The Right Attitude for Golf

You know how most golfers are. You go to a tournament, look at the long faces, the strained expression, the faraway look in the eyes and you want to tap them on the shoulder and say, “What’s the matter? The patient die?” There was more levity around Lincoln’s deathbed.

Or maybe they know something you don’t. The stock market just fell. The Communists got back in power in Russia. Maybe they just found out their wife ran off with their caddie. Or they lost everything in a hotel fire.

I have seen guys look happier going down in a mine for 10 hours.

Then you look over at Frank Urban Zoeller and you wonder how he got in here. He’s whistling, for crying out loud! Humming to himself.

Maybe that’s another reason the pros call him “Fuzzy.” I mean, doesn’t he understand the situation? Shouldn’t his hair be grayer, his muscles tenser. Isn’t golf more about silent screaming than loud whistling? How come his mouth isn’t dry, his lips white, his eyes staring? What’s with those aviator glasses? Fuzzy’s probably just trying to hide the bloodshot from that second vodka-and-tonic.

Fuzzy’s been playing golf long enough--21 years as a pro--to know the game is not “Saturday Night Live.” But neither, he thinks, is it brain surgery.

It’s not a sport in which you have brain surgeons at ringside, either. You don’t have ambulances at every corner. It isn’t as if these guys had to defuse bombs, put out oil well fires or even lay brick.

“Look,” says Fuzzy, “we’re at the most beautiful places in the world, places where other people pay to go to vacation. I mean, just because you have to par it doesn’t make it Devil’s Island.”

Fuzzy notices birds are singing, palm trees swaying, the surf’s up, the sun is out and the hardest thing you have to do is putt.

This is not to say Fuzzy doesn’t know that’s a wolf in the bed. That’s not grandma with all those teeth. Fuzzy’s not Little Red Riding Hood.

“But, when I was taught to play, I was told the game was meant to be enjoyable. That’s why so many people play it,” Fuzzy recalls.

Work to him was something you did at a lube rack, not a green.

He also plays fast. Common practice on tour these days is for everyone to take five hours to play a round. But when Fuzzy Zoeller and Lanny Wadkins were paired, they hardy paused. They could have played on horseback.

A reporter was seeking Fuzzy out at the Franklin Funds Shark Shootout at Sherwood Country Club this week. He was told Fuzzy had teed off on No. 10 half an hour before. Now, the average golfer who tees off on 10 these days might be expected to be approaching 11 or maybe on the tee at 12 in half an hour. Fuzzy was putting out at 16.

“There are two things that can happen when you hit a shot,” reasons Fuzzy. “You can hit a good shot--or you can hit a bad shot. Why wait?” Fuzzy believes you wait for a woman or a bus. Waiting on a putt doesn’t shorten it any.

Fuzzy is one of the handful of players today with two majors to his credit. He is thus one of an even smaller handful who still have a chance to win all four majors in his career. He’s got the two tough ones--the U.S. Open and the Masters in the bag.

When Fuzzy won 10 tournaments in a little more than six years, two of them majors, it looked to the golf world like the second coming of Palmer. At least, America’s new hope. But a chronic bad back kept delaying the expected and Fuzzy’s career, so to speak, went into a sand trap.

Then last year, Fuzzy seemed to have blasted out. Healthy again, he was the man-to-beat on tour. He was second no less than six times last year. Some people are not second that often in a career. He was third in the British Open, if you please, and he was in a playoff for the Tour Championship. He won more than a million dollars without winning a tournament and was second in the Japan Open. It was a vintage Fuzzy year.

It’s not hard to fathom the secret of Fuzzy’s renaissance. He is deadly when the green comes into view. He was first in greens-hit-in-regulation last year and is second this year when he has hit greens 72.8% of the time with his approaches and that means 957 of them.

But there is another part of his game that makes Fuzzy’s team one of the favorites at Sherwood this week and makes him one of the U.S. hopefuls for 1995. Bear in mind all four majors were won by non-Yanks last year for almost the first time in anyone’s memory.

It is his attitude that makes Fuzzy the threat to strike up the Star Spangled Banner. Relaxed, patient, resourceful, melodious, his calm is probably worth three strokes a round to Fuzzy.

His back might twinge but his stomach feels fine. No knots there. He might be the only guy in the shootout this week to notice how green the fairways are and how majestic the white oak lining them are and how picturesque the waterfalls. To which some of the others might respond, “That’s easy for you to say, Zoeller, you’re never in them! To us, they’re just lateral water hazards and unplayable lies!”

There are some golfers to whom the Taj Mahal would just be a free drop. But Fuzzy would probably drop the club to take a picture of it. Sometimes, his biggest problem is not what club to use but what song to whistle. He takes more care with that recital than an Arthur Fiedler.

“Sometimes it’s just something I heard on the radio that morning and sometimes it’s something from my vast musical repertoire,” grins Fuzzy. He may be the first guy to win the British Open and, when asked what won it for him, answer: “I dunno. Probably, ‘The Merry Widow Waltz’ or ‘Stars and Stripes Forever.’ In the key of C.”