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The Week: Seeing the Light

What we learned at an improbable PGA Championship

By Alan Shipnuck

Woods made a great escape on the 54th hole but ran out of heroics on Sunday. Simon Bruty

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Big Play: Carl Lohren

Teeing Off: Revisionist History

TRUST ME
This PGA cut Tiger Woods deep. At the British Open he could blame his demise on some weird weather, but Hazeltine will go down as the place where Tiger finally blinked first. Forget the high-gloss, four-birdie finish. Woods will remember the crushing back-to-back bogeys that preceded it.

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Rich Beem hoisted the Wanamaker Trophy while four downtrodden club pros failed to break 80, but there were plenty of other winners and losers last week. Here's our tally.

Winners

Pepto-Bismol. In the most over-the-top product placement since O.J.'s Bruno Maglis, Beem boasted that his daily preround chug helped quiet his butterflies. Here's hoping he doesn't get an Imodium A-D endorsement.

Minnesota golf fans. First they willed the Golden Gophers to an NCAA title, then they turned the PGA into a raucous party -- without any of the boorishness of the Bethpage masses.

Steve Duplantis. Beem's hard-living ex-caddie is now making a go of it on the European tour, far from the glory of the PGA Championship. But without Duplantis's guidance, Beem never would've won the 1999 Kemper Open, and without that preposterous breakthrough, Beem would probably be selling sweaters in the El Paso Country Club pro shop today.

Hazeltine National. Following the biggest makeover this side of Greta Van Susteren, the once reviled track emerged as a thrilling major championship venue.

Justin Rose. He made his pro debut in the U.S. by opening with a 69, a hint of what's to come. Watch out for this multitalented Englishman, who is younger than Sergio García.

PGA of America. The lords of the Masters and the U.S. Open have become obsessed with protecting par, which has led to brutal setups that are inching toward unplayable. The PGA doesn't care what the winning score is and is content to offer a tough but fair venue that consistently produces the year's most exciting golf.

Losers

Tiger Woods. Let the legend shrink.

Butch Harmon. They say they're still friends. We know what that means -- it's over between "Butchie" and his prized pupil. At least Harmon still has Justin Leonard.

Lou Holtz. The legendary college coach used to set the standard for press-conference poor-mouthing, and then along came Beem. To hear the newly minted PGA champ talk, it's a wonder he ever breaks 80.

Leonard. Almost as shocking as Beem's victory was J. Low's collapse. That final-round 77 was a devastating setback for a grinder who had been building toward another major for five years.

European Ryder Cup team. When Pierre Fulke is your low man at the PGA, you know you're in trouble. Eight of the 12 Euros missed the cut at Hazeltine, just the latest warning sign that the Ryder Cup may be a bust.

Charles Howell. Three under par and a very strong contender well into the third round, Howell had a chance to bust out of his sophomore slump, but he blew up over the final 10 holes on Saturday, making three double bogeys, including a four-putt on which the last three tries were inside of three feet. Howell's 80 doomed him to 17th place; his last top 10 finish remains the Nissan Open last February.

Victory jigs. Even with all her practice, Juli Inkster still looks ridiculous. Beem would be wise to lose the modified cabbage patch and stick to fist pumps.

O.B.

Notah Begay didn't compete at the PGA Championship, but he did travel to the Twin Cities last week to throw out, er, chip the ceremonial first pitch before the Aug. 13 Twins-Orioles game. "I hit a little sand wedge from just forward of the rubber," says Begay, who was on hand to support Native American Heritage Night. "We used a modified baseball -- something soft that was more like a mushball. To a righthanded batter it would have been on the outside corner."

Tour veteran Brandel Chamblee , 40, has agreed to work at least nine golf telecasts for ABC in 2003. A semiregular talking head on the Golf Channel, Chamblee says he will be in a tower, but he doesn't know which one or with whom.

When does a party have a corporate sponsor? When the get-together is the so-called Lumpy Bus Bash, in honor of Minnesota's most colorful golfer, Tim (Lumpy) Herron . At 9:30 on Friday morning, 100 or so of Herron's closest friends convened at the home of Ketti Histon , Herron's older sister, who was spearheading the bash with their kid sister, Alissa Super . By noon, six cases of James Page Brewery beer, a two-gallon cooler of a minty margarita mix and three bottles of rum and Diet Coke had been disposed of, the spirits part of a $2,000 budget provided by a Minneapolis-based financial-services company that Herron endorses. As soon as the alcohol ran dry, the Lumpers piled into a rented yellow school bus, each sodden enthusiast wearing a green cap and white T-shirt emblazoned with 2002 PGA LUMPY CHAMPIONSHIP. Upon arriving at Hazeltine, Histon gave her charges a pep talk. "Try not to act like a bunch of animals!" she said. Once the herd caught up with Herron, the drinking game of choice was to pound a beer every time their hero made a birdie, and Herron set off much chugging by rolling in an eight-footer at number 10, his first hole of the day. However, as he began chopping his way to what would be a 75, the Bus Bashers began drinking to birdies and bogeys. Herron ended up three strokes over the cut line, and the ride home was a somber one for his fans -- at least until the bus pulled up to Histon's home, and Lumpy was magically there waiting, a wavy-haired Buddha cracking open a Budweiser. The Bus Bashers let out a loud cheer. Toasts were offered to the next PGA at Hazeltine, which, thankfully, is not until 2009.

Issue date: August 26, 2002

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