Singh's steel

Golf's gentle nature belies top player's competitive zeal

Michael Bamberger, SI.com

The myth is that professional golfers are genteel, and that the courses they play are manicured gardens. On Sunday afternoon, in the final round of the PGA Championship -- in the tiny farm town of Haven, Wis., hard by the shores of Lake Michigan -- those lies were exposed again. Whistling Straits, a wholly manufactured course that looks Irish and plays American, was blowy and craggy and wicked for the final round of the year's final major. The three men in the three-hole playoff for the title, Justin Leonard, Vijay Singh and Chris DiMarco, they'd all stick a tee in your eye if you accidentally took the honor from them.

Leonard is from Dallas, and his teacher, Butch Harmon, is more Texan than anything else (he lived there for years). Watching the two of them together on the range is like watching two ballplayers taking hacks in a batting cage, jawing, spitting, cussing, smirking. When Leonard left the practice tee Saturday afternoon for the start of his third round, Harmon gave him a thwack on the backside. Go git 'em. Leonard lost his Ralph Lauren clothing contract several years ago in part because he's lousy at schmoozing. The baseball cap he wears, always with the brim low on his head, reads Ben Hogan. Perfect.

DiMarco is a raving Florida Gators football fan who is happier tailgating out of the back of a Ford Explorer than standing on some oversized, overfertilized practice putting green, although that's where he had to spend his days in an attempt to overwhelm the part of his game that threatened to stymie his career. (He's made $13 million in career earnings and legitimized a putting stroke called The Claw.) In 2000, on the week he won his first PGA Tour event, he met with a sports psychologist for the first time in his life, pushed into it by his wife. Do you think he met with the psychologist again? He did not.

And then there is the winner, Mr. Singh, likely the least gracious loser on Tour, for which he does not apologize. He apologizes for nothing. Annoy Singh once, you're on his ex-list forever, and there are writers and players and caddies who are. There are days, when Singh is home in Florida, that he'll hit 1,500 balls, eat a sandwich, and hit 1,500 more. Last year, with the whole feminist-leaning world angry at him for his chauvinistic comments about Annika Sorenstam playing at Colonial, he went out and won the Byron Nelson Classic. There's no love between Singh and Tiger Woods, obvious to anyone who watched their icy handshakes at the conclusion of their 36 holes together on Thursday and Friday. Frequently, Singh didn't even watch Woods make his swings. Most players would be quaking if the game's most powerful and important person didn't like you. Singh finds strength in it. Every personal affront, real or imagined, Singh uses to his flinty advantage. Maybe that's why he's now 4-1 in playoffs.

It takes guts of a certain kind to shoot a closing 76, then find your game in a playoff. But that's what SIngh did. The formula that calculates these things says Singh is the third best golfer in the world, after Woods and Ernie Els. The computer is wrong. It's Vijay one, and he couldn't care less what comes after him.