The Price Of Fame

For Nick Price, last year seemed as if it would never end. When the season did conclude, he reflected on how he had handled being the No. 1 player in the world. Poorly, he decided. Now he says things will change.

They certainly will start differently. In 1995, Price was coming off a year during which he had seven wins, including the British Open and the PGA Championship. He was on the verge of signing a $25 million endorsement deal and had just moved into a mansion next to Greg Norman's in Hobe Sound, Fla. He was also starting to struggle with all the demands that went along with his status. Price quickly lost his No. 1 ranking to Norman, played poorly in the majors and did not win in the U.S. for the first time since 1990.

"I hadn't managed my time very well," Price now admits. "I made a lot of mistakes, which hopefully I can rectify this year."

Price makes his 1996 U.S. debut this week at the Doral-Ryder Open, as the Tour begins its Florida swing, and claims to be happier and hungrier. He's encouraged by the fact that he closed out 1995 with a couple of victories, in the Hassan II Trophy in Morocco and the Zimbabwe Open—"Those may not be the highest-profile tournaments," he says, "but a win's a win"—and started this year with a second-place finish (despite a pulled stomach muscle) in a South African event.

Price bristles when people say that those back-to-back money and Player of the Year titles in 1993-94 were too much for him to handle. "That's not true at all," he says. "The only thing that I lost was control of my own time. All things being equal, I want to get back to that situation. I think I'll be able to handle it a lot better."

Price has consulted with Norman on how to deal with success and claims his backslide was educational. Not that he really flunked the 1995 season. After all, Price earned more than $1.2 million worldwide, his stroke average tied for third best on the Tour, and he placed first in overall driving. Still, his performance did not come close to meeting expectations. Will we ever again see the Nick Price of 1994? Maybe not, but Price thinks the 1996 model will be a beauty. "I'm looking forward to this year because my life has returned to normality," he says. "The hardest thing is going through the period I did, but, hey, if that's a bad year, I'll take it."

Watson Explains

Tom Watson took hits from all sides last week for failing to name names after being quoted by the Australian AP as saying that players cheat on the Tour. The very fact that someone as painfully honest as Watson didn't identify the culprits should have been a tip-off that there was more to the story than made the wire. At a dinner before the Australian Masters, Watson, along with John Daly and Ian Baker-Finch, fielded questions posed by two TV commentators. When asked about last year's Mark McCumber- Greg Norman incident at the NEC World Series, Watson said, "There is no question that people cheat on the PGA Tour."

Watson claims the remark was misinterpreted. "I didn't want to give the impression that the Tour was rife with cheating," he said on Sunday from his home outside of Kansas City, Kans. "The Tour is generally clean, but over its history there have been instances of people not playing by the rules. I apologize if that was taken as a general indictment. As my wife said, 'You opened your mouth and inserted your foot in it again.' "

Seve 1, Kite 0