Floyd Stays With What Works

On a senior tour that has gasped and wheezed its way through a very unhip couple of days on the Westside, there is hope.

Shhh, he is stepping off the 18th green now.

So, Gary McCord, how was your round?

“This is the hardest S.O.B. I’ve ever seen,” he exclaimed, curdling the culottes on a Riviera matron. “If this is what the senior tour is like, I’m going back to the regular tour and get squashed by Tiger.

“Heck, at least there, it’s somebody like Tiger who is squashing you.”

At a U.S. Senior Open that has been as exciting as watching your dad in a dollar Nassau with his buds, hope showed up in an appropriately twisted handlebar mustache.

“Have you seen it out there?” McCord said Friday afternoon. “I mean, have you seen that grass? If you try to Roseanne the ball, you end up stuck short of the green, takes you two more shots to get there.”

In his world, to “Roseanne the ball” is to hit it fat, or short.

“Mick Jagger” is when your putt lips out.

About the only occasion for which McCord has not coined a phrase is a tournament victory.

Perhaps this is because, in 15 years as a PGA Tour regular, he never experienced one.

Some would grieve. McCord ordered vanity license plates reading, “NOWINS.”

They are still on his car, but this could change, and as soon as Sunday, after McCord survived his first two days on the senior racket with a six-over-par 148, good enough to rank eight shots off the lead in a struggling field.

It is a tour that needs him more than he needs it.

Most of the golfers here are as celebrated as the guy who runs the pro shop.

McCord is the irreverent CBS golf analyst who talked himself out of a Masters assignment by saying the greens were bikini-waxed and one part of the tough course should contain body bags.

“I find it impossible that I will ever go back to Augusta,” he said.

The most popular golfers on this tour are too old to be a consistent factor. McCord is only two months past his qualifying 50th birthday, hence his senior debut here.

“I’ve been on TV so much, most people don’t even know I ever played golf,” he said. “I guess this will give them all new fodder for conversation.”

He was never great, but he says he is “100 times” better than when he last played regularly in 1988, thanks to a new swing and renewed motivation.

“In your life you try to live a contradiction, and if I played well, it would be a contradiction,” he said earlier this week. “And I think that stimulates all sorts of conversation.”

In other words, he’s the right man, for the right time, in the right . . . well, not exactly the right place.

After shooting a 74 Friday in front of another sparse crowd here, he shrugged.

“This place has been under an apathy siege for like, the last five years,” he said of Los Angeles. “They have to resurrect the crowd around here, which is very hard to do. It’s almost like, they all left with the football team.”

If he had seen the masses at a Nissan Open, he would know the blame lies less with the city than the event and time of the year.

Which shows just how desperately the Senior PGA Tour needs his sort of caffeine fix.

Despite saying he “ozoned it for four or five shots out there”--whatever the heck that means--McCord was one golfer Friday who seemed to have fun.

He laughed. He whistled. He took full practice swings while standing on the green with his putter.

Behind the ropes his wife, Diane--”She’s absolutely nuts”--cheered and occasionally blew him kisses.

The fans ate it up.

“Can I take your picture?” asked one.

“Only if you have a camera,” he answered, then gladly stopped playing and posed.

Afterward he lamented a couple of blown shots, saying, “I blinked twice and I got a 74; I cannot blink again.”

Soon enough, he was laughing again.

“They have good personalities on this tour,” he said. “But you need the guys who are playing well to have those personalities.”

In other words, Hale Irwin versus Gil Morgan is not exactly Ali-Frazier. Heck, it’s not even Claire-Lasorda.

McCord was making news even before he showed up here. During Open qualifying in Albany, N.Y., he didn’t think he made it after shooting one over par. He changed into blue jeans and climbed into his car for a trip to Cleveland when he was accosted by an official.

He was told he was in a playoff for the final spot, so he changed clothes again in the parking lot, walked back to the first tee . . . then was told that the official was mistaken. He was in.

“We went to the airport and made it to Cleveland, which is a great spot to go if you are . . . if you are going somewhere,” he said earlier this week.

He will hustle back to an airport Sunday, on to another CBS assignment, away from the course for about another seven weeks. So what’s keeping him from dumping all that--his TV work, his books, his screenplay--for a full-time gig here?

“I do nothing well, but I do a lot of things,” said the author of “Golf for Dummies.” “I think I’ll keep it that way.”

In other words. . . .

“I am stupid, but I am not that stupid.”