Fun-Loving Davies Goes For Record Win
It’s too bad Laura Davies and Walter Hagen lived 70 years apart. They likely would have hit it off.
Neither one cared too much for practice. Both were fans of the night life and liked games of chance. And both were great competitors on the golf course who knew how to win when the chips were down.
Davies and Hagen are also the only two golfers to win the same tournament in this country four years in a row. This week at the Standard Register Ping in Phoenix, Davies will try to go a step beyond Hagen and win a fifth straight year.
“When you are defending, you have to forget about that and go on and play,” Davies said Tuesday. “If I am in position to win on Sunday morning, then it may cross my mind.”
Part of what will cross her mind, if she is in contention Sunday morning, is a lot of dollar signs.
In addition to the $127,500 first prize, Davies would get a $300,000 bonus for winning the tournament a fifth consecutive time. And the Arizona Republic and Scottsdale Insurance have teamed to form Laura’s Million Dollar Charity Drive.
If Davies steps into the winner’s circle on Sunday, it will generate $1 million to local agencies to fight domestic violence and child abuse.
“Obviously it would be great for me, personally, to win the fifth title,” Davies said. “No one’s ever done it, and that would be exciting. But added on top of that, that million dollars to these good causes is something that for me would be very special.”
Hagen won the PGA Championship four consecutive years beginning in 1924. The only other person - beside Davies - to win the same event four straight times was Gene Sarazen at the Miami Open (1926, 1928-30), but that was over five years since the event wasn’t held in 1927.
The long-hitting Davies and the largeliving Hagen shared a passion for fun.
“I don’t desire to be a millionaire,” said Hagen, who took the game out of tweed jackets and put it into sweaters. “I just want to live like one.”
It was in Davies’ homeland of Britain where Hagen solidified his reputation as a maverick.
At his first British Open at Deal in 1920, Hagen found out that professionals could not go into the clubhouse. So he hired a Rolls Royce and a butler and lunched on caviar, smoked salmon and champagne outside the main entrance.
In 1923, when the same rule was in effect at Troon, Hagen refused to enter the clubhouse for the awards ceremony when he finished second. Instead, he invited spectators for a drink at the inn where he was staying.
Hagen did more than any other person to break down the social barriers between professional golfers, who were viewed as low class, and the much more aristocratic amateurs.
Davies, though decidedly more shy than Hagen, has a flamboyance of her own and likely would have loved Hagen’s crusade to take golf out of the hands of the elite and give it back to the masses, where it started.
Davies is a woman of the people.
Two years ago while on her way to winning the LPGA Championship, she thrilled the gallery on a 410-yard hole playing downwind when she teed her ball up on a golf pencil with the eraser removed and rode the wind over the dogleg to drive within eight paces of the green.
Davies, who has 14 career LPGA victories and 35 other wins around the world, has yet to win this year. But she knows what to do if she goes into Sunday with a chance.
“If I’m within four or five shots of the lead, that’s the plan,” she said about where she wants to be headed into the last round. “If I can be within five, I’ll go into it thinking about winning.”
Martin update
Although the USGA will let Casey Martin try to qualify for the U.S. Open in a cart, honoring the court victory Martin won in Oregon against the PGA Tour, it sounds like the British Open is not open to the idea.
The British Open entry form contains a clause which states: “Players shall walk at all times during a stipulated round unless permitted to ride by the Championship Committee.”
That gives the Royal & Ancient Golf Club room to allow Martin to ride but R&A secretary Michael Bonallack said Tuesday the organization is discussing its options with lawyers.
“If and when he enters, it will be up to the committee to decide whether they will invoke that clause,” Bonallack said. “The matter has been discussed and the general policy is that players must walk, but we are taking advice on the matter.”
Bonallack said the two main concerns for the R&A are setting a precedent that would allow other players to use carts and the logistics of getting carts around the tight British links courses. Carts are virtually unheard of in Britain.
Martin, who plays in the Nike Tour event at Monterrey, Mexico, this week, would go through the 36-hole final qualifying competition at one of four courses near Royal Birkdale in northwest England.
Notes
Callaway Golf snagged an interesting guy to promote its products - Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder who is one of the richest men in the world. Under an ad campaign with the slogan, “I love a big idea,” Gates sings the praises of the Big Bertha drivers. The innovative company certainly has its advertising bases covered, reaching from Gates to rocker Alice Cooper. … CBS Sports will replay one of the legendary rounds of golf on April 12, right before its Masters coverage, when it airs the Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf match played in 1964 between Ben Hogan and Sam Snead. Hogan hits every fairway and every green in the match played at Houston Country Club. The show was originally aired Feb. 21, 1965.