Outside Oberlin

Payne Stewart: U.S. Open Champ dead at 42

Unlike most columnists, Iım not going to say that I knew Payne Stewart, that he was a stand-up guy, a great competitor and all the rest. I didnıt know him‹and since lying is generally bad form in journalism, especially when trying to honor the dead, I wonıt say that I knew Payne.

Quite frankly, there is something rather perverse about the attention that a death like this generally garners. The still-murky circumstances surrounding Mondayıs fatal crash in South Dakota of a Learjet carrying Stewart and five others will only fuel the flame of the media fire.

Every paper in London has huge, front-page color photographs and 108-point type screaming PAYNE KILLED IN AIR HORROR or GOLF WORLD MOURNS DEATH OF TRUE CHAMPION.

One canıt help feeling badly for the Stewart family, both for the tragic circumstances and the glare of media attention that will shine on them for weeks in their most trying time. And one musnıt forget, either, that there are five other victims whose loved ones most likely donıt feel all too great about their dearly departed referred to as "the other victims" thousands of times a day for weeks.

However, once all that is put aside, this is one last opportunity to examine the career of a great sportsman, an individualist to the last and, from all accounts (though I wouldnıt know personally), a classy guy.

At the beginning of the 1999 golf year, Payne Stewart was 42 years old and had won one tournament in the past seven years. He had given chase in the 1998 U.S. Open before eventually falling to Lee Janzen, and many assumed this was his last gasp in the real big time. Sure, he had seven top-10 finishes in both 1996 and 1997, but that isnıt the same as winning ‹just ask Greg Norman.

To most golf fans, Stewart was the guy in knickers and a driving cap ‹ a solid golfer, once great perhaps as his 16 career victories indicated, but past his prime as one of the golf worldıs elite. If an objective observer were to examine the facts, they would come to the same conclusion.

Indeed, Stewart seemed to be one of many very good golfers, including Corey Pavin, Fred Couples, Ian Woosnam and Nick Faldo to name just a few, who had dominated the game in the 80s and early 90s, but whom age, the game and a new set of young talent were now passing by. Tiger Woods, David Duval, Phil Mickleson, Justin Leonard ‹ these are the elite now. And many of those once-great seem content to wait out their 40s. They could count on a couple of top-10s every year, good money winnings and endorsement deals and more time with their families before their kids left home. Then the big 5-0 and the Senior PGA, where everyone is nice to each other, the new guy always wins and they can laugh and joke with their old formerly fierce competitors.

But an objective observer would have been the completely wrong person to examine Payne Stewart. An objective observer would say that Stewart looked ridiculous in his nouveau-classical-golf getup. And that his fluid swing and mastery of the little things in the game of golf were just not enough to compete with the overwhelming, astounding talents that more and more golfers bring to the game.

No, to understand Stewart you need to be biased. I donıt know how Stewart was able to dress the way he did and get away with it‹but he did, in a long time. And also that Stewart, an athlete all his life at 42, was in some of the best shape heıd ever been in.

It didnıt take long in 1999 to see just how hungry Stewart was. One of the yearıs first tournaments, the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, offered some terrible weather to compound the difficulty of its Monterrey courses. No matter.

Payne, still smarting from the 1998 near-miss at the U.S. Open, came out to play and came out to win‹and did, in a rain-shortened tournament. The skeptic could still say, "Oh, well he didnıt have to finish the tournament."

But not for long. A month after Pebble Beach, Stewart finished second at the Honda Classic in Coral Gables, Florida. A month later, he tied for second after losing a three-way playoff at the MCI Classic in Hilton Head, South Carolina. The MCI was in April, and Stewart didnıt contend in May. But he was hungry; oh, was he hungry. Pebble Beach had merely whet his appetite ‹ he said himself that he would have preferred to play out the whole tournament. And what was coming up in June but the main course, the dish he devoured in 1991 at Hazeltine in an 18-hole playoff against Scott Simpson, was coming right up. Yes, the feast of the U.S. Open, that Payne could almost taste after leading for three rounds the year before at Olympic before shooting a final-round 74 and losing by a shot. The feast that was sweetest for Stewart, that he had smelled so many times and tasted but once, was coming up.

And was it ever sweet. He duelled with Phil Mickleson on Pinehurstıs Sunday back nine, fighting shot-for-shot with one of the men chosen to take his place on the mantle of golf greats ‹ a man who had looked up to Stewart in his not-so-distant boyhood. Yes, they duelled, and on the 18th green they stood, the old man with a chance to close out the young pup with a 15-foot putt. I wonıt even try to describe what the pressure is like standing over a 15-foot putt on the 18th green to win the U.S. Open. For one thing, I canıt imagine it ‹ for another, I havenıt the literary talent. Suffice it to say, there is nothing in sport to quite rival that putt. And what did Stewart do on a treacherous downhill putt, short enough that you think you should make it, long enough that you know you might not? He hammered it into the back of the cup with authority. He couldnıt have known that this would be his final victory, one of his final tournaments, but what better way to close out a career?

Well, there was a better way, and he found it. I wonıt bother with a long, drawn-out description of events at the Ryder Cup leading up to Payne Stewartıs final act of class ‹ I will be succinct.

Basically, Europe demolished America for the first two days. Americaıs team, stressed already from a pre-tournament squabble over player compensation, seemed ready to come apart at the seams. Sunday saw a complete turnaround for America, due in no small part to the veteran leadership of Stewart and his compatriots, and with each American victory, the already-rowdy crowd at Brookline got rowdier. Bearing the particular brunt of the rowdiness all weekend was Colin Montgomerie, Stewartıs opponent on Sunday. Stewart at several points turned on his own crowd and appealed for common courtesy.

And again he found himself on the 18th green again, and again a ball lay many feet from the hole. But it was not Stewartıs, it was Montgomerieıs, and Monty could win the match and preserve some dignity for Europe if he holed the putt. The match was the final of the day, and the Cup decided already.

Either way, pandemonium would erupt after the ball stopped moving‹but if Monty missed, he would suffer even more abuse. So Stewart did the right thing, the classy thing, the civilized thing‹he conceded the putt. Sure, he lost the match in doing so, but he preserved his opponentıs dignity.

Dignity--now thereıs a word you donıt hear too often these days on the sports pages.

It was of course impossible for Stewart to foresee his own death. But had this tragedy occurred a year before, Payne would have been remembered as the brash, talented golfer who stopped winning too soon. Now, with this past summerıs dual crowning glories, he will be remembered as he should. For his U.S. Open triumph, he will be remembered as a great golfer and competitor; for his grace at the Ryder Cup, as the classy guy he was. Or so Iıve heard.