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Home on the range

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Posted: Wednesday May 03, 2000 04:46 PM

Step away from the ledge, gentle reader. I have not been fired, reprimanded or otherwise muzzled. On Tour has been dark lately for the most banal of reasons -- vacation. Yes, even underworked sportswriters occasionally need to (further) relax.

I always take a week off following the Masters to coincide with the spring break of the Montessori school where my wife, Frances, teaches. That the timing helps me avoid the worst three-week stretch of the PGA Tour schedule -- Greensboro, Houston, New Orleans, a.k.a the Boremuda Triangle -- is merely coincidental. Anyway, I won't bore you with the details of my downtime, except for one notable occurrence. First, an apology: I'm sorry it happened. It was a momentary lapse of judgement, and in no way did I mean to stain this glorious game. What, exactly, happened? Did I get a John Daly haircut, suddenly start dressing like Duffy Waldorf, or develop an irritating full-swing waggle, à la Mike Weir? No, it's much worse than that. After years of stalling, I was finally coerced into taking my better half to the driving range for the first time, under the auspices of teaching her how to play ( Butch Harmon was unavailable). Please bow your heads for a moment of silence.

MAIL CALL I was wondering if you had a great connection with Sports Illustrated in order to get your job, and do powerful people exist within SI in order for you to keep it? As a subscriber to SI, I sincerely find your work grossly inadequate in covering golf and judging from your style probably not good enough to cover any other sport. You could write an article in SI on anything, and I would not have to look at the author to know that it was you. It will be without a doubt the worst article (e.g., Vijay Singh's Masters victory). With the amount of money that has been infused into golf over the past three years as well as the phenomenal increase in the popularity of golf, I find it difficult to see your covering golf for the premier sports magazine in the world at a level even close to where your colleagues perform. Would you care to respond to my comments? —Malcolm Pierce LaVergne, Ithaca, N.Y. Congrats, Mal, you've won this week's award for the most bile-filled dispatch. As a reward, we're going to give you a free subscription to CNNSI.com. Enjoy! My friends and I have been longtime readers of yours both on the Net and in print. Will you be attending our mini-major, the John Deere Classic, this July 27-30? If history is any guide, the event should culminate in a tight match between Paul Goydos and Willie Wood. All joking aside, the Classic is moving to the new TPC at Deere Run, which from all accounts is spectacular, and I think it would be worth your while to attend. Please look me up if you cover the event. I will show you the town and would like to see if you are as much fun in real life as you sound like on paper. We can take in a round at the Davenport Country Club, former host of the Western Open and generally considered one of the best courses in Iowa. I will give you two a side. —Joe Judge, Davenport, Iowa I gotta tell you, Joe, it's a swell offer. Taking your rent money would be a nice way to decompress from the British Open, which falls the week before the JD. Maybe I'll cancel my trip to Ireland, where I'm looking at comped rounds at Ballybunion (Old), Royal County Down, Royal Portrush Lahinch and Tralee. Keep monitoring your e-mail. Can you fix me up with LPGA golfer Carin Koch? —Jason Perlmutter, Astoria, N.Y. Sure, but you better duck when you meet her husband, Stefan. On golf heros: Tiger Woods is an arrogant, self-centered egomaniac; David Duval is an unemotional, zero-personality robot; Colin Montgomerie is a whining, snivelling hothead who blames others (i.e., Americans) because he can't win a major. Golf's present best are supposed to be the sport's future heros. I don't think I would want my nine-year-old emulating their behavior. Any comments? —Allen Rose, Vancouver, B.C. Yeah: I hope never to see your paean to sportswriting heros.

Understand, I've been putting this off for years. Every time Franny would ask about learning I would try to talk her into taking up heroin instead, because it's cheaper and less addictive. Eventually she began telling people my reluctance was born of fear, that deep down I was concerned she would turn out to be a better player. This was absurd. I didn't think that. I was certain of it. Actually, my big fear has always been that she would learn to love golf like the rest of us, and it would cease to be my household's last bastion of malehood. Golf is the only form of recreation I enjoy without Franny. On our honeymoon she went to the spa while I played Poipu Bay. We ski together, hike together, ride bikes along the beach together, etc., etc. Golf has always been about me, or me and the boys, a subculture she has never really understood or approved of. I had planned to keep it that way, but with a hard sell that involved future golf vacations together, I finally gave in and we went to a nearby range.

Frances has been to enough tournaments and overheard enough numbing shop talk to understand the rudiments of the game, but she had never held a club in her hands. I borrowed a lady's nine-iron from the pro shop and showed her the proper grip. She resisted my advice to de-rock so her ring, combined with her well-kept nails, gave her a grip that, I glumly realized, is far prettier than my own. Next we talked stance. She was standing too upright. I coaxed her into a lower, more athletic position. After a quick cold shower, I explained some of the basics of the swing. I wanted to keep it simple. Basically, I just told her to keep her eye on the ball, her head down, don't sway on the backswing, maintain light grip pressure, stay balanced, and don't try to swing too hard. That I've never been able to do all of these things at the same time is irrelevant.

Franny's first swing produced a grounder to shortstop. I was impressed by her clubhead speed but not surprised. She's a good athlete -- a one-time gymnast and softball player, a high school cheerleader (sadly, no amount of begging can convince her to put that little uniform back on), and these days she kicks butt in the local 5 and 10Ks. What really struck me was how free and natural her swing was -- unencumbered by years of late-night Golf Channel instruction and a myriad of ever-changing swing thoughts and the ghosts of ill-timed snap hooks to drop expensive Nassaus, Frances was like a kid swinging a stick at a rock. I was unspeakably jealous. As she lined up her second career swing I felt a pang of regret. It would only get harder from here. How could she possibly know the heartache that awaited? More still, what kind of a wretch would send his beloved down this path? I regained my focus. She hit another wormburner, this one a little more on line. I expertly diagnosed her problem -- she was taking her eye off the ball. (It would have taken David Leadbetter six months and $10K worth of lessons to come up with that.) Another swing, another ground ball. Ever the perfectionist, Frances frowned. She expected to be knocking over flagsticks by now. It's not as easy as it looks, I said. That's what you're always telling me, she countered. On her fourth swing Franny caught her teed up range ball flush, hitting a line drive dead on line that carried some 40 yards and rolled another 20 or so. She was suitably enthused, and we proceeded to share a congratulatory kiss. She suffered a little setback on her next cut -- the whiff -- but rallied with another low, hard line drive. On and on it went.

Next to us in the hitting line was a portly, balding middle-aged dude with a horrific swing who had been watching us intently since our arrival. I was flattered for a while, thinking he was dazzled by my acumen. But after a while I drifted off to hit a few rocks of my own, eager to test out a new set of sticks that had arrived a few days earlier in the mail (that's a whole other column). He didn't even notice that I had left. This guy seemed to be focusing a disordinate amount of his attention on Frances's hip turn, which was nicely accentuated by a pair of snug capri pants. I knew I should have made her wear a burlap sack. After talking me out of wrapping my two-iron around his neck, Frances methodically worked her way through the rest of her half a bucket, finally declaring that her hands were getting sore and she was ready for some sushi.

We strolled toward the parking lot, holding hands under a Technicolor sunset. The game of golf had survived this little experiment. Whether our marriage will remains to be seen.

Sports Illustrated golf writer Alan Shipnuck will take you On Tour each Wednesday at golfplus.cnnsi.com. Click here to send Alan a question or a nice, friendly comment.

 

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