Why No Leader in Clubhouse?

You know, in this business, as you get older, you have to fight against yearning for the past. Put up blocks against runaway nostalgia. Resist saying, “DiMaggio would’ve had it,” as a modern outfielder misjudges a fly ball, or, “Dempsey would’ve killed them both,” as two heavyweight contenders stagger around a ring.

All the same, I have this depressing notion about golf. I try to block it out but I keep getting the feeling that we’re never going to see any more Ben Hogans, Jack Nicklauses, Arnold Palmers or Sam Sneads on our links.

I don’t know what it is, but no one seems capable of being top dog anymore, the guy whose ball, so to speak, the rest of the game plays off of. A leader board looks like a motel registry today. The old story: The game has gone from Who’s Who to Who’s He? A guy doesn’t seem to want to take the heat anymore. He gets out of the kitchen.

Take the U.S. Open. Guys win it, then disappear. Curtis Strange wins Opens back to back, 1988 and ’89. And hasn’t won anything since. Payne Stewart wins the ’91 Open. And lucks into only one tournament victory thereafter, last spring’s Houston Open, which Scott Hoch really handed over to him, blowing a six-shot lead in the last seven holes.

Tom Kite had a chance to be the best player in the universe when he won his U.S. Open at Pebble Beach in 1992. He won two tournaments the next year--but he’s as long gone as Chloe since.

Ernie Els looked like the new Jack Nicklaus when he won the ’94 Open, his first tour victory. But his lone victory since was a struggling one in the Byron Nelson.

Winning the British Open is almost as big a hoodoo. Dickens’ “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” is an open-and-shut case compared to the mysteries of Bill Rogers, who won the British Open in 1981 and, within a year or two, couldn’t break 80. Ditto Ian Baker-Finch. A classy player with an enviable swing, he won it in 1991. And that was the last seen of him in golf’s prime time. Poor Ian looks like a weekend golfer with delusions of grandeur out there now, struggling to break 80--90 some weeks.

Nick Faldo was universally conceded to be the world’s best player when he won the British Open in 1992. But he has managed only one victory on our tour since, the 1995 Doral Open, which he won because Greg Norman hit a ball into the water on No. 18. John Daly won last year’s British Open and now can’t make a cut.

What is going on? Why do we have this galling inconsistency on the part of our modern-day players? Greg Norman is usually held to be the best of the lot. He has won 13 tournaments, lifetime. Hogan won that many in a year, 1946.

The French have a saying that in solving a mystery, Cherchez la femme. Look for the woman. But in golf it should be, Cherchez l’argent. Look for the money.

I don’t buy any of the other explanations for the disappearance of recognizable stars. They argue there are simply more good players, golf has gone from a monarchy to a democracy. They say the equipment is better. What? Hogan wouldn’t win with graphite shafts? Come on!

There weren’t good players 35-40 years ago? Check the senior tour. They’re still out there.

I worry for the game because it’s becoming a crowd shot. Every other sport has its repeat champions. Baseball has Tony Gwynn, Mike Piazza, Frank Thomas, Tim Salmon, year-in, year-out. Football has Troy Aikman, Steve Young. Basketball has Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal.

Golf is led, so to speak, by committee.

Let’s examine what I think happened. Corporate America, eager to get in on the sports craze, has begun buying into it. Take stadiums, for instance. The Hoosier Dome has become the RCA Dome. Bowl games advertise insurance companies. The New York Yankees have not yet become the Chase Manhattan Yankees, but don’t bet they won’t.

Big business invaded golf--and auto racing--a long time ago. But not on the massive scale as now.

One result is, the minute a golfer sticks his head above the crowd, becomes what Hogan or Nicklaus became, he gets in the grip of a lovesick octopus, Madison Avenue America. He gets invited to corporate outings for $50,000-$100,000. He gets big appearance money for showing up at Asian tournaments with fields almost as inferior as the outings. He gets in the made-for-TV trash tournaments that will pay more money in a week than he won all year.

Take Corey Pavin. Corey is the gritty little golfer who would be a great player in any era. He won our Open last summer.

And the corporations came running with open checkbooks. Corey became eligible for the big-bucks postseason golf soap operas--the Grand Slams that pitted the winners of the four majors last year, the Skins’ games, the four-round automobile commercials.

Corey won $1,340,079 on the tour last year. That’s a lot of pressure putts, three-irons to guarded greens, tightening up of the throat over bad lies.

Then, he made $1.4 million in a couple of weeks of relatively carefree exhibition postseason golf.

So, naturally, Corey is going to take six weeks off. He’s going skiing or motor-biking or some such. Anywhere but in a twosome with Greg Norman.

Golf is a game that doesn’t lend itself to part-time pressure play. It requires massive concentration. You can’t get in shape for the Masters playing customer golf. Or skiing Vail. It’s a demanding mistress. A merciless master. It’s like diamond-cutting. One slip and ruin. You need to keep an edge like a Cossack’s sword.

Will Corey Pavin join the chorus of dropouts in the great game? He thinks not.

“I don’t play carefree golf,” he assures you--and himself. “I try even if it’s only a $10 Nassau. And, I’ll play in as many tournaments as I did last year.”

Golf had better hope so. But Pavin will not be in the field at the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic this week in Palm Desert, a tournament he has won twice, an event that helped hone him into that staple of the tour, “best player never to win a major,” before he cracked through at Shinnecock last year.

Golf, like any game, needs stars, guys who get above-the-title billing. Otherwise, they might as well play in masks or under assumed names. The game needs a Hogan, a Jack, an Arnie.

Of course, if we got a Hogan today, they’d try to make him the International House of Pancakes’ Ben Hogan. Except Hogan would tell them to take a hike. Ben Hogan was not for sale. He refused to play in the first $100,000 tournament because the corporate sponsor required that players wear numbers.

The Hogans of the game made money with their nine-irons, not signs on their backs or their bags. That’s why they were stars.