machine
Andy Capostagno Golf
It might be unkind to a fine tournament, but this week’s United States PGA Championship is likely to suffer by comparison. The PGA is older than the Masters and both Jack Nicklaus and Walter Hagen won it five times, so it comes highly recommended.
But because the wise men of the PGA of the US have set up Sahalee Country Club wrongly (according to the experts), because it is always the fourth major of the year, because it comes after a particularly fascinating Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, well, just because, the US PGA is doomed.
In this country it was, briefly, highly regarded. Parochialism being what it is, the fact that Nick Price won the PGA in both 1992 (his first major) and 1994 (his third) meant that the tournament took on a lustre that has since faded. Maybe it began to lose its glow when Ernie Els threw away what was at one stage a six shot lead in the 1995 Championship. He was passed and beaten by the sweet swinging Australian, Steve Elkington, and finished third.
Els will peg it up again this year and, after a break from the treadmill in his Herold’s Bay hideaway, the word is that the back spasms which have plagued him since before the US Open have subsided and he could be ready to take on the world again.
It is to be hoped that he spent his time sipping beer and eating boerewors, for it seems too great a coincidence that Els’s back pain emerged after he had discovered the dubious pleasures of the gym. He is a man who thrives on all the things that are supposed to be bad for the figure, but good for the soul. Such things cannot be found in the gym.
In common with a few less illustrious South African golfers, Els may recognise Sahalee despite never having played there. Set among the cedars of Redmond in Washington State, it is a residential country club resort of the kind currently proliferating in this country, much to the chagrin of the environmentalists, much to the benefit of the real-estate traders.
It is not quite Dainfern or Mount Edgcombe, but a wayward drive at Sahalee will probably be accompanied by the sound of breaking glass, rather than the squawk of the indigenous Canadian goose.
If Els is to win at Sahalee, he will probably need to keep his driver in the bag. The fairways are narrow, the rough is four inches deep and the ball that avoids the spinach will ping-pong to rest among the cedars and pines. The PGA committee has further toughened the course by reducing two of the par fives to par fours and making the professionals adapt to a par of 70 rather than the members’ tally of 72.
It probably won’t matter. Davis Love won with a four round total of 269 at Winged Foot last year and someone will come pretty close to that score this year. Maybe it will be Colin Montgomerie at last. The glum Scot builds his game upon straight hitting with the driver and he may be one of the few who will be able to paste it off the tee at Sahalee without fear of course reprisals. Montgomerie is also more likely to get the major monkey off his back with a PGA victory than anywhere else. The PGA does not carry the emotional baggage of the Open, the Masters or the US Open and, with the pressure off, Monty could emulate Love in making it his first major.
Certainly history is on the side of a debutant winner. Nine of the last 10 winners of the PGA have been major-less hitherto, including John Daly who outdid Cinderella by winning in 1991 after an all-night drive to peg it up as ninth alternate when, among others, Price had dropped out with an injury.
Daly is a 66-1 shot this year and can safely be discounted, but Price won on tour two weeks ago, contended for three rounds in the Open, and if his putter is working, the relatively flat greens of Sahalee could earn him a third PGA victory. Others to watch out for are Fred Couples, who is a native of nearby Seattle, Jim Furyk who has been stunningly consistent in the majors for two years now and the inevitable Mark O’Meara.
O’Meara is the first man to win two majors in the same year since Price in 1994 and he has a chance to become the first since Ben Hogan in 1953 to add a third.
Logic tells us that Hogan’s place in history is safe, but as the man who smashed Elvis Presley’s recording of Hound Dog said, records are made to be broken.