AFTERWORD: A Year Later…

IF YOU WANTED to explain the year 1995 in golf, the best way to do it would probably be with a series of snapshots:

• Ben Crenshaw, hands on his knees, tears streaming down his face after making his final putt to win the Masters seven days after the death of his lifetime teacher and mentor, Harvey Penick.

• Corey Pavin leaping in the air to see where his four-wood to the 18th green at Shinnecock had landed, knowing in his heart that he had just hit the shot that would make him a U.S. Open champion.

• Costantino Rocca on his knees, pounding the ground in disbelief and joy after his 70-foot putt on the 18th green at St. Andrews forced a British Open playoff with John Daly. Even though Daly won the playoff, Rocca’s putt was the shot of the year in golf.

• The stunned look on Curtis Strange’s face after he missed the putt that cost him his Ryder Cup singles match with Nick Faldo, a match that will be remembered—fairly or unfairly—as the one that gave Europe a stunning upset victory at Oak Hill.

Those were golf’s headlines, the moments that would be remembered for years to come. They were not, by any means, the only stories in a year that was as eventful and emotional as anyone connected with the game could hope for.

The vagaries of the game were once again very much on display: Nick Price, after winning ten times in 1993 and 1994, didn’t win once in 1995. He fell from first on the money list to thirtieth. How quickly can the game’s fortunes change in a year? Consider this: in 1994, Price made $1,140,000 more than Jeff Sluman in official earnings. In 1995, his earnings exceeded Sluman’s by $19.

The most compelling story during the early part of the year belonged to Davis Love III. Love had played poorly during the closing months of 1994 and, as a result, had finished thirty-third on the money list—his lowest finish in five years. Since he hadn’t won a tournament and hadn’t finished in the top thirty on the money list, he began 1995 needing to win one of the year’s first twelve tournaments or be forced to sit out the Masters.

In a sense, the extra pressure was probably good for Love. His mind had wandered away from the game the previous year because he had been so disappointed by his performance in the majors. Knowing he had to win seemed to help him refocus on the game. Right from the start he played well. Naturally, every time his name popped onto the leader board, the questions about the Masters began.

The story had added poignance for several reasons: Love had been born five days after his father, Davis Love Jr., had led the 1964 Masters after the first round. He had grown up in Georgia. And, perhaps most significant, he would not have been facing his current dilemma if not for his decision to call a one-stroke penalty on himself at the Western Open when he couldn’t remember if he had re-marked his ball properly on a green during the second round.

That penalty had caused him to miss the cut by one shot. If he had made the cut, he would have earned at least $2,000 for the week. At year’s end, he was $766 out of the top thirty. Love was asked often how he felt about calling the penalty on himself, given that it might cost him a spot in the Masters. His answer was always the same: “How would I feel if I won the Masters and always wondered if I had cheated to get in.”

Each week, the pressure built. Love was in contention at Pebble Beach, then again at San Diego. He had chances at Doral and Bay Hill. Then, at the Players Championship, he birdied the 16th hole on Sunday to tie for the lead only to get his tee shot wet at 17. He finished fourth.

There was only one chance left: New Orleans. Normally, Love would have taken the week off to rest for the Masters. This time, he didn’t have that luxury. Once again, he was on the leader board all week. On Sunday, he had a two-shot lead on Mike Heinen on the back nine. But nerves took over. He began spraying the ball.

“I was fighting myself,” he said. “I kept telling myself to keep playing for birdies, but I knew deep down that all I needed were pars and I lost my aggressiveness.”

He lost the lead too, bogeying two of the last three holes. He and Heinen had to go to a playoff. Love parred the first playoff hole from off the green to stay alive, then stuck a gorgeous five-iron three feet from the pin on the second playoff hole. After Heinen missed his putt, Love managed to keep his hands steady long enough to get the putt in the hole.

He was in the Masters. Love rarely loses his composure. But when he tried to talk about all the people who had helped him through the difficult weeks that had just passed, he choked up.

Several hundred miles away, in Austin, Texas, Harvey Penick lay on his deathbed. He was ninety and had been sick for a long time. Tom Kite, one of his longtime pupils, was with him. When Kite heard that Love had won at New Orleans, he leaned down and whispered in Penick’s ear: “Davis won New Orleans. He’s in the Masters.”

Penick had known Davis Love Jr. until the plane crash that killed him in 1988. He had known Davis III as a little boy and had occasionally looked at his swing. When Kite delivered the news of Davis’s victory, Penick was too weak to talk. But he managed to raise his hands and clap. Kite thought a tiny smile curled around his lips. Less than an hour later, he died.

Kite’s first call after Penick’s death was to Crenshaw, who had played in New Orleans because he was the defending champion. Crenshaw had taken his first lesson from Penick thirty-six years earlier at the age of six. It was after midnight when Crenshaw finally tracked Love down to give him the sad news.

