Tataurangi shows a lot of heart

FORT WORTH, Texas -- The easy part is over for Phil Tataurangi. Thanks to his tie for fifth at last week's MasterCard Colonial, he's already won more than enough money to be a lock for exempt status in 2003. The slightly more difficult part is seeing a cardiologist and possibly undergoing an operation to correct a problem he has with a racing heart.

Tataurangi, 30, is a New Zealand native who relocated to suburban Dallas a few years ago to play the U.S. tour. He missed most of 2000 with a pinched nerve in his neck but also has suffered from supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), which causes the heart to beat erratically or quickly and leads to symptoms similar to those of a heart attack. It's something he was born with and has toocarefully control because almost anything can trigger the onset of the symptoms -- like the previous week at the Byron Nelson Classic when he started his heart racing by jumping up to get a look at a hidden pin position. Tataurangi planned to look into a relatively minor surgical procedure (definition of minor surgery: surgery performed on anyone but you) to correct the problem soon or possibly have a pacemaker installed.

He didn't have any heart problems at Colonial. He played solid golf all week and shot 69 in the final round, paired with leader (and eventual winner) Nick Price in Sunday's final twosome. "He didn't make any putts and he seemed really relaxed," Price said. "He did a good job of controlling his heartbeat today. Hopefully, he'll use this as a springboard to better things."

Earlier in the week, he'd been asked what it was like to be playing with some of golf's big names. "My name is a big name," he said. "It's got 10 letters. How big do you want it?"

Tataurangi is quietly building a pretty good year. He was fifth at Pebble Beach and eighth at the BellSouth Classic. The $163,400 he won at Colonial pushed his winnings over $540,000 for the season, which easily should make him exempt in 2003. "It was a good week," he said. "It's nice to have some good results."

New money

Bank of America will replace MasterCard as sponsor of the tournament at Colonial Country Club. That's good news for Colonial officials. Not only will the tournament's purse bump up to $5 million next year, but switching sponsors may help attract Tiger Woods to the tournament. Or so officials think. Woods, who skipped the event last year to score an estimated $2 million appearance fee at a European tour event in Germany, has said in the past that he was reluctant to play at Colonial because his sponsor, American Express, is a direct competitor of MasterCard's. Next year, the German event will be up against the Byron Nelson, an event that Woods usually plays. Woods did appear at Colonial once, tying for fourth.

The sponsor dilemma is a convenient excuse for Woods, who plans to play fewer than half of the PGA Tour events. Even though Nissan is a big rival of Buick, with which he has one of his biggest endorsement deals, Woods has played in the Nissan Open nearly every year.

The Colonial announcement was bad news for Phoenix Open officials, who also had been courting Bank of America as a possible sponsor.

Claw of the wild

Remember how Kevin Sutherland switched to the claw putting grip the week before he teed it up at the World Match Play Championship at La Costa, then beat Scott McCarron in the final and earned $1 million for his first PGA Tour victory? I saw Sutherland on the practice green at Colonial Saturday afternoon. He had switched back to a conventional grip at Greensboro and this past week was putting conventionally at his second consecutive tournament. "I wasn't making any putts so I went back to what I was doing before," said Sutherland, who already had missed the cut in Fort Worth and was just hanging around, practicing, until he caught a flight out on Sunday. "I had no feel. I was having trouble with distance control and feel. So I went back. The first time I went back [to the conventional grip] was at Greensboro and I putted pretty well -- fantastic, actually." I told him he'd converted me to the claw and now he's deserting me. What's going on? He laughed. "I'm probably not done with the claw," he said. "I'm just taking a little hiatus from it."

The Short Game

Tom Kite probably played his final round at Colonial last week. He had made 29 straight cuts at the tournament, dating back to when he was a University of Texas amateur in 1972, but his streak ended over the weekend when he shot 152, 12-over par, in tough, windy conditions. "I hate to come up here and play like I did this week, but it was 30 good years up here," said Kite, who lives in Austin. Kite, who passed on the Senior tour last week, took advantage of the final year of his 10-year tour exemption for winning the 1992 U.S. Open to play in Fort Worth. Asked if he'd be back next year, Kite sounded doubtful. "They'd have to give me a sponsor's exemption like they did when I was 20," he said. ... Here's the difference between being seen as a good guy and a not-so-good guy. Garrett Willis, who has not made a lot of friends on the tour, was 6-over par in the second round at Colonial and struggling when his drive at the 18th tee hit a tree. He walked in and didn't turn in a scorecard. It was his fourth withdrawal this year; the other three came after bad opening rounds. Colonial defending champion Sergio García, however, was 10-over par when play was suspended by darkness Friday night and he still had two holes to play. García had no shot at making the cut but he still showed up the next morning to play the 17th and 18th holes. Asked if he'd thought about pulling out, García said, "Withdraw? Why should I? I don't think it's professional to withdraw unless you have an injury." ... García was the ninth defending champ to miss the cut in a PGA Tour event this year.

