Staying Loose Is Key for Couples

PALM DESERT â€”  A part-time golfer and a guy who looks as if he has trouble stifling a yawn on his way round the course played off for the 39th Bob Hope Chrysler Classic golf tournament Sunday.

Considerably to his surprise, Fred Couples won it on the 91st hole.

It was a victory for nonchalance over disinterest. Fred Couples wins tournaments in spite of himself. He’s almost apologetic. He’s like the poker player who drops his hand and says mildly “Are these any good?�

He beat Bruce Lietzke, who plays the game every other eclipse of the moon and only when it doesn’t interfere with his busy off-the-course schedule. When he can fit it in between taking care of his race cars and hunting and fishing with his kids.

You know how most golfers are. They practice till their hands bleed. They play 36 holes a day. They spend their nights in the motel room putting on the carpet and testing their swing in front of the mirror. Golf is their life.

With Lietzke, it comes in third or fourth. Maybe even after grocery shopping or taking out the week’s trash.

Although he can tee it up at any tournament he wants, Lietzke could fit in only nine tournaments last year. He made only $42,880, and 211 golfers finished ahead of him on the money list.

Couples found time to play in 15 tournaments last year but it was not disinterest in his case, it was a bad back and an ill father and girlfriend.

Still, Couples seems to be the first guy since Julius Boros who found out the game can be played half-asleep.

Couples wins tournaments with a shrug, Lietzke loses them with a shrug. So, you had a final down here this week that had all the elements of two guys in the 18-handicap-and-over truck drivers tournament at Bridgeport Municipal.

Couples seems to win against his better judgment. Sometimes, he acts as if it’s a minor annoyance. For instance, he could have been playing in the “Celebrity Field� down here this week, getting his picture taken with presidents, internationally famous screen and TV stars, multimillionaires. Couples would rather play with Fulton Allem and two druggists from Peoria.

There’s a notion in some quarters that Couples could be a golfer for the ages if only he cared a bit more. He’s got the swing for it, the temperament for it. But he seems to get distracted. Not wool-gathering, exactly, just unconcerned. Gary McCord dubbed him “Boom Boom� in honor of the length of his drives and seeming indifference with which he approached them.

A Tiger Woods cares about his game. He slams his club, raises his eyes heavenward, grimaces, curses to himself when a putt slips by, glares angrily at missed shots. Couples never changes expression. He treats a 40-footer that goes in and a four-footer that misses by an inch with the same lack of enthusiasm. It’s impossible to tell from looking at him whether he is 10 under or is missing the cut. He has won 13 tournaments, including one Masters, but the suspicion is that, with a little bit more dedication, he could have won 25 tournaments and three or four majors.

So, these two rather reluctant players found themselves atop the leader board after 90 holes here Sunday. They went on the tee at 18 for the playoff. If either of them was feeling the pressure, you couldn’t tell. You would have thought they were deciding a $2 Nassau. No clenched teeth, no tight lips, no four-fairway stare like Raymond Floyd on the spoor of first money. No clubs heaved in a pond a la Tommy Bolt, no lashing at spectators.

Actually, Couples won the tournament on the ninth hole of regulation. His tee shot, flaming to the right, was headed like a runaway truck out-of-bounds. He would have been back on the tee hitting his third shot, but the ball fortuitously crashed into the cart carrying announcer Roger Maltbie.

The ball caromed back toward the fairway where Couples was not only able to play it, but put it up in birdie range and make the putt. He had been able to make three out what might well have been a six.

Either way, it might not have bothered Couples too much. He remains as deadpan as a guy sitting in a no-limit game with aces in the hole. He knows failure is the flip side of success in this aggravating game. So, he doesn’t let it aggravate him.

“I love to play golf. But sometimes I don’t show it,� he admits.

Couples might not let his face in on the secret. He has picked up a purse of $414,000. He does it with this beautiful, relaxed, fluid, textbook swing and the bemused look of a player to whom golf is only a game and not worth his complete attention. As if he was whiling away the afternoon, expecting an important phone call.

On the other hand, he beat a guy, Lietzke, who blows the cobwebs off his clubs periodically and tees it up when he doesn’t have anything better to do. The majors? Bruce hasn’t played in the U.S. Open since 1986. He got $248,400 this week in his spare time.

So, you’ll have no trouble identifying the winner of the 1998 Hope Classic in the photograph. He’ll be the one yawning. The runner-up will be the one taking off for a four-week fishing trip with the family.

Hogan wouldn’t believe it.

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* COUPLES’ DAY: Things were bouncing Fred Couples’ way at the Hope. C8