“That wipes out a lot of the happiness from winning,” Love said.

“Don’t feel that way,” Crenshaw said. “You probably gave him his last moment of joy.”

Crenshaw and Kite were pallbearers at the funeral that Wednesday. Love wanted to go, but Crenshaw talked him out of it, telling him he needed to practice since he hadn’t been able to get to Augusta early the way he normally did. “Harvey would have wanted you to be ready to play,” Crenshaw said. “Don’t go.”

Love took Crenshaw’s advice. Four days after the funeral, the Masters came down to two men: Love and Crenshaw. And, just as it would have been scripted in the movies, it was Crenshaw, the one most affected by Penick’s death, who birdied the 16th and 17th holes to break a tie with Love and win his second Masters title.

He walked up the 18th fairway, cheers ringing in his ears and Penick very much on his mind. Struggling to hang on to his composure, he coaxed his final two-foot putt into the hole and then collapsed, knees buckling, the tears running down his face.

Love was in the interview room at that moment, watching the scene on a TV monitor. “If I hadn’t been in there with all those people,” he said, “I’d have cried too.”

Crenshaw’s playing partner on that last day at Augusta was someone who had grown accustomed to being the “other” player in the last group on Sunday: Brian Henninger.

Eleven months after he had dealt with the John Daly hordes en route to his second-place finish in Atlanta, Henninger stunned the golf world by tying for the lead after three rounds in his first Masters. He had earned his spot the previous July by winning the rain-shortened Deposit Guaranty Classic and he loved just about every second of his first trip to Augusta.

Not that it was easy. He started out very nervous on Thursday, bogeying two of the first four holes. But he shook that off and managed to shoot 70 for the day. A 68 the next day moved him into contention. His playing partner on Saturday? Davis Love.

Although he had never played with Henninger before, Love knew that he loved to fish and hunt. He also remembered how nervous he had been in his first Masters. And so, even though they were competing with one another, Love went out of his way to talk fishing and hunting to keep Henninger loose.

It worked. Henninger shot another 68, one that included a fifty-foot bomb for birdie at the 16th, the same hole where Jack Nicklaus had made a similar putt twenty years earlier to clinch one of his six Masters titles. “I swear I could feel his presence,” Henninger said after the round.

He was tied with Crenshaw for the lead and all of a sudden everyone wanted to know more about him. This was Fantasy Island stuff. Henninger’s whole family had come to see him play and he would now be in the final group on Sunday. He was a little too keyed up when Saturday was finally over and had trouble sleeping. He woke up too early, made a bogey early, and never made a birdie all day. Even so, he finished in tenth place, earning him an automatic trip back to Augusta in 1996.

The only bad news about the week was that his performance and his easygoing charm turned Henninger into a media star. He spent most of the next two months being interviewed by everyone from Sports Illustrated to Golf Digest. It was the first time he had dealt with that kind of distraction, and it affected his concentration and his game. He ended 1995 searching for the magic he had found at Augusta.

Paul Azinger spend the entire year searching—for Paul Azinger. He had known when he made his emotional return to the tour in 1994 that he could not expect to be the player he had been before he had been diagnosed with lymphoma at the end of 1993.

But he was not prepared for the struggle he would face throughout the year. A fourth-place finish in Hawaii in January had buoyed him, but he couldn’t string good rounds together the way he once had. By the Masters, he was starting to feel frustrated.

“I should have had trouble sleeping last night,” he said just before leaving the locker room to play his opening round. “I didn’t. I slept like a baby. I’m not keyed up the way I should be before a major. I’m just not as sharp mentally or emotionally as I need to be. I need to get that edge back before I’m going to be able to play the way I want to.”

It was also difficult physically, at times. Azinger had been warned by his doctors that one of the aftereffects of chemotherapy was lingering fatigue. Sure enough, he often found himself tiring late in rounds and late in tournaments. Given the tiny margin between success and failure on the PGA Tour, that alone would be enough to keep him from being the pre-chemo Azinger.

Even so, he refused to make excuses and plugged away, waiting for the breakthrough. It didn’t come by year’s end and he finished 100th on the money list, his lowest finish in a healthy year since 1984. Azinger was frustrated, but not discouraged.

“I’m healthy and that’s the most important thing,” he said. “I would love to have bounced right back to where I was, but that’s not the way life is. I’ll just keep on working.”

No doubt.

If Azinger was frustrated, John Cook was baffled. After a slow start in 1994, he had bounced back to play extremely well during the second half of the year, finishing in the top five at both the U.S. Open and the PGA. But 1995 was a mirror of the early part of 1994. Putts wouldn’t drop. Cuts either weren’t made or were made on the number, putting Cook in the early weekend groups he despised. Late in the year, he was actually in jeopardy of losing his playing card and talking once again about how much longer he wanted to play.

