U.S. OPEN : Maybe the Highlight Is Fight for Low Nick

All right, sports fans, drop everything, get your shooting stick and binoculars--and umbrella--this is the, by God, Yew-nited States Open itself. This ain’t your Disney World four-ball, your import-car Open, your telephone-company Classic, this is the One. Bring all 14 clubs. You don’t capture this one with a drive and an eight-iron. You dust off the three-irons, file the wedges. Get ready to think. You don’t club an Open course to death. You have to outflank it.

Win this and you become the Bear, the Hawk, the Haig, the Merry Mex. In fact, even come close and you become the Shark.

Nicholas Raymond Leige Price has played in nine U.S. Opens without ever becoming anything but the Other Nick or the-Nick-Who-Wasn’t-Faldo. He hasn’t been able to notch his gun with Opens. Two cuts missed, a tie for fourth his best finish (1992), 64 over par for his 32 rounds of Open play.

The-Nick-Who-Was-Faldo did somewhat better: In a playoff for the championship one year (1988), third another year (1990) and fourth another (1992). The-Nick-Who-Was-Faldo also won three British Opens and two Masters.

Nobody really mixed the two Nicks up in those years.

But as the world’s greatest players collect at historic Shinnecock Hills this week for the centennial U.S. Open, the question is being begged as to which is St. Nicholas and which is Nick-Who?

The Nick-Who-Isn’t-Faldo is probably glad of it now. Because the Nick-Who-Is-Faldo is rapidly becoming the Other Nick. The Nick-Who-Isn’t-Price.

The Nick-Who-Is-Price comes here as a guy who has been selected player of the year two years in a row, who is coming here as reigning British Open champion and two-time PGA champion. For two years in a row, he has been the tour’s leading money winner, the Nick who makes a million-and-a-half a year. It’s his picture that is on the official tour media guide for the second year in a row.

The Price is definitely right. The Price has won 14 tour tournaments in this country. The Other Nick (who plays only sporadically in the United States) has won four.

Nick Price has never had an identity crisis in this country. But in Europe, he was always part of the chorus. First, there was Seve Ballesteros, who was universally hailed as World’s Greatest Player.

When Seve faltered, the Great Brit Faldo inherited the title. Some held out for the German, Bernhard Langer, and the Spaniard, Jose Maria Olazabal, when he won his Masters.

Even on his home continent of Africa, Price played in the shadow of the great Gary Player, who became one of only four players in the history of the game to win a Masters, U.S. Open, British Open and PGA.

That’s a pretty select fraternity (Ben Hogan, Gene Sarazen, Jack Nicklaus and Player).

The Open at Shinnecock this year could settle more than first money. It could settle the rights to being the Nick of Time.

To be sure, there are 154 other golfers on hand. Unlike the two Nicks, several of them have won U.S. Opens. One of them (Jack Nicklaus) has won four. Another (Hale Irwin) has won three. One (Andy North) has won two. So has Curtis Strange.

Faldo has been lurking around the premises for days, sparring with the course, testing its chin (and his own), so to speak. Shinnecock is a tricky foe. It has an arsenal of counterpunches, not the least of which is a wind so capricious it can make a five-club difference depending on its direction--and velocity. It also has power of its own. Two of its par-four holes are longer than 470 yards and another is longer than 450.

Price was afraid he might leave his fight in the gym if he came out early to trade jabs with Shinnecock. “You could wear yourself out practicing out there,” he points out. “You have to leave yourself some creativity.”

The Nick-Who-Is-Price has always had a healthy respect for overwork. He respects it so much he avoids it. He treats golf as a game, not a sentence. While not exactly happy-go-lucky, he has been known to smile at a missed putt. He is popular on the tour, where he is known as a guy who likes to mix--cocktails as well as friends. The Other Nick is more of a stalker, a relentless pursuer of par who saves his conversation for his caddie. That Nick is a fitness nut. Nick the Price has only lately come to the weight room.

Golf is a game whose heroes have no identity crises. “Jack” means only one person, Nicklaus. When you say “Arnold,” everybody who ever went in a locker room knows whom you’re talking about. There was only one “Ben,” “Sam,” “Byron,” or “Gene.” “Walter” meant Hagen, “Bobby” meant Jones.

Only “Nick” is in dispute. There will be a dozen sub-plots to this year’s Shinnecock Open. Title of world’s best player may be only one of them. Title of world’s best Nick may be the real issue here.