Men in Green (23 page)

Curtis and Mike seemed happy to talk about old tournaments and old players. I stayed out of the way. Mike was waggling a beautiful persimmon-headed, steel-shafted fairway wood, and Curtis said, “Lemme see that thing.” He likes to have things in his hands.

Curtis talked about how bored he gets, standing on the range hitting balls, and how frustrated he was by his poor play in senior events. He knew what a struggle it was for Mike just to get into those tournaments. When I thought about it later, I realized that the Champions tour, the professional circuit reserved for players fifty and over, can get right in a guy's head, even though it is barely a blip on the sporting landscape. That tour for old guys is right there, telling a veteran player about the state of his game, which he may or may not want to know at that point in his life. Nobody ever asked Dwight Gooden at fifty why he couldn't strike out twelve in eight innings anymore. But tour players are expected to pretty much maintain their peak level of play for the simple reason that a few of them are able to do so. It all makes you appreciate the wisdom of Ben Hogan when he said, “I am the sole judge of my own standards.”

Curtis and Mike knew people who had won repeatedly and made fortunes on the senior tour. Some were Hall of Famers, like Hale Irwin and Bernhard Langer. Others were not, like Dan Forsman and Jay Haas, Curtis's Wake Forest teammate and Billy Harmon's close friend. The few golfers who are nearly as good at fifty as they were at forty are outliers.

At the time of our visit, Curtis had played in 115 Champions tour events over nine years and had just six top-ten finishes. You never would have predicted such modest results when he turned fifty. During those same years, Mike had played in only twenty-five events. On the regular tour, Mike played in thirty-eight events in 1988
alone
. In the 1980s, nobody played more events on tour than Mike, and nobody won more money on tour than Curtis. Each, in his own way, was a big part of the show. What would possibly top
that
?

•  •  •

Mike told Curtis the story Ken Venturi had told us, how Curtis had challenged Ken over his critical commentary in the final round of the '85 Masters. That was when Curtis hit those shots into the water on thirteen and fifteen while contending in the final round. In Ken's telling, Curtis poked him during a heated discussion, and Ken said that if Curtis ever did that again he would slug him.

“That never happened,” Curtis said.

Mike explained that he was just repeating the story Ken had told us.

“Did you believe him?” Curtis asked in his pointed way.

“No,” Mike said, trying to be a good guest.

The truth is, at the time Ken told us the story, we had no reason not to believe it. It sounded plausible. Ken and Curtis were both hotheads. Over time, though, I was becoming less sure of Ken's stories, and I know Mike was, too.

Curtis said that he and Ken never had any sort of conversation about Ken's Sunday commentary in '85.

“Honest to God, on a stack of Bibles,” Curtis said. “Nothing.”

•  •  •

Curtis went to Wake Forest on an Arnold Palmer Scholarship. Sometimes Arnold would visit campus for a tournament or homecoming and play with the team, and Curtis and his teammate Jay Haas would try to get in a game with him. Curtis's father, Tom, played in six U.S. Opens and was a prominent club pro in Virginia and West Virginia. He knew and liked Palmer. Early on, Palmer was a Wilson guy, and so was Tom Strange. When Arnold started his own line of clubs, Tom signed on with him. Curtis remembered his father having dinner with Palmer at Venturi's U.S. Open. For some years, Tom Strange wore golf shirts with the Arnold Palmer umbrella logo sewn on them. Curtis grew up on Palmer. As a touring pro, he played Arnold's tournament at Bay Hill every year. Curtis would seek out Arnold at Augusta, hopeful that the four-time winner might unlock the secrets of the course for his fellow Demon Deacon. Curtis didn't get far. “Arnold didn't say a whole lot,” Curtis said.

Curtis talked about Jack, too. Curtis got paired with Nicklaus at his first Masters, in 1975. Jack was at the height of his powers. Curtis was a college golfer on vacation. He was petrified. “I'm standing on that first tee Thursday with Jack Nicklaus and I'm over my ball and I'm saying to myself, ‘Hold on, left hand, you're going for a ride.' ”

In other words, he would grip the club hard with his left hand and barely at all with his right and thereby eliminate the chance of hitting an ugly snap hook. Curtis smoked his opening tee shot and then spent the next eighteen holes watching a Nicklaus exhibition in which the Golden Bear nutted eighteen tee shots, pured eighteen second shots, and posted the easiest 68 Curtis had ever seen. Nicklaus hit every green and each of the par-fives in two and took thirty-six putts. No bunker shots. No chip shots.

