19

WELCOME BACK, ZINGER

THE BRITISH OPEN is the only tournament from which almost no one leaves on Sunday night. Unless you have a private plane, there’s no way to get out of the remote places where the tournament is held, especially if you have to fly overseas to get home.

Greg Norman’s private plane left Prestwick Airport less than an hour after Price put both his hands on the claret jug. His former plane, which now belonged to Price, was parked directly across from his new plane, so Norman wrote Price a note and taped it to the door of the plane before departing.

“Two years in a row this plane has carried the claret jug home,” he wrote. “Congratulations. Well played.”

Norman had listened to the final few holes of the tournament on BBC radio during the forty-five-minute drive from Turnberry to Prestwick, and it had given him a boost. He had left the golf course feeling hollow, disappointed that he had been close to contention without ever really being in the hunt. His parents had been with him for the week since they were coming to Florida for a visit and he had wanted them to see him win a major championship—or at least have a chance to win one.

Norman made about $33,000 (£19,333) for finishing tied for eleventh, meaning he probably broke even for the week if you figure the cost of flying his twelve-seat G-3 jet back and forth across the Atlantic and the cost of four rooms for seven nights at the Turnberry Hotel (one for him, one for his children, one for his parents, and one for his pilots) into the equation.

The expense of playing in the British Open had been an issue all week, since a number of top Americans, including Curtis Strange, Fred Couples, and Hale Irwin, had stayed home. Strange skipped the British Open about as often as he played it, and although he had entered the tournament in 1994, he had never intended to play—unless he won the U.S. Open. Strange had enjoyed himself when he had played in the tournament in the past, but he didn’t think he had a good chance to win and thought the effort and expense were too much if he didn’t honestly think he could win. There was another reason he didn’t play: “Because everyone says I have to,” he said.

He might not be as angry as he once was, but he was still just as stubborn.

Price and his friends celebrated his victory with a raucous party at the Turnberry Hotel, the claret jug serving as a champagne holder for most of the night. Late in the evening, Davis and Robin Love and Brad and Bonnie Faxon happened upon the party and were invited to join in. They did, taking their sips from the jug along with everyone else.

“It’s amazing how much colder and fresher champagne tastes when you drink it out of this jug,” Jeff Medlen said.

“You’re right, Squeek,” Price said.

“Funny thing,” Davis Love said, “to me it tasted tinny.”

It is all a matter of perspective.

Naturally, the Price party ran over into the wee hours. Earlier, Tom and Linda Watson had eaten dinner with Jack and Barbara Nicklaus. As soon as he finished his work for ABC, Nicklaus had gone back to the hotel and called Watson.

“Let’s get some dinner,” he said.

Watson sounded awful. “I don’t think so, Jack,” he said. “I think we’ll just order room service.”

“I understand how you feel,” said Nicklaus, one of the few people on earth who really could understand how Watson felt. “But I think you need a good dinner with some good wine.”

“I appreciate it,” Watson said. “But I don’t think I’m up to it.”

Nicklaus knew not to push too hard. Five minutes later, the phone rang. It was Watson. “What time?” he asked. Apparently Linda Watson had disagreed with the idea of spending the night wallowing. The Watsons and the Nicklauses had a sumptuous meal that included two bottles of wine. At about 11 o’clock, with the Scottish sun just disappearing over the western horizon, the two couples decided to adjourn for an alternate-shot golf match on the par-three course that spreads out across the vast front lawn of the hotel. Watson had a cigar stuck in his mouth and a huge grin on his face. Nicklaus had been right to call him. Linda Watson chipped a ball to about four feet. Tom’s turn to putt.

“Oh no, Linda, look what you’ve done now,” Nicklaus said. “You’ve left him a four-footer.”

Watson glared at Nicklaus, stalked up to the putt, and rammed it into the hole. “You see,” Nicklaus said, smiling. “You can make those putts.”

They all dissolved in laughter. Watson would feel the pain again the next day, but at least for one night, he was laughing. A few hours earlier he would have thought that impossible.

The next morning, although he wasn’t in the greatest condition of his life, Price (after pulling Norman’s note off the plane) flew to Nottingham to see his mother. He walked into the dining room carrying the now-empty claret jug and put it on the table. Wendy Price’s eyes went wide. “I’ll be right back,” Price said. “You just sit here and enjoy it for a while.”

