A: A dance with your sister? A checker game in the firehouse? Watching paint dry? A Swedish movie? All of the above?

Watching Nick Faldo play golf is like watching a Swiss make a watch. It’s meticulous. It’s admirable. Mistake free.

But boooo-ring . Monotonous. Vanilla ice cream. White bread.

It’s kind of like a no-hit game. You know it’s excellence at work. But you kind of wish someone would break it up.

The public likes Dempsey-Firpo. He’s up! He’s down! They like fighters who have to get up. They like rallies by teams three touchdowns behind. The greatest World Series game ever played might be the one in which the Philadelphia Athletics, down 8-0, rallied to win, 10-8.

And fans like golfers who win British Opens out of parking lots. They like Arnold Palmer standing hip-deep in rough, flailing it up onto the green. They even like Palmer squandering a seven-shot lead in nine holes to blow the Open.

Perfection bores them. Annoys them.

Faldo reminds you of a guy learning to tap-dance by the numbers. One-two-three, putt. Or one-two and two-putt. Not a fun guy. On the course.

If they sat up nights trying to design a golf course more suited to Nick Faldo, they couldn’t come up with a better one than Augusta National.

Americans have terrible trouble coping with it. Americans like to brawl with a difficult golf course. Birdie-bogey-birdie-bogey. Out of the rough, out of the sand, over the trees, no-brainer putts, chip-ins.

Augusta frustrates them. It’s too subtle for Americans. That’s why foreigners have won eight out of the last 15 Masters.

Watching Faldo play this course is like watching two boxers. He tries to jab it to death. He clinches where it gets dangerous. He retreats where necessary. He cuts his losses. And he has won here twice.

There’s no rough at the Masters. But it’s misleading. It’s like those British links courses. They have no trees. They don’t need them. The Masters has no rough. It doesn’t need it. It encourages you to loosen your belt and take a 360-degree-John-Daly-swipe at it. The Yankees go after a course like Dempsey with his man on the ropes. They try to land haymakers.

Faldo goes after it with surgical precision. He’s not particularly long off the tee, merely straight. He puts the ball where he wants to on the fairway. He doesn’t play a round of golf so much as he surveys it. He’s the thinking man’s player. He never tries a shot that’s right out of Lourdes. He doesn’t need it. You get the feeling he wouldn’t shoot a 63 if he could. Too much of an element of risk. Not in character.

Listen, do you know which way the fairways are mowed on your home course? Of course you don’t. Who cares?

Nick Faldo cares. Nick came into the interview room the other day and the first words out of his mouth were in observation that they had mowed the fairways here from green to tee. This made Nick Faldo frown. The tee shot doesn’t run as far against the grain. You have to factor this in the game plan. It used to run tee to green. Faldo spotted the difference. It went in the computer.

Faldo is like the German General Staff. The planning is meticulous. He doesn’t like surprises. You check which way the grass is growing, which way and at what velocity the wind if blowing. He probably knows the composition of the earth down several geologic levels.

It’s kind of cost-accountant golf. Even when he makes a birdie, Faldo feels constrained to balance it with a bogey.

Even his swing is as controlled and calculating as a surgeon’s.

You look at Faldo and you have to resist the temptation to look in the back for the knobs.

But, if it’s soporific, it’s effective. This guy won a British Open once with 18 consecutive pars on the final day. That hasn’t been done since Laurie Auchterlonie’s day. That is almost hickory-shaft golf.

The Masters is a course you have to play intelligently, not aggressively. Faldo takes the safe route to the hole, not the short one.

On a day when the registered sluggers of the game were infighting the course--Tom Watson closed birdie-birdie-birdie-birdie-birdie but had an eight on the hole before--Faldo sailed along like one of Her Majesty’s battleships showing the flag to the colonies. As usual, it was par golf--nine in a row at one point. When he made a birdie, he was almost embarrassed. He promptly apologized with a bogey. Faldo doesn’t want to rattle Augusta’s cage just yet. The kids and the grand old man, Nicklaus, were shooting five-under-pars. Faldo’s course was steady-as-she-goes.

But nobody in the field was yawning. When they looked behind them, there was the great Brit shooting this stiff-upper-lip, Colonel Blimp, ho-hum-another-par golf. Nick Faldo with a 71 is like a lot of the boy wonders with their 67s. Because when they get their 76s, Faldo will still be getting his 71s. He’s like a guy who stays in every pot, then drops his cards and says, “Are these any good? “ With Faldo, they usually are.