He No Longer Needs Footnote

What the world needs now--the golf world anyway, is Love, sweet Love. That’s the thing there’s been too little of, as Burt Bacharach would have it.

In other words, Love finally conquers all. And Davis Milton Love, the Roman Numeral III finally joined the elite of the game. No longer will he be that staple of the golf scene “The best golfer never to win a major . . .” and all that jazz.

He won his “major” here at Winged Foot on Sunday. And a “major” it was on this track this week.

After more than 300 tournaments, 10 victories, a second in the ’95 Masters, a second in the ’96 Open and $7.7 million earned, he finally got to eat with the family, to join golf’s peerage.

It was, so to speak, Lovely. But it wasn’t easy. Never mind what the scorecard says. He didn’t go into the final round with one of those nice cushions the front-runners of this game cherish. He was tied with a bulldog of the links, the Texan who doesn’t sound like a Texan but who plays like a Texan.

Davis was trying to win his first major at 33, while Justin Leonard was trying to win his second major (in a row) at 25.

Leonard is a guy you never want to see in your rear-view mirror on the golf trail. If you’re looking for him on the golf course, try the fairway. In fact, try the middle of it.

I don’t think he’s ever missed a seven-foot putt. His golf is marked with tenacity and persistence in a game in which you like your opponent to be flighty, temperamental or as unpredictable as Texas weather. Leonard walks around with this startled stare, as if he has spotted Elvis coming out of a pay phone.

The outcome Sunday was otherwise as anticlimactic as a busted flush or the third act of a German opera. It had all the earmarks of a match-play finale. Which is ironic because the PGA discontinued the match-play format in 1957 precisely because it got finishes such as Chandler Harper vs. Henry Williams IV, or Walter Burkemo vs. Felice Torza--or Walter Burkemo vs. Anybody. Television screamed. And golf went to medal-play matchups you could sell tickets to. Also, advertising.

The Davis-Leonard final featured a guy who should have won several majors versus a guy who probably got his first prematurely.

It started as one-sided as the second Louis-Schmeling fight or the Six-Day War. Love swept to a four-shot lead by the fifth hole. But the galleries were so used to seeing Davis’ snake-bitten pratfalls that they kept waiting for the roof to fall in or the wheels to come off. Davis had a history of hitting the wall in tournaments he should have won and of beginning to play east-west golf on courses that ran north and south. They thought he would be looking over both shoulders at once and start faltering, hitting the ball in wrong places, misreading putts out of nervousness.

Not this day. Love called on his experience and his swing so smooth you could have poured it on pancakes.

He also thought his way around. No. 3 on Winged Foot is a 216-yard hole they like to think is a par three. There is out-of-bounds behind it, tree branches overhead and trouble all around it with two peninsula-long sand traps squeezing the approach. In winning the 1959 Open here, Billy Casper laid up on this hole every day. He parred it each day. But the modern-day nuclear golfer disdains this conservative approach with his warhead shafts and plutonium putters.

Not Love. On Sunday, he hit it short of the green in Casper country. Then, he ran home a 30-footer for his first birdie, went to eight-under par and was off and running.

He also put the driver away on several of Winged Foot’s king-sized par fours, including 18.

But God wasn’t about to let him smuggle it into the clubhouse, untested. On the 15th hole, a torrential rain came down, turning the terrain into the kind of conditions in which Noah would have fitted out the ark and begun collecting animals. Seals would have gotten out of this weather, but Love breast-stroked his way through to birdie 18 and win his first major.

It was Golf’s time to sing “I’m In The Mood For Love.” Love is making this world go round. It used to be Tiger country but Tiger couldn’t buy a putt on this course Sunday.

It was a popular victory. Guys who have teed it up in 300 tournaments, won Kmarts and Buicks and Heritage Classics, are entitled to sit with the big boys. He has paid his dues, trudged off to the parking lot enough nights a shot or 10 behind. He’s a third generation of gentlemen golfers. He adorns its history. Welcome to the living room.

Besides, any sport can use a little Love in its life.