He left her sitting there, eyes glistening with pride. Price, who hadn’t cried the day before in the midst of his stunning victory, felt his eyes misting too. He had dreamed often of handing his mother the claret jug. Now he was living his dream.

On the other side of the ocean, real life went on. The PGA Tour always held an event opposite the British Open for those who didn’t qualify for the tournament and those who didn’t choose to go. Once, the tournament had been held in Chattanooga. Now Chattanooga was gone, replaced by the tournament that had in the past been held the same week as the Masters: the Deposit Guaranty Classic, which had been moved from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, to Jackson.

The prize money—$700,000—was the smallest on tour all year, but the event carried the same two-year exemption as any other for the winner and the same ticket to the Masters, the World Series of Golf, and the Tournament of Champions.

And the winner of all those extras, in addition to the $126,000 first prize, was Brian Henninger. His first PGA Tour victory didn’t turn out exactly the way Henninger had envisioned it. He won the tournament on a soggy Sunday morning by winning a playoff from Mike Sullivan after tournament officials had determined that the golf course, drenched from three days of on-again, off-again downpours, was not going to be playable that day. Henninger and Sullivan had been tied for the lead after thirty-six holes, so they were brought back to the course to play off.

The only hole that was even close to playable was the 18th. Henninger and Sullivan were told they would keep playing the hole until someone won. As it was, eighteen was soggy and drenched. Henninger got it over with quickly, rolling in an 18-foot birdie putt. There was no gallery, no television, no one screaming for John Daly. But it was a win.

Henninger told the media that he was thrilled and proud to be the Deposit Guaranty champion, but he wouldn’t feel as if he had really won on tour until he won a seventy-two-hole tournament. A number of players read those comments that week and were impressed. Billy Andrade made a point of telling Henninger when he saw him the next week that what he said had merit, but he should never feel as if he hadn’t earned the victory. “You can only do what they give you the chance to do,” he said.

When he finished with the media, Henninger called Cathy at home. His mother answered the phone since she and Brian’s father were visiting. Thinking that Brian was about to go out and play his final round, she chattered on about how cute the baby was and how much fun they were having. Finally, Brian broke in.

“Mom, I won the golf tournament,” he said.

“You what? But how?”

He explained what had happened. Everyone was thrilled… sort of. “I love the idea that I’m in the Masters and that I have a two-year exemption,” he said. “But my goal is still to go out and win a seventy-two-hole tournament.”

At least now he knew he would be able to play anywhere he wanted to through 1996 in search of that goal.

There are three weeks between the British Open and the PGA, just as there are three weeks between the British Open and the PGA, just as there are three weeks between the U.S. Open and the British Open. Because of the travel to and from Europe, the two tournaments that suffer the most in terms of getting name players in their fields are the one just before the British—the Anheuser-Busch—and the one immediately after it—the New England Classic.

For the past several years, the New England, played in the twenty-eighth week of the season, has been the first nontelevised tournament of the year (not counting the Deposit Guaranty, which goes up against the British). With the economy in the Northeast struggling, Ted Mingolla, the man who invented the tournament and runs it, has been unable to come up with a title sponsor who will make the TV buy necessary to get on a network or ESPN.

Even so, the New England is an event most players respect and try to play. Mingolla’s golf course, Pleasant Valley Country Club, is in Sutton, Massachusetts, about ten miles outside Worcester. It is a pretty, tree-lined course with lots of variety in its holes and a small clubhouse that looks like an elementary school from the outside.

One player who had always come to the New England was Paul Azinger. When Azinger was still a struggling young player, Mingolla had given him a sponsor’s exemption into the tournament, and Azinger never forgot. Regardless of the date, Azinger always showed up at the New England. In 1993, he had won the tournament.

And, in 1994, he had hoped to make the New England his first tournament back on tour after his chemotherapy and radiation treatments were over. That would have worked perfectly: defend at the New England, perhaps get one more tournament under his belt before the PGA, and then hope to play at least respectably when he defended his PGA title.

Life is never that simple. Azinger had made his first post-chemo public appearance on May 16 at the PGA’s pretournament media day in Tulsa at Southern Hills, the site of the 1994 tournament. He had talked on the phone to a couple of reporters during the process but had, for the most part, stayed away from the public eye. He had decided early on that he didn’t want to fight a public fight, that he would talk about the whole thing once it was over. His last chemo treatment had been on May 3. A CAT scan on his shoulder the next week showed no signs of cancer.