The fall finally brought relief. Cook didn’t win, but he did contend again. He strung together several strong finishes that not only secured his place among the top 125 money winners but put him into the top 100—he was ninety-seventh at season’s end. Still, for someone who had more than $1 million in 1992 and more than $400,000 in 1994 even without winning, a year in which he earned $186,977 was baffling for Cook.

It wasn’t as if he couldn’t hit the ball well anymore. He was convinced that he still had the game to win, that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with his swing. He still went through tremendous mood swings, going from calm and analytical one day, to furious and ready-to-quit the next. He could joke one minute about being nicknamed “Mr. Happy,” and then be mad at the world a minute later.

In October, he finally won again: at the Mexican Open. Although the event is unofficial, being able to win something for the first time in more than three years put a smile back on Cook’s face. He was still only thirty-eight, an age when a lot of golfers take their games to new levels. He would begin 1996 with new hope… again.

Billy Andrade also began 1996 with hope, but also some doubts. He had ended 1994 on an up note and had played well during the first part of 1995. But instead of taking the next step—winning again—he found himself sliding. It wasn’t anything as dramatic as the eight straight missed cuts in 1993, just never quite getting to the level he had reached in 1991, when he had won twice.

Perhaps no tournament summed up the year better for Andrade than the U.S. Open. He had missed qualifying for the tournament by one shot in 1994 and didn’t want to be left out two years in a row. On the Tuesday before the Kemper Open, he played 36 holes of Open qualifying at Woodmont Country Club in searing heat, waking up at 5:30 in the morning to make his 7:10 tee time comfortably.

The entire day was a struggle. When he had finished at 139 he checked the scores, did some quick math in his head, and called Jody: “I could be here a while,” he reported. “I think I’m going to be in a playoff.”

He was exactly right. Eight players tied for the final three spots. It wasn’t until the fifth playoff hole, shortly before dark and fifteen hours after his wakeup, that Andrade clinched his spot with a birdie.

He played well that week at the Kemper and came to the Open full of confidence. By the weekend, he was fighting the flu though, something he didn’t want to use as an excuse either publicly or to himself. He knew he wasn’t going to win the tournament, but he had an excellent shot at the top fifteen. If he could finish that high, he would clinch a spot in both the ’96 Open and the ’96 Masters, the latter being especially important to him since he hadn’t played at Augusta since 1993.

With three holes to play on Sunday, Andrade was right on the number to be in the top fifteen. But a bogey at the 16th hole and a missed birdie putt at 18 dropped him into a tie for nineteenth, a huge disappointment. Still, he didn’t get discouraged. The following week at Hartford he shot a course record 62 on Saturday to move into contention and finished fifth. That earned him enough money to make him exempt for the British Open.

Andrade was excited about playing at St. Andrews even though he got in too late to make plans for Jody and Cameron, who was now fifteen months old, to come. He had one great moment in Scotland: As he was teeing off on Friday afternoon, Arnold Palmer was making his final walk down 18, playing his last round in a British Open. Andrade had gone to Wake Forest on an Arnold Palmer Scholarship. As he walked off the first tee, he stopped to watch Palmer putt on 18, a few yards away. When Palmer holed out to a huge ovation, he looked up at Andrade and gave him a thumbs up. Andrade walked down the first fairway tingling with pride.

He missed the cut that day though and didn’t seriously contend again for the rest of the year, finishing sixty-ninth on the money list. He was still only thirty-one when the year ended and still hopeful that the magic he felt was so close would be findable in 1996.

Greg Norman had no trouble finding magic in his clubs throughout 1995. He won three tournaments and broke the PGA Tour record for earnings in a year, winning $1,654,959 in only sixteen tournaments. That meant Norman averaged more than $100,000 in every tournament he entered for the year. He passed the struggling Nick Price in the Sony World Rankings and finished the year as the unquestioned number one player in the world.

And yet it was another year full of ups and downs for Norman. There was—again—the lack of a major championship victory. Norman played superbly for 16 holes on the last day of the Masters and stood on the 17th tee tied for second place with Davis Love, one shot behind Ben Crenshaw. But a horrendous second shot there led to a three-putt bogey and he ended up settling for a tie for third place.

The U.S. Open was even worse. Norman led after thirty-six holes, after fifty-four holes, and after sixty-three holes. But, as in the past, he could not produce the shots when he had to down the stretch on Sunday afternoon in a major.

The snakes all had names: Bob Tway at Inverness in 1986; Larry Mize at Augusta in 1987; Mark Calcavecchia at Troon in 1989; Paul Azinger back at Inverness in 1993. This time the snake’s name was Corey Pavin. He played brilliantly on the back nine, overtaking Norman with a birdie on the 15th hole. That gave him a one-shot lead going to the 18th. Knowing that this was his chance to finally shed the Best-Player-Never-To-Have-Won-A-Major label, Pavin had to wait on the tee almost fifteen minutes because play had slowed to a near standstill in the brutal conditions at Shinnecock.

