This Long Hitter Leaves Them Short, Too

There are different ways to lose golf tournaments, and Fred Couples chose the most frustrating one at Riviera Country Club on Sunday.

In his head-to-head matchup with Corey Pavin at the Nissan Los Angeles Open, Couples came up short.

He came up short on No. 6, on No. 7, on No. 8 and on 14.

This is the sort of paradox that golf thrives on, how the longest hitter on the PGA Tour gets beat in the final round because he can’t make the shortest shots.

“I left them all short,” Couples said of his putting. “I couldn’t get a real good feel.”

It wasn’t all that bad, Couples insisted.

“It’s not like I putted like a clown,” he said.

Pavin shot a 68 to win by two strokes while Couples had a two-birdie, two-bogey round of 71. Pavin needed only 25 putts for 18 holes, but Couples had 33.

Afterward, Couples was asked to assess his round: “There’s not a lot I can say because I didn’t do much.”

He had chances, though. Couples missed eight-foot birdie putts at No. 10 and No. 11 that would have put him even with Pavin.

Then, after he finally caught Pavin at No. 12, Couples made a costly putting mistake on the par-three 14th. Couples stood over 20-foot putt for birdie and left it 2 1/2 feet short. He missed that one, too, for a three-putt bogey.

“It just didn’t happen,” he said.

But what has happened to Couples this year is that he has pretty much perfected finishing second. His runner-up finish Sunday is his second in two official PGA Tour events, counting the Mercedes Championship at La Costa where he lost a playoff to Phil Mickelson.

“La Costa really hurt because it could have been a great way to start the year,” Couples said. “This, no, this was a fun day. It’s great to come here and play. Someone’s going to win. If I don’t win, I’d like to finish second.”

At the very least, finishing second can be very lucrative. Couples has won $228,134 in his two official events, but that doesn’t count the $100,000 he received for a second-place finish in Thailand last week and the reported $100,000 appearance fee he got for playing in Dubai, which Couples chose to do instead of playing Pebble Beach.

Couples will skip the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic next week so he can work with his golf teacher, Paul Marchand, the pro at the Houston Country Club. Couples will return to the tour the second week of March at the Honda Classic.

“Hopefully, I can come back out and play well,” he said. “I don’t think I’m playing terrible. I seem to be very close. That’s probably a weak statement to make because I almost won my two times out.”

The two-time Los Angeles Open champion might have won Sunday if the ball had rolled a little farther for him. He said Riviera is his favorite course and that the greens were easy to read and he got used to them quickly. The putts were there for him to make, but he simply didn’t do it often enough.

But Couples said it’s important to remember one thing about putting on the last day of a tournament.

“It’s not easy,” he said.

We’re pretty clear on that.