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May 2008
Campillo a valuable Brave
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Since August 2005, Mike Hampton’s pitching record with the Braves is 0-0. His salary for just this season alone would cover nearly the entire payroll of the Florida Marlins. Frankly, it would appear he has just about reached a dead end. Through. Quit. Even speculative stories about how much progress he’s making toward returning to useful form have been noticeably absent. Sometimes you wonder if he ever wants to pitch again, or if his arm has taken early retirement.
That being such as it is, let’s consider the case of Jorge Campillo, whose arm also has had one of those Tommy John remodeling jobs. It’s working like new. Jorge has won more games in two months than Hampton has in two years, and he started late. A lot of us experts were wondering how long it would be before he’d get a chance to start with all those faltering arms around him. Even Tom Glavine took a sabbatical on the DL.
Once Campillo got in the rotation, only a blister could stop him. But just temporarily. He knows how these big-league teams can get careless with a guy, beginning with the Braves, and he’s taking no chances. Bet you didn’t know that he was in the Braves’ stable as long as 12 seasons ago. He was signed by an unidentified scout in 1996, then just as handily lent to the Mexico City Tigres in his home country. Then at the end of the season they gave him to them. Take him he’s yours.
That’s a good league, the Mexican, Triple-A, where Warren Spahn finally hung up his gear. Not exactly 5-star accommodations. Max Lanier, who jumped the Cardinals in 1946 to join the Pasquel brothers, told of a park in which a railroad ran through center field, and the game had to stop when the train came through. For Campillo, it was beginning to look like a lifetime. He put up good figures for the Tigres, good ERAs, started and relieved, but for eight years nobody came calling.
Then Seattle bought him in 2005. After arm surgery, he was a Pacific Coast League earned-run leader, but still the Mariners weren’t impressed. Then came the Braves again, nearly 12 years since the first time. They picked him up off the street the day after Christmas last year, but registered him under that non-descript category of “non-roster invitee.”
So was his spring non-descript, but soon after the season opened the Braves’ pitching was in such a jumble, he was called up from Richmond. First thing you notice about him is his non-conforming style. He has an economical delivery, not a lot of windmilling and fussing about on the mound. He gets ready to pitch. He delivers the ball. At the top, it seems he’s re-gripping the ball and comes almost directly overhand. However he does it, it’s working. At the moment, he has won twice, should have had another, and his earned-run average leads the staff.
By his calendar, he won’t be 29 years old until August. The Braves list him at 6 feet 1, but he doesn’t look it. He is an amiable sort, but you’ll notice the absence of conversation here. His management of the English language is still a work in progress, as is my Spanish. His pitching, though, speaks a language easily translated to major league. In the surgical absence of Peter Moylan, the Australian surprise of a year ago, Campillo (“cam-pee-yo”) has the look of the pitching sleeper of ‘08.
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Thoroughbreds in U.S. get best care
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
What most Americans never realize - while stricken by the drawn-out emotional saga of Barbaro or the crushing calamity of Eight Belles, caught on live television in one of our major sports’ traditional events - is that 55,000 horses were slaughtered in this country each year as late as 2004. That’s an approximate figure, and a large percentage of the victims are not racing thoroughbreds but, in many cases, somebody’s family playmate.
Naturally, when Eight Belles went down in the Kentucky Derby, animal lovers who arise from their slumber to leap to the fray in such highly publicized situations used this situation to reap every headline they could. A filly, racing against male horses, finishing second in the Kentucky Derby, then breaking down on camera — what an arousing target.
The folly of it is that no horse lives a better life than a racing thoroughbred. Pampered, petted, provided a carefully supervised diet, and bedded down in its own private suite each night.
The value of such equine royalty escalates with each visit to the winner’s circle. Then follows the after-race life of promise as a breeder. No animal could have been more patiently coddled than Eight Belles.