Nicklaus went on to win by a shot over Tom Weiskopf and Johnny Miller in one of the greatest Masters ever. Curtis saw up close Nicklaus's classic forged MacGregor blade irons and MacGregor woods, packed in Nicklaus's shiny green-and-white MacGregor bag. In those days, MacGregor was in a class by itself.

Curtis played Wilson clubs in college and as a young pro but MacGregor clubs in his professional prime. He won his two U.S. Opens carrying twelve MacGregor clubs. After his second Open win, Curtis signed a massive ten-year deal with MacGregor. But Curtis believes that Nicklaus, who owned a piece of the company, wanted him out. He never understood why. His new contract was not even two years old when a MacGregor executive started negotiations to buy Curtis out.

“It hurt,” Curtis said, “because here's the greatest golfer of all time telling you, ‘We don't want you.' ”

Curtis said he got paid in full and retained the right to sign with another manufacturer, which he did. But it was a weird way to make a great big pile of money all at once, and it was not what he wanted. There are players who view their equipment contracts like Linus viewed his blanket. Sometimes the company-player relationship can make or break a player. Getting bought out by MacGregor certainly didn't help Curtis's confidence. For years, and with great success, Curtis had been a prominent son of clan MacGregor. And then he was not. I picked up the persimmon fairway wood that Mike and Curtis had been waggling and saw that it was a MacGregor 4-wood with Jack Nicklaus's perfect signature stamped on its soleplate. I showed it to Curtis. He smirked and said, “I know.” Hurt has a long shelf life.

•  •  •

One of the press-tent jokes about Curtis was that if you wanted a quote from him, you went to Jay. Jay Haas and Curtis Strange had been friends forever, and I had always thought of them as being attached at the hip. You'd see them playing practice rounds together or talking on the driving range.

But when Curtis talked about their friendship with Mike and me it was clear that Curtis was far less social than Jay. They had a true friendship, but you could see there were limits. Curtis didn't really need a best friend on tour, just as Lee Trevino did not. (Trevino called Curtis “The Piranha.”) Curtis told us that Jay often organized group dinners and always invited Curtis, and sometimes he came. But usually Curtis was content to order room service and eat by the light of the TV. That was all news to me, and I think to Mike.

I asked Curtis how he celebrated his first U.S. Open victory, won on a Monday in a playoff at the Country Club over Nick Faldo in '88. Mike had asked Arnold a similar question, about his first win at that '55 Canadian Open. Arnold's answer had stuck with me: “It was quiet.”

I asked Curtis, “Who did you celebrate with?”

“It's got to be Allan, right?” Mike said.

Mike was referring to Allan Strange, Curtis's identical twin, who played the tour briefly and later became a stockbroker and financial adviser. Their father and golfing mentor had died when they were fourteen.

“Allan flew in that Monday morning,” Curtis said, revisiting his playoff day. “I didn't even know he was coming.”

That was telling. Allan figured Curtis had enough pressure on him. He wasn't going to bother him for a ticket.

“He got in coming right through the front gate, the security guys all thinking he was me. He was there hours before we started, walking around, drinking beer, and people are like ‘What kind of shape is Curtis gonna be in when he gets to the first tee?' I saw him. I knew he was there. But we didn't talk until much later that night.

“You don't really celebrate. I didn't. You do the trophy presentation and then you do a lot of press, then you go into the clubhouse and the members and the USGA give you a champagne toast, and after that you're on your own. Sarah and I looked at each other like ‘What do we do now?' We went back to the hotel. It was quiet. When we got there it was past ten, ten-thirty. They served us dinner in the restaurant and we just sort of sat there and looked at each other and giggled. Like ‘Can you believe where this game has taken us?' We were
driving
when we first came out, and here I was, the U.S. Open winner.”

It was quiet
. The exact phrase Arnold had used.

