Deejay Helped May Reach Station in Life

Bobby May, then 23, stood on the first tee at Bel-Air Country Club, the skyline of UCLA before him, the graphite of radio behind him.

Eight years before the back nine at Valhalla with Tiger Woods, there was the front nine at Bel-Air with Rick Dees.

Eddie Merrins, the longtime pro at Bel-Air, and Ed White, Dees’ business manager, set up the round. May hoped someone would sponsor his fledgling golf career, getting him through Q-school and the first thin years of the PGA Tour. It had come to that.

Dees, a radio personality at KIIS-FM, hoped he didn’t snap-hook a drive off Brenda, May’s fiancee.

“I had graphite everything,” Dees recalled, “trying to impress whoever was there. And they introduce me to this small guy.”

It was May, maybe 5 feet 7 and a little uncomfortable with the idea of lining up sponsors.

“He’s consistent,” Merrins had told Dees, “but he’s putting so much pressure on himself. He feels funny about being sponsored. He thought he should just make it on his own.”

Dees looked at May and wondered if he could hit it. You know, really hit it.

“I could have sworn when he hit the ball it was going to hit the top of Pauley Pavilion,” Dees said. “I was stunned. I looked at him and said, ‘How does a body that size generate club-head speed like that?’ So, he has a wedge in. He just throttled the earth, and I heard Chinese voices coming out of this hole. I thought, ‘Who is this?’ He eagled the hole, shot a 64 or 65.”

Like that, May had himself a sponsor. Many, actually. Before he went off to PGA qualifying school, May’s list of 10 sponsors would include Dees, White and Joe Pesci.

Flush with the $75,000 investment in his golf future, May failed to get through Q-school. He telephoned the sponsors and asked if they wouldn’t mind if he took his game and their money to the Asian tour. Not at all, they said.

“Because if you can hit balls with cobras in the shade,” Dees said, “you can play anywhere.”

A year later, May paid them all back. They refused his request to include interest.

“So,” Dees said, “we broke even and got a tremendous insight into what intestinal fortitude it takes to perform at the highest level of the game.

“At a certain point, on that professional level, the mental side of the game has to mature. It will either kick in or you’ll drive yourself crazy as a professional golfer. He allowed it to gradually germinate and he really started to make it. But, in the back of his mind, he always thought, ‘I need to go back home and prove myself.’ The bloom came, obviously, at the PGA.”

Watching that final-round back nine at Valhalla, Dees admitted, “I was as nervous as a busboy at Hooter’s.”

And he found himself . . . proud.

“I get the most pleasure,” he said. “Like Walter Mitty, you know? There’s a piece of me that’s Bob May swinging. Of course, I’ll never get that chance. But it is the greatest reward and satisfaction to see such a wonderful person do well. Because he is a great guy.”

HE’LL GET BACK TO YOU ON THAT

In the moments before he falls asleep, when today rushes back, when tomorrow calls, Tiger Woods does not become Michael Jordan. He is not Babe Ruth. Or Muhammad Ali.

He is a guy who hits golf shots, still. That, he said, is how he sees himself.

Even after all of this, the most dynamic golf ever played, Woods knows only the last shot, and the next one. That is what he said.

Asked Monday night at Bighorn Golf Club, in the throes of a shivering-in-the-desert flu, if he ever did consider the depth and breadth of his stature, Woods, only 24, smiled and shook his head.

“The quick answer,” he said, “is no. I haven’t thought about it. For one, I’m living the moment as of right now. I think when your career’s winding down and you’re on the downward spiral of it, that’s when you can look back and reflect and have a better understanding of what you were able to accomplish throughout your career. Right now, I don’t know what my peak is. Have I passed it? Am I at it right now? I don’t know.”

Woods shrugged.

“I’ll have a better answer for you in a few decades,” he said.

SHE’S A TIGER WOMAN

Althea Gibson recently celebrated her 73rd birthday with friends at her New Jersey home. The first black to play on the LPGA Tour, Gibson told the Chicago Sun-Times through a friend that she never misses Woods on television.

“It I were Tiger’s age,” she said, “I would marry him and make him the perfect wife.”

Gibson told Fran Gray, director of the Althea Gibson Foundation, that Woods reminds her of her late husband, Will, in appearance and composure.

“It takes her back in time to her relationship with Will, which was a real love story,” Gray said.