He chatted calmly with playing partner Ian Woosnam about how bad traffic on the Long Island Expressway was likely to be that evening, then simply walked away from the tee to be by himself for a few minutes. When it was finally time to play, he hit his drive safely down the right side, still more than 200 yards—228 to be precise—from the green.

The play was a four-wood, an awfully long shot to execute with a major championship at stake. Only, Pavin is about as good as anyone alive at creating shots in difficult circumstances. The shot flew over all the danger, bore through the wind, and finally rolled to a stop, five feet from the pin. Pavin was literally running after the ball as soon as he hit it, knowing he had hit a great shot. When he saw where it had ended up, he leaped about as high in the air as a 5-foot-7-inch Gritty Little Bruin can leap.

At almost the same moment, Norman, one shot behind Pavin, was hitting a sand wedge third shot to the par-five 16th hole. The shot hit on the front of the green, then spun backward off the putting surface. That was Sunday at the Open in a nutshell: Pavin was able to get a four-wood within five feet; Norman couldn’t keep a sand wedge on the green.

Pavin was the champion. Norman, always gracious in defeat, welcomed him to “the club” of major title winners, then went into the press room and swore he wasn’t disappointed. The look on his face, as he walked briskly to a car that had been backed up to the back of the press tent to help him make a fast escape, said differently.

Norman wasn’t factor at either the British Open or the PGA, but he did make major headlines one more time before the year was out. That was at the World Series of Golf, where he accused Mark McCumber of cheating during the first round.

It is almost unheard of on tour to publicly accuse another player of cheating. But Norman was convinced he had seen McCumber remove several blades of grass from his line on the seventh green. McCumber insisted it was a dead insect—which would have been legal to remove. Norman was so convinced—and so incensed—that he refused to sign McCumber’s scorecard at the end of the round. Then, after a PGA Tour official signed the card, Norman threatened to withdraw from the tournament.

Eventually, Laura Norman and Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem talked him into continuing and, amazingly, Norman pulled himself together and won the tournament on Sunday, winning a playoff from Price and Billy Mayfair with a chip-in on the first playoff hole that brought back memories of shots people had made playing against Norman in the past.

The victory made Norman the PGA Tour’s all-time leading money winner, allowing him to pass Tom Kite. But the McCumber controversy festered all fall. A number of players defended Norman, bringing up past incidents in which McCumber had been questioned for actions he had taken on the golf course. Others, remembering that McCumber had blasted Norman publicly a year earlier for his involvement in the World Golf Tour, wondered if the incident was more personal than professional.

Norman stood by his story; McCumber by his. And, as is so often the case with Norman, a lot of time was spent talking about matters that had nothing to do with his remarkable ability to play the game.

Norman’s year was a walk in the park compared to what happened to Nick Faldo.

Having made the decision to play the U.S. Tour in order to better prepare for the major championships, Faldo rented a house in Orlando and showed up in January as a full-fledged member of the PGA Tour. He played very well during the winter months, winning in Doral and contending in several other places, and seemed to be fitting in quite comfortably.

American players who had never known Faldo enjoyed his dry sense of humor. He seemed looser and happier not having to deal with the European media on a daily basis. But there was more to the story than met the eye.

In making his decision to come to the U.S., Faldo had talked often about how difficult it would be for him to be away from his family—wife, Gill, and their three children—for long periods of time. By midsummer rumors were ripe that Faldo was planning to leave them for a very long period of time: forever.

Gill Faldo showed up at the Ryder Cup at Oak Hill in September and she and Nick looked very much like a loving husband and wife. That turned out to be their last public appearance together. Less than a month later, Faldo filed for divorce, offering Gill an $11.8 million settlement. According to the British tabloids, he was leaving his wife and children for Brenna Cepelak, a twenty-year-old University of Arizona junior who was a member of the women’s golf team. They had met, according to the reports, the previous January when Faldo had played in the Northern Telecom Open in Tucson.

Faldo, who in spite of his move to the U.S. Tour, never seriously contended at any of the four majors, showed up at the last tournament of the year, the Tour Championship in Tulsa, accompanied by bodyguards whose job was to keep the paparazzi and the media away from him. By the end of the week, Faldo was so sick of the American press he claimed he actually missed the British press.

“By comparison, they’re a bunch of sweethearts,” he said.

Cepelak apparently felt the pressure too. She dropped out of Arizona in the fall, because, sources at the school said, she couldn’t deal with the media attention she was getting on a daily basis.

That was the end of the Faldo soap opera for 1995. No doubt, there would be much more to come in 1996—on and off the golf course.

Tom Watson and Nick Price didn’t make any tabloids during 1995 and neither of them had to resort to bodyguards at any point. But both had frustrating years nonetheless.