Now, would you care to hear the story of some thoroughbred classics that didn’t come to such a fairy tale end? Imagine, if you can, the winner of a Kentucky Derby coming to his end in a can supplying food on somebody’s table in Japan. It happened. Ferdinand won the Derby in 1986 with Bill Shoemaker on his back, then the Breeders’ Cup Classic the next year. Retired to stud, he was sold to a thoroughbred farm in Japan. He hadn’t been a successful sire in this country, so why was he expected to produce there? When he didn’t, Ferdinand was sold and came to his end in a slaughterhouse in 2002.
In 1978, there was no finer race horse in America than Exceller. Nor in Europe, where he won classic stakes, both on turf and dirt. In one race in this country, the Jockey Club Gold Cup, he beat both Affirmed and Seattle Slew, two Triple Crown champions, coming from 22 lengths off the lead. At Saratoga he has a place in the Racing Hall of Fame, but in Sweden he became a food item, slaughtered in 1997 when he failed as a sire.
In this country, such champions wind up in the Kentucky Horse Park, a kind of living museum. In Sweden, they wind up a victim of slaughter. And Exceller was a statuesque figure of a horse, but as I usually say, all race horses are things of beauty, surely not meant for dog or people food.
So the Belmont approaches and with it the anticipation of the first Triple Crown champion since Affirmed. Hovering over the sport, though, is still the memory of Eight Belles’ breakdown.
Big Brown has had no serious challenger, nothing to whip up the memory of Affirmed and Alydar, straining every fiber to cross the finish line first. Affirmed won the races but Alydar won the breeding crown, a star in the stallion barn. Sorrowfully, Eight Belles is gone, but her tragedy should take nothing away from Big Brown’s day in the sun.
To be honest, this is not one of the better crops of 3-year-olds, but were it not for Big Brown, it wouldn’t register. Probably the surest confirmation is that after the Kentucky Derby, only one other horse in that field chose to challenge Big Brown in the Preakness.
And I still look back at the moment of truth, when trainer Rick Dutrow strode so confidently to the board at the Derby drawing and chose the outside post with three other inside gates open.
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Cox, extension deserve rousing ovation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nothing came easy in Bobby Cox’s life, beginning at the beginning. His childhood years were spent on a farm in the “dust bowl” of Oklahoma, when harsh conditions finally drove his father to pack up the family and head west, a sort of a belated chapter as of “Grapes of Wrath.” In the heart of agricultural country in Selma, Calif., his father found work with the railroad company and dropped anchor. Selma became Bobby’s home from the age of 4, and in his own words, “It was a good life,” in which he established many of the values that he still lives by today.
He spent a year at Reedley Junior College and left when the Dodgers offered him a minor league contract. He rode buses and spent many a night in roadside motels from Reno to Salem to Panama City to Albuquerque, and eventually landed in Richmond. Yes, he was a Braves farmhand for a season, then finally the sun broke through. The Yankees traded a catcher and a pitcher, Bob Tillman and Dale Roberts, for him in 1967. By the time he was 30, after just two seasons with the Yankees, the old knees sent the signal — it was over, and those he walks on today are artificial. He had made an impression, though, and the Yankees gave him a job managing a farm club in Fort Lauderdale, and the only time he has been off the bench since then was when the Braves put him in a suit behind a desk and a name plate that said, “General Manager.”
It’s a strain on the imagination to recall that he once managed the Braves and was fired after four seasons, replaced by Joe Torre. That was the day that Ted Turner, with Cox present at his own firing, was asked who his choice of manager would be, and the bodacious one wryly said, “Bobby Cox.” It would so happen again in mid-season 1990 when Cox returned to the kind of suit he felt most comfortable in, with “Braves” across the chest. Not many managers get second chances, but Bobby turned this tour of duty into a career, and since June 22, 1990, only Bobby Cox has managed the Braves. That, of course, includes those 130-some times he has lost debates with umpires and had to retire to the tunnel.