Gibson had a stroke about five years ago and suffers from degenerative arthritis. She still knows her golf, though. And her men.

THE LAMB’S ON ME

May, protagonist in Woods’ PGA Championship saga, is still out there. He placed third at the Reno-Tahoe Open last weekend, finishing one shot out of the Scott Verplank-Jean Van de Velde playoff, which Verplank won.

While dining in Reno, May finished his rack of lamb and was surprised to learn his check had been picked up by an anonymous patron, who included a note with the gesture.

It read: “It was about time somebody stepped up and challenged him.”

HIT ONE, DRAG MARK

Removed from his Masters-British Open double by two years and a lot of frustration, Mark O’Meara isn’t holding up his end of the Isleworth pairing.

At 43, O’Meara hasn’t won since 1998, has missed four cuts in 16 tournaments, and is beginning to wonder if his career shouldn’t take another turn.

“I have had talks with CBS about working for them,” O’Meara told the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

The affable O’Meara has one top-10 finish this year, a ninth at the Players Championship. Other than that, he has played unevenly, his game has sagged and, perhaps, his attention was wavered.

“I’ve been able to climb to the top of the mountain,” he said. “I want to spend more time with my family. For instance, my son is playing in his first football game today, and I’m here.”

Not even Woods, his supper-grubbing neighbor, has been able to release O’Meara from his golfing misery.

“He wants me to play better,” O’Meara said. “He pushes me. I appreciate that.”

It appears, however, that Woods will go on without his big-brother figure.

“I am happy for my little buddy,” O’Meara said. “He is the greatest player who’s ever played the game. He might not have the greatest record yet, but he is the greatest to ever play. The only one who can stop Tiger is Tiger.”

KARRIE, A GRUDGE

Karrie Webb is getting a lot of requests to compare her game to Woods’, which would flatter most players, male or female. Not Webb, though.

It has made her cranky.

“He doesn’t have to answer these same questions every week,” she spat.

Right. The questions he gets are very different. Such as, “What’s it like to be friendlier than Karrie Webb?”

Anyway, Webb is taking it out on the BBC, England’s telly, which aired a tape of Webb taking improper relief from a sprinkler head. Webb was penalized two shots.

“Just so you know,” she hawked and spat again, “I will never do another interview with the BBC.”

Distraught BBC suits, faced with the possibility of losing the blandest personality on the LPGA Tour, huddled to discuss the possibility of folding the network.

BE THE MAN

The Akron Beacon Journal asked players at the NEC Invitational if they would like to be Tiger Woods.

Not for the day. Not for one swing of the driver. Not for one trip to the ATM. But for every day, forever.

Steve Pate: “No way. I’d be institutionalized.”

Ahem.

Notah Begay: “I’d love to have Tiger’s success, but I wouldn’t want to have to put up with the riff-raff.”

Translation: Take the money, trophies, fame and girls, and leave the media.

Paul McGinley: “I have a great lifestyle myself. I’m just happy being Paul McGinley at the end of the day.”

There must be many days when Tiger would love to be Paul McGinley. Only one question: Who’s Paul McGinley?

TICK, TICK, TICK . . .

Lee Trevino, in the Boston Herald: “Tiger Woods is competing against records and golf courses. That’s what people don’t understand: It’s not a foot race. He’s racing against the clock. I think he is a better bunker player and a better chipper [than Jack Nicklaus]. That is the killer--the short game.

“I was so pleased to hear Nicklaus say in his press conference that [Woods] just has no weaknesses. It doesn’t make any difference what the shot calls for, he can execute it. That is phenomenal for a guy who’s 24 years old. He did it by trial and error. He’s worked as hard as a guy who’s 40 years old today.”

NOTES

Woods returns to Southern California Nov. 27-Dec. 3, when he will host the Williams World Challenge at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks. Woods and 11 other tour players--Tom Lehman is the defending champion--will compete for a $3.5-million purse. Proceeds will benefit the Tiger Woods Foundation, among other charities. Information: (714) 816-1806.

The USGA awarded a $5,000 grant to the Jim Murray Memorial Foundation to fund a journalism scholarship honoring the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist.

Firestone Country Club, site of the NEC Invitational, reportedly is being considered for the 2007 PGA Championship and for future U.S. Opens.