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Viva Van de Velde!

Frenchman has a chance to wipe away British Open farce

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Posted: Friday August 13, 1999 03:40 PM

There are some athletes you can root for, and some guys you can't.

Cal Ripken Jr.: Easy to cheer.

Albert Belle: Easy to boo.

Peyton Manning: Yes.

Ryan Leaf: No.

Tiger Woods: So, so easy to cheer.

David Duval: Getting harder every day.

From the e-mailbag Some comments on Show me the money, August 5, 1999. These holdout guys are idiots. With the signing bonuses and $5+ million a year contracts for these first-round holdouts, all they tell me is that they are not about football. Get off of your money-grubbing butts and play football or get out of the game altogether! -- Rob Galindo A simple solution. Rookies get a set salary, not a contract. This would alleviate many problems: The first-round bust, agents talking players into declaring for the draft before they're ready, and those agents giving players "gifts" to get them to sign with them and getting them in trouble as to their amateur standing. After their first year, when they've proved themselves capable of playing in the NFL, they can negotiate contracts. -- Wade R. Aiken A lot of the rookie holdouts are looking pretty stupid right now. L J Shelton looks like he'll be lucky to make second string for the Cards. And you can criticize Jamal Anderson if you want -- he signed a contract, and he ought to be willing to live with it. But I don't think it's fair to attack Carl Pickens the same way. Pickens is an outstanding player who has paid his dues playing for these guys -- he didn't pout when he was under contract, or refuse to play and demand to be traded. He's not breaking any contract to play for them, and he's not holding out for money -- he just wants to leave. How can you blame him for threatening to retire, and reiterating his refusal to return? -- Andrew Norris I don't believe you should ever hold out in training camp. It hurts the player and the team. If you don't have a contract by the start of the season, you don't play in the regular season games. All the holdout does is make it harder for him to win a starting position. -- Jonathan Roy This from Jamal Anderson: "You guys will be sad (maybe) but pay my bills? You will not. Provide for my family? I don't think so." His salary this year will be $2.5 million. Jamal and his family should be just fine. If he wants sympathy from me he won't get it. -- Mike Almquist I have a few words for Jamal Anderson: You are under contract. You have no right to hold out. Your contract was good enough for you when you signed your name to it. Honor it. If next year comes and still no deal, fine, hold out. -- Tom Cammalleri, Simi Valley, Calif. If I had my way, I'd make all rookies receive a standard pay for a trial year, so they can prove they're worth these big-money contracts. I know that would only happen in a fantasy league, but some of these players live in a fantasy world and forget reality. They're all comparing their contracts to the guy next to them and the bigger the contract the more bragging rights that come along. All this comes before they've proved a damn thing on the field. -- Bob Malin More comments

Now, some people might think Belle is just a big, misunderstood teddy bear. Some people actually believe Leaf is a sort of victim. And there may well be Ripken and Manning and Woods haters out there, too.

But, once in a while, an athlete comes along whom everyone loves. When was the last time that happened? Gretzky at his retirement? Jordan at his, maybe?

How about Jean Van de Velde?

When the famous Frenchman tees off Thursday at the PGA Championship -- he's famous if you know golf at all, or he should be if you've ever really, really screwed up -- everyone in the world will be behind him.

Well, most everyone. There are some of his countrymen who believe his collapse at the British Open was something of a slap in France's face.

Still, for the rest of the duck-hooking world, for anyone who ever had to back off a putt with a beer on the line, for anyone who ever had to make good with the game in the balance or a reputation at stake, Van de Velde is an inspiration.

Here is a guy who ... well, c'mon now. Let's just say it. He choked away the British Open. Three-stroke lead going into the last hole, a triple bogey and a heartbreaking loss in a three-way playoff. He let the pressure of one of golf's four majors get to him, wrestle him to the ground, throw him into Carnoustie's Barry Burn and humiliate him. He lost a tournament he should have won. He had won it.

And when handsome, 33-year-old Jean Van de Velde came to face the world in Medinah, Ill., on Wednesday, the day before his first major in the United States, he still wore a smile. He still carried himself with the same good grace, the same good humor that endeared him to most of the world after the Carnoustie Collapse.

"Everyone was so serious -- about everything," he told the assembled golf media Wednesday. "And I said 'What's going on here?'"

What was going on was that, after the British, everybody felt terrible for Van de Velde. Maybe even worse than he felt for himself.

He had won the thing. And then he lost it. They had to literally scratch his name off the championship trophy.

The fact that Van de Velde handled the loss like a stand-up guy was what really put him on the good guys list. Even when he talked about the sun coming up tomorrow, about golf being only a game, about there being more important things in life -- when a guy has suffered a case of collar-tightening like that, those kinds of sentiments are often a weak attempt at downplaying the failure -- somehow, with this young man, it didn't come off badly.

It was believable. He was believable.

"We're going out there hitting a golf ball, and here we go walking behind a golf ball and hitting it again," he said Wednesday. "It's a big deal. But it's not that big of a deal."

A collapse of that proportion can go a long way to ruining a career. Has Scott Hoch ever really recovered from missing that putt in the Masters in 1989? Has Greg Norman been the same since he frittered away his lead at the 1996 Masters?

That's why Van de Velde, who has won only once, on the European Tour, will carry the hopes of millions of screw-ups with him when he tees off at the PGA on Thursday.

He's shown us how to lose. Let's see how he wins.

John Donovan is senior writer for CNNSI.com.

Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.

 

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