There is a deep sense of kindness in his face. I have known managers that I feared, managers that I liked, managers that I admired and managers at whose firing I never shed a tear. The first manager I covered as a rookie reporter just out of the Navy Air Corps was 69 years old. He could have bitten the head off a nail. Cox has a habit of treating every newsperson who approaches him with the same sort of courtesy. Oh, I’ve heard snap a time or two, but in situations when most managers would have bitten the head of that nail.
He doesn’t view his players as chattel, rather as compatriots in a cause. If he is unhappy with a player’s performance, he takes it up with the player. It doesn’t become a headline. To be traded to Atlanta is on nearly any player’s wish list. Those who don’t fit in are soon gone. No shrieking tapes or boomboxes in the Braves clubhouse. Players soon learn to respect the unwritten rule of team: What takes place here and what’s said here, stays here. In fact, I’m not even certain that there’s such a caveat posted in the Braves clubhouse. It may be simply understood.
In all these years, I’ve heard Bobby Cox make unpleasantries about only two players, and only one opposing manager. Considering all the swords he has crossed with umpires, it’s amazing he hasn’t amassed a book on those guys. Let it be said, that rarely, if ever, when he is dismissed from the premises is it a personal matter, more in the defense of one of his players.
Since he parted company with his knees, golf is no longer one of his passions. The country place near Adairsville is. And his and Pam’s love of animals. They have a party that has been an annual off-season function raising money for animal care. Good citizenship is more than a card to be carried in the wallet, it’s a habit and tradition with the Coxes. None of us can be sure that signing on to manage the Braves one more year will be the end of it, but it’s a move to be met with a rousing ovation in all corners. My guess is there will be more to follow.
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Bob May gets no respect
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bob May is not a name that pops out of your memory bank just like that — pfffft! In fact, it’s not a name that has popped up anywhere lately. You have to go back to the year 2000 to find him in a headline, and then that was because he lost. And, to whom you ask? Tiger Woods, of course. We’ll get back to that later.
Bob May just passed through town last weekend and I’m not sure anybody even noticed.
He posted three rounds in the 60’s in the AT&T Classic. He may as well have been playing in the Siberian Open, for all the attention he didn’t get. There was a time when he did have to leave for a foreign land to get attention. He played on the European Tour and when he won the British Masters in 1999, they dusted off a place for him and invited him back home, like, “Gee, Bob, where you been all this time?”
He was rolling in 2000 when his name popped up in the PGA Championship at Valhalla. When Tiger checked in with a final score of 270, still the record for the PGA, May tied him and they went into a playoff. Now, we come to the sinister part of the story, on the tee at the 18th hole. Tiger tees off and his ball appears to disappear down an unpaved utility roadway, then mysteriously reappears on the fringe of the fairway. It has been replayed over and over again on television, and the puzzle is how it was re-directed from its line toward the forest to its position by the fairway.
One witness has told me that he saw a boy kick the ball. Stands by his story without flinching. The ball was headed hell-for-leather into deep trouble, but checking replays over and over again, there was never any visible evidence of interference. Surely nothing to implicate Woods in any way, but a mystery that still persists. May has never cried foul. From where he stood on the tee there was no way he could follow the flight of the drive that could have changed the course of his career. Nor would he have been plodding around the course at Whitewater Creek Monday trying to qualify for the U.S. Open, to be played at Torrey Pines in June.
This was a local qualifier, the back door to the Open. Make it there, you move up to the regional. May lives in Las Vegas, but being here for the AT&T, this is where the USGA booked him. He had little leverage. He’s playing on a Minor Medical Extension after two years off the tour.
“I was teeing off in the Byron Nelson in 2003 and something popped in my back,” he said. He had to start all over again in Q-school. “You’d think that playing for the championship of your country you’d get more consideration than that.”
It gets worse. He has to earn $540,000 in four events to be upgraded to Major Medical, and that’s like climbing Mt. Everest barefoot. But, whatever, loading his clubs and giving a wave, it was back to the Nationwide Tour.
