Tee and Sympathy

You can feel the intensity of the guys -- and about 80 percent of the Kemper crowd was men -- watching the game as well as playing it. People seem to be looking for something they can steal for their own game. This, too, sets golf fans apart. No one goes to a NASCAR race hoping to learn how to draft on the Beltway. No one thinks if they study Roger Clemens, they'll be able to hit 95 on the radar gun, too. Not golf.

"I always thought that half the people who came to tournaments were there because it was a festival, a picnic, a chance to go to the rich man's club," says sportswriter Dan Jenkins, who's been covering tournaments since the Ben Hogan and Sam Snead eras. "The rest were there to get a [golf] tip."

That's J.D. Wininger to a tee. "I watch their form, I watch the club selection, I watch them swing the way I wish I could swing," says Wininger, 58, of Centreville, lounging on a hillside overlooking the 16th green and 17th tee. "This is a tough way to make a living. You have to have total concentration day in and day out, every round, every shot. This isn't easy."

This is the sentiment that drives golfers, amateur as well as pro. The prevailing theology of golf is that you're never good enough, that something is always wrong with your game. Repent! Change your grip, adjust your stance. The constant striving for self-improvement can feel neurotic, but at bottom it's also optimistic. It takes a fundamentally optimistic person to believe that, someday, you will achieve a small state of grace by permanently banishing those pesky three-putts.

Sports Illustrated's Frank Deford drew a cunning parallel between golf magazines and women's fashion and beauty magazines in a radio commentary last year. Men like to make fun of women's magazines, but as Deford pointed out, the two genres have much in common. Where women's magazines carry articles like "The 25 secret sex wishes racing through his mind," golf magazines write about "The 40 ways to take your game to new heights." Women's magazine: "Burn fat faster." Golf magazine: "Restore your lost power, distance and accuracy."

Concluded Deford: "Maybe there's not much difference between us after all, except women want to be better looking, better lovers and better dressed. They want to be better women. Men just want to be better golfers."

Fine, but what's so seductive about golf is that it's the only sport that makes you believe you can be better, long past your athletic prime. When you see the pros up close at a tournament, just standing around, you get another reason for believing. If it weren't for the phalanx of caddies and the players' purposeful strides, it would be hard to tell who's got a PGA card and who can't break 100. It's not just that everyone at the Kemper dresses like a golfer (polo shirt with logo, slacks, golf hat); it's that the golfers typically aren't overly impressive physical specimens themselves.

Langham, who shot a spectacular round of 63 to tie the course record on the first day, is 6-1 and, frankly, on the stringy side at 170 pounds. He's hit hundreds of thousands of golf balls since he began playing as a child, and yet his arms and forearms are no more impressively muscled than the lumpy sportswriters who interviewed him after his round.

"We're lucky in the game of golf," says Langham, 32. "There's no age limit. You don't have to be a certain size. If you take good care of yourself, you can play for a long time. The better you take care of yourself, the better you play."

Those with enough money don't simply play, though. They surround themselves with the game.

Wander into something called the Aloha Expo Village, a big walk-through tent that lives up to none of its names. Marriott is selling time shares with golf privileges. Another sponsor is offering golf excursions to Hawaii. PowerBar has a promotion, as does Allegra, the allergy drug. At the Eagle Classics booth, you can buy a framed picture of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods walking together at the Masters.

It's $35 to get onto Avenel's grounds, $15 more if you want access to the shady pavilion. But that's for the masses. The swells never pay for a ticket. They're sitting in the corporate tents, with bartenders at their call and artificial turf at their feet.

There's a "champion's terrace" ringing the final hole. Temporary structures have been thrown up on risers so that guests can watch the 18th fairway and green from a deck on high. The corporate sponsors are identified by small signs: Integic, Vignette, IBM, GMAC, AT&T, SunTrust, Verizon, Bank of America. You can't get close to any of them without a special invite.

Despite the corporate ostentation, there's some unkind talk from veterans that the pro tour is changing, that the fans aren't what they used to be. Sure, the crowds are bigger, thanks primarily to Tiger Woods, but the fans are also more uncouth, less respectful of polite tradition.

"I've been following the tour for 11 years, and you'd never see a guy like that until just a few years ago," one woman says anonymously, nodding to a beefy, bearded guy wearing a tank top, running shorts and Topsiders. "The clientele has changed. The PGA is playing etiquette tapes on the shuttle buses [from the parking lots] now! No offense," she adds, noticing what her questioner is wearing, "but we never used to see a guy wearing jeans to the course."

Shocking. Imagine: Bluejeans!

John Howe, the proprietor of Eagle Classics, laughs when informed about such comments. He's been traveling with the tour for a year. "Well, it can be pretty funny," he says. "We were at the Phoenix Open, and it was an enormous party. We had 600,000 people in four days. We saw women walking around in high-heeled shoes, these enormous things with thick soles. We got to laughing about that."

But no, he says, there's nothing wrong with that. "It's just a real broad-brush of people now," Howe says, laughing. "It's good for me, because it brings in new customers. And I'll tell you what: Ultimately, it's excellent for golf."