Watson had played so well in 1994 that he was convinced it was only a matter of time before he found a putting stroke that would hold up on Sunday afternoon, allowing him to win again, perhaps even in a major. He thought about going to a long putter during the ’94 offseason but abandoned that idea, showing up for his ’95 debut at Phoenix with an old putter he hadn’t used for years. He was in contention for three days at Phoenix, then faded, picking up where he had left off at the end of ’94.

As it turned out, he didn’t come as close to winning during ’95 as he had during ’94. He had moments, including a magic first day at St. Andrews that left him leading the tournament. But his swing wasn’t quite as good as it had been a year earlier, and although he putted well at times, he couldn’t putt consistently well enough to contend.

A number of people thought he might be one of Lanny Wadkins’s captain’s choices for the Ryder Cup team because of his experience, his ball-striking, and his ability to play well on tough courses. Wadkins opted for Fred Couples and Curtis Strange and Watson, as has been his policy for the last few years, played his last U.S. tournament early in the fall and then went home to Kansas City for the winter. He finished the year fifty-eighth on the money list, not bad for someone who turned forty-six in September, but not nearly as high as Watson would have liked.

Price finished twenty-nine spots higher than Watson—thirtieth. That was twenty-nine spots lower than he had been in 1993 or 1994. The closest Price came to winning was the lost playoff to Norman at the World Series of Golf. Beyond that, he was a mere shadow of the player he had been during the previous two years when he had been the game’s best player.

Price had finished 1994 convinced that he could handle all the attention that was coming his way. He had left IMG and set up his own company. He vowed not to let the pressure of being number one get to him.

And yet, it still got to him. All the years of saying yes to everyone finally caught up with him. Price became uncharacteristically impatient—with himself, with his golf game, and with outsiders. He even groused publicly during the British Open, first about not being on the cover of the program as defending champion, then about a tee time Friday that was so late he finished in frigid, windy conditions at almost 9 o’clock.

Price, who never seemed to get upset, now seemed constantly upset. He wasn’t getting enough practice time. Or enough private time. His easy smile seemed forced. He even refused interviews one day at the Masters. Nick Price refusing interviews? That was man bites dog stuff. A few weeks later, he took a few weeks off to collect himself.

Nothing worked. He had flashes—leading the U.S. Open after the first round, almost pulling out the World Series on the last day—but he just wasn’t the player he had been. Price had made it clear at the end of ’94 that the only thing really left for him to do in golf was win more major titles. He had two PGAs and one British Open and wanted to join the elite group that had won all four major titles.

Perhaps ’95 was an aberration, an inevitable fallback after nearly three years of absolutely sizzling golf. Perhaps Price simply needed a year to adjust to the harsh glare of a spotlight usually reserved only for Palmer or Nicklaus or Watson or Norman. Or, perhaps the hot streak was over. As Tom Kite points out, a golfer never knows when he has just won his last tournament because at that moment he feels invincible.

Price certainly didn’t feel invincible at the end of 1995. But he still felt hopeful. After all, he would only be thirty-nine in January, and if his pal Norman’s theory is correct, his best golf should still be ahead of him.

Jeff Sluman finished 1995 convinced that his best golf was still to come. The progress he had made since his nadir in 1993 bordered on remarkable.

“Two years ago, I had no idea where the ball was going to go when I hit it,” he said. “If it landed in the fairway, it was more luck than anything else. By the end of last year, I started to feel as if I had an idea about where it was going. Now, if it goes anywhere except the fairway, I’m shocked.”

Sluman’s results in 1995 reflected that confidence. Not only did he make $563,581—his second-best year financially on tour—he was in position to win several times. At Greensboro he had the lead on the back nine; at the Buick Open he had a two-shot lead with nine holes left and at the Buick Southern he was tied for the lead on Sunday.

He didn’t win and that was frustrating, but the fact that he was playing well enough to be in position to win not once, but three times, was a long way from those cold days in 1993 when making a cut represented a great week of work.

“He’s going to win again soon,” Paul Goydos said after playing with him late in the year. “And when he does, he’ll win a bunch more times after that. His game is that sharp.”

Even though he didn’t win, during 1995 Sluman enjoyed golf more than he ever had before. He thought often about his mom, who had passed away late in 1994, and how much she had enjoyed his success in golf and made a point of enjoying the game no matter what hand he was dealt. When he came up $19 short of making the thirty-man field for the Tour Championship, he was disappointed, but philosophical.

“It means I missed playing in one tournament,” he said. “It’s too bad, because I really like the golf course [Southern Hills], but it’s still just one event. It just gives me one more thing to shoot for next year.”

Most important to Sluman, he was shooting high—actually low—again.

As superbly as Lee Janzen played in 1995, it was the event he didn’t play in that everyone talked about when the year was over.

