Mr. Warhol, You’re on Tee, as Golf Gets Its 15 Minutes

It’s better to be timely than brilliant. Take, for example, the Presidents Cup. What we have here is a pretty good idea with some very good luck. The sports gods are smiling when you cook up a semi-cockamamie event just as your sport becomes red-hot. Golf is now so mainstream, so fashion-forward in its retro way and so cleansed of its old snooty reputation, that even a president standing for re-election was conspicuous at the Cup Friday.

These days, the public wants to watch well-mannered people who strike little dimpled balls. We’ll crowd theaters to watch Kevin Costner and Don Johnson trade arcane golf jokes in “Tin Cup.” If you don’t know a Big Bertha from a Big Dog these days, you’ll take a snowman on the trendoid exam. Those who’ve loved golf for decades may not know quite what to think when they see Cheech debating the fine points of club selection in a Hollywood hit.

Golf is now officially chic. At least for the next 15 minutes. If you just can’t stand it, hit yourself in the head with your wedge; by the time you wake up, our voracious, bored pop parade will probably be picking the bones of some other nice, harmless cultural artifact. In the meantime, everybody from senior citizens to Generation Xers are talking up the Tiger Woods Era, according to USA Today. The Wall Street Journal informs us that rock stars and billionaires-aided with private swimming pools and tennis courts-now build private golf greens, golf holes or entire golf courses around their homes.

“Mr. Jordan’s foursome is next on the tee. Mr. Barkley, you may hit away.”

Against this backdrop, the Presidents Cup, while not quite flourishing, is growing nicely. How could it fail? Attendance at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Lake Manassas, Va.--notable for its brick clubhouse bigger than the Louvre--will exceed 50,000 for three days. Actual golf participation has been flat for the past five years. The ‘80s boom quieted down long ago. But the trend spotters have now caught up. Now, golf is cool enough to watch.

Celeb sighting will be optional here this weekend but probably unavoidable. Friday, a 13-handicapper who used to answer to “Bubba” was seen on a balcony beside the fourth green as Corey Pavin and Phil Mickelson played Ernie Els and Mark McNulty in foursomes.

The day’s top photo op may have been U.S. captain Arnold Palmer shaking hands with Clinton. So many presidents on earth, so few four-time Masters winners.

Many have noted for years that golf is America’s last civilized professional game--free of labor strikes, franchise shifts, drug scandals, salary holdouts and guaranteed $100-million contracts. It’s basically unchanged since 1956. But, as the President at the Cup pointed out, golf appeals increasingly to us because of its “measured pace.” In our Too Much Information Age, life can seem “so fast and so crammed” that golf is “just a beautiful thing to do.”

Only a decade ago, a blatant knockoff of the Ryder Cup would have been greeted with derision. No amount of hype could have kept such an artificial concoction breathing, much less growing. Now, you can’t keep the best players in the world from shouldering their way into this Prez Cup to play for free.

No one here asks, “What on earth is this ‘International Team?’ ” Everybody knows that the international team is just an excuse to get Greg Norman and Nick Price on CBS in a team-play format against America’s best players. It’s about as authentic and rooted in the tradition of its sport as a Wrestlemania championship belt.

But nobody cares. Everybody chucks the Presidents Cup under the chin and says, “Isn’t it a pretty baby? Just wait until it grows up.”

American golf doesn’t have bigger names than Tom Lehman, Davis Love III, Fred Couples, Phil Michelson and Corey Pavin, nor a hotter young player than Kemper and Western Open winner Steve Stricker. And they’re all on the 12-man U.S. team that won the inaugural Cup in 1994 and leads after Saturday’s second round of play, 10 1/2-9 1/2.

An International team, representing the whole world (except for Europe), could not possibly be stronger than the one assembled here, led by Nick Price, Greg Norman, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh and Steve Elkington.

Now that golf is “in,” knowledgeable fans no doubt will want talking points for sophisticated conversation on the clubhouse veranda. One might note that Palmer and International captain Peter Thomson, the five-time British Open champion, have never been close. Palmer is famous for being able to rip “War and Peace” in half with his bare hands. Thomson may have read it.

Thomson fired the first shot of the Cup by saying that he thought his team of Norman and young Aussie star Robert Allenby were “invincible.” Palmer immediately retorted by arranging Friday morning’s draw so America’s best team--Couples and Love, the four-time World Cup match play champs--would face the Invincibles. The U.S. team won, 2 and 1. In the afternoon, Thomson arranged the draw so that the same teams would face each other again. This time Couples and Love gained a 1-up victory.

At a chi-chi dinner party, one must know the gossip du jour so as not to put one’s cleated foot in one’s mouth. Here at the Cup, for instance, one must never mention the word “Graham” in the presence of Norman.

You see, David Graham, the ousted International captain who was kicked out of his job by a team mutiny just two months ago, told the Washington Post’s Len Shapiro this week, “I think the whole team owes me an apology. There’s no question [Norman] was the instigator, no matter what he says. How do I know? David Frost told me that. Vijay Singh told me that. . . . The decision I made not allowing Greg to be miked by CBS when he came to the event that Sunday [in 1994] was a very significant issue to him.”

In ‘94, Norman was too ill to play in the Cup, but arrived on Sunday and rode around the course in a cart, ostensibly to give moral support to his mates. Could a sick Shark have had his eye on a few hours of gratis TV exposure as well? Please, say it ain’t so.

In its insouciant young way, the President’s Cup clearly has a little bit of everything: tone, glamour, rivalry, hissing contests. Heavens, by tonight, will we need to rearrange the seating cards at the victory banquet?