After Teeing Off, Ernie Needs to Get Mad, or Els

Well, for all intents and purposes, the 1996 golf season is over. A few mop-up tournaments, junk golf events, year-ending showcases--but nothing important. The majors are over. What’s left is Golf’s Sally League.

And this Year of Our Lord is just another in the long, slow retreat of the great game from glory. The game motto should be “The King is dead--long live Fred Funk!”

Whatever happened to the heroes of yesteryear? Where are the Hogans, Nicklauses, Palmers, Sneads of yore? Titans who rose above the crowd. Golf was meant to be an oligarchy, not an anarchy. A royalty, not a rabble.

Yet, in 30 tournaments this year, we’ve had 25 different winners. Only four--Mark O’Meara, Phil Mickelson, John Cook and Mark Brooks--were multiple winners. We had six guys winning their first tournament.

Ben Hogan would be ashamed to tee it up in 30 tournaments and win only one. Or none. In 1953, he teed it up in six tournaments--and won five of them.

Hogan won 63 PGA Tour events. Sam Snead won 81. Jack Nicklaus won 70 and the King, Arnold Palmer, 60.

Hardly anybody out there today has won in double figures. Tom Watson, 33, and Lanny Wadkins, 21, are the only ones holding their own.

What’s going on? The equipment’s better, the courses are like velvet. It’s only the players that haven’t improved.

It’s creeping socialism, is what it is. Boring as hell. The leaderboard looks like a motel registry in Peoria. Guys flash in the sun for a while--then disappear like swatted flies. Nobody has any staying power anymore. You win a tournament, and you miss the next four cuts in a row. In Hogan’s day, you couldn’t win and miss the cut the next week. If you did, you’d be back cleaning clubs for a living. Hogan got $2,000 for winning the U.S. Open in 1948. Last year, the guy who finished 73rd got more than that.

It’s all Ernie Els’ fault. He was supposed to restore order. We poets of the press tent decided that two years ago.

Els came out of South Africa with the touch of a piano player but the strength of a piano mover. Had it all, we figured.

When the first tournament he ever won here was a U.S. Open, we were ready to be convinced. That’s the way Nicklaus began his pro career. Also, Lee Trevino. Els was following the path to greatness. We sat back and waited.

We’re still waiting.

So, I made a study of Ernie Els. I thought maybe I could spot what he was doing wrong. Maybe, the vees were pointing in the wrong direction, maybe he was “coming over the top” (whatever that is). Maybe he was “getting too much right hand in it.”

It’s none of the above. Ernie Els’ problem is, he thinks it’s only a game. A fatal delusion.

I spotted it in the recent U.S. Open and PGA Championship as Els shot his way out of both of them. With a shrug. He did that last year at the PGA at Riviera too.

It got so bad, I started shouting at the TV screen. Els couldn’t hear me, so I will reproduce it here in the hopes it may save his career (or end mine). I wanted to reach out and shake him. I was outraged at his casual indifference. I mean, didn’t he know we had appointed him the new Palmer, the next king of golf? I blew my stack:

“Hey, Ernie! This is the by-God Yew-nited States Open! Get serious! This is not a four-ball in Johannesburg with your brother-in-law. Get that sleepy look off your face!

“Hey, Ernie, that hole is 460 yards long, a par-four with a dogleg to the left and water to the right! Don’t you understand that? Don’t just stand there and yawn. I see a guy yawn, I press the bet.

“Hey, Ernie! That putt is a two-break downhill slider across 11 cleat marks. You could three-putt from there, don’t you get it?! Wrinkle your brow, at least!

“Hey, Ernie! Your ball is in the sand and plugged! Throw your club! Change your expression! Look mad, for cryin’ out loud! Kick the ball-washer! Yell at your caddie! Say ‘That wasn’t a four-iron there! Why the hell did you give me a four-iron?’ Learn to find somebody to blame, Ernie! It can never be your fault, babe.

“Don’t smile when you hit a tree! Pick up! You don’t have to take double bogeys, you’re Ernie Els! Act like it! You think Tom Weiskopf wouldn’t head for the parking lot right about here?! Get the flu when you’re lying four in a sand trap. Or tell ‘em your hamstring is pulled. I mean, we’re talking Vardon Trophy here!

“Hey, Ernie! Where do you think you are?! At the seashore?! Did you just come here for the free lunch? I mean, what are you trying to do--finish 11th?! You could win here! Look like it! Bite your lip, at least!

“No more Mr. Nice Guy, Erns! Scowl. You think Hogan would grin at a missed three-foot putt? Get real! He wouldn’t grin if he made it. That putt cost you $70,000, Ernie. That’s funny?!

“Wake up and smell the pressure. Do me a favor, at least grimace. At least look interested. Don’t you give a damn?! Well, act like it! Sweat a little bit! Gnash your teeth! Roll your eyes at heaven like Arnold did when he lipped out those 40-footers.

“Call the golf course a monster. Don’t praise a track you just shot 79 on. Criticize the greenskeeper. Knock the course. Say that, if it were human, it’d sleep in a casket. You walk around as if you’re at Disneyland.

“You don’t seem to get it, Els! Like, hey, man! You’re playing for a million bucks here, not a $20 Nassau!

“Lemme ask you something. You know the difference between a birdie and a bogey? You’d never know it to look at you. You know the difference between first and 19th? Well, you’re going to find out if you don’t get grimmer.

“Did you wake up this morning? You’ve got to realize TV wants you to show some emotion when you hit a shot--disgust if you miss it, glee if you make it. Is that too much to ask? Don’t just stand there like a guy waiting for a bus.

“What in the world are you smiling about? That was a six you just made, Ernie, not a three.

“Ernie, it’s about the gum. Care to see Ben Hogan chewing gum in the middle of a U.S. Open? Nicklaus? Not even Chi Chi Rodriguez.

“Get a life, Ernie. Get a snarl. Get some old Tommy Bolt movies. Now there was a guy who knew how to treat golf for the two-timing harlot it was! He was golf’s Vesuvius. You’re not even a tea kettle. Blow!

“We need a champ, Ernie, not a good-will ambassador. You look as if you have everything else it takes.

“Except that attitude, Ernie. Won’t do at all. You got the grip, you got the shots. Just remember a large part of this game is mental. You got to get to the point where, if you shoot a 63, you go home and kick the cat because it wasn’t a 61. That’s the secret--anger. It’s not the inner game. It’s the inner rage. What do you think made Ty Cobb great? You can never be satisfied. Golf is not a game, Ernie, it’s a sentence. Twenty years at hard labor. So, wipe that grin off your face. Just remember, we need you. Golf needs you. Otherwise we have to make do with a Jones who isn’t Bobby--and a lot of Genes who aren’t Littler.”