He’s Climbing Hills Again

What is it with Retief Goosen? Is he doing it to us again?

You know about the Goosen clock? Wind it up and every three years it goes off, for no apparent reason.

Make no mistake, he has great timing. This guy is a June bug in polyester pants. There is no doubt that Goosen has the game to win the U.S. Open. He has done it before, three years ago at Southern Hills in Tulsa, Okla., where he won his only major title in an 18-hole playoff.

But long before then, the word was out on Goosen ... so smooth, all his swing needed was a frame and a place to hang it. That’s the Goosen we’ve seen through two rounds of the U.S. Open here at Shinnecock Hills, the guy who shot a 66 Friday and whose four-under total of 136 is only two shots behind leaders Phil Mickelson and Shigeki Maruyama.

It already has been a good year for Goosen, who has five top 10s in 11 PGA Tour events and ranks among the top players in scoring, putting and combined driving distance and accuracy.

He also has made $1.2 million, and you would think that with all that dough, he could afford a livelier personality.

The 35-year-old South African makes vanilla look outrageous, oatmeal seem racy and beige an absolute riot of color. It’s not as if Goosen is trying to be boring, it’s merely his nature.

He doesn’t wave to the fans. Neither does he acknowledge their cheers or even seem to hear them. He acts as if he smiled, his face would crack.

When Goosen won at Southern Hills, the player he beat in the playoff was Mark Brooks, who isn’t all that colorful, either, which is totally out of character for a Texan. On that day, Goosen and Brooks wore tan slacks with white shirts and white caps. The only way you could tell them apart was that Brooks was the one with a drawl.

Goosen won that playoff by two shots and the tournament wire to wire. He either led by himself or was tied for the lead at the end of every round. He could have won it all a day earlier, but he three-putted the 18th hole on Sunday for a bogey, a turn of events that some thought would inflict severe damage on Goosen’s psyche.

As it turns out, Goosen’s psyche has been an object of concern since he earned his European Tour card in 1992. In his first nine years, he won only four times, and the experts figured he lacked that certain something to break through in the big time. Some pegged Goosen for having low self-confidence.

The morning of his playoff against Brooks, Goosen received calls of encouragement from Nick Faldo and countryman Ernie Els. Don’t worry about that three-putt bogey, they told him.

It must have worked. Goosen was also buoyed by a talk the night before with Jos Vanstiphout, his sports psychologist.

The conversation, as recounted by Vanstiphout, went like this:

Vanstiphout: “How are you?”

Goosen: “OK.”

There can be only one reaction: Is that all it takes to be a sports psychologist?

That U.S. Open victory seemed to be all Goosen needed to climb onto center stage as a big-time player. Since then, he has won twice more on the PGA Tour, four more times on the European Tour, led the Order of Merit twice and won a scoring title.

Goosen hasn’t won another major, but that’s something entirely within his sights this weekend. If winning a second U.S. Open isn’t exciting enough for everyone, Goosen need not apologize. At this point, what you see is what you get.

Goosen started playing golf when he was 11 in Pietersburg, South Africa, and he was regarded as a bright prospect, in the same league as Els, in the junior ranks. But Goosen’s progress was stalled when he was struck by lightning as a young amateur and he had health problems that lingered for years.

Maybe that explains why Goosen is so quiet, so undemonstrative in the way he goes about his business of golf.

He had it, lost it and then found it again. And this weekend at Shinnecock, Goosen has a chance to prove once again that he has the stuff to win a major championship.

If there is cheering for him early Sunday evening, he might even do something completely out of character, such as tip his cap, right before he lifts that trophy high over his head.