The Vampire Strikes Back

MEDINAH, Ill. —  Just as they were about to put a lily on its chest and dump it in the Chicago River or bury it out behind a cornfield, Medinah on Saturday got up out of its coffin like Dracula and began to bite people in the neck.

Just as we were beginning to think it was two guys in a gorilla suit or a dragon made out of papier-mache and a smoke machine, it turned out to be the real article.

The real Medinah stood up and began to kick, and there was terror in the fairways. All those insolent kids who were taking liberties with the old course, pulling its hair, tweaking its nose and making fun of it behind its back, were suddenly running for their golf lives and looking for a bed to hide under.

It brought the gaudy front-runners back to the field in carload lots. It let the marquee names back in the tournament. It taught the upstarts a lesson. It got tired of being tormented.

Medinah has fangs.

Take the 17th hole. On the face of it, this is a benign parcel of real estate, a bucolic retreat, a nice place to fish or skinny-dip or have a barbecue. It’s green and leafy. It’s not even a particularly dangerous-looking par-three. It’s only 168 yards and, while it has water for most of that, it looks just like a nice smooth seven-iron and one or two putts. Easy three.

Hah! Don’t kid yourself. It’s like the choir boy who turns out to be an ax murderer. The water comes right up to the front part of the green, and it’s full of drowned golf balls--and pars. The green slopes from back to front.

This hole turned the U.S. Open into a U.S. Open Saturday, just as key players were beginning to disparage the event as “a Memphis Open” (Andy Bean) or “The Anheuser-Busch” (Peter Jacobsen).

It first ambushed a little British player, one Ian Woosnam. Ian might be leading the Open by two shots if he could have figured a way to play No. 17. He came up to it Friday, jockeying for the lead, when he hit his tee shot to the left of the green. And the next thing he knew, it took him five strokes to negotiate the last 40 feet to the hole. Triple-bogey six.

Saturday, Woosnam came to 17 five under--and he hit his tee shot in the water in the front of the green. Before he got through, he made double-bogey. He had played a par-three in 11 shots in two days. It took him out of the tournament.

Scott Simpson had the U.S. Open squarely in his golf bag when he came up to No. 17 Saturday. He was eight under par, the field was staggering into a swamp behind him, and it looked as if all he had to do to win his second Open was stay conscious.

Scott Simpson is a curious specimen for a golfer. Unflappable, good-humored, Scott is as patient as a guy waiting for a bus in the Sahara Desert. Simpson goes after a course like a guy who has come to do the windows or fix the plumbing. He just tries to win its confidence.

Scott is the kind of guy who, if he were in a card game, he’d fold two pair. If he was a pitcher and Jose Canseco came up, he’d walk him. If he heard a noise in the attic, he’d call the cops, not get a gun. If he had a plane to catch, he’d be there two hours early.

He plays layup golf. If he hits it in the trees, he bunts it out and starts over. Arnold Palmer might try to hit it through a building, but Scott Simpson deals in the possible.

He’s a very good golfer, one of the best when the money’s high and the course is tough. He plays Scott Simpson’s game, not Seve Ballesteros’. He’s a percentage player. The worst he ever makes is a bogey. And not many of them. He could par Rhode Island.

That’s why he won an Open. Beating Tom Watson and Ballesteros, no less.

He couldn’t remember the last time he made triple-bogey.

He can now. He made it Saturday. On No. 17 at Medinah. Dracula’s Fangs.

Within two holes of going in the clubhouse as the leader going into the final round, Scott studied No. 17. He calibrated the trigonometry. The wind had come up. It made the tee shot a bit of a crapshoot.

You didn’t want to be behind the hole in that yawning bunker. But you didn’t want to go in the water.

Scott Simpson hit a seven-iron. It easily cleared the water. But it also went in the trap. No man’s land. No-shot land. If you hit a normal trap shot--duck soup for a pro--the ball rolls off the green and possibly into the water. The green is like a barn roof.

Simpson tried to hit a shot--sideways--that would land in the fringe and stop there to let him putt, gingerly, for the hole.

It’s brain surgery. It calls for a scalpel, not a sand iron. Simpson cut it too fine and the ball trickled back down in the trap. His next shot, he tried the other side of the green. The ball rolled down the slope but stopped in the fringe in front of the lake.

From there, he took three shots to get it in the hole. Triple-bogey.

Visibly shaken, he played 18 like a man who had just heard a tombstone talk. He bogeyed it.

He had now gone from nine under par to four under in three holes.

But Scott Simpson does something only one other pro--Jack Nicklaus--might be expected to do: He comes in the press tent to explain his troubles, patiently and uncomplainingly for the assembled reporters.

A five-over finish might tempt most golfers to set fire to the press tent before they’d set foot in it. Scott Simpson took the thorns with the roses. “I talk about ‘contentment’ on the golf course when I’m winning, (so) I thought I’d better be willing to talk about it when I’m losing,” he explained cheerfully. It impressed a lot of cynical chroniclers.

No. 17 put Medinah back in the tournament and the tournament back in a contest. When the day started, it looked like a walk in the park for Tim Simpson (nine under) or Jeff Sluman (eight under) or Mike Donald (seven under). The star names were either on their way home or in the back of the bus. The leader board looked like a satellite tournament in Tupelo, Miss.

When No. 17 got through (Tim Simpson bogeyed there, as did Mark Brooks and many other contenders) it looked like a war zone.

Curtis Strange was back in the tournament. So was Jack Nicklaus, Fuzzy Zoeller, Greg Norman, Nick Faldo--the ticket-sellers. Thirty-one golfers are within five shots of the lead, 27 within four shots.

I can’t wait till they get to No. 17 today. I think someone should keep an eye on that hole. I think it turns into a bat at midnight. They should have driven a stake through its heart when they had the chance earlier in the week.