‘Little Ball’ Still Works for Pavin

Corey Pavin packed his slingshot Monday and headed off to Chicago to do battle. That’s where the David of pro golf will be taking on several Goliaths this week.

The first monster who can mash him is the Medinah Country Club’s Course No. 3, where the PGA Championship will be contested over 7,561 yards, the longest track ever in a major tournament.

Then, there will be more than a hundred of the human kind, all routinely bashing the golf ball more than 300 yards. To them, Medinah is a driver and an eight-iron. To Pavin, it is a driver and maybe another one.

“It doesn’t bother me a whole lot,” Pavin says. “I’ve been a short hitter all my life.”

That Pavin should even be pre-PGA subject matter is an upset. For all intents, he has been missing in action since he hit that memorable four-wood on the 18th hole at the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, sprinting up the fairway in time to see his ball come to rest five feet from the hole. That major victory, his only one, was more than 11 years ago. His last tour win was at the Colonial a year later.

That is, until July 30, only 16 days ago.

“It was pretty emotional,” Pavin says. “There was a lot to take in, all at once.”

There he was, 10 years, 2 months, 11 days and 242 tournament starts removed from that victory at the Colonial, once again standing on an 18th green with the big trophy and the big paycheck awaiting him. It was the U.S. Bank Championship at Brown Deer Park in Milwaukee, and with his ball sitting on the green and main challenger Jerry Kelly’s in the rough, victory was assured. Remaining poised was not.

“I couldn’t dare look at my wife, because I knew I’d lose it, right there,” Pavin says. “I’ve been through so much, and Lisa has been right there with me. I was fighting with myself not to lose it.”

He meant composure, not the tournament, which he had pretty well salted away with an opening-round 26 on his first nine, best ever on the PGA Tour, and a 36-hole total of 125, also best ever on the tour. His card for the opening nine read like the judging of a lousy figure skater: 3-3-2-3-2-4-3-3-3. The temptation was to ask him how he screwed up that sixth hole.

Pavin is 46, 5 feet 9 and 155 pounds. He ranks last on the PGA Tour, where muscles and money seem directly related, in average driving distance at 264.1 yards.

Asked when he is teamed with the likes of Tiger Woods or John Daly just how far behind he is after the drives, he says, “Usually about 50-60 yards.”

He is a singles hitter in a world of Babe Ruths. Gary D’Amato, writing in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel of Pavin’s victory, pointed out that the event had been won exactly 10 years ago by Woods, whose victory could be seen as the beginning of the change in pro golf.

When Tiger said “...’hello, world’ with that victory, he might just as well have been saying, ‘Goodbye Corey Pavin,’ ” D’Amato wrote.

But Pavin, who was among the best and richest golfers in the world from the mid-1980s to the mid-’90s, never quite left. As his friend, tour pro and fellow UCLA alum, Duffy Waldorf, puts it, Pavin is a true “gutty little Bruin.”

When most his age are selling shirts and five-irons in the pro shop, waiting for age 50 and the Champions Tour, Pavin has kept the ball rolling toward the hole. He lives in Dallas now, is back with his longtime caddie, Eric Schwarz, and ranks 91st in the world and 44th on the PGA Tour, with winnings this season of $1,249,301, including his $720,000 payday in Milwaukee.

He is also one of captain Tom Lehman’s Ryder Cup assistants and is actually stirring up some Internet speculation that Lehman, who may make the team with points of his own, will add Pavin as a player because of his experience and competitive zeal.

He won $43,863 Sunday at the International near Denver and said Monday that he’s feeling as well as he has in some time. He hasn’t even played in a PGA championship since 2000, when he missed the cut, and hasn’t done any damage in the event since his second-place finish in 1994.

Thursday afternoon, he will tee it up in a threesome with German Bernard Langer, who drove it an average of 289 yards last year, and Texan John Rollins, who averages 294. In the threesome ahead will be Daly, whose drives should be measured by bouncing a laser beam off a satellite.

Pavin will be the guy with mud on his four-wood and a slingshot in his back pocket.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.