It Was Like Watching Gorse Grow

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — Watching Nick Faldo win a golf tournament is like watching fish swim. Remarkable in its own way, but pretty boring after a while.

If you’re crazy about lag putts, approaches to the fat part of the green, nice, safe two-woods off the tee, you’d love the British Open Sunday. If you’re into monotonous perfection, Nick Faldo is your pin-up.

He’s no fun. He’s not Seve Ballesteros winning his Open out of the parking lot at Lytham. He’s not Arnold Palmer, his shirt hanging out, his eyes squinted, trying to figure out how to work the ball over two trees and a five-story building. He’s not Lee Trevino hitting shots that smack the flagstick, otherwise they’d go in the Firth of Forth.

He plays computer golf. B-o-o-r-r-i-n-g! Someplace inside there is a floppy disk and a microchip and a program for a 72.

He’s an offense against nature, if you’re a golfer. No one should play the game that easily and dully. You should win such tournaments as Opens with massive, three-break, 60-foot putts, as Hale Irwin did at Medinah. Or you should hit breath-taking two-irons to guarded flags, as Hogan did at Merion, or chip in out of hip-high rough, as Watson did at Pebble Beach.

Faldo won the British Open Sunday like a guy walking the dog. He won it off the principal, so to speak, without having to invest more than the interest in his game. He’s about as exciting as a clerk.

But he “caned the loop,” as the Scots say. That is, he went through the series of holes, seven through 11, out on the promontory of this land jutting into the sea, known as the “loop,” without disaster. “Caning” takes its cue from the practice of British officers taking their walking sticks to disobedient troops.

Faldo shot a 71 on the final round, if you care for minutiae. Of course he did. He sized up what it would take to keep the field at bay. He didn’t go for the tournament record--268, set by Watson in 1978.

Faldo doesn’t make it interesting. He plays what the gang at Rancho Municipal would call “commercial” golf. Just good enough to win. Like a fighter who never throws the right, a hitter who shortens up on the bat with two strikes, Nick was not about to fall into the trap Arnold Palmer set for himself in 1966 when, with a seven-shot lead with nine holes to play, he set about to breaking Hogan’s Open record and ended up breaking his own heart--and nearly everyone else’s.

Nick knew par golf would win him the 119th British Open. It won him the 116th British Open, you will recall. Nick could par the Indian Ocean. Color him gray.

But also color him with the Union Jack. It used to be a Brit winning the British Open was man-bites-dog stuff. Now, it’s the-Pope-is-Catholic stuff.

From the start of the first invasion of Britain by American golfers headed by Bobby Jones and company in the mid-’20s to the second invasion by Palmer and company in 1962, Yanks seemed to be able to win this tournament any time they really cared to. And when they didn’t care to, the tournament seemed to be given over to other colonialists--Bobby Locke and Gary Player of South Africa and Peter Thomson of Australia, for instance.

British or British-based golfers (Ballesteros) have now won five of the last seven championships. There’ll always be an England.

Is Nick Faldo now the world’s No. 1 golfer? Well, winning two majors this year and coming within a missed putt of the other would seem so to rate him. “I let my clubs do the talking,” shrugs Nick. “But I feel I’m one of the key players at the moment. In the last four seasons, I’ve won four majors, and I’m the first guy in a long time who’s won two in one year.”

Nick is like Hogan. He weighs his words the way he does his shots. He doesn’t like them to go drifting off in the rough, either. He spent most of the post-tournament news conference discussing what he should do with his swing, if you consider that sexy. “I’d like to draw the ball better,” he said. “I’m trying to do something about getting the top half of my body in sync with my legs. I’m tall, and I get too much leg drive.”

Not exactly Churchillian in tone or inspiration.

Faldo is so low key, his preparations Sunday included a midday sleep. The last guy I saw able to fall asleep just before one of the biggest fights of his life was Joe Louis. Joe had to be awakened to go in the ring. So, presumably, did Faldo.

Most athletes have trouble sleeping the night before a big game. Faldo has no trouble sleeping an hour before. That should tell you something about Nick Faldo. Maybe, all you need to know.

He made only three bogeys all week. He went into only one sand trap. He had no three putts. No wonder he has trouble staying awake. His game bores even him. That’s not golf, that’s something else.

He does, however, have one colorful accessory--his caddie. His caddie is a woman from Sweden, 22-year-old Fanny Sunesson, a bubbly, vivacious type who keeps Faldo--well, awake.

She does this, Nick reports, not by talking to him about the trouble he might encounter but by talking about the kind of drapes he might put in his new home, or how many bedrooms he has there and what kind of wallpaper he should have and whether he will own a dog. “I knew what she was doing,” Faldo says with a smile. “She was trying to keep my mind off of golf.”

Maybe. And maybe, like everyone else, she was hoping Nick would hit it into trouble once in a while. You don’t need a caddie when every shot goes right to the fat of the green, the center of the fairway, and every putt is as safe and un-adventurous as government bonds.

Faldo might be the world’s greatest player, much as John Gielgud might have been the world’s greatest actor. This doesn’t prevent the public from preferring Bruce Willis.

Nick doesn’t know what fun this game can be. I mean, 72 holes without a ball in the water or out-of-bounds or under a log and a whole card full of two-putts! That’s not golf. The game would have died out long ago.

No wonder he’s able to fall asleep. He puts everyone else there, too.