The Week: Bad Boy Makes Good

Will Jonathan Kaye's first Tour win help change his rough-edged image?

By Alan Shipnuck

Kaye became only the fourth player since 1970 to win a playoff with an eagle. Chuck Solomon GOLF PLUS EXTRA Big Play: Tom Patri TRUST ME Michelle Wie's win at the Women's Publinx is a great achievement, but far more exciting is the prospect of her winning the men's version, which brings an automatic spot in the Masters. NEXT UP PGA Tour: FedEx St. Jude Classic Champions Tour: U.S. Senior Open LPGA Tour: ShopRite LPGA Classic PGA European Tour: Open de France INSTANT POLL Which 2003 major was the best? The Masters The U.S. Open The British Open The PGA View Results

On Sunday, Jonathan Kaye won one of the PGA Tour's better tournaments (the Buick Classic) on one of its most esteemed courses (Westchester Country Club), but don't think he's about to be accepted by the golf establishment. Rebel is too strong a word to describe Kaye, 32, but he is blessed/cursed with the unusual ability to go to work every day without the slightest concern for what his colleagues think of him. "Well, you know, it's nice to have people regard you highly," Kaye said following his first Tour win, a rousing playoff victory over John Rollins, "but at the same time there are a lot of people in this world. It's hard to make everybody happy."

Kaye perfected his jaunty posturing on the public courses around Denver, where he grew up, and with his soul patch and ever-present wad of chewing tobacco, he delights in spitting in the eye of the Tour's country-club image. Under Special Interests in the Tour's media guide he once famously listed "floating in the pool." This year's entries include "dog training" and "jalapeño farming." Kaye's class-clown act occasionally lands him in the principal's office, and the fines and reprimands delivered by PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem have contributed to Kaye's stained reputation. In 2001 he was booed off the 18th green at Pebble Beach after directing an obscene gesture at the gallery. (Kaye had been heckled after he slammed his putter against his bag.) He began last year under suspension, owing to a beef with a security guard at the 2001 Michelob Championship, and didn't play in his first event until February's Tucson Open. (Kaye, having forgotten his player I.D., had become incensed when the rent-a-cop denied him access to the locker room.) These are just the most publicized stories. Everybody on Tour, it seems, has a favorite tale about Kaye.

The sad thing is that this bad mojo has obscured a solid all-around game. Kaye has finished in the top 80 on the Tour money list four years running. Though a slight 5'11", 165 pounds, he has grooved his idiosyncratic swing to the point at which he has to be considered one of the Tour's best ball strikers. (Kaye ranks 15th in total driving and 19th in greens hit in regulation.)

Last year Kaye emerged as a serious Sunday threat. He held the 54-hole lead at Hartford but came out on the business end of a final-round duel with Phil Mickelson, who shares Kaye's rascally temperament but not his image problems. Two months later, at the Reno-Tahoe Open, Kaye missed an eight-footer on the final green that would have won the tournament, and he lost the ensuing playoff to Chris Riley with a sloppy bogey. What did Kaye learn? "It's really important to hit it in the fairway in a playoff," he said last week.

Kaye slipped into Westchester having quietly tied for 10th at the U.S. Open, his fourth Top 10 of the year. After two rounds he was four strokes back of leader Briny Baird in a tie for fifth that included Tiger Woods. When rain forced the postponement of most of the third round, Kaye had to slog through 29 holes on Sunday, on a bum knee no less. He was one shot behind Rollins playing the uphill, par-5 18th. Kaye made a clutch up and down for birdie from just off the green to force the playoff, and then, playing the 18th again in sudden death, he ripped a perfect drive and then a 254 yard hybrid iron to set up a decisive eagle.

In a lively press conference afterward Kaye insisted, "I'm a nice guy," and of his peers he added, "I hope [the victory] changes their perception of me." Everybody loves a winner, supposedly. Kaye will put that old saw to the test.

O.B.: British Win Is In the Stars