Power of Caring
  presented by Cigna

Issue date: October 30, 1995

While most of the PGA Tour was in San Antonio putting the finishing touches on another season at the Texas Open, Curtis Strange was back home in Virginia having wicked flashbacks. It has been nearly a month since the Ryder Cup, yet Strange can't get the final day out of his head. He remembers standing in the 16th fairway with a six-iron in his hands and Nick Faldo in the trees. All he had to do was hit the green to go dormie with two holes to play. He knew that the half-point would win the Ryder Cup for the U.S. and finally justify Lanny Wadkins's controversial decision to make him a captain's pick.

Over and over again in his mind Strange has pulled back the club, and then it happens, always the same: wide right.

"I honest to god couldn't have imagined hitting a worse shot, and it shocked me that it was going where it was going," Strange says. "I just couldn't believe it. You can't imagine what went through my mind. That was the shot that killed me."

It was also the beginning of the end for the U.S. team, which subsequently melted in the heat of a white-hot Ryder Cup Sunday. Strange failed to get up and down from right of the green at the 16th, then missed short par putts at the 17th and 18th holes to lose to Faldo. Strange wasn't the only American to slip up, but due to the way the final matches unfolded, and because he went 0-3 overall as a captain's pick, he was cast as the Man Who Lost the Ryder Cup after the U.S. bowed to the underdog Europeans 14 1/2-13 1/2.

Strange missed the cut at the recent Las Vegas Invitational, his first event since Oak Hill. He had planned to play in Texas but simply did not have the energy to get back on the horse, and he surprised tournament officials by withdrawing early Wednesday before the pro-am. And that ended his season, because he had failed to qualify for this week's Tour Championship—an event he won in 1988—for the sixth consecutive year.

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Strange has very little to say about the Ryder Cup. "I've got too many black eyes," he explains. Normally stoic, he has been stung by the barrage of criticism. He said that what hurt most was the WRONG MAN, WRONG TIME headline that appeared over the SPORTS ILLUSTRATED account of the Ryder Cup. It was as if he had lost it single-handedly. Also, his worst fear, that Wadkins, a fellow Virginian and Wake Forest alum, would be accused of cronyism if Strange did not come through, was realized.

"I'm a friend of Lanny's, but I can honestly say that in 18 years on Tour I've never gone out to dinner with him," Strange says. "He honestly felt I could help the team and bring some things other than my golf game, and hopefully I did. Lanny's a very proud person. He enjoys and loves the Ryder Cup, but more than that he loves his country and wants to represent it the best he can. He wouldn't have jeopardized that by picking me."

Immediately following his loss to Faldo, Strange dealt with the situation in his usual, straight-ahead way, unblinkingly providing no-nonsense answers to equally direct questions. It wasn't until the closing ceremonies, when he spotted his wife, Sarah, crying in the crowd that he cracked. He reacted by burying his face in his left hand, his fingers pressing hard on his temples. It was an image that the U.S. media seized upon. The picture appeared in newspapers and magazines across the country, and when it was first flashed on the oversized television screen set up on the grounds at Oak Hill, Allen Strange, Curtis's twin brother, turned away in disgust and left the premises.

"I was crying because I couldn't be there for him," says Sarah Strange. "I feel like having been Lanny's pick, we felt more pressure. To have Lanny respect his game enough to pick him, and then not come through for Lanny, that was the hardest part for us."

Loren Roberts was sitting next to Strange during the ceremonies. "Curtis was as close as you can get to tears—for him anyway," Roberts says. "I know how Curtis is and how he prides himself on being mentally tough."

How tough remains to be seen. Will the three consecutive bogeys that made up the Ryder Cup collapse of 1995 blot out the U.S. Opens of 1988 and '89, and all the other accomplishments of a stellar 19-year career?

The only thing in Strange's past to compare with the Ryder Cup collapse came at the 1985 Masters when, while holding the lead on Sunday, he put balls in the water at the 13th and 15th holes to hand the title to Bernhard Langer. Strange came back from that, but at 30, he was 10 years younger.

