by Robinson Holloway
© 1996 Sports Illustrated

Scott McCarron was on his way to a five-stroke victory over poor old Tom Watson in the Freeport McDermott Classic. It was an amazing sight. There was Watson unraveling under the back-nine pressure while McCarron coolly hit all the shots, as if he were the one who had won 37 times. It was unbelievable.

"Unbelievable? Is that what you said when I was doing it last week?" asked Paul Goydos. Well, sure, of course we did. It did seem unbelievable that an unknown, untested player like Goydos could play a bogey-free weekend and win at Bay Hill. Still, by last week we should have known better. After two months of comfortably satisfying winners like Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson and Davis Love III, McCarron's win was simply a part of the new trend on Tour: first-time winners. It was started by rookie Tim Herron and his wire-to-wire dominance at the Honda Classic. Then came Goydos, and now McCarron, who picked up $216,000 with his win at English Turn, outside New Orleans. Three in a row. "The baton passes," said Watson. "Which one of these guys who won over the last three weeks is going to be a real star? That's the question."

It is difficult to say. All three won as convincingly as they did unexpectedly. Herron had a fine amateur career, but the Honda was just his eighth start on Tour. McCarron and Goydos both struggled last year, having their best performances in the last two tournaments of the season, earning just enough to squeak in among the top 130 players who qualified for exemptions. McCarron finished 128th on the money list and Goydos 129th, positions that, had five non-Tour members not been among the group, could have stripped them of their exemptions and sent them back to Q school. "And what does that tell you?" asked Goydos, pausing expectantly like the school-teacher he once was, eyebrows raised. He answered himself: "Depth, depth-there are too many good players. And the Tour wants to lower the exempt number to the top 115 or top 100 or less!"

The three consecutive wins came at the time of year when the Tour traditionally has its strongest competition. The field in New Orleans, however, was not as muscular as those at Bay Hill and Honda. After years of being positioned in that perfect vacation week between the Florida swing and the Masters, the New Orleans tournament hoped that by inserting itself into the Florida schedule it would draw more top American players. Instead, many took the week off. And because it was no longer a tuneup for Augusta, some of the international headliners who had played in the past decided to stay home. More troubling, some of those who did turn up, both foreign and domestic, didn't stay for long. Before the tournament started, players dropped out at the rate of about five a day, causing organizers to go through alternates faster than the O.J. jury. In the end they couldn't fill the field, and only 136 players turned in scores on Friday. The odds of having another first-time winner were high. Seventy-seven nonwinners teed it up on Thursday, and 37 made it to the weekend.

Such a weak field, and the fact that Herron and Goydos had shown that it could be done, started McCarron thinking that he needed to take a more aggressive approach. "Two weeks ago I was home watching Tim Herron win," he said, "and then last week at Bay Hill, I saw what Paul Goydos did. I thought, Maybe it's time to start playing to win."

Herron and Goydos were not only inspirational, they also prompted a key equipment change. "I saw Tim and Paul hitting the Great Big Bertha driver," said McCarron after his win, "and the one thing I needed to do was hit more fairways. When I got here Monday one of my goals was to find another driver. The Great Big Bertha made this course play a whole lot easier." The other club that McCarron was willing to invest with partial credit for his victory was his long putter. It's a Troyline, the same kind Bruce Lietzke uses, not the homemade model McCarron cobbled together four years ago from an old putter, a driver, a wad of gum and a few grains of sand. "It rattled and was an eyesore," he said, "but I putted with it for a year and a half and nearly won the U.S. Mid-Amateur."

