The Book on Brooks: Don’t Tell Him Who’s on His Tail

Mark Brooks has some nerve! I mean, who does he think he is, Hogan? How dare he? He should apologize at once to Fred Couples and Payne Stewart. You’d almost think they caught him using their toothbrush or wearing their shirts.

Brooks won the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic on Sunday, holding off the charges of Couples and Stewart and a major company of the flower of the game of golf in the process. I mean, Couples and Stewart! Icons. Routing a field of his superiors, so to speak.

What’s the world coming to? Is there no respect for tradition anymore?

Brooks is a pleasant-enough, baby-faced young man from Texas with a nice, smooth swing and a firm putting stroke.

But when he came into the press room here at the Hope on Saturday as one of the leaders of the tournament at 18 under par, a question suddenly filled the room. “Mark,” someone wanted to know, “you have the lead here, but how do you feel about the fact Fred Couples and Payne Stewart are right there on your heels and will be closing in on you tomorrow? Will it affect your game? Make you nervous?”

English translation: “It’s very cute you’re in this position, Mark. But enjoy it while you can because tomorrow the big boys are showing up and they might scare you to death.”

Understandably, Brooks was outraged at the implications in the question, irritated and indignant.

“Those guys put their pants on one leg at a time same as the rest of us,” he shot back, hotly. “And, the last time I looked, they were not winning every tournament they ever entered.”

He might also have said, “By the way, I’m the Mark Brooks who won two tournaments last year--one more than those guys did. I’m also the guy who finished third in the British Open last year, only one shot behind the winner, John Daly. And I would have won if it weren’t for hitting in that pot bunker on No. 16 at St. Andrews.”

Brooks is not exactly your tour rabbit, although he looks like a college All-American. Which he once was. This was his fifth tournament victory, a respectable record.

Was he looking over his shoulder nervously at the looming giants of the game, Couples and Stewart? “I slept fine last night!” he protests. “Got 10 hours of solid sleep, didn’t worry about anything.”

He did rummage around in the garage of his host, Howard Lester, before the tournament, pilfering a new putter with a one degree loft. That was how little the “major” golfers in the field bothered him.

He merely went out and won one of the challenging tests of the year, the Hope.

You know, usually, when you get ready for a heavyweight title fight, you have the one opponent to get ready for. Ditto a Super Bowl. Rose Bowl.

The charm of the Hope is, they throw four opponents at you--a different one daily. Each course has a different style. Some you can be aggressive with and attack. Others you have to defend yourself against. It’s not even the same four year-to-year. It presents unique problems. Takes a calm golfer. To some extent, a lucky one.

Take Wednesday: a gelid wind raked the desert and particularly swept across the host course, Indian Ridge, known to valley golfers as “The Ridge.”

With the wind, the Ridge is a 7,037-yard Hall of Horrors. In the teeth of that gale, only five players broke par and no one broke 70. That same day, 20 broke par at Indian Wells, 16 broke par at Bermuda Dunes and 16 at Tamarisk.

Players who began the tournament at Indian Ridge Wednesday had an uphill fight. Of the players in the hunt at the finish Sunday, only one, Scott Hoch (who had shot one of the two 70s at Indian Ridge Wednesday) was still in the hunt.

Winning the Hope takes more than 14 clubs and a good caddy. It takes luck of the draw, it takes the player who can shut out the distractions of a pro-am in a tournament where not only the courses change but so do unfamiliar playing partners.

In other words, a guy whose game may go to pot at the approach of the some of the registered icons of the game, isn’t going to win the Hope. A Hope is won--and has been won--by the likes of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Billy Casper, Tom Kite, Johnny Miller.

Now, if you were to see those guys in your rear-view mirror, then you might have a right to panic.

Brooks steered the thing carefully into the clubhouse at 23-under-par Sunday without feeling the urge to scream, run, hide under a ball-washer or pick up.

Now, he’s the prominent winner himself. And we can look forward to the day when someone clears his throat in the press room and wants to know of Payne Stewart or Fred Couples: “Uh, does it bother you guys to know Mark Brooks is right on your tail? Will that make it hard for you to swallow, and will you be trying to look over both shoulders at once?”

Our Mr. Brooks will have arrived.