Pavin the way to a memorable year (Yahoo! Sports)
March 10, 2010
Corey Pavin lost his game in the late 1990s. It was painful to watch. It always is. The sport, for all its civility, can be the cruelest in the world.
“The thing about golf,” Pavin said this week during a relaxing round at Malibu Country Club in Southern California, “is that it comes and goes and we don’t know why sometimes. If we knew why, it would never go.”
From 1997 through 2009, Pavin, the 1995 U.S. Open champion, teed it about 25 times per year. Not once did he register more than three top 10s in a season. He won only once, in 2006, at Milwaukee. He got into some bad habits which affected his confidence. He went through different teachers. Nothing worked.
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Which is why, watching him stroll the fairways in Malibu, it’s impossible not to feel good that there is a game which provides second chances to its athletes years past their prime. At 50, as a rookie on the Champions Tour, Pavin has earned $103,260 in only three starts. If he performs well, he could easily make over $1 million.
It sure is nice to be young again.
Yet, before Pavin can spend the rest of his playing days in the less-stressful atmosphere of senior golf, he has one more job to finish in the spotlight: Lead the United States to its first back-to-back Ryder Cup win since 1993.
Captain Pavin, who lives in Los Angeles and Dallas, is back in a competition where he belongs. Prior to his slump, he was a Ryder Cup fixture, and hero. Most memorable is the Saturday four-ball match he and Loren Roberts played against European standouts Nick Faldo and Bernhard Langer in 1995 at Oak Hill in Rochester, N.Y.
The match was all square coming to 18. With Faldo facing a 15-foot birdie putt, Pavin chipped first from the fringe, 18 feet away.
Pavin’s ball circled the cup before it fell in, leading to a critical point after Faldo missed his attempt to halve the match. Pavin beat Langer 3 & 2 in singles the next day, but the Americans were unable to retain the Cup.
It was his last Ryder Cup as a player. He was only 35. If he had been on his game, Pavin would have played in perhaps three or four more Cups. It hurt him that he didn’t.
No wonder he was so excited when he got the official word from the PGA of America in the winter of 2008.
“I couldn’t get the smile off my face all day,” said Pavin, who was an assistant to captain Tom Lehman in the 2006 Ryder Cup at the K Club in Ireland.
He doesn’t seem the least bit apprehensive about the task ahead. That’s not who Pavin is. Especially at 50, the father of a 2-year-old girl, a man content with where he has been and where he wants to go.
With plenty of help from his wife, Lisa, Pavin is having a great time as captain. And the real fun hasn’t even begun.
But it’s about a lot more than having fun. He will be intense when the time comes. Book it.
“You want to do your best,” he said, “but you want to win.”
Pavin is paying more attention than ever to each week’s tournament, being careful not to rule out anyone and that includes 60-year-old Tom Watson who, due to his second-place finish in last year’s British Open at Turnberry, ranks 20th in the current Ryder Cup standings.
“I need him to play in some regular tour events,” Pavin said. “Hopefully, he’ll give me something to think about.”
Whoever he decides will be his four captain’s picks on September 7, Pavin won’t get stressed out about it.
“I’m a pretty laid-back person,” he said. “I think about things, and am somewhat methodical, but once I’ve made up my mind, I never look back.”
He won’t go completely by the numbers. His gut may trump the stats. How he feels a player is likely to deal with adversity will factor into the picks. The competition, after all, will be waged on enemy territory.
Pavin, however, is not concerned that the fans at Celtic Manor in Wales will go over the line. He and European captain Colin Montgomerie “are on the same page … [Montgomerie] would be the first one to denounce it.”
Still, the Ryder Cup is seven months away. For now, the focus is on his own game. He’ll tee off about 15 times on the Champions Tour this year. Known as a short hitter, Pavin says he’s been striking the ball well, but the putts haven’t been going in consistently enough.
Even on this recreational round in Malibu, many slipped by the edge.
Pavin is not panicking.
“They’re going to go in eventually,” said Pavin, who won 15 tour events.
He is grateful for the opportunities he’s receiving on the Champions Tour which weren’t available in his latter years on the regular circuit. He was hitting too many five woods and four irons for his approaches. He is hitting a lot of six irons and seven irons into the greens these days.
“It’s nice to get clubs in there I can score with,” Pavin said.
Not surprisingly, he puts his Milwaukee victory high on his list of achievements. He proved to his doubters that he was capable of winning again. He always believed he could do it.
Sure he was disappointed he couldn’t prevail more often after the Open win. Who wouldn’t be after what he had accomplished?
But Pavin is no victim. Not even close. He is very blessed and he knows it.
“I’ve been so lucky,” Pavin said, “to be able to play golf professionally and have a very successful career. It’s been a good life.”
Michael Arkush is an editor for Yahoo! Sports. Send Michael a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.
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