Janzen won three times—the Players Championship, the Kemper Open, and the International—and finished third on the money list with earnings of $1,378,966. He proved again and again that he was as good a finisher as there was in the game, most notably at the Kemper where he birdied the 18th hole to force a playoff with Corey Pavin, then birdied the 18th again to win the playoff. Out-gritting the GLB is not an easy thing to do.

“Look at it this way,” Janzen told Pavin that day. “Last year I beat Ernie [Els] the week before the Open at Westchester and he won the Open. So, you’re the favorite next week.”

Apparently, Janzen knows golf about as well as he plays it.

And yet, when the PGA was over, Janzen, because he had played so poorly in 1994 (except for that win at Westchester) was in twelfth place on the Ryder Cup points list. To the surprise of many, captain Lanny Wadkins did not add him as a captain’s pick. Janzen wasn’t surprised that Wadkins picked Couples—“If Freddie can walk, you have to pick him,” he had said a few weeks earlier—but like a lot of people he was surprised that Curtis Strange was selected.

“Maybe the fact that I didn’t play that well in ’93 was a factor in Lanny’s mind,” Janzen said.

Regardless, Janzen kept his sense of humor about the whole thing. After winning at the International the week after the selections were made, he walked into the locker room and volunteered to caddy at Oak Hill for any of the players who were going there to play.

And, even without a Ryder Cup spot, the year was a breakthrough for Janzen. He put to rest any questions about whether his ’93 U.S. Open victory had been a flash-in-the-pan deal and established himself as one of the game’s top players. The three victories gave him seven in four years and put him behind only Love (nine wins) among players in their age group.

“If you’re coming down the stretch in a tournament and Lee Janzen is in contention, watch out,” said Love. “He’s as tough as anyone there is out there.”

And, in all likelihood, tough enough to be on the Ryder Cup team in 1997. “It definitely gives me something to shoot for the next two years,” he said.

One would be foolish to bet against him.

Paul Goydos, Mike Donald, Bruce Fleisher, and Jeff Cook thought about the ’95 Ryder Cup in only one context: spectating. Each, in his own way, was trying to find a way to be on the Big Tour in 1996.

Cook was the longest shot of the four. Having played poorly in the ’94 Q-School finals, he found himself back on the Nike Tour, a place he didn’t want to be for a fifth year. He had thought that he had found an answer to his putting problems at the end of ’94 but that turned out to be an illusion.

The entire year was a struggle, full of missed cuts and missed opportunities. Cook never finished higher than thirteenth in a Nike Tour event and ended up missing eleven cuts in twenty-four tournaments. He finished ninety-fourth on the money list, failing even to qualify for the Nike Tour Championships.

That meant he had to go back to the second stage of Qualifying School and, unlike in the past, when he had breezed into the finals, he failed to qualify, meaning he didn’t even have a spot on the Nike Tour for 1996. With his thirty-fifth birthday coming up in the spring, Cook was faced with returning to the Asian Tour, something he had thought was part of his past.

“I know I have to start thinking about my future,” he said. “I’m not really sure what I want to do. I can’t play forever and I know I want to coach someday. The question is am I ready to give up the dream just yet. I’m really not certain. I should still have some good golf left in me, but the last two years have been discouraging.”

Mike Donald had finished 1994 on an up note. Even though he didn’t make it through Q-School, he had played well enough at the end of the year to make it back into the top 150 (he was 141st) money earners, meaning he was partially exempt on tour.

Actually, Donald had been agonizingly close to getting his fully exempt status back. He had figured out that if Kenny Perry had missed an eight-foot bogey putt on the final hole of the Hardee’s Classic (where Donald tied for third), he would have made an additional $25,000 that week. That would have put him back into the top 125.

Playing a practice round with Perry at the Memorial Tournament, Donald mentioned to him that he had been rooting very hard for him to miss that putt.

“But, Mike,” Perry said, “the putt was for bogey.”

Donald smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah well, you know how it is, Kenny,” he said. “There has to be someone out here rooting for you to make double.”

Since Perry didn’t make double, Donald was back on the seesaw, going back and forth between the Big Tour and the Nike Tour. It was a struggle. By year’s end, he had made only two cuts in fifteen events on the Big Tour and a total of $5,760. The Nike Tour wasn’t any kinder: $4,941 in seven tournaments. For all intents and purposes, a lost year.

Donald turned forty during the summer and, like Jeff Cook, had to wonder how much longer he would hang on hoping for chances to play. He was starting to run out of time—and patience.

Bruce Fleisher was seven years older than Donald and in an entirely different situation. Each passing year put him one year closer to the promised land of fifty and eligibility for the senior tour.

