CHASKA, MN – I’m typing today with a badly sprained wrist wrapped in an ice pack. I’m staying here in Minnesota with the coach of local high school girls’ tennis team, so we went to hit some balls. I know she has a competitive streak a mile wide, but I came into the net anyway. She tried to give me what Roger Clemens calls “the bow tie,” a screaming rocket towards the Adam’s apple, (named for the area at which it’s named). Pie-eyed with horror, I lurched out of the way, tripped over my own feet and broke my fall with my hand. When the cobwebs cleared, there I was for the second time in two days, flat on my back, legs splayed in an ungainly position, blinking stupidly.
Twenty years ago there would have been a Trinity College Women’s Lacrosse star in that picture with me. Sadly, times change.
Club pro Kevin Roman had to feel that way at the PGA Championship yesterday, but happily he’s only bloodied, but not bowed. Kevin shot an 87 in the first round at Hazeltine National. It was a ghastly day all around. He started with four bogeys in five holes, and things devolved from there. His tee shot on the gargantuan 652-yard par-5 15th hit a tree just off the tee box and finished a whopping 51 yards from where it started.
Guess what? That was one of the two holes where they were measuring driving distance. His 150 yard driving distance record may be a dubious record.
Oh well, at least Kevin beat John Daly. Kevin may be a club pro, but it’s those down-home, grass-roots, green and grateful club pros that sometimes show us the true meaning of sportsmanship, not guys who run around the country looking for tournaments in which to shoot 84 and withdraw. The kid had a mortifying day, yet had a great attitude nevertheless. Take this interview snippet:
Jay: Talk about what you’ll take from the day that was good. What did you do right out there. What went well?
Kevin: I ate lunch well. I ate lunch great. I ate ice cream like a PGA Champion!
You have to admit, the kid has a great sense of humor about it. He twisted in the wind for five hours on the course, while twenty friends and members watched live and two cities watched via TV and Internet as Kevin sank deeper and deeper into the nether-reaches of the leaderboard. It was 18 lashes in the public square…well seventeen; he birdied the par-5 seventh
Still just a few hours removed from an experience that would have devastated a touring pro, there was Kevin, laughing with his wife, Donna, eating pasta with his members who made the trip, working the swing of a thirteen-year-old student of his, and yes, eating popsicle after popsicle with the same smile on his face and twinkle in his eye he had on the practice range all week.
Meanwhile, John Daly is down the road somewhere, who knows how many miles away and how many brain cells removed. Since – and these are his words – “beer doesn’t count,” his withdrawal leaves more time for drinking.Daly has now withdrawn from three majors. He has a long and consistent pattern quitting when the going gets tough. He has DQ’d himself from tournaments intentionally about a dozen times in his career by storming off without signing his scorecard.
There are few Holy Commandments of the professional game, but among them are “always play hard,” “always play with dignity, grace, class and sportsmanship,” and “always sign your card.” It’s called being a pro: plain and simple, something Daly mocks every time he launches six balls into the water trying to reach a par-5 and takes an 18, something he mocks every time he does something else to call attention to himself, and something that dumbs down golf to a lowest common denominator and erodes the altruistic virtues and ethos the game has nurtured and promoted for centuries.
Daly may have a Claret Jug and a Wanamaker Trophy, but Kevin Roman is more of a role model. He’ll bust a gut to post a respectable score; Daly won’t even work up a good sweat. A true pro guts it out with the same grit and determination whether he shoots 87 or 67.
“I remember Bill Brodell, a club pro, qualified for the 1982 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and opened with an 88,” said pre-eminent sports writer Gary van Sickle. “He could have packed it in, but he didn’t he gutted it out. The next day, he got a hole-in-one at the seventh hole and is in the record books forever.” That’s called playing for pride, something every one of these club pros will do to their last breath. They don’t take one second of their time on tour for granted. The opportunity may never come again.
So maybe Kevin Roman won’t make the cut, but he’ll play with honor, pride, and class. You don’t tell the greatness of a man by what he does when times are good, but when times are tough. Heck, just today the run of lousy breaks continued. Just before his tee time, while standing around watching Ernie Els finish on 18, a drunken lugnut shouted “ERRRRRRRRRR-NIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!”, flailed his arms around like Neil Peart at a Rush concert, and splashed his Bloody Mary all over Kevin’s brand new Greg Norman-brand khaki slacks. Kevin just sluffed it off like it was nothing, another day in the office for a hrd working club pro.
Oh well. At least it beats looking up at the sky after nearly eating a tennis ball, and typing the rest of the week with one hand.
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Did you know? Both Tommy Bolt and Sam Snead played in the PGA championship after qualifying as club pros? Bolt in ’71 and Snead in 72 & 73. Bolt finished 3d, Snead was 4th and 9th.
