And in the Green Corner, Baltusrol

People think a golf tournament is a recital by an artist, like Rachmaninoff at Carnegie Hall, Caruso at the Met, Gene Kelly at a lamppost in Paris, Sarah Bernhardt at the footlights. It’s Arnold Palmer doing “Chopsticks,” Jack Nicklaus at the console, Raymond Floyd, so to speak, singing “Carmen.”

The course is simply the instrument, the scenario, so they say. The violin, the book, the proscenium arch.

Nothing could be further from the truth. A U.S. Open is a heavyweight title fight, a Wimbledon final. It’s Koufax facing Mantle with the World Series on the line. Montana throwing into a zone defense.

You may not know it, but the golfer will. The course is not the piano, it’s the competitor. Tougher than the other 155 competitors. The bleeding doesn’t show, but it’s there. The heart is pumping, the adrenaline flowing. The golfer may be attacking it or he may be defending himself against it, trying to clinch with it, but he knows he’s in a brawl with it. It’s trying to knock him out.

So, it doesn’t do any good to examine only Tom Kite, Fred Couples, Chip Beck and Greg Norman. You don’t just talk to Dempsey, you interview Tunney as well. And, in golf, you check on that character with the broken nose and tattoos all over him climbing in the ring to do battle with you.

Pebble Beach reminded you of a pirate with a ring in his ear, a parrot on his shoulder, a wooden leg on his stump and murder in his heart. Oakmont, in Pittsburgh, reminded you of Fritzie Zivic. It would gouge you, rabbit-punch you, thumb your eye, hit you on the break. In other words, mug you.

You take Merion. If it were human, it would be nicknamed “Sugar Ray.” Fast, lots of footwork, elusive, smart.

This year, the guy in the other corner is Baltusrol. Experienced, tough, a veteran--this is the seventh Open played here--a contender in anybody’s book.

It’s a heavyweight, all right. But how tough is it? After all, it’s in there with the flower of world golf.

First of all, you’d have to say Baltusrol is a slugger. Packs a wallop. A brawler. Not cute. Firpo, maybe. Mike Tyson. Stallone gets the role.

It looks to take you out with the right hand. It’s long, you see. Has one hole 630 yards long. If Merion had a hole that long, there wouldn’t be room for the rest of them.

Baltusrol’s 7,152 yards long. And, it’s a par 70. That’s like being locked in a closet with a lion.

But maybe it’s all right hand. Maybe, it’s just Rocky. Tough but no science. Easy to hit. A bleeder.

It has three 470-yard, par-four holes. It has no par-fives till the last two holes, 1,172 yards between them. But maybe it has no moves. Maybe it simply hopes to lure you into a slugging match, toe to toe.

That’s not what you really want in an Open. Remember what Muhammad Ali used to do to those big, slow guys like Liston and Foreman? Maybe that’s what Baltusrol is--a big, strong knockout artist who has to try to cut off the ring or it will lose on all cards.

What you want in an Open is somewhat different. You know, the greens hard, the rough high, the water deep, the fairways narrow, the sand powdery and the trees full.

So you worry about Baltusrol. It may look, like George Foreman, as if it’s been eating too many hamburgers and malts. Maybe it’s that most melancholy of contenders, the fighter who can take it.

If you’re thinking all you have to do is bust the ball out there 280 yards at a crack, forget it. John Daly can do that with his eyes closed. That’s not golf, that’s batting practice. That’s not an Open, that’s a driving range.

First of all, there’s no rough. At least, no Open rough as we know it. You all know what “Open rough” is--grass up to your hips, barbed wire around the greens, penal, impenetrable.

There are no sand traps in front of the greens. Then, you remember the last time the Open was held here. Two guys--Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf--tied the Open record in the first round. They shot 63s yet.

Then, you notice that Nicklaus, winning here the last two times, broke Open records both times. He shot 275 in 1967, breaking Ben Hogan’s Open record of 276. Then he broke his record again in 1980, shooting 272.

That’s still the Open record. Unless two guys break it this week.

An Open is better when a guy with a jab, footwork, hand speed and head fakes takes on a course and outpoints it. Gives it a boxing lesson. Stays out of its range. Befuddles it.

You look at the field and you wonder who in here can do that. The Yank golfers are already worried that Baltusrol will yield to a kind of European run-up game, the player rolling the ball onto the green.

Americans don’t like that bounce-the-ball-in game. They like to hit those lovely high shots with lots of backspin that stick where they land. Run-up shots are for weekend hackers. That’s bowling, not golfing. Americans don’t know that shot. They despise it.

Americans like to treat the Open as another stop on the weekly tour. A drive and an eight-iron. If it’s Sunday, this must be a Buick Open someplace.

They get on an Open course only every 10 or 12 years. And try to take it with one or two practice rounds. As if were the Nestle Invitational.

Hogan never treated an Open course so cavalierly. He would go to the course a week or 10 days early and dissect it. He would hit three drives on every hole--one right, one center and one left. Then he would decide which was the most suitable.

He respected his opponent, used it as a sparring partner, not a punching bag.

If these guys now try to trade punches with it, three-quarters of the field will be overmatched, leaving the tournament to some guy with a 5% loft on his driver and a 390-degree backswing.

Or, it could be we’ll have the first European winner since 1970. Baltusrol looks like a big, clumsy wild swinger to them.

“Foreign players are going to love this course,” Paul Azinger predicted. “It’ll suit their game.”

But the really tell-tale observation came from Greg Norman, the great white course-eater from Australia.

“This is the fairest Open I have ever played in,” he said. “The USGA is to be commended.”

It was hard not to notice he was licking his lips as he said it.

I expect Baltusrol will have a sheet over its face by Sunday night. And a lily on its chest. It may not last any longer than Michael Spinks did. And die with its boots off.