After his disastrous 1994, Fleisher dragged himself back to Q-School, and even with a bad shoulder, finished tied for seventh. That put him back on tour, but the shoulder limited him to twenty-two tournaments during the year. He played well at times, very well—including an eighth at Westchester and a tenth at Quad Cities—but being unable to play a full schedule hurt him. He did hold on to partially exempt status by finishing 154th on the money list with $108,830 in earnings and that did put him back into the finals of Q-School. All he wanted for 1996 was one thing: exempt status and a healthy shoulder. He knew he still had the game if his body would just let him play it.

No one rode the roller coaster during 1995 quite the way Paul Goydos did. He began the year full of confidence after making $241,107 for a seventy-fifth place finish on the money list. He had finished in the top ten four times and the top twenty seven times. He was confident enough about his future on tour that he and Wendy began looking for a bigger house.

They found a house and planned to move in during October. In the meantime, Paul was fighting himself and his golf game. It was a year of missed opportunities. At the U.S. Open, after making the cut on the number, Goydos shot 70 in the third round, the fourth lowest score of the day. That vaulted him into twenty-second place, meaning a good Sunday would not only secure him a big check but could get him into his first Masters.

Instead, he shot 78 and made $3,969 for sixty-fourth place.

Three weeks later, at Williamsburg, a third round 64 put him into seventh place. With three holes to play, he was still tied for eleventh. But a double-bogey on the 16th hole cost him seven places and $13,000, turning a $25,000 week into a $12,000 week.

It was that way all summer and fall. Every time he was in position to make a substantial check, one hole or one bad shot seemed to jump up on Sunday and cost him big money. It was beginning to look like the classic story of the player who misses just enough putts to end up back in Q-School.

With two weeks left, Goydos was 142nd on the money list and almost resigned to his fate. “What happens, happens,” he said. “I feel like my game has been close the last few weeks, but close isn’t good enough right now. I know what the deal is.”

Always figuring, Goydos had calculated that he would need to make about $30,000 in Las Vegas and Texas to get to 130th on the money list. Because five foreign players were in the top 125, the exempt list would be extended to 130th. Since he had made just under $113,000 in thirty-three tournaments to that point, $30,000 seemed like a lot of money.

It seemed like a lot more after an opening 73 put him near the bottom of the field in Vegas. But he bounced back with a 65 the next day and ended up playing the last four days in a combined twenty-two under par. That was good enough to tie for fifteenth place, giving him $23,250, his largest payday of the year. Unfortunately, a number of other players on the bubble played well that week too, and Goydos only moved up five spots on the money list. Now though, he was only $5,000 away from player number 130—Russ Cochran.

If you really wanted drama on the golf course, San Antonio on the third Sunday in October was the place to be. Several players on the bubble who had missed the cut were flooding the press room phones with calls while several other players fought their way around knowing that one shot could literally be the difference between a spot on tour in ’96 and a trip back to Q-School.

Nervous, Goydos made three bogeys on the front nine. He appeared to be dead. But he dug in on the back nine and made three birdies. His biggest putt of the day though was for par—a ten-footer at the 17th. “I just knew, absolutely knew, that I could not afford another bogey,” he said. “A par there didn’t guarantee me anything, but it gave me a chance.”

When he had signed his card, Goydos walked into the press room and watched the computer. One player would make a birdie and Goydos figured he was out. Then someone else would bogey and he thought he was in. It went that way all afternoon. When the tournament was finally over—the pace of play was torturously slow, much like the last day at Q-School—Goydos had finished tied for twenty-second place. That was good for $10,211. Total for the year: $146,211.

But was it enough?

No one knew. The Tour’s computer in Ponte Vedra, which normally spit out a new money list on Sunday evening within thirty minutes of the final putt’s dropping, had gone down. Goydos and several other players left for the airport still not knowing their status for the next year.

Sitting in the terminal, Goydos did the math by hand: he thought he was 129th, $760 clear of Cochran, who was now, according to Goydos’s math, 131st. He called Wes Seeley, the Tour’s communications rep at the tournament, just before his plane took off. Seeley told him that the computer was still down, but Mike Hulbert, sitting at home, had also done the math by hand and came up with the same numbers as Goydos.

It became official while Goydos was in the air. Seeley called Wendy as soon as he knew for sure. The sigh of relief he heard was the sound of Wendy breathing again.

The next day, the Goydos family moved into their new house. And celebrated.

Curtis Strange did no celebrating during the fall. Instead, he found himself doing a lot of explaining.

As in ’93 and ’94, Strange had played some solid golf during ’95. He had a great chance to win at the Bob Hope in February, but a late bogey gave the tournament to Kenny Perry. Still, he arrived at the British Open thinking he was in good position to be one of Wadkins’s captain’s picks for the Ryder Cup team.

Having just missed being a pick in ’93, Strange badly wanted to play the Ryder Cup again. He knew how much Sarah enjoyed the week and he loved the feeling of being part of a team representing his country. And, with the event being held at Oak Hill, the site of his second U.S. Open victory, it would be wonderful to return to a place that held such fond memories for him.

