Nelson’s Success Is a Secret

Larry Nelson has a secret that Tiger Woods would probably love to know.

It’s not about the hot streak Nelson is riding into the Toshiba Senior Classic, which begins today at Newport Beach Country Club. Woods knows about streaks.

It’s not about making crucial putts with tournament titles on the line. Woods certainly knows about that.

It’s about seizing control of his tour without attracting much attention. At that, Nelson is an expert, while Woods knows apparently very little.

Nelson’s current streak closely rivals the one put together by Woods last year. Nelson has won six of the last 10 tournaments he has entered and has 12 consecutive top-10 finishes. Woods won nine of 20 tournaments in 2000 and had 17 top-10 finishes.

In doing so, Woods graced the covers of newspapers and magazines and appeared on nearly every TV sports show. Nelson, the Senior PGA Tour player of the year in 2000 when he was the leading money winner, has managed to stay relatively anonymous.

In a field this week that includes 37 of the top 38 money winners from last year, Nelson is the favorite. But so far he has received only one interview request, despite having won twice in four tournaments this season.

The secret? Nobody knows, least of all Nelson.

“I don’t know that I try to maintain any profile at all,” Nelson said. “That’s just kind of the way I’m viewed. It’s not necessarily a choice that I have, it’s just kind of the way things are.”

Nelson, 53, hasn’t exactly come out of nowhere. From 1981 to ’87 he won two PGA Championship titles and the U.S. Open, joining Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Seve Ballesteros as the only players to win three majors in the ‘80s.

He played on Ryder Cup teams in 1979, ’81 and ‘87, posting a 9-3-1 record. He won 10 times in a 23-year PGA Tour career, but somehow never became a household name.

Nelson is a Vietnam War veteran who did not start playing golf until age 21. He is a former pool-hall gambler who once played 9-ball for $800. He quit pool and taught himself to play golf by reading Ben Hogan’s “Five Fundamentals of Modern Golf.” He had hopes of landing a club professional job.

When he decided the club pro thing wasn’t working out, he hit the mini-tour circuit only a couple years after learning to play.

Still, he remains out of the limelight. Perhaps his quiet nature is to blame. He describes himself as an introvert, yet maintains he’s never unapproachable or rude.

“I’m happy to talk to different people and do different things,” he said. “I like people and I like being with people, but I seem to have a low profile. I don’t know why.”

Perhaps it’s because his victory in the 1983 U.S. Open, when he defeated Watson in a rain-interrupted final round at Oakmont, ended on a Monday when many golf fans were at work and couldn’t watch.

His two other major titles came in 1981 and ’83 in the PGA Championships, which has the lowest profile of the four major championships. After each victory, Nelson said he felt cheated that he didn’t get much publicity or any endorsement deals, but he has long gotten over that.

“It doesn’t bother me,” he said. “At this age, I’ve impressed everyone I wanted to impress.”

Lately, he has been impressing on the senior circuit. He is the latest to seize control of the tour, following dominant stretches by Jim Colbert, Hale Irwin and Bruce Fleisher over the last five years.

“[The senior tour] has become a more competitive environment,” Irwin said. “People don’t understand how good these senior players can still play. Although Larry was a major championship winner [on the PGA Tour], I think there was a bit of a time when he started the senior tour that he didn’t assert himself, but now he has.”

Nelson won three times in 1998--his first full season on the tour--and twice in 1999. But he battled a herniated disk in his neck during that time and never felt completely healthy.

In 1998, he entered the U.S. Senior Open at Riviera having finished first or second in four of his previous seven tournaments, but the neck injury flared up and he withdrew.

The next year, he pulled out of the Senior Classic in Newport Beach for the same reason. During that time, Nelson also mixed in four or five events each year on the PGA Tour.

Colbert attributes Nelson’s current success to his focusing on the senior tour.

“The first thing he did was openly commit to playing well out here and winning everything,” Colbert said. “You get out here and you think, ‘Oh, I’ll play five or six on the other tour,’ but it doesn’t work that way. You can’t play part time.”

These days, Nelson dedicates himself to a strict fitness and nutrition regimen and is avoiding activities that trigger the problems in his neck and back. He says good health is the biggest factor in his recent run.

“This is the healthiest I’ve been since I’ve been out here,” Nelson said. “Most of the injuries I’ve had, if I was working in an office or something like that, it wouldn’t even slow me down. But any kind of little thing can affect your golf swing.”

Over the last few months of last year and the beginning of this year, not much has been troublesome for Nelson, especially his putting. He led the tour with a 1.724 putting average last year and his 1.694 putting average is sixth best this year.

Realizing that streaks don’t last long in golf, especially on the senior tour, Nelson hopes to ride his as long as he can. He wants to win the money title again, but there is something higher on his list of desires.

While Nelson has finished second in senior tour majors five times in 12 attempts, including the Tradition and the Senior PGA Championship last year, a senior tour major title has eluded him.

Much like the spotlight.

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Toshiba Classic

* When: Today-Sunday.

* Where: Newport Beach Country Club.

* TV: Today, 2 p.m. (delayed), PAX; Saturday and Sunday, 3-5 p.m., CNBC.

* Tickets: $18 for tournament rounds today-Sunday; $50 for a weeklong grounds pass good through Sunday; $100 for a season clubhouse badge good for tournament and clubhouse admission all week. Seniors 60 and older pay $9 on Friday. Available at the gate, by phone at (949) 515-4840, or on Internet at https://www.toshibaseniorclassic.com.