“At like two in the morning, I got Allan on the phone,” Curtis said. “He had left right after I won. He told his buddies, ‘If he had lost, I would have stayed, but he doesn't need me.' We talked about what I was thinking about on certain shots. Same as we did after a tournament for years and years. He was always the one person I could really trust to tell me the truth.”

When Curtis won at the Country Club in 1988, he cradled the trophy as if it were a newborn baby. When he won in '89, at Oak Hill in Rochester, he cradled Sarah. The first signs of breast cancer had recently been diagnosed.

The sports psychologists will sometimes tell their golfer patients to imagine lifting the trophy on Sunday night before they play their first shot on Thursday morning. It sounds like a nice idea, but it was meaningless to Curtis and to Mike. Curtis was your classic one-shot-at-a-time player. Mike was not exactly the wish-it-true type, in anything.

On the Sunday night of the 1990 U.S. Open, Mike got a call from Lynn Roach, Fred's agent. “I'm going to fly in tomorrow morning,” Roach told Mike, as Mike he remembers it.

“What for?” Mike said.

“ 'Cause if you win this thing, you're going to need help.”

“Lynn, if I win this thing tomorrow, I do a few interviews and I'm on my way.” All the while he was thinking,
Lynn, if I win this thing tomorrow, all I'm gonna need is a limo and a driver and a map to Rush Street
.

Roach didn't come.

When he was through with his play on Sunday night, Mike went to his locker in the cavernous Medinah clubhouse. In it, he found a note from Curtis, wishing him good luck in the Monday playoff. Curtis wasn't rooting against Hale. He admired Hale. In fact, the best rookie advice he received was from Hale: “Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut.” But Curtis understood the moment like everybody understood the moment. David would be playing Goliath for the U.S. Open, and Curtis was standing with David. He was rooting for the underdog. For the guy he played with in the '74 Western Amateur.

Writing that note and leaving it for Mike was some gesture, when you think about it. Given the depth of the disappointment Curtis had to be feeling then, at the end of his two-year run as the U.S. Open champion? The exhaustion he had to be feeling? He has spoken about that Sunday afternoon, how he felt something washing out of him when it was all over. Maybe that something was what Arnold would call
the edge
.

In any event, leaving that note for Mike was a generous, selfless thing for Curtis to do, and not the kind of thing he did on anything like a regular basis. Maybe it was the first act of the rest of his life.

•  •  •

We wrapped up with Curtis and got back into the Subaru, and Mike picked up where he had left off. It wasn't as bad as the silent treatment I got at Colonial in '86, but it felt about the same. The difference this time was that I didn't know what I had done wrong.

We stopped for sandwiches and talked about nothing. On the drive to the airport, I stopped making any effort and we drove on in silence. Mike wasn't even telling me to slow down or warning me about oncoming trucks. The silence was broken only when Mike wanted to point out the next turn.

I was worried that any true rapport Mike and I had built over the past twenty-five years and on our various stops with the legends had somehow evaporated. I know it was bad, because later I told Christine about it.

The state of Mike's golf game could not have been helping. That day at the Cricket Club, Jaime had played better than Mike. For years, Mike had played in nearly every qualifier he could for every senior event, but he was no longer doing that. There was an underlying health issue complicating matters. During a routine test, a cardiologist had found an aortic aneurism and advised Mike to watch it closely. The uncertainty distracted Mike, and his golf took a back seat. Eventually, he received an aortic stent. Everything went well, but the whole process didn't inspire Mike to go to the range and beat balls. All the while, he was continuing to deal with the aftermath of a long relationship he'd had with a lovely woman in Atlanta, a parting that came despite the deep feelings each had for the other. Life and timing. For a bachelor with no children, he had a lot going on.

Mike missed tournament golf. He missed the feeling of shooting 69 on a tough course with other tour players and the prospect of a good payday. In 2012 he played in the U.S. Senior Open and got paired with Damon Green, a tour caddie and a very good player. For some reason, the guy bothered Mike, and not in a passing way.

“Enjoyed it,” Mike said when their thirty-six holes together were over.

“Well, I didn't,” Green said, as Mike remembered the conversation. Green was within spitting distance of the lead after rounds of 68 and 72.