Say September’s Ryder Cup teeters on the final singles match. Say you couldn’t pay some players enough to subject themselves to such save-America pressure. Say you’re captain Ben Crenshaw.
Which player would you prefer to be carrying our flag?
Tiger Woods? David Duval? Phil Mickelson? Mark O’Meara?
No, you’d want a guy who almost certainly won’t be on the team, a 54-year-old ex-geek who’d sooner land a ComEd commercial than a trick-shot Nike ad, a short-knocker whose down-the-middle game will bore you to cheers.
You’d want a guy who captured three U.S. Open titles, but never America’s imagination. You’d want a Chicago-tough guy who once made All-Big Eight defensive back at Colorado and has occasionally irritated fellow pros and reporters with unpredictable surly flashes. You’d want a guy who plays toughest on the world’s toughest courses.
Hale, yes, you’d want Irwin.
You shouldn’t be amazed that a man in his mid-50s stands 5 under par and four shots off the lead after two rounds of the PGA Championship. You shouldn’t be awed that, often hitting three or four clubs more, Hale Irwin (69) dusted Friday’s playing partners Mickelson (72) and 19-year-old flash Sergio Garcia (73).
You shouldn’t because Irwin plays Medinah as if it were custom-built for him. Medinah is a fairly boring made-for-U.S.-Open course that fits Irwin’s fairly boring made-for-U.S.-Open approach and temperament like his golf glove. Irwin has one huge advantage over the Tigers and Sergios: He knows what not to do.
“There’s no substitute for experience,” Irwin said. “You have to do what Medinah allows you do, and that’s not be overly aggressive and not be foolish and that’s to take what you can get and be happy with it.”
That’s why Irwin tied for third when the Open was played at Medinah in 1975, why he won the Open at Medinah in 1990 and why he’s the only 54-year-old alive whose chances of winning this PGA would have been termed any better than a dead man’s.
After winning 20 times on tour, Irwin has become the Michael Jordan of the senior tour, winning 24 times in four years.
What’s more, the Ryder Cup will be staged at Boston’s Country Club of Brookline, another great gray lady known for long, tough par-4s that all seem to look alike. The Open-caliber Country Club is another course made for Irwin.
So why wouldn’t Crenshaw make Irwin one of his two captain’s picks? Hasn’t Crenshaw repeatedly said he wants players who are best in U.S. Opens and who are “really playing with confidence right now”?
Irwin said after Friday’s round that he’s playing with even more confidence this week than he did when he won here in ’90.
Yet the first time Irwin was asked if he believes Crenshaw should choose him, he appeared genuinely surprised and amused and said, “I needed a good laugh.”
The second time he was asked about the Ryder Cup, he thought for a moment, leaned into the microphone and deadpanned, “Are we going to get paid?”
Reporters also needed a good laugh following several days of chasing after reaction from Crenshaw and the players he criticized for showing so little respect for Cup tradition.
But seriously, if Capt. Crenshaw wanted to send a message to his spoiled brats and the flag-waving fans they have infuriated, why wouldn’t he pick Irwin and perhaps even bat him cleanup? Have Irwin’s game and nerves deteriorated that dramatically since 1991? That was the “War on the Shore” year that America discovered the Ryder Cup.
Remember Kiawa Island? Remember who rode shotgun for Capt. Dave Stockton in the final singles match against Bernhard Langer? Hale, yes. As Irwin says, there’s no substitute for having played in five Ryder Cups.
Do you trust that Duval, whose skin has proven to be thinner than $100 bills, won’t have trouble breathing under his first Cup pressure? Do you trust Woods, who has yet to prove he can do anything major except play one crazy-hot, blissfully ignorant Masters on an Augusta National custom-fitted for him?
No, you’d sooner trust a guy who has won at Butler National, Winged Foot, Pinehurst No. 2, Muirfield, Pebble Beach, Inverness and Harbour Town. You’d put your rent money on a guy who worked construction during college summers, grew up on public courses, never has had a lesson and taught himself to play on tour while holding his swing together with “gum and sticks.”
You’d bet on a 54-year-old who says he’s hitting the ball farther than he ever has, who still putts with the confidence of a flat-belly and who still keeps himself in good enough shape to whip any of the Ryder Cup crybabies.
Just because Irwin has never been a member of golf’s good-old-boy fraternity is no reason to keep him off the team. This team needs his fire-tested guts. This team needs him to teach daily lessons in course management and Advanced Wedge instead of your basic Big Bertha 101.
As he said: “That team has a personality right now that I’m not sure I know.”
Cup lovers should root for Irwin to shock Tiger’s world and win the PGA. That’s the only way Crenshaw would feel pressured to pick Irwin. Uncle Sam needs you, Hale.
