Still beeming a year on

There is a certain appealing honesty about a golfer who has won three times on the United States Tour, including a major championship, saying: ”My entire career has been a fluke.”

But then Rich Beem, the defending US PGA champion this week at the Oak Hill Country Club in New York, has never shied away from expressing an opinion, even a ridiculously dismissive one.

Beem won this tournament in magnificent style last year, hitting one shot and one putt in the last nine holes that rank with the great strokes played in these championships. He eagled the 11th with a five-wood second to five feet to establish a lead, and then, when Tiger Woods was threatening to maul all before him by finishing with four successive birdies, Beem holed a 30-footer for a birdie of his own on the 16th.

It was exactly the right thing at the right time but it has not stopped Beem playing the self-deprecation card. Continuing the ‘fluke” theme, he says: ‘My career is like a guy who works at a printing press for a couple of years and then writes a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

‘I’ve gone from making $15 000 a year as a very bad assistant pro to winning the ultimate. I mean, I’ve got this Wanamaker Trophy sitting in my house and sometimes I just sit there and look at the names of all the past champions and I just laugh. It’s hysterical.”

As it would be to a man who once left golf altogether because he was disillusioned by his lack of success. The head pro at his club, realising that Beem was never going to be enthusiastic about cleaning clubs and selling tees, but also acknowledging that there was a talent in the man, said: ‘You can either go off and play golf or you can just go off.”

Beem went to the mini-tours, often playing for prize money put up by the competitors themselves, but found that a hectic social life was not compatible with success. Golf became a chore, the pickings in any case were thin and eventually, through the influence of his then girlfriend who thought golf was stupid, he went to Seattle.

There, being the party animal he admits he is, he often went sleepless and, when and if he woke up in time, he went to work as a stereo salesman in an audio store. He will tell you he was pretty bad at that, too.

Maybe it is as well that he was because, in effect, he was forced back into golf.

He saw his friend and fellow El Paso resident JP Hayes win the 1998 Buick Classic, with its first prize of $324 000. It would be fair to say that victory got Beem’s attention.

Going into the Buick Hayes had won $16 000 and broken 70 only once that year. Beem knew he was a better golfer than Hayes. That year he went to the tour qualifying school and the rest has been hysteria.

In his rookie year on tour he won the Kemper Open, which encouraged him to travel to Scotland for the 1999 Open at Carnoustie. While there he encountered Scottish beer and Scottish pub hospitality for the first time, foolishly decided to drive back to his hotel, and the conviction against his name is one thing he does not joke about.

Everything else is fair game — even his own game. ‘I’ll be brutally honest,” he said, ‘my year isn’t going very well. If you see me using a portable loo on the course it’s not because I need to go to the bathroom. I’m going there to look for my golf game.”

He and wife Sara have recently had Michael Waide, born three weeks early. ‘He was 6lb 11oz,” said Beem. ‘If he had been born three weeks later he would have been 8lb — he would have been a moose. Lucky he came early.”

And so in a 12-month period Beem’s career has changed and his life has changed. He is ecstatic about his newborn, saying: ‘You can never be prepared to have a child. It’s way better than winning golf tournaments. It’s a huge thrill.”

But he is also pretty pleased about the improvement in his prospects. ‘What,” he was asked, ‘was the best thing about winning the PGA?”

‘All that free money stuff,” was the instant reply. Beem was invited to tournaments all over the world after his win, enticed by the appearance money. ‘I like to take December off,” he went on, ‘but, hey, if the money is there, I’m going to take it. I’m not going to be bashful about that one.”

Anything else? ‘Well,” he said, ‘I get pretty good parking spots. But it’s amazing, the more money you make, the more you can afford things, the less people will let you buy. I didn’t have a pot to piss in and couldn’t afford anything and nobody would buy me anything.

‘Now it’s let me get this, let me get that. I get a lot of free meals from people that know me and, you know, that’s kind of a nice deal.” —