“I think Lanny wants to pick me,” he said one day on the range at St. Andrews. “I just have to play well enough down the stretch here to justify him picking me. If I play awful, he can’t pick me. If I play well, I think he will.”

Strange played poorly at the British Open, missing the cut. He missed another cut at the Buick Open and came into the PGA knowing he had to play well if Wadkins was to pick him. “He’s really pressing,” his friend Jay Haas said after a practice round at Riviera. “He wants this very, very badly.”

Most people were certain one captain’s spot would go to Couples. The candidates for the other spot were the old war horses: Strange and Tom Watson along with Lee Janzen and Jim Gallagher, both of whom still had chances to qualify for the team that last week off the points list.

They didn’t. And Wadkins picked Strange, who bounced back after an opening 74 to shoot three straight 68s and finish tied for thirteenth in the PGA. Wadkins was immediately second-guessed for the pick by people who wondered how he could leave Janzen off the team. Clearly, Wadkins wanted Strange for his experience (five Ryder Cups) and because he is a natural leader, one of the most popular people in the locker room on tour.

Strange arrived at Oak Hill wanting desperately to justify Wadkins’s selection. He had heard all the nay-sayers and was convinced he would come through and shut them up.

But the first two days didn’t go well for him. Wadkins played him in the morning alternate-shot matches, first with Ben Crenshaw, then with his buddy Jay Haas. The Americans lost both matches. Still, they led 9–7 after two days and since the twelve singles matches had always been their strength, looked to be in command.

That command slipped early. Peter Jacobsen and Brad Faxon lost winnable matches on the 18th hole. Fred Couples barely managed a half with Ian Woosnam. Loren Roberts, who had played superbly the first two days, lost to Sam Torrance. By the time Strange and Nick Faldo reached the 16th tee, it was apparent to both of them that their match was going to decide the Ryder Cup, the same way Davis Love’s match with Costantino Rocca had decided the outcome in 1993.

Strange was 1–up through 15 and, even though he was fighting his swing, had played very well. But he couldn’t hang on the last three holes. Each time, he drove the ball well and had an iron (a six, a three, and a three) to the green. Each time, he fanned on the shot, missing the green badly. And, each time, he made bogey. By parring 17 and 18, Faldo won the match, 1–up. As it turned out, if Strange had managed one par over the last three holes, he would have tied Faldo and the final score would have been 14–14, meaning the U.S. would have retained the Cup.

It didn’t happen that way. This time, it was the Europeans chortling about the cup “being on the Concorde,” the way Wadkins—ironically—had said over and over at the Belfry in ’93. Strange, who had always talked about “wanting the ball” with the game on the line, had been given the ball. And he had dropped it.

He was devastated. Strange has never been one to rationalize defeat. You win or you lose. You come through or you choke. He had lost. Choked. He didn’t hold back his emotions or his disgust with himself in the aftermath.

It is worth remembering one thing: the only way to be a goat is to play well enough to have a chance to win. Six other Americans lost singles matches that day. None of them played well enough to be 1–up with three holes to play—against Nick Faldo.

That’s why, when he had a chance to think about what happened, Strange still felt awful, but hopeful. He vowed to come back in 1996 and prove wrong those who said he was finished. It wouldn’t be easy. But golf never is easy.

Tom Kite could certainly attest to that. In 1995, he had the worst year of his professional career. He was never in serious contention to win a tournament; had only two top ten finishes; and when the year was over had made just $178,850, a fraction of his normal winnings. That put him 104th on the money list, the first time since 1973 that he had finished out of the top fifty, much less the top 100.

He hadn’t won since the 1993 Bob Hope and Los Angeles Opens, which he had won in back-to-back weeks. Then, he was the hottest golfer alive, the defending U.S. Open champion, a man clearly on a roll. But back problems forced him to take off several months, and although he played superbly in the ’93 Ryder Cup (hammering Bernhard Langer in singles) and made a lot of money in ’94, he hadn’t won again.

As ’95 ended, Kite had just turned forty-six and had to consider the possibility that he had won his last tournament. Of course a lot of people had said the exact same thing about him in 1992 just before he won the Open. No one would work harder to try and find his swing again than Kite. But while he was looking, he would also be watching other people’s swings. Shortly after Thanksgiving, the PGA of America announced that Kite would be the Ryder Cup captain in 1997 when the U.S. team went to Spain to play a Seve Ballesteros–captained European team to try to recapture the Cup.

It would no doubt be a difficult job, much the same way the U.S. team had faced a difficult job at the Belfry in ’93. Just as Tom Watson had craved that challenge, Kite would crave this one. And, as 1996 began, players in both the U.S. and Europe were already talking about the next Ryder Cup.

All of them wanted the same thing: the chance to feel their legs shake, the chance, as Curtis Strange once put it, “to throw up all over themselves.”

It only happens that way in one sport. Golf.