Mailbag

This has become tiresome. It's time to dance. Here's the Mailbag:

Wouldn't it be great if all the tour stops created some suspense? For example, once the cut is made Friday, all the players making the cut would start fresh on Saturday, with the leaders after two days receiving some payout. Just think, never again would we have a Saturday where someone leads by six or seven shots. On those days, there are generally only one or two players with any chance to win, and that's assuming the leader has a heart attack. The guys in fifth place and below, the ones who are 15 shots behind, are just going through the motions.
—Don Chambers, Mililani, Hawaii

Aloha, Don. Guess you're still on Hawaii time. The International tour stop used to do just that, using modified Stableford points instead of strokes. The field was cut after each round, then players started over again each day. Players didn't like it. Neither did TV networks. When the winner on Sunday was in one of the first groups off, which was just about every year, there was absolutely no suspense for the last 90 minutes of the telecast. Your idea has been tried and it failed. Players didn't like the notion that good play for three days would go unrewarded (except monetarily) and that the winner would be decided based on only the final 18 holes. You might as well skip the first three rounds, then, and just have one-day 18-hole tournaments.

I'm heading overseas in late June and will spend a week in the San Francisco area. As a mad golfer, I'd love to play Pebble Beach, but the million-dollar greens fee and six-hour round don't appeal much to me. Not at all. Do you have any ideas regarding local courses? I played Bandon Dunes last year and wonder if there's something of that caliber in the area.
—Vince Bellier, Melbourne, Australia

Check out the poor man's Pebble Beach, the Pacific Grove Golf Links. It's a muni practically next door to the gated 17-Mile Drive community. It's the most fun per dollar in America. It's a scruffy course, not particularly well-maintained. It's par-70, short and relatively easy. If you can't break 80 here, you can't break 80. It's quirky as hell. The first two holes are par-3s. Back-to-back par-5s on the front nine are separated by a tree line and a local rule allowing you to pick up your ball and bring it back to the tree line, with no penalty, if you hit a shot that strays onto the adjacent hole. Pacific Grove is all about the back nine, built on dunes around a lighthouse. You'll swear you're in Scotland. Prices have gone up but when I played there last year, it was still less than $40.

In San Francisco, check out the Presidio, a former Army base course on a hill overlooking the bay. It gets heavy play and also a lot of wind and fog. Another offbeat favorite of mine is Crystal Springs, south and west of the city. The layout and maintenance is pretty average again, but it's hilly with great, fjord-like scenery, pines and lots of wildlife. Before you get to Monterey, stop in Santa Cruz and check out Pasatiempo, designed by Alister Mackenzie, who created Augusta National. Pasatiempo was his favorite; he lived for a while on the course. Sadly, houses encroach on a few of the holes now, but it's a neat, though pricey, course.

Why do telecasts insist upon showing the flight of the ball through the air? Having seen one ball fly through the air, we have seen them all. Once the ball reaches the green, the location of the ball cannot always be determined by the viewer. Why don't broadcasters use a white arrow to point to the location of the ball?
—Dan Dougherty, Honolulu

Gee, why do telecasts show stock cars racing on those boring straightaways? Seen one, seen 'em all, Dan-O. Me, I like seeing the curving arc of the ball, especially when shown from the blimp, which ABC seems to do more of than other networks. Forget the arrow crap. Much worse is the tendency to zoom in on the hole after the ball goes in (like after a long putt or chip). Attention, networks: Once the ball is in the cup, nothing else is going to happen there. No fight is going to break out. The ball isn't going to pop back up like out of a toaster. No gopher will dance. Instead of zooming in on the cup, the camera should switch to the player so we can see his reaction ... which you too often miss completely. And another thing, about that bad airline food ...

I believe the rule that requires a player to use the same ball to complete a hole as the one he teed off with is unnecessarily time-consuming for normal public-course play. Most golfers typically take damp towels to the green to clean the ball. These towels (and various clubs) lay around the green in various locations and have to be picked up. With my golfing friends' permission, I keep a cleaned, same-type ball in my pocket just for putting. Perhaps the upper golf echelon doesn't know or remember the time pressure that public-links golfers are under. Every second saved helps. Therefore, don't you think this rule should be waived for general play?
—Bob Draper, San Diego

What's the problem, Bob? You've already waived the rule. Besides, in my experience, most golfers simply putt with a dirty ball. Or wipe it on their cutoff jeans or tank tops.

There are courses on the PGA Tour that are valid U.S. Open-quality courses (like Colonial in Fort Worth) that never get to host majors, even if they submit bids. In general, do the golf ruling bodies (USGA/PGA of America) dislike using tour stops for majors?
—Thomas Reagan, Arlington, Texas

For starters, I'm not so sure Colonial is a valid U.S. Open course, Ray-Gun, but the real problem is logistics. Most course memberships don't want to give up their course for several weeks twice in a year. Colonial is a cramped site with no parking, little room for corporate tents, an inadequate practice range, poor traffic access, and if you've ever tried to walk past the clubhouse on a weekend during the PGA Tour event there, you know it can't handle a big gallery. That's beside the point of how the greens would endure the Texas heat in June. Torrey Pines is a good bet to land an Open, but I'm not sure how many other tour courses are suitable sites. And don't forget politics. Think the USGA is going to rent a TPC course from the tour? Although an Open (or here's my idea -- a Ryder Cup) at the Stadium Course at Sawgrass would be pretty intriguing.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Van Sickle writes for the magazine's Golf Plus section and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.

 

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