This Stage for Golfers of All Kinds

Others may opt for the U.S. Open, the British Open, or the Masters but one of my favorite golf events has always been the World Cup of Golf, which is being staged this week at the Lake Nona course in Orlando.

This is because you don’t have a whole pack of guys shooting 63s and 64s, firing one-irons to guarded greens over two bodies of water. You often get players who play the game even as you and I--with double loops in their backswings, knocking knees over three-foot putts, and loud groans over topped shots left in traps and scores in the low 90s.

Over the years, there have been golfers from places like Iceland with a two-month golf “season,” golfers from the Fiji Islands, from Southeast Asia, Pakistan. It was the World Cup that really brought about the golf explosion in Japan. When two Japanese players, Torakichi Nakamura and Koichi Ono, routed the flower of the world’s golf in this event in Tokyo in 1957, golf hit banzai! levels there.

But what was golf’s Third World represented only one end of the tournament. At the other end, you had the absolute pinnacle of golf. It was the World Cup that had Sam Snead and Ben Hogan as partners for almost the only time in their great careers. It was here that Gary Player first made his presence felt. Roberto de Vicenzo and a partner won the first cup ever played to etch his name into world consciousness.

It was one of the few tournaments Nicklaus and Palmer ever played as teammates, not rivals. Seve Ballesteros won here in 1976 and 1977.

When the Cup started, no one thought a team from Sweden would even enter it. No one thought they had one. But two years ago, a team from Sweden won it. Last year, the same team--Anders Forsbrand and Per-Urik Johansson--came within one shot of winning again.

American golf has become almost anarchic. It is not a parade, it is a rabble. A winner a week seems to come out of the ranks. No one wants to lead.

We have Ryder Cup points, Vardon Trophy standings, and money-won to point to the hierarchy. But one of the best barometers as to who is who in golf is World Cup selection.

You know the sponsor of any tournament is going to want Fred Couples in the pairings. He puts a glow to a tournament by his very presence. Not quite as incandescent as Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus--but more than any contemporaries this side of Greg Norman.

Fred Couples with a driver in his hand is a sight that makes the golf fan’s heart beat a little faster and makes him want to run over two or more fairways to get in on that action.

It’s not entirely distance. Fred Couples hits the ball long--but no longer than about 25 or 30 other players on the tour. His nickname, “Boom-Boom,” stirs a certain excitement but it is probably Fred Couples’ demeanor that makes him a fan favorite.

Couples is one of the few players out there who does not look as if he is fighting the golf course. He does not ever look as if he had been locked in a closet with a snarling wildcat. You look at Fred Couples and he almost looks distracted, as if he had forgotten where he was. You cannot tell from looking at him whether he is two under or four over, whether he is playing a practice round or a sudden-death playoff.

He almost looks as if he were enjoying himself, as if no more than a bet with his brother-in-law was at stake. It is an attitude that has earned him frowns from the Establishment. It is very un-Hoganesque. “He doesn’t care enough,” was the most frequently heard criticism.

Freddy cares. You don’t win seven tournaments in a little over two years if your mind is not on winning. It’s just that Couples does not go around the golf course like a hissing boiler, a la Craig Stadler, or a man serving out a life sentence, a la Curtis Strange.

When Couples won the 1992 Masters, all golf was ready to throw its visor in the air. It was not that he was the first American to win it in five years, it was that he won it as if it were a $2 Nassau.

A golf course does not intimidate Couples, not even Augusta National. You can’t win the Masters unless you are a dedicated, focused golfer. Fred’s attention doesn’t wander, as his critics would have it.

Fred Couples won his second tournament of the year at Kapalua last week and golf couldn’t be happier. If Fred Couples is on his game, so is the sport.

Why, Fred was asked, did he think it was so difficult today to be a consistent, repetitive winner?

“It’s a matter of numbers,” says Couples. “They had great, great players in other days but I think you would find that today, instead of eight or 10 outstanding players, there are maybe 30 or 40. You can’t overcome a bad round as readily. In fact, you can’t overcome a bad hole as readily. You look at a Jay Haas. He shoots a 64 in the final round of a tournament--and all it gets him is in the playoff. The margins for error are thinner.”

Does he feel an especial pressure, now that he has become one of the recognizable super players, a multiple winner--11 tournaments--and a major winner?

“I try to play relaxed,” he says. “I think that, to keep from making mistakes, you have to learn to relax in a tournament.”

Relax and golf might seem oxymoronic, a contradiction in terms, to anybody who ever stood over a five-foot putt to win a press. But Freddy feels it may be the secret to his game. He hits the shot he wants to hit, not the one the course wants him to hit.

Not surprisingly, Couples and the equally popular Davis Love have been chosen to represent the U.S. at the World Cup this week. It is a pairing that will swell the crowds and pacify the patriots.

A World Cup is a tournament that offers the exquisite with the exotic. The sublime and the subliminal. In its own way, it is probably more what golf is all about than any two U.S. Opens. It is the second consecutive year for Couples and Love, who won the Cup in Spain for the U.S. last year.

But more important, it will be a showcase for his fans who would rather watch Fred Couples miss an eagle putt than see most other players make one.