Doyle Slaps Away Any More Laughs With Major Victory

Allen Doyle, who won the 60th PGA Seniors’ Championship on Sunday, is living the fantasy life of every wannabe golfer who reaches his mid-40s with dreams of striking it rich on the senior tour after his 50th birthday.

“Absolutely,” said the owner of Doyle’s Golf Center in La Grange, Ga., a small town about 60 miles southwest of Atlanta. “It would take me 10 years to earn at my driving range what I earned last week.”

With Sunday’s victory worth $315,000, Doyle, 50, has surpassed $1 million in earnings since turning pro four years ago.

“This is a pretty damn good way to make a living,” he said from Charlotte, N.C., where he is competing this week in the Home Depot Invitational. “You’ve got the opportunity to show that you’ve got some talent and, if you do well, you’ve got a chance to improve your lot in life.”

Doyle has improved his lot with a swing that inspires snickers from opponents and fans--at least until they see the results.

A former defenseman who was inducted as a hockey player into the Athletic Hall of Fame at Norwich University in Northfield, Vt., Doyle slashes at the ball with an abbreviated backswing resembling a slap shot.

It’s the result of winters spent practicing as a teenager in Massachusetts in a cellar with a low ceiling, which made a full backswing impossible, and summers spent working as a caddie.

“Through caddying,” he said, “I saw people losing all kinds of shots, spraying the ball all over the place. I said, ‘Geez, if you can hit it pretty straight, keep it in play and have a pretty good short game, you can score pretty good,’ so I kind of geared it down to hit it straight.

“I played hockey, so it was not hard for me to make that move because I had pretty good leg strength and pretty good hand and forearm strength.”

Maintaining his unusual swing, Doyle put together a sterling amateur career, representing the United States on three Walker Cup teams and three World Amateur teams, routinely beating youngsters such as David Duval, Justin Leonard and Tiger Woods and winning more than a dozen titles in Georgia, where he settled after serving in the Army at Ft. Gordon in Augusta.

In 1994, though, he realized he had nothing left to prove on the amateur level after he won five of seven high-level tournaments and finished second in the other two.

He turned pro in 1995, in part because his two daughters were getting ready to apply for college and he didn’t want to have to tell them that he couldn’t afford to send them to the school of their choice. (As it turns out, both earned golf scholarships, the elder Erin at Southern Mississippi and Michelle at South Alabama.)

Competing against players a decade or two younger, Doyle won three times on the Nike Tour in 1995. A year later, at 47, he became the oldest rookie in the history of the PGA Tour, where he won more than $200,000 in two seasons.

His 50th birthday last June opened the door to the senior tour. Two months ago, he got his first victory, winning the Ace Group Classic at Naples, Fla.

On Sunday, he overcame a four-shot deficit with an eight-under-par 64 at Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., the best final round in PGA Seniors’ Championship history, and vaulted to the top of the seniors money list with $666,724.

“Obviously,” he said, “it’s the high point of my playing days.”

With his first major, his days as an unknown player are over.

“I never had any problem not being recognized for what I’d accomplished,” he said, “but it is kind of nice, after years of playing in oblivion, to play in front of audiences who might say, ‘Wow, he’s a pretty good player.’

“But I’m not this guy who improved two shots a side in the last three years to allow this to happen. I’m basically the same player I was five years ago or 10 years ago. I’ve just moved up the ladder and got a chance to play at a higher level.”

EL NINO APPROACHING

Depending on whom you ask, teenager Sergio Garcia of Spain could be the next Seve Ballesteros, the next Jose Maria Olazabal or the next Woods.

Or maybe all three.

And Garcia, 19, turned pro only this week. He made his professional debut Thursday, shooting a five-under 67 in the opening round of the Spanish Peugeot Open at Barcelona.

Countrymen Ballesteros and Olazabal urge caution in promoting “El Nino” too hard too fast.

“The press are thirsty for him, but I just don’t think we should push him,” Olazabal said this week in Spain. “I know I’m asking for an impossible thing here, but if we leave the kid alone, he will have more chance to improve as a player and mature as a person.”

Said Ballesteros: “My message to him is to say ‘no’ as many times as he can. He must not listen to anybody else--he should be Sergio Garcia always.”

Garcia’s resume is already filled with an eye-opening array of accomplishments.

He was only 12 when he won the club championship at Mediterraneao Club de Golf, where his father is the head pro. At 13, he was a scratch player.

He made his first cut on the European tour when he was 14, became the youngest winner of the European Amateur Championship at 15, won 17 of the 21 amateur tournaments he played in 1997 and 1998 and this month became the first European amateur in 21 years to make the cut at the Masters, where he was the first European to finish as low amateur.

His seven-over 295 at Augusta left him 15 strokes behind the winner, Olazabal, and tied for 38th in a field of 96.

Five days later, he announced he was turning pro and was asked to compare himself to Olazabal and Ballesteros.

“I would say I’m a little better driver than [them],” said Garcia, whose power off the tee has been compared to Woods’. “With the irons it’s difficult to be as good as Jose, maybe impossible. He’s the best iron player I’ve ever seen.

“With the heart I don’t know how anyone can be as good as Seve. Also, you see him doing those little shots. Then you go home and try and try. But maybe only he can do them. I was 14 the first time I played with him. I was so nervous. . . . Playing the game is not hard, but playing it with great pros is difficult.”

Now that he’s one of them, it’s not about to get any easier. Another teenager, Justin Rose of England, turned pro after tying for fourth in the British Open last year and hasn’t made a cut in 18 tries.

“This is not a new page for me as a golfer, it’s a new book with the pages blank,” Garcia told reporters at a news conference this week. “My move to professional golf will start from zero.”

DON’T GO THERE

Olazabal, the only one with a chance to do it this year, said it’s impossible for any player to win all four majors in one year.

“Truly and honestly,” said the 33-year-old two-time Masters champion, “I don’t believe anyone will accomplish the Grand Slam. . . .

“My chances of winning the U.S. Open are so slim I prefer not to even think about them.”