Classic case of identity crisis
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In the calm of a September morning, year of our Lord 1967, the first tee shot was struck in what was then the Atlanta Classic, later to become the Georgia-Pacific, then the Bell South, and now the AT&T Classic. Soon to become a “blank” (no kin to Arthur) Classic, the blank waiting to be filled in. That’s the fate of tournament golf in this country, events basically held captive of an empire known as the PGA Tour.
These are edgy times in the life of the AT&T Classic, soon to be orphaned unless some kindly corporation steps forward. You see, last year a slot fell open when the Booz Allen Classic, a struggling event played in the vicinity of Washington, was abandoned. It was a peachy date, around the Fourth of July, and to top it off, commissioner Tim Finchem, who runs the tour autocracy, managed to insert Tiger Woods as host, and AT&T bit like a lurking bass. Divorce of the communications giant and little ol’ Atlanta Classic was not long to follow.
That’s the life of tour tournaments. Sponsorships ofttimes last fewer years than a Hollywood marriage. The Texas Open, for instance, has had 10 name changes, which brings up another issue. The now Valero Texas Open has eyes on the Sugarloaf slot that the AT&T now occupies. The Texas Open now falls in the post-Tour Championship season, a sort of cluster of leftovers in the sense that they are left to duel with football, the World Series, stock cars and all sorts of television competition.
This will be the last AT&T Atlanta Classic. AT&T had moved to Maryland, with Tiger in escort, on the classic old Congressional course, where U.S. Opens have been played, and takes the new title of “AT&T National, hosted by Tiger Woods.” With such a great date and the appearance of Tiger guaranteed, who could blame AT&T? But why AT&T? This corporate giant already has the Pebble Beach tournament, another authentic classic. True, this does give AT&T a cozy connection to all that’s political in Washington, I’d suppose, but it does leave the Atlanta Golf Foundation dangling in the wind.
Forty years the foundation has cared for this championship like a mother cares for her babe, from the time it was a pup struggling for existence. Whoever could forget the sight of Bob Charles and his $22,000 check being helicoptered to the airport after winning the first of these tournaments at Atlanta Country Club? The purse was bumped up from $110,000 to $300,000 to the present number, $5,500,000. Sixteen millions have been directed to charities, mainly Children’s Healthcare. Loyalty, where art thou?
Finchem delegated Greg Norman to lay out this TPC course at Sugarloaf, a sort of a balm for butting in on Norman’s World Golf Tour projection. The Classic had outgrown Atlanta Country Club and gratefully, though remorsefully, accepted its new bailiwick in Gwinnett County. So here it has flourished, doing due diligence to the commissioner, who has now left the foundation like a widow looking for a new mate.
All is not without hope. David Kaplan, the tournament director, has been busy courting prospects. There is at least one strong one, and another prospect that might come aboard on a “presenter” level. Whatever may develop, the PGA Tour must be dealt with, and truth is, the tour isn’t all fired up about having two tournaments in the same area, especially since one is the crown jewel Tour Championship.
The chilling prospect is that, should the foundation not be able to connect with another sponsor, and Atlanta loses its place in the rotation, the classic is gone and might never be back. Unless one of those undesirable Fall leftover dates should pop up, which would be like a seat in steerage.
Like duffers, golf books scatter wildly
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Probably — and I say so to protect myself from litigation — more useless books are written about golf and how to play it than any other game. You might include cooking, but that’s not a game, and one false step and you can get poisoned. But golf is the hot topic now, with all these touring pros in the vicinity torturing themselves at Sugarloaf, even the guy who designed the course. Greg Norman must have been mad at somebody, particularly anybody who plays golf.
