Ben Crenshaw winced as he signed his scorecard, then flinched again when he looked up and saw a mild-mannered reporter from a great metropolitan newspaper.
“Good grief,” Crenshaw sighed. “I looked like you out there. We might as well have traded places.”
Sad but true. I don’t know whether Crenshaw can type, but I feel confident I could have done what he did at the Bob Hope Classic Friday. We’ve all been there. Double digits, open up another sleeve of balls, keep your head down, pray, and hope that nobody else is watching.
Yes, on one hole, Ben Crenshaw shot a 13.
“It’s the old story,” Crenshaw went on. “People come up to you and ask how’d you get a 13? Easy. I lipped out a six-foot putt for a 12. That’s exactly what happened to me. Now, if a TV guy comes up and asks me for all the gory details, I’ll have to ask him something first. Does he have a half-hour show or an hour?”
Crenshaw, a gifted player and an even better gentleman, laughed after his horrific experience. He’s won 17 tournaments, including the Masters, since turning pro in 1973. He’s earned well over $5 million. He declared a truce with golf long ago. Besides, this is almost over. Crenshaw shot 86 Friday for a 229, last in a field of 128 players. He’ll miss the cut after Saturday’s round and move onward.
“A silly game,” Crenshaw mused. “Good thing I had a good drive on that hole or I’d have really made a mess of it.”
Indeed, Crenshaw’s tee shot was long and true on the 18th at PGA West’s Arnold Palmer course. It’s a 540-yard par 5 that takes a left turn toward the green, but it’s the only 10th handicap hole, which means half the other holes are rated as tougher. Oh, there’s water along the left side the entire way, too, but it really shouldn’t affect someone of Crenshaw’s stature. That’s why he pulled a 4-wood from his bag for his second shot. He was 224 yards from the flagstick, with a hefty breeze behind him.
“But I hit it fat,” Crenshaw recalled. “And when you do that, even when you’re downwind, the ball has a tendency to get knocked down. It went splash. So I took a drop about 160 yards from the green, tried a 7-iron, hit it on the toe and got wet again. Same club again, same place, same result. Toed it, and it’s in the lake again in front of the green. How many strokes is that, seven?”
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Crenshaw then reached for a 6-iron. He avoided the sweet spot and lost his fourth ball.
“By now, it’s pretty funny,” he said. “I try the 6-iron again and finally land it on a dry place. Behind the green. In 10. I chipped on for 11, and that’s when I missed that dang 6-footer for 12. Worst part of it was, the 18th hole was only my ninth because we started at No. 10. So, after all that, I still had nine holes to go.”
With 45 whacks to that point, Crenshaw could have been an ogre. But that’s not his style. He had three amateur partners who paid big money for the privilege. So, until the bitter end of their long afternoon midst howling gales, Crenshaw chatted and smiled and lined up putts for the team.
“Hey,” Crenshaw said, “they’re out here to have a good time, and I’m not going to spoil it just because I’m about running out of golf balls. Which I almost did. My first tee shot today, on No. 10, went in the water. I lost another later. That’s six in all, and I’m only carrying nine in my bag.”
There have been a couple of famous 13s in golf annals. Tom Weiskopf took one on the 12th hole at Augusta National in the 1980 Masters. Tommy Nakajima posted a 13 on No. 13 there two years earlier. But the Bob Hope Classic isn’t the Masters. On Friday, while Crenshaw was scattering fish at PGA West, Lennie Clements shot 61 at Bermuda Dunes. He leads Scott Hoch by 1 and Crenshaw by 32.
“I’ve had a 10 in my career,” Crenshaw said. “My worst score, I think, was 87. This was ugly, though. You ever stand over the ball and just know something bad is going to happen?”
Do you have a half hour to listen, Ben, or an hour?