Staying home and not seeing his buddies and not playing golf and not exchanging barbs with the media had been both a blessing and a curse to Azinger. He missed the people, but not the attention. He missed the competition, but not the tour life. He missed the game, but not the time away from his family. He loved being at home, spending time with Toni and Sarah Jean and Josie Lynn. He hated knowing how worried they were about him.

When the family flew home from Los Angeles in December after the first round of chemo treatments, Paul and Toni sat the girls down on their bed one night and tried to explain to them what was going on. Daddy was sick, they said, and he was taking some medicine that would make him feel bad for a while but was going to make him better. His hair was going to fall out, but that was okay too, because it would come back in a few months when he was all better. Most important, he would get better.

They never mentioned the word cancer. Which was a mistake.

“The first day Sarah Jean went back to school after Christmas break she came home crying,” Azinger said. “All the kids had come up to her and said, ‘Oh, we’re so sorry about your dad, he’s got cancer, isn’t that awful?’ She was terrified. She asked me if I had cancer and what was it and was I going to die. It hadn’t occurred to us that second-graders would know about cancer, but they did.”

Azinger had to explain to Sarah Jean that cancer was scary, but it was curable and that his kind was especially curable. That calmed her, but even after his chemo was over and his hair began to come back she continued to be frightened of cancer. “We all fear cancer,” Azinger said. “It’s just that, in my family, we fear it a little bit more now.”

The next five months fell quickly into a pattern: a flight to Los Angeles, chemo treatments, a week of misery, then three weeks of feeling better just in time to go back for another chemo treatment. His mood swings were predictable, but by the time April rolled around, he was beginning to see the end and he realized that all the talk about getting better hadn’t just been talk. He was getting better.

When he walked into the packed ballroom in the Southern Hills clubhouse, he looked different than the Azinger everyone remembered. He was a little thinner and he was bald. That didn’t bother him, he had gotten used to that. What had bothered him was having his eyebrows fall out in the fifth month. He had never dreamed he would look forward to shaving again, but he couldn’t wait to get his hands on a razor.

With close to two hundred reporters in the room and another sixty from around the world hooked up by phone, Azinger gave a painstakingly detailed account of what he had been through, including a recreation of what he had sounded like dry-heaving for nine hours after the first round of chemo. Several times he had to stop because he began to choke up, talking about his family or about the outpouring of affection he had received from thousands and thousands of people. He talked about his Christianity and how he felt closer to God now than he had before.

“Some people might say, ‘Why me, God, why me?’ he said. “I just ran to God and he helped me through it.”

It was a long day in Tulsa. After his mass interview, Azinger did a dozen TV interviews and then another dozen brief one-on-one interviews with print reporters. From there, he flew home for a day and then on to the Memorial Tournament, where he was the defending champion. He spoke briefly at the pretournament awards ceremony and then took part in the junior clinic later that day.

He was tired by the time he flew home that night, but he felt good. Tulsa and the Memorial represented his reentry into the world that had been his life for twelve years. He was glad to see all the players again. He was even glad to see the media. And everyone was glad to see him.

His treatment wasn’t over yet. He had to fly back to Los Angeles for five weeks of radiation treatment. Dave Stockton, who had been Azinger’s Ryder Cup captain in 1991, insisted that he and the family use his house—he was away playing in senior tour events most of that time—so they stayed there. The privacy was nice, but the girls missed their friends and the days were long, since he received his treatment first thing in the morning and was finished after that.

Shortly after arriving in Los Angeles, he began to swing a golf club and hit some shots. A couple of days into the regimen, his shoulder began to hurt. It scared him. He called Dr. Jobe. “You’re going too fast,” Jobe said. “Nothing’s wrong. But stop. Don’t push yourself.”

He stopped. Four weeks into the radiation treatments, he had some fatty tissue removed from behind his chest. He had noticed it well before the cancer diagnosis and had pointed it out to Jobe, who had been convinced it was just fatty tissue. His oncologist, Loren Feldman, decided it should be removed, just to be certain.

It was removed and it proved to be just what everyone thought it was: fatty tissue. Nothing more. But somehow word got out on tour that Azinger had undergone more surgery and the cancer might be back. At the Western Open, Davis Love asked Larry Moody, the man who ran the Bible study group on tour, point-blank what was going on. “Honestly, Davis, it was just fatty tissue,” Moody said.

“You can understand,” Love said, “why everyone’s worried.”

