Davis Just Had to Love Finally Getting Major I

If you’re a jockey, you want to win the Kentucky Derby.

If you’re a fighter, you want to win the title.

If you play tennis, you want to win Wimbledon.

If you’re a ballplayer, you want to make the World Series.

A football player wants to make the Super Bowl. Or, at least, the Rose.

And, if you’re a golfer, you want to win a “major.”

It validates you. You are not necessarily The Man. But you’re one of them.

That’s why Davis Love III must be heaving a huge sigh of relief somewhere today. Just as he was beginning to wonder if he ever would, he won a major this week.

He had piled up 10 tournament wins. Actually, that’s a lot for these days of deep and fierce competition. But you don’t get much notice for hauling down the Freeport-McDermott Classic, whatever that is.

You see, a lot of great athletes never get out of the crowd. A Rod Carew or an Ernie Banks, who deserved better, never got in a World Series.

Ken Rosewall never won Wimbledon. Neither did Ivan Lendl. But Yvon Petra did. Go figure.

Great fighters never got title shots. George Godfrey, for instance. Even John L. Sullivan ducked him. Manny Ycaza never won a Kentucky Derby. Neither did Ralph Neves. And so on.

It could be we knights of the keyboard put too much emphasis--and thus too much stress--on “majors.” Sam Snead won six majors, to say nothing of 75 other tour events, but we never let the world (or Sam) forget that one of them wasn’t the U.S. Open.

Any golf tournament is hard to win. But a “major” is one where they let the grass grow in the rough but not on the greens. The definitive description of a major is the USGA’s Sandy Tatum’s motto: “We’re not trying to embarrass the best players in the world, we’re trying to identify them.”

The Masters got to be a major by default. It was a course designed and nourished by the great Bobby Jones; so it was the Camelot of golf courses, its cup the Holy Grail of golf. Only it had a field about as difficult to beat as a weekend member-guest at Montalvo.

Jones, the eternal amateur, invited lots of non-pros, including the entire Walker Cup team, often a gaggle of dilettante golfers who played golf on the weekend and the stock market the rest of the week. He filled his tournament with the reigning champions of Egypt or Formosa, dentists from Cucamonga and anyone from abroad with a monocle and a pedigree. You had about 10 real golfers to beat, so the same guys kept winning it, Hogan-Snead, Snead-Hogan, Palmer-Nicklaus, Nicklaus-Palmer till they re-rigged it and let the hungry tour players in, not just the best golfer in Taipei.

Even the PGA had a long history of being played on pitch-and-putt real estate courses where the holes were designed to run between the condos. The head of the PGA at the time was able to strike advantageous financial deals at the expense of the golf, which atrophied till they put it back on tracks where you needed more then a driver, wedge and putter to play the game.

The British Open and U.S. Open always maintained their standards. The Masters and PGA came up to them, the Masters by toughening the fields, the PGA by toughening the courses.

So Davis Love has identified himself as one of Sandy Tatum’s best players in the world. Everyone knew he was anyway. But you can’t do that by winning Buick Classics.

The trouble was, Davis never could find a way to smuggle a final-round lead into the clubhouse in a major.

Of course, that is why it is a major. It’s supposed to be tough to sneak it into the clubhouse--particularly with that apple in your throat.

Is that what we poets of the press box have done? Does a guy with a swing of pure spun gold, a putting stroke of an angel and a short game right out of Lourdes come up to the final nine and suddenly think, “Oh, my God, this is a major!” and his ball starts to go sideways? Should a Ken Venturi, eyes glazed, running a temperature of 100 in a heat index of 108, stand on an 18th green, drop his club and say, “Oh, my God, I’ve won the Open!”

When a Sam Snead wins more tour tournaments than any other player (81) and an estimated 135 around the world, should he feel a failure because one of them wasn’t the major?

Did golfers 50 years ago attach the same importance to these tournaments, or was it just another stop on a burgeoning tour? The money was not all that great. Hogan got $2,000 for winning the U.S. Open in ’48. If you asked a player in those days what was the most prestigious tournament to win he would more than likely have said the U.S. Amateur. Nowadays, the question is whether or not to count Tiger Woods’ three Amateur victories as “majors.”

Meanwhile, we put on Phil Mickelson the mantle of “best player never to win a major” (even though he won a U.S. Amateur). We tighten a noose around his neck and get ready to kick the box out from under him. It’s like he’s giving five shots to the course every time he tees it up in a “major” from here on out.

Golf, like life, is not fair. In recent years, guys were winning majors as their first tournament victories (Nicklaus, Jerry Pate, Lee Trevino, Orville Moody). Andy North has won two U.S. Opens--and only one other tournament. Moody won a U.S. Open, period.

Still, Davis Love has made his bones. He’s a “made” man, as the Mafia would have it. He can relax and play his game. It wasn’t Love at first sight. Love is lovelier the 11th time around (that’s how many times he played a PGA, missing the cut in four of them). But he’s home free. It’s Mickelson’s turn in the barrel.