What’s So Tough About It?

SPRINGFIELD, N.J. — Stop me if you’ve heard this one, but an unknown is leading the Open.

Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones, Jack Nicklaus, meet Lee Janzen. Nice enough young guy. Probably good to his mother. Likes beer. Can putt like a dream.

But he’s winning your championship. He might better be introduced to Sam Parks, Tony Manero, Orville Moody, Ed Furgol, winners who didn’t figure. He’s about 200 tournament victories behind the likes of Palmer, Littler, Watson, Johnny Miller, Byron Nelson and Raymond Floyd, but by tonight, he might have won as many U.S. Open titles as any of them. That’s the way golf is. No respect for reputations.

Of course, you might want to introduce him to T.C. Chen and George Burns. They also led the U.S. Open with a record-tying 203 after three rounds. But they didn’t win and weren’t heard from much afterward.

You can tell right away what’s wrong with Lee Janzen. He’s too young, too good-looking. Not a wrinkle on him. He doesn’t have that weathered, worried look golf gives you. That haunted look from staring down too many narrow fairways and trying not to notice the trees on the right, the water on the left, the sand in the middle. You can tell by looking at him he doesn’t know how tough this game really is yet. He thinks this is the Nestle Invitational. A four-ball at Miami.

He hasn’t found out yet that 10-foot putts don’t have to go in, shots can be hit fat or topped, tee balls can go right-to-right, even good shots get bad bounces.

You all remember when Ken Venturi won at Congressional in 1964, exhausted from heat and anxiety, he dropped his putter and marveled, “My God, I’ve won the Open!”

Ken had paid his dues, dreamed his dream. If he had won it years before, he would have shrugged smugly and taken it for granted. That’s why he didn’t win it.

Young Master Janzen doesn’t seem to think it’s much of a big deal. After all, he’s already won at Tucson (1992) and Phoenix this year. But he might have listened to Payne Stewart in the interview room at Baltusrol on Saturday. Stewart is Janzen’s closest pursuer, and Payne, who already won a U.S. Open, had a word for the young man: “There’s so much pressure. The fairways get narrow, the greens shrink, the holes get smaller and breathing gets difficult.”

Janzen might never find this out. He appears to be a quite unflappable young player. The “yips” are years away. His eyes are 20/20, his belly’s flat and he has shot 67-67-69 this week. What’s tough about all this?

He might never find out. This track is a front-runner’s paradise. It’s long. But length is no problem to today’s golfer. One of them (John Daly) reached a 630-yard hole in two this week.

The way the course is set up, it’s a parade, not a contest. It should have a grand marshal and floats.

An Open golf course should be one where you can come storming from behind on a final round as Palmer did at Cherry Hills in 1960, Casper did at Olympic in 1966 or Miller did at Oakmont in 1973. This tournament looks more like a queue.

There are no hell holes at Baltusrol. No places where guys come four under par and crash and burn. There are hardly any double bogeys in this year’s tournament. It’s the easiest Open track in the world to keep the wheels on.

You can’t attack it. You just go out there to defend yourself against it. The Maginot Line mentality. Don’t make any mistakes.

Golf without mistakes is like watching haircuts. A dinner without wine. It’s no fun watching a game where the worst thing that happens is a tee shot might fall in some light rough, where the ball runs so much on the fairway even the short hitters have seven-irons to greens on 470-yard holes and the worst that can befall a player is, he might miss the three-foot second putt. A 72 is a terrible score, but, by the same token, a 68 is a great one.

If it were a poker game, there would be no calling and raising. If it were a fight, it would be a gavotte. Lot of clinching. The players act as if they were in the Vatican.

It’s pretty boring stuff. It keeps the ribbon clerks in.

To give you an idea of its shortcomings, its finishing holes are par-fives, the only par-fives on the course. Now, a great golf course has to have a great finishing hole--the par-five 18th at Pebble Beach comes to mind, but it has an ocean.

But most par-fives are eaten alive by today’s players. Even the 630-yard 17th, the longest hole in U.S. Open history, yielded 23 birdies Saturday and 56 pars and extracted only seven bogeys. The 18th is a patsy that gave up 38 birdies, 43 pars and had totaled only seven bogeys. There were 26 drives over 300 yards long. Baltusrol’s two par-fives are two guys in gorilla suits.

Lee Janzen will find the plodding Payne Stewart dogging his cleat marks in the final round today. Payne threw 16 pars at the course Saturday, 12 of them in a row before he finally became bold enough to fire at the pin on 13--and surround the defenseless 18th for his two birdies.

“Patience” is the word thrown out by the Open players this week. The dictionary defines being patient as “enduring pain, delay, inconvenience without complaining.” In golf, it means “just let me tiptoe out of here with my par.”

“I was very proud of the way I played today,” Stewart boasted. “Years previously I would have lost patience and tried to force things, but I’ve matured and gotten wiser.”

Patience might win the America’s Cup and chess matches, but it won’t sell tickets. Patience is for Popes and crossing guards.

You know what this tournament will be remembered for (if Janzen gets out-patienced)? It will be remembered for one shot--no, two shots, the ones Daly used to reach the 630-yard 17th on Friday, becoming the first player to hit on in two there. That’s what the conversation in the locker rooms will turn to.

Daly is nine shots out of the lead going into the final round. More’s the pity. The American people don’t want patience. They want action, Ruth with a fastball, Dempsey with Firpo on the ropes, Montana with a minute to play and the ball. Arnold Palmer with a three-wood and a tree in his line.

There’s still time for someone to get in and mix it up with Baltusrol, muss its hair, start throwing crazy rights, get it dirty. This bloody thing is too polite.

You know what Janzen did to get ready for the Open? Practice four-woods over water, two-irons out of trees? Nope. He huddled with the PGA Tour’s resident Miss Manners, Andrea Kirby. She briefs the players on how to behave in front of the public and the press.

She should brief them on how to attack a golf course, how to come from behind, how to lock the doors and roll up their sleeves and say: “One of us isn’t going to walk out of here.”