Fleisher Has Game, Not Fame

Bruce Fleisher won seven tournaments in his inaugural year on the Senior PGA Tour. He won his first two events back-to-back, an introductory statement never made by Jack Nicklaus or Arnold Palmer or Lee Trevino or Tom Watson or anyone else on the senior tour.

Fleisher, who is 6 feet 3 and elegantly thin, won $2.6 million, way more than he earned in a 28-year PGA Tour career . . . and he made himself sick. Three trips to the hospital last year, bouts with bronchitis and pneumonia and exhaustion, prove just how important the senior tour is to Fleisher.

Fleisher worked himself ill and silly, and he is back for more.

As the Toshiba Senior Classic begins today at the Newport Beach Country Club, Fleisher is again the tour’s leading money-winner. He has already won two of the first six events. He says last year seems a blur, his success a considerable surprise, the ensuing hubbub a considerable drain.

And certainly to Fleisher, Year 1 of senior play has brought him a touch of fame, a considerable increase in demands for his time, for his autograph and words of wisdom, for his appearance at pro-ams.

If you describe Fleisher as famous, though, that would be an overstatement. Take a walk around Fashion Island, just a couple blocks from the host country club, and ask strangers, Who is Bruce Fleisher? A lawyer? A TV announcer? A politician? The name tickles the edges of consciousness. He is somebody we’ve heard of. But how, where, why?

That is becoming both the curse and the charm of the senior golf circuit today.

Fleisher, Dana Quigley, Tom Wargo, Vicente Fernandez, Allen Doyle. They’re all in the top 10 on the money list this season. Do you know them?

George Archer is No. 3. Archer is 60 years old and he did win 12 PGA events, including the 1969 Masters, but Archer isn’t a household name. Jim Dent is No. 5 on the list. An African American, Dent spent too much energy breaking down racial barriers to spend enough time on his golf game. Only Lanny Wadkins and Hale Irwin, among the first 10, had great success before.

Tom Watson, whose arrival at the senior level last season was supposed to give the tour a big boost, has yet to make a big mark. Watson is supposed to step in now, take the place of Trevino, Nicklaus and Palmer, become the new touchstone for nostalgia. But he isn’t winning consistently, and so there has been no energy infusion.

Instead, we have Fleisher.

This is not a bad thing. Not if we know his story.

By the time he was 13, Fleisher was beating pros around South Florida. He earned his PGA card 29 years ago. He won the 1968 U.S. Amateur. He was paired with Palmer a year later in his first Masters. He was handsome and eager to be out and about. He had loads of talent.

He was going to be quite a star.

Except that during his first 10 years on the PGA Tour, Fleisher was among the top 100 money winners only once. Which was one more than the number of tournaments he won. “I figured out pretty quick that there’s only one Nicklaus, one Palmer, and I was not one of them,” Fleisher says. “I don’t think I was quite driven in the same way as those guys.”

Fleisher dropped off the tour for more than five years in the late 1980s. He became a club pro, he became a more attentive husband to Wendy and father to daughter Jessica. He relaxed, and he and Wendy made friends. When Fleisher rejoined the PGA Tour in 1991, he won his only tournament--the New England Classic. On the seventh playoff hole Fleisher sank a 50-foot birdie putt to beat Ian Baker-Finch.

For his last two years before turning 50, Fleisher says “I worked very, very hard in preparation. How? By staying on the [PGA] tour and staying in competitive form. I just played a lot.”

It is easy, Fleisher says, to explain why he’s winning so often now when he didn’t before, and why Tom Watson isn’t.

“Tom Watson has made his mark,” Fleisher says. “Tom Watson has made his money. His reputation is secure. He doesn’t need to win. He doesn’t need the money. I do. I had a much greater sense of urgency when I got out here.”

Fleisher is sitting on a couch in the lobby of the Hyatt Newporter on Wednesday afternoon. He has just arrived from Carlsbad, where he was visiting the Callaway Golf headquarters. This is a perk. Callaway has signed Fleisher to a lucrative endorsement contract and one of his rewards is a stay at Callaway’s corporate campus. “What a beautiful place,” Fleisher says. “I didn’t want to leave.”

But Fleisher also looks a bit tired. He stopped briefly at the Newport Beach course to hit a few balls but maybe not enough. He is not playing in the pro-am this week. He already has played five tournaments this season, but Fleisher says he will slow down some this year.

“I have to,” he says. “I didn’t handle all the demands so well last year. I got just a small, small taste of what it must be like to be Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods. I’ll tell you this, after a little taste, I’ll always be glad I’m not them.”

That won’t happen. Even after a year of being a senior dominator, Fleisher can sit in the hotel lobby and be unnoticed. Good for Fleisher. Maybe not so good for the senior tour.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com