McCarron, 30, got the idea of going to the long putter in 1991, just as his Tour ambitions were undergoing a renaissance. For four years golf had been just one of a doz- en recreational sports McCarron had actively pursued. Although he had played nearly all his life and attended UCLA on a golf scholarship-completing his degree in history-McCarron didn't believe that his game was good enough to make it in pro golf, so he lived vicariously through the careers of friends Brandt Jobe and Brad Bell, both of whom have since dropped off the Tour. In the back of his mind, McCarron always wondered if he should have taken a crack at the Tour. "That burning desire to be on Tour was always there," he admitted. And after observing older players use the long-shafted putter with much success when the Senior tour would stop in Southern California for the Raley's Gold Rush, he picked up the broom handle and never looked back. "I would not be where I am now without the long putter," McCarron said after Sunday's win. One of the benefits of the long putter, McCarron says, is that it enables him to keep the ball from jumping after making contact. His ball stays on the ground with less initial backspin, thereby rolling more accurately and consistently. "You basically line it up and go," he says. "No thinking about what you've got to do-you just go. The less you think out there, the better."

If Watson had heard that, he might have winced. Even McCarron admitted that-like nearly every other golfer with a heart-he would like to help Watson with his putting problem, if he could. Every short putt that Watson misses-and there were the usual collection of embarrassing examples at English Turn-spawns at least a dozen putative solutions from concerned observers. One club pro even called the New Orleans press room on Sunday morning with a cure-all and wanted to know if he could talk to Watson before he started the final round. In part because of his openness in discussing the subject and in part because it's so painfully obvious and so frequently showcased, Watson's difficulty with short putts is universally known. It has actually come to this: When he sank a four-footer on the practice putting green on Saturday afternoon, the spectators applauded.

Watson had reason to be optimistic in New Orleans, to think that this could be the week he would win on Tour for the first time since the 1987 Nabisco Championships. Although he still stood more confidently over a 12-footer than a four-footer, he was making at least as many testers as he was missing, and his putting, overall, had been good in 1996. Coming into the week he would have ranked fifth in the Tour's putting stats if he had played the minimum number of rounds needed to be included. It's not a position he can expect to keep. The stats for last week are as telling as the slow-motion television replays of all the missed piddlers. Watson ranked second in greens hit in regulation, but among those who made the cut, he was 48th out of 72 in putting, which was why he ranked 53rd in birdie-conversion percentage.

Two years ago Watson was so confident that his improved ball striking would be complemented by a mended putting stroke that he frequently said he would win that season. He came close, but at Pebble Beach he was outputted down the stretch by an equally yippy Johnny Miller. Then at Turnberry, Watson killed his chances for a sixth British Open when, moments after assuming the lead on Sunday, he made two straight double bogeys, each time missing a short putt.

At New Orleans,Watson's rhetoric was more subdued. "Many times a disappointment has propelled me to a win the next week," he said. "Maybe this time it could be next week or the Masters." The trouble was, Watson uttered those consoling words on Saturday, when he was just two strokes off the lead, shots he had squandered with short misses.

On Sunday, Watson offered explanations that sounded like excuses. "Seventy-four is not a terrible score," he said. "It was a tough day to make putts because of the wind. You not only had to read the putt, but you also had to play the wind." The wind was strong, blowing at about 30 mph with gusts up to 40 mph, and the scores were high. Only one player broke 70, Brad Fabel, who jumped 29 places with a three-under-par 69 to finish tied for 10th. Twelve players shot rounds in the 80s. All the things Watson said about the difficulty of the conditions were true, but the defensive phrases sounded out of place coming from a man who always takes his medicine.

He had put himself in position to win. By the time the leaders turned for home, the tournament had become a two-man race. Both McCarron and Watson were level through nine holes, McCarron still 12 under for the week, Watson 10 under, while the rest of the contenders had bogeyed themselves out of contention. The next stretch of holes "is where I blew it," Watson said of bogeys at 10, 12, 13 and 14, the last two a result of missed putts of less than five feet.

Watson finished by sinking a 45-footer for birdie, just the second all day at the 18th. That earned him sole possession of second place and a check for $129,600. "It was some consolation, but not much," he said glumly. Asked if each defeat inflicts a little more damage to his psyche, Watson at first said no, then admitted, "It takes an ounce of flesh-not a pound, but it takes an ounce."