‘Funny Things’ Happen, but Stewart Still Wins

When it was over, and golf writers stood around in the press tent talking about the bad golf they’d seen that day, none of it mattered to Payne Stewart, the knickered golfer who had won the U.S. Open playoff at Chaska, Minn.

Never mind, he said, that his 75 beat Scott Simpson’s 77 with the highest scores in a U.S. Open playoff since Tommy Armour beat Lighthorse Harry Cooper, 76-79, in 1927.

The point was, Stewart said, he won.

And always remember this, he lectured writers: “Funny things can happen on the way to the clubhouse.”

And they had to agree, he was right.

After all, Stewart had double-bogeyed the 15th to fall two strokes behind Simpson.

“Funny things” began at the 16th. There, Stewart’s tough iron shot cleared a tree and landed 20 feet from the cup. Simpson’s far easier iron shot hit a mound and skidded 40 feet past the pin. Stewart made the 20-footer and Simpson three-putted. It was a two-stroke swing that pulled Stewart even.

On the par-three 17th, Simpson bounced his not-very-funny ball into a pond, Stewart put his on the green. Simpson saved a bogey with a 12-foot putt and Stewart parred the hole.

Simpson, trailing by a stroke at 18, put both his tee shot and his subsequent iron shot into the rough and bogeyed the hole.

Stewart, needing only to two-putt from five feet to win the tournament, finished in style by making the five-footer.

Also on this date: In 1967, a USC relay team of Earl McCullouch, Fred Kuller, O.J. Simpson and Lennox Miller broke the world 440 relay record by a full second, clocking 38.6 seconds at the NCAA meet in Provo, Utah. . . . In 1941, in the Pacific Coast Conference-Big Ten track meet at the Coliseum, Oregon’s Les Steers raised the world high jump record to 6 feet 11. . . . In 1976, four American Basketball Assn. teams joined the NBA as part of a merger agreement. The four: Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, New York Nets and San Antonio Spurs. . . . In 1994, the World Cup of soccer opened in Chicago.