Tuesday, October 26, 1999
Shock, sadness, and some remembrances from
those who knew Stewart best
By TIM DAHLBERG
AP Sports Writer
Through their shock and sadness, Payne Stewart's friends and
competitors remembered him Monday as far more than just a golfer
in funny clothes.
To them, he was a giant of the game.
“What a wonderful man. He was a great credit to golf and
to our country,” said Billy Casper. “Golf lost a great
man.”
Greats of the past and present, stunned at Stewart's tragic
death, joined to praise him both for his conquests on the course
and the way he conducted his life off it.
From the quieted fairways of the Champions Golf Club in Houston
where he was to play this weekend to the somber Orlando, Fla.,
neighborhood where Stewart lived, they offered their reflections.
“There is an enormous void and emptiness I feel right
now,” Tiger Woods said.
“One of the most terrible tragedies of modern day golf,”
was the way Arnold Palmer described it.
On a day the golf world started by celebrating a new Ryder
Cup captain and looking forward to this week's Tour Championship,
it ended in mourning a player whose knickers and tam o'shanter
hat made him one of the most recognizable personalities in the
game.
The plane crash that killed Stewart and four others quickly
turned what had been a time of joy into one of grief for Curtis
Strange, the new Ryder Cup captain.
“We have lost someone who is truly a great ambassador
for the game,” Strange said.
At the Champions Golf Club, workers continued to tend to the
manicured fairways and greens in preparation for the season-ending
Tour Championship. Stewart was on his way to Texas for the tournament
when his plane crashed.
Flags flew at half mast, and there was a somber mood in the
air.
“Missing him is just unbelievable,” said course owner
Jackie Burke, a longtime PGA member.
“He's an irreplaceable guy,” Duffy Waldorf said.
“I think of Payne Stewart and there's a guy that's going
to be like Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer, a guy you want around
all those years.”
Jeff Maggert was at the course practicing for the tournament
when he heard the news.
“It will be a tough week for all the players, for myself,
for the wives, everyone,” Maggert said. “It's a tragic
situation”
The PGA Tour canceled the tournament's Tuesday pro-am, but
the tournament was still scheduled to begin Thursday “like
he would want us to do,” Burke said.
“I don't think he should ever be replaced in this event,”
Burke said. “There will just be a spot there open for him.”
Peter Jacobsen, one of Stewart's good friends on the PGA Tour
who also played in a band with him occasionally, said Stewart's
record, which included two U.S. Open titles, spoke for itself.
More than that, though, Jacobsen said Stewart's love of golf
and its traditions should also be remembered.
“He had a real reverence for the game,” Jacobsen
said.
Justin Leonard, who played with Stewart in a losing alternate
shot match against Sergio Garcia and Jesper Parnevik in the Ryder
Cup, had to go inside and compose himself after nearly breaking
down while hearing the news at a promotional appearance in Fort
Worth, Texas.
Stewart was the emotional leader of the U.S. Ryder Cup team,
who wore his patriotism and pride to play for his country on his
sleeve and urged his fellow players to do the same.
It was also Stewart who made all his teammates play ping-pong
at night to relieve their stress and make them bond together as
a team.
“It was very tense up there. It was something that gave
you a nice little release,” U.S. captain Ben Crenshaw said.
“Payne was right.”
Crenshaw said Stewart was “very much a believer in playing
for his country, very much a patriot.”
It wasn't only the American players who mourned Stewart, though.
Members of Europe's Ryder Cup team, gathered in Jerez, Spain,
for the Volvo Masters, were also devastated by the news.
Masters champion Jose Maria Olazabal fought back tears as he
remembered Stewart as a “true sportsman on the course and
a gentleman off it.”
“We all knew what the Ryder Cup meant to him, but he never