Moody understood. So did Azinger. Jobe and Feldman had both told him after the surgery that it would be four weeks before he could start taking full swings with a golf club. That meant he couldn’t possibly play New England. He called Mingolla and told him what was going on. Mingolla understood but wanted to know if there was any way Azinger might come up for a day. Absolutely, Azinger said.

And so he was there on Pro-Am day, riding around in a cart for a while to see some players, notably his buddy Payne Stewart, who was suffering through a horrible year. He met with the media and updated them on his progress. Now, he said, he hoped to play in the Buick Open, which was the week before the PGA. He didn’t want the PGA to be his first week back, not only because it would mean he would have no warm-up at all for the tournament, but because it meant that week would be even more of a zoo for him than it was already going to be.

Everywhere Azinger went, someone stopped him to tell him how much they had been thinking about him or how glad they were to see him back. As he walked into the lunchroom, Tim Simpson, a veteran player who had never been close to Azinger, hugged him and told him he had been praying for him and thinking about him a lot.

“That’s why I have to play the Buick,” Azinger said. “You see, every guy out here is going to feel he has to say something to me. They feel a need to say something. I understand that. The funny thing is, there are going to be people out here who didn’t much like me before this happened, who are going to like me now. The rest of my life, whenever I walk around a golf course, there are going to be people who are going to come up and talk to me about cancer; how they had it or someone in their family had it, or a good friend had it. Everyone’s been touched by cancer in some way, and I’m out here in public having been touched by it.

“I understand that. And I think I have a responsibility to use that public forum to help raise money to fight the thing and to help out anyone I can who is fighting it. I know what it’s like. Other guys don’t. It would be brutally insensitive of me to just walk away from it and I don’t intend to.

“But there’s a part of me that just wants to come back out here and play. Compete. I haven’t sat around missing golf for the last few months, I’ve been too busy trying to get healthy. But today, out there with Payne, I wanted to say to him, ‘Okay pards, let’s just drop a couple balls in the bunker and see who can get closest to the pin for five bucks.’

“I want to compete. I don’t want to walk around saying, ‘Oh well, I made a bogey, but at least I have my health.’ I don’t expect to come back and be where I was as a player, but I want to get back to the level I was at sometime. The sooner the better.”

Tulsa and the Memorial had been the first step, New England was the next one. The big step, though, was the Buick Open in Grand Blanc, Michigan, about an hour north of Detroit. Azinger had been practicing at home for two weeks and had been given clearance to play. The national media showed up again, first for his initial practice round on Tuesday, then when he did it for real on Friday.

He had to wait until Friday because torrential rains early Thursday wiped out the first round. Instead of teeing it up at 12:50 as scheduled, Azinger spent the afternoon at the movies, going to see both A Clear and Present Danger and Speed. He hated waiting an extra day because he wanted to get the anticipation behind him and start playing again.

Friday was a perfect day, cool and gorgeous, and Azinger’s every move was documented by TV cameras, still-photographers, and reporters. When his playing partners, Ben Crenshaw and Corey Pavin, walked onto the 10th tee (they were playing the back nine first) Crenshaw looked at Pavin and said, “Gee, Corey, it’s real nice of all these people to come out here and watch us tee off.”

Randy Hutton, a local product analyst, was doing the player introductions on the 10th tee, something he had done at the tournament for ten years. He knew this was different. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing,” he said. Hutton introduced Pavin first: “From Orlando, Florida, please welcome Corey Pavin!”

Pavin smiled at the applause and launched a bullet down the middle.

Azinger’s turn. Hutton again: “From Bradenton, Florida, please welcome back to the game, Paul Azinger!”

It was the four extra words, “back to the game,” that got Azinger. He had joked beforehand about getting on the first tee and being so emotional that he couldn’t draw the club back. Now, he stood behind the tee as the applause and cheers washed over him, taking several extra practice swings, his eyes looking straight at the ground. He didn’t want to look up, because if he did, people would see they were glistening with tears.

“Corey told me later I should have just said my eyes were sweating,” he said.

Pavin’s eyes were sweating and so were Crenshaw’s.

Finally, Azinger took a deep breath, gathered as much composure as he could, and somehow hit the ball solidly down the right side of the fairway. The shouts could be heard in every corner of the golf world.

Zinger was back. He shot 76 that afternoon, but came back with 70 the next day. He missed the cut, but that hardly mattered. He had hit some good shots and some bad shots. He had gotten angry at himself for missing putts. He had competed. The warm feeling he had every time the crowd cheered him one more time was just a bonus.