We had another golfing visitor in town last week, I hear. I missed Carl Hiaasen. I was out of town at another golf event, watching Paul Goydos almost win The Players Championship. He has a better handicap than Hiaasen, and he doesn’t go around writing books about it. I mention Goydos over Sergio Garcia because Sergio won about the way Ernie Els won a tournament awhile ago. Neither won it, somebody else lost it, in the case of the TPC, Goydos. Good-natured, humorous and just recovering his game, as is Hiaasen.
Goydos is making more headway. Hiaasen starts his book with an 18 handicap and he finishes at 18. The confounding struggle in between is the meat and potatoes of his project, titled “The Downhill Lie,” which reminds me of another golf story, or almost golf story, having to do with another chap who spent a life jousting with the accursed game, Jim Murray, the great columnist.
Jim was being escorted to his burial place in a cemetery in Los Angeles by a cadre of old pals. Most of us had played golf with him on some continent or another, and knew of his contentious relationship with it. He once talked the owner of a new course not yet opened to the public to let him play a round first, that way he could say he once held a course record, though it may have been 104. As his escorts walked away from the hearse down a slope toward the burial plot, laboring under the weight of the heavy casket, one of our group murmured softly, “It’s a downhill lie. Jim wouldn’t like that.”
So, you get the significance of a downhill lie in golf. Hiaasen had given up golf 30 years before and his renewal became his “downhill lie,” 207 pages of it. He is a genuinely esteemed author, and sport is not his customary genre. I’ve noticed his name on books by my wife’s bedside at times, but since she deals in quite a contrast of reading material, it never occurred to me that the same guy would be writing a book about golf. So when “The Downhill Lie” arrived in my mail, curiosity seized me and I read the darn thing from cover to cover. And laughed, and empathized, and sneered, and tired of his constant name-dropping, David Feherty, for instance.
Golf literature, to employ the term loosely, mainly falls into two categories: How-to and how-not-to. There are some outstanding books of instruction, Hogan’s “Five Fundamentals of Golf,” without which Larry Nelson would never have reached the stars, he says. And Harvey Penick’s “Little Red Book,” and Bobby Jones’ “Golf Is My Game,” and many another.
For every one of those, there are two dozen about some guy and his lousy game. If you can’t play it well, sit down and tell the world about it. Get it off your chest. Belabor us with your world travails, and the worse it is, the better it sells, I’d guess. Must be, for all those that are out there. For pure how-to, I guess the Englishman Ted Ray’s book covered it all, “Driving, Approaching and Putting.”
I say that, for nobody ever writes a book about putting. Most important stroke of the round, makes or breaks the game, and all the self-acclaimed experts write about everything but putting. I forget if Hiaasen gets into it or not. I’d check it out, but I’m not certain I could stand that much painful golf again.
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No age restrictions at Players Championship
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. — It was, I would say, the most uncommon leaderboard you’ll see on the PGA Tour in a long while. (For one thing, Tiger Woods’ name isn’t there because he isn’t here. He’s in injury rehab.) It is a mixture of elders, of seasoned veterans and a bunch reaching for the moon. At the top this hour, the leader is a player who between 1996 and 2007 never won a tournament. Paul Goydos is 43 years old. Sergio Garcia, in his late 20s, has still to produce on his promise. And he is followed by Kenny Perry, who is 47.
Surprise of the week, I’d suppose, is Bernhard Langer, the 50-year-old German wearing more commercial patches on his shirt than a stock car. Then we have Phil Mickelson, who is 37, and who is all over the course and all over the board. Jeff Quinney has moved up, a former U.S. Amateur champion, and Ian Poulter, the outlandish Englishman, and Tom Lehman, the retiring Ryder Cup captain (and at age 49 peering over the fence into the Champions Tour) and Greg Kraft, both early finishers.
And so they are scrambling back and forth. Just awhile ago, J.B. Holmes, the Kentucky Wildcat, took off on an intoxicating streak of five birdies, and just as dizzily slipped into a pit of bogeys, but did birdie the infamous and perilous 17th hole. This is the hole of which Ernie Els said the other day, “They should blow it up.” He had just triple-bogeyed it.