"That was tough to swallow, and this is along the same lines," Strange says, "but this is even tougher because you take personal shots."

Most of his peers feel he will rebound, although no one will know until next year, when Strange says he will again play a full schedule.

Wadkins waited until eight days after the Ryder Cup before getting in touch with Strange. "I was concerned about him, and it turns out he was concerned about me," Wadkins says. "But we're both big boys. We've had adversity before. It wasn't the first time, and it won't be the last, unfortunately. I just told him not to worry about it. Number one, he didn't ask to be picked. He's probably the only person who didn't ask to be picked, quite honestly."

The rest of the U.S. team made a concerted effort at Oak Hill not to let Strange become the fall guy. Even Paul Azinger, working for NBC that week, tried to help. He asked Wadkins if he could speak to the devastated team, and when he walked into the team room, Curtis and Sarah Strange were sitting at the same table as Ben and Julie Crenshaw. Ben was in such a state of shock that he just stared blankly as Azinger tried to put the loss in perspective. "I'm sorry this happened," he said, "but you know, 18 months ago I was dying of cancer. The reality here is that this is just golf. You lost as a team. There is not one individual to bear the burden."

Roberts, who also lost on Sunday, recalls that the team was not about to let Strange take the heat alone. "I know Curtis was hurting. I know he felt bad," Roberts says. "That's why we all went to the press room together. That was the only way it couldbe. It was the whole team. It wasn't Curtis. It wasn't me. It wasn't any one person. We all wanted to face the music together."

The only formal interview Strange has given since that brief session at Oak Hill was nine days later, on a Richmond radio talk show. "When you let Nick out of the bag when you have him beat, it's disappointing," Strange told Al Coleman of WRVH.

"When you let down 11 other guys and the captain, it's even more disappointing, especially when you were picked for that reason. You were picked to finish off a match and do well on Sunday when the pressure was on. That's all part of my disappointment.... I didn't come through. I had 11 other guys depending on me. Yeah, you come in as a team and you win and lose as team, but I certainly didn't help the cause Sunday afternoon."

In the weeks since, Strange has continued to search for ways to deal with his disappointment.

Davis Love III, a more successful member of the U.S. team, was not sure Strange had made much progress until he saw him in Las Vegas. "I was worried about him at first, right afterwards, thinking he had already done a little bit of TV, he kind of makes a comeback, gets on the Ryder Cup team, has it thrown on his shoulders the last hole and doesn't come through," Love says. "I thought he might be thinking, 'I've had enough. I don't want to deal with this anymore.' But when I saw him in Vegas, he was in a pretty good mood. I saw him every day, and he was grinding and playing some golf. It just looked like Curtis."

There are other signs that Strange is slowly recovering from his Ryder Cup hangover. Disheartened after Oak Hill, Strange said that he was tired of trying to correct a fatal flaw in his swing. Now he says that was just something that popped out in a moment of frustration. Now he talks about playing in the next Ryder Cup, serving as captain of the team in 1999 at The Country Club, and staying on Tour for another 10 years, right up to the time he joins the Senior tour.

Those who know him best are not surprised.

"Certainly what he went through at the Ryder Cup is a tough experience, but he didn't get to where he has been by rolling over and playing dead,'' says Tom Kite. "It would shock me if he did now. Obviously he's got two choices. He can say, 'Well, that was more than I can handle' and roll over. Or he can say, 'This is going to make me a better player.'"

If Allen Strange knows his brother, there's no question which route Curtis will take.

"I don't think this changes him at all," Allen says. "He's pretty stubborn about it. I don't think this changes his practice habits or his desire or his ambition. God forbid his accomplishments are forgotten because of one match. He's been awfully successful over the years. The Ryder Cup can't destroy that. He's a pretty hard and coarse son of a gun when he needs to be.''