You Da Man!

"No," said Watson, who captained in '93. "Under no circumstances should he pick himself. You can't do both. There's too much peripheral work." Said Maggert, "If Tom wasn't the captain, everybody would be saying he ought to be one of the picks." Saul Lehman. "I'd take Kite." Said one well-dressed New York woman, "Take himself? That would be so tacky."

Kite's tympanums were starting to ache. "People keep saying it can't be done," he grumbled. "Well, doggone, I've been told all my life that I can't do something and there's nothing I like more than proving to 'em that I can, too, do it."

The awful truth, though, is that rookies seem to do just as well as vets at these things. U.S. rooks are 59-63-8 since all of Europe joined the Ryder Cup fray in 1979. It wasn't the rookies who cost the U.S. the last Cup, anyway. They went 11-6. It was the vets, who went 11-15-1 at Oak Hill.

So how about somebody in between? No. 16 Fred Couples has played in four Ryder Cups but is only 37. "When he really wants to play, he's as good as we've got," said Kite. Of course, there are the drawbacks: Couples's tender back, the condition of his cancer-stricken father, the condition of his girlfriend, Thais Baker, who is fighting breast cancer and might not be able to travel to Spain, and his own ambivalence about getting off the couch. "I know a lot of guys have told Tom they're disappointed in Freddy's lackluster attitude," said Tolles, "but he's been playing well lately."

How about No. 12 Steve Jones? He called his 40th-place finish in the PGA "one of the biggest chokes of my career." A long shot like No. 126 John Daly, who held the Thursday lead? "Did they pick me when I won the '91 PGA? [No.] Did they pick me when I won the '95 British? [No.] Those were both Ryder Cup years." Would Kite pick him this time? No.

Mark Brooks, No. 13? His missed cut in the PGA was the fifth in his last seven tournaments. Sorry. Lee Janzen, No. 24, who bulled his way to the second-round lead at Winged Foot with a 67? Hmmm.

Or what about that kid Duval, who makes birdies the way Contact makes tiny time pills—which makes him a very good match player—and was a sizzling 4-0 in the '96 Presidents Cup? Double hmmm.

That's the trouble with America. Too many choices.

When Kite made it to his Sunday tee time, lodged in third place but seven shots behind the leaders, things suddenly got simple. He was paired with one of his applicants, the curly haired Janzen, and you sensed a wordless job interview coming up. "Huge break for me," said Janzen.

Janzen put on a dimple-and-groove recital, firing a one-under 69 on the murderous Winged Foot track, getting up and down from everywhere but the Hutchinson River Parkway and making a birdie on 18 to knock the captain clean out of fourth place, a little push that cost Kite $10,000. "You had the team made until you cost me that money," Kite groused.