Ernie is not alone is this vindictive view of the hole that is no less than the main attraction of those who come to a golf course to feast on disasters. By noon Saturday, every available patch on the grassy bank, and a stretch of bleachers, were filled with drooling guests, awaiting each calamity. Last year, 93 players hit the water here. Without the 17th, The Players Championship would be minus its main attraction. Also without it, it would be more favorably viewed as a fifth major, so commissioner Tim Finchem and his kingdom are betwixt and between.
This hole, which is an island in a patch of water, was not part of Pete Dye’s original design. “We had moved so much dirt to build up the stadium effect that we were left with this big hole in the ground. It was Alice [his wife] who came up with the golden solution. She suggested that we create an island and fill the whole with water,” Pete said.
And they did, and thus the 17th was created. And for states around and nations afar people come to play The Players Club simply to get a whack at the 17th green. Even a president stopped by for a view of it Friday. George Bush I had been in town for a speech, and Finchem gave him a seat by the 17th drop area. Of the eight he watched play through, only one, Billy Mayfair, ditched a shot, and then got a handshake from Bush I. As for No. 17’s future, look at it as a blessing or a curse, but don’t expect it ever to become part of the fifth major.
Well, the scramble is still on, and it won’t sort itself out until this afternoon, given a weather blessing. The leaderboard is a mosaic of red (for birdie) and blue (for bogey). Holmes, for instance, birdied seven holes but checked in only 1-under par. Six of the overnight leaders got off to a bogey start on the first hole. Perry and Langer were slipping a notch.
But into the tweening hours Paul Goydos clung tenaciously to his slender lead, this for the 140th ranked player on the tour, and who last won at the Hawaiian Open last year.
Fred Couples, another elder, had kept up with the gang until a 41 on the front nine derailed him. From 2 under he had plummeted to 4 over and still falling. This was not a tournament anyone would run away with and steal. In fact, from the looks of the leaderboard, there was no assurance anyone had the game to win it.
Stay tuned.
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Is Anthony Kim Tiger’s next challenger?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. — Well, Tiger Woods isn’t here, but Anthony Kim is. And the world may as well take a deep breath and get ready for him. All the moons are aligned in his favor. Mark O’Meara has trumpeted his arrival. (O’Meara, Tiger’s old pal and counselor.) Kim doesn’t have his own plane yet, but when the wheels lift into the well of his first jet, you might imagine that O’Meara would be among the passengers.
Historically, in situations like these, the wounded often make a swiftening recovery. Not Tiger, of course. We all know that the PGA Tour world is Tiger’s world. You also know the old fable, that when the cat is away, the mice will play. Of course, Tiger is safely ranked at No. 1, and Kim is more than an arm’s length away at No. 6. But when he won the Wachovia Championship that Woods wasn’t able to defend, the keening of a new threat was sounded across the land. While Tiger didn’t have his ear to the ground, there is no doubt that he must have picked up a ripple or two.
It played into the hands of eager journalists when Kim checked in with the early lead at The Players Championship on Friday, two 70s, 4-under par. Not exactly the player to beat, but with a 47-year-old (Kenny Perry) and a 50-year-old (Bernhard Langer) among those in pursuit, he had to like where he sat.
Kim comes from the land which has given us several Kims and an all-star cast of Parks and Jangs and Kangs on the LPGA Tour, and where youth of both genders make the turn to golf also from the time they learn to walk. Anthony is different. He was born in Los Angeles. He is eligible to play on the Ryder Cup team. He was aimed for golf from the time he was 2. “I don’t remember. That’s what my parents told me,” he said.
He went to the University of Oklahoma and made three All-American teams in a row. “I wanted to leave after my freshman year, but my mom convinced me to stay. And after my sophomore year, but she convinced me to stay again. After another year, though, she didn’t hold me back. My dad had been behind me turning pro, so that was that.”
