Wednesday, June 19,
2002
Golf's
elder statesmen say new generation — Woods excepted —
lack discipline
By STEVE BRISENDINE
Associated Press Writer
KANSAS CITY, Mo.
(AP) — It's the familiar refrain of Grumpy Old Men: Kids
these days.
No discipline.
Got things way too
easy.
This wasn't a group
of retirees lounging around a coffee shop, though. These were
five of golf's all-time greats — Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus,
Lee Trevino, Gary Player and Tom Watson, who have 212 PGA Tour
victories and 51 majors among them.
The targets of their
barbed comments: today's PGA players — except Tiger Woods.
“I think Tiger's
the most disciplined player out there,” Nicklaus said Tuesday
at a news conference before the Children's Mercy Hospital Golf
Classic at Blue Hills Country Club. “I don't see any other
disciplined players out there.”
Woods has the other
players “buffaloed,” Nicklaus added.
“Not once did
I ever evaluate my chances against these four guys and say, 'I
don't have a chance,'” he said.
Player said many
golfers today are happy to finish second or third.
“I get so (ticked)
off at that,” he said. “The only person who remembers
if you finish second is your wife and your dog — and that's
if you have a good wife and a good dog.”
And until other players
start winning majors on a consistent basis, Palmer said, golf
will continue to lack great rivalries.
“Rocco Mediate
made the statement that he was not going to play the British Open
because the course didn't suit his game,” Palmer said, drawing
a laugh from spectators as he pretended to rub away tears of sympathy.
“He's one of the strongest and best strikers in the game.
I helped nurse him along. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.”
Mediate's attitude
wouldn't have cut it in the past, Nicklaus said. In his generation,
“Nobody cares what the golf course is — you take your
game and you go play golf.”
Blame the comfortable
living that golf can provide even middling pros, the five said.
“Tiger Woods
won $1 million for winning the U.S. Open,” Palmer said. “The
total prize money my first year on the tour (1954) was $750,000.
... If you weren't in the top one or two, in a couple of years
you were back home mining coal.”
Now, Player said,
on the Super Senior circuit for golfers age 60 and up, “If
you don't fall out of the golf cart you can make 10 grand.”
When golfers of his
generation turned pro, Nicklaus said, “We played the game
for the game. We all said the same thing: 'If you play well, the
money will take care of itself.'”
One name that came
up as a possible rival to Woods was that of Phil Mickelson, who
is still trying to win his first major.
“If I could
just teach him to putt,” Trevino said.
Watson, a Kansas
City native and five-time British Open winner, has played host
the charity event for 23 years.
Woods declined his
invitation to play, Watson said, citing a desire to concentrate
on his PGA Tour play and his own foundation work in Florida.
“He's doing
what he needs to do,” Watson said. “I have no problem
with that.”
Tuesday afternoon's
18-hole exhibition raised an additional $18,000 for the hospital,
besides money raised from sponsorships and ticket sales.
Watson won six holes,
Nicklaus four, Player one and the others were halved.
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