“My victory was getting up on that first tee and hitting the ball,” he said. “The whole thing is over. I’m a golfer again. I’m back in my element.”

When he got back to his locker that first evening, exhausted from the walk and the work, the exhilaration of the whole day, and the post-round media circus that he had known would be part of the deal, he collapsed on a bench. Several players came by to ask him how it went. He recounted a couple of missed putts and his concern on the first tee that he was shaking so much that he might heel one into the crowd and kill someone. “That would have been some comeback, huh?” he said, laughing.

He started to open his locker and found two notes taped to it. Each was from someone who had a friend fighting cancer. Could he possibly call, even if it was just for a minute?

Azinger pulled the notes off his locker. “There are some things I have to do now that I’m back,” he said, “and some things I don’t have to do. These are the ones I want to do.”

He made the calls that night. There would be many more to come. That was fine with Azinger. “I tell them all that cancer is beatable,” he said. “I tell them to go out there and beat cancer’s butt.”

He smiled. He didn’t say, “I did.” He didn’t have to.

The three tournament winners between the British Open and the PGA were Kenny Perry, a veteran having the year of his life, who won at New England; Dicky Pride, a rookie who came from nowhere on the money list to win at Memphis in a playoff; and Fred Couples, who finally had put his back miseries behind him.

Couples hadn’t been on tour for long stretches in 1994, and his 65–68 finish during the thirty-six-hole Sunday windup, which was brought about by the Thursday rainout at Buick, was one of the more heartening stories for American golf in a year when there were a lot more Americans out with injuries and illness (Couples’s back, Mickelson’s leg, Azinger’s cancer) than competing for major titles.

Couples played superbly on the last day at the Buick in spite of a bizarre incident that occurred on the range shortly before he teed off for his morning round.

While he was warming up, a man in his thirties who was standing behind the ropes several yards away from Couples, began yelling at him to please come over and sign his hat and shirt and talk to him. He was yelling so insistently that Couples finally turned around and said, “I can’t right now, I’m trying to get ready to play.”

The man persisted. When Couples left the range to head for the first tee, the man followed him, insisting that he had to talk to Couples, that he had to have him sign his hat and that this was very, very important. Security people were called in so that Couples could get to the tee unimpeded.

When the man was taken to tournament officials, he explained to them that he had had “a vision” the previous night about Couples and that it was vital that he talk to him if only for a minute. If he didn’t, the vision would be gone and his life would be ruined. He had even gone so far as to write a four-page letter to him, explaining the vision and why it was important that they talk.

Couples couldn’t talk now, he had thirty-six holes of golf to play. Fine, the man said, would you at least give him this letter and I’ll go watch him play and not bother him. He had made no threats, so the officials took the letter from him and let him leave. PGA Tour officials were called in. The local police department sent an undercover officer to trail the man in case he should make any kind of move on Couples. Extra security was also assigned to his group.

The next question was how much to tell Couples. Since 1977, when Hubert Green was subjected to a death threat during the final round of the U.S. Open, each player on tour has filled out a form at the start of each year in which he is asked how much—if anything—he wants to be told if any kind of threat or bizarre request (like this one) involving him is made during a round of golf. On his form, Couples had asked to be told nothing. Some players ask to be told everything and anything; others take a middle ground and ask to be told only if tournament officials think the matter is serious. Like any group of visible athletes, professional golfers are subjected to occasional threats or crank phone calls. Usually they involve well-known players like Couples or Greg Norman or John Daly.

Fortunately for everyone involved, this incident blew over early in the day. The “vision man,” as officials called him, followed Couples for a number of holes and then left. Noticing the extra security, he told an official, “I didn’t mean to cause any trouble,” before departing. The letter itself was rambling, confusing, and full of misspellings. It invited Couples to a party that day so that the “vision man” and a number of his friends could explain to Couples what he could do for society. The man signed his name and gave his phone number and the address of the party. He also asked Couples to bring Azinger along with him.

Couples didn’t show. Instead, leading Corey Pavin by one shot on the final hole of the day, he carved his second shot at the 18th to within two feet of the flag for a birdie that clinched his first victory on tour since the 1993 Honda Classic.

Couples was back. Azinger was back. Phil Mickelson was back. Pavin, who had gone through a midyear slump, was playing well again. Curtis Strange tied for third at the Buick.

Things suddenly looked a lot better for American golf. The PGA was next. Nick Price and Greg Norman were waiting.