He played the Valero Texas Open his first time out, on a sponsor’s exemption, and finished second, a $338,087 nest egg. He breezed through qualifying school, and he hasn’t looked back. He came into The Players on a $2 million cushion of earnings. Also, a restructured personality. When he first arrived on the tour, he was a kid on an island. A smart-off, hothead who found few friendships. With his newfound humility, he has developed some closer relationships.
“Are you now suddenly humble?” he was asked.
“No, I’m just not mouthing off,” he said, and he smiled, another newly acquired gesture. “I’ve changed a lot in the last couple of months. I’m hard- working, and I’m learning how to control what I say. Being No. 1 is a goal of mine, and I’m going to work hard to get there.”
It’s not that it’s just around the corner. It’s not that Tiger’s dominance is seriously endangered, but in his absence there’s a new wave of interest abroad in the press facility. Golf hasn’t been Kim’s only interest. If he hadn’t been just 5-feet-10, he might have aimed for the NBA. Basketball is still is first interest after golf.
“When I was 6, I thought I was going to play college basketball, college football and college golf,” he said. “But that was when I was 6.”
Here he is. Poised, in Tiger’s surgery absence. Though it should be considered that The Players has never been Woods’ private preserve. He hasn’t played well here, and in all these years still has only one championship on his scroll. So there’s room for an Anthony Kim at the Kingdom of Finchem.
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Perks returns to scene of triumph
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla. — No, Tiger Woods would not be here, a dreary fact re-confirmed by the local paper. But Craig Perks would be, and in fact, was on the grounds for another Players Championship. And you say, “Craig who?”
Well, for openers, Craig Perks has won as many Players Championships as Tiger Woods. One each. One after the other, Woods won in 2001, Perks followed in 2002, as unlikely a champion as has ever been crowned in the upper echelon of the PGA Tour. It had been a blustery weekend at Ponte Vedra Beach, postponement after postponement until Sunday opened upon the Stadium Course bright and cheery. Craig Perks was one stroke off the lead. Woods had receded into the background and would finish 14th. There was congestion atop the leaderboard until Perks turned on his finishing game, totally out of character, setting up a reaction that ran through the gallery like an electrical shock. Who was this strange man with the strange name?
Perks had arrived in this country from Palmerston North, in New Zealand, armed with a golf scholarship at University of Oklahoma and twice made the All-America team, once as a Sooner, then later at Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette. Then came several groveling years through the shadows of the mini-tours, then the Nationwide and eventually, graduation to the PGA Tour. His world rank was No. 203 when he arrived at Ponte Vedra that spring, but by Sunday he was only one stroke out of the lead.
Arriving at the 16th green, he chipped in for eagle, on the par-3 17th, the famous island hole, he sank a 15-foot putt for birdie, and on the 18th, completed his magical finish chipping in for par while Stephen Ames, playing beside him, looked on aghast. No moreso, let it be said, than most all of the thousands of spectators on the course that day. Perks’ world ranking quickly leaped from 203 to 64, and the horizon had opened before him. “No one was more shocked than I was,” he said. “I was just trying to do the best I could, and it turned out I won.”
It might rightly be said that in all PGA Tour history, there had been no more stunning upset winner since Sam Parks, a club pro, won the U.S. Open in 1935 with a score 11 over par. Backing in, you might say. No backing in for Perks. He shot his way through what some call the most intimidating finishing stretch in tour golf and won The Players by two strokes over Ames. Sadly, he would never win again. His tour ranking dropped like a rock in water. In 2006, he collected his last check at New Orleans. “It wasn’t much,” he said. “I finished dead last.”
Last winter he came to grips with his state of affairs. Where had it all gone? “I’d tried to play like a champion instead of being what I had been, just Craig Perks, a good player,” he said. “I was 41 years old, and it wasn’t easy, walking away after two years of doing the best I could and failing. I had played poorly for too long.” But he did. At the Children’s Miracle tournament in Florida, he went into retirement. It just had a better sound than “quitting.” This week Craig Perks has returned to the scene of his triumph, tall, still lean, and able to light up the premises with that corn-on-the-cob smile. He was not on a sentimental journey, more a business trip. He is setting up shop at the club where he once worked behind the counter, La Triomphe, in a suburb of Lafayette. He’s a teacher now, and his credential at The Players is attracting clients.
“I’m setting up a twenty-first century golf fitness center, more than just teaching golf, but teaching fitness golf,” he said. “We’ll be open for indoor or outdoor weather.”
And it might be said, that on the side, there will be some reminiscing about the Sunday he won The Players Championship. Once in a lifetime, or at least, since Sam Parks.
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Big Brown looks golden
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When trainer Richard Dutrow strode briskly to the big board at the post position draw and dropped the name of Big Brown on No. 20, the outside gate, you had a premonition. There were other inside posts open, but here was a trainer so confident that his three-year-old would win the 134th Kentucky Derby that he wanted Big Brown, who is big and who is brown, out of traffic and unimpeded.
Dutrow had spent the week around the barn area at Churchill Downs bragging about his colt. “Best horse in the field,” he’d said, and he’d said it over and over again. Some blamed on his natural New Yorker swagger, and others simply branded it “shooting off his mouth.” If, as they say, you can get it done, it ain’t bragging.
Now is the time to take it a step further, and you ask: Is Big Brown the next Secretariat? And in the reply of Cot Campbell, who knows something about race horses, “I’d say the chances are good.” So says the master of Dogwood Stable, whose Summer Squall finished second in the Derby, then won the Preakness a few years back.
Based on what we’ve seen up to now, there is no threat to push Big Brown as Alydar was to Affirmed, last to win the Triple Crown in a pursuit that turned into a heart-stopping series. In fact, the Preakness may be run with less than a full gate, and the Belmont with even fewer challengers.
From the time Big Brown stepped on the track he has been dominant. When he won the Florida Derby, he started from the outside 12th gate, and one report read that “he horrified eleven other three-year-olds.” He won by five lengths. His speed ratings, a bunch of numbers with which I’m not familiar, are startling, nevertheless. He has won on grass, on artificial surface and on dirt. The surface? Bah, humbug. Means nothing to Big Brown.
Dutrow knew Big Brown’s speed. So did jockey Kent Desormeaux, who had no fear of the outside gate. It was written often that the only other time a horse won the Derby from the outside post was the race in 1929, won by Clyde Van Dusen, a gelding. It was different then. No starting gate. The starter lined up the horses as best he good and sent them off.
“What you like about him [Big Brown], as inexperienced as he is, is that he’s so impressive in the paddock, like a veteran,” Cot Campbell said.
Desormeaux, no rookie, he. He had won Derbies aboard Real Quiet and Fusachi Pegasus, and had made his home on Big Brown’s back. They got away evenly, and Desormeaux gradually edged his mount nearer the rail, but made no obvious effort to gain ground, held his position on the outside into the far turn, when he began his move. He picked up horses one my one and into the stretch had the lead and the race was over. You rarely ever see the stretch that vacant on the first Saturday in May. Big Brown, then several lengths back to Eight Belles, then another gap back to Denis of Cork. Big Brown led them home on cruise control.
Tragically, the filly broke down breezing out on the turn, and attention turned to her and away from the spectacular quality of what we had just witnessed. I’d say Eight Belles justified the decision to pass up the Oaks for the Derby, especially since her trainer, Larry Jones, won the Oaks with Proud Spell.
Big Brown — the name — refers to just what you’re thinking, UPS. A trucking magnet, Paul Pompa Jr., bought him at Keeneland sales for $190,000, a two-year-old in training. UPS is one of his major clients, and thus the name, matching color and size. The next Secretariat? Maybe a little strong and a little early, but Big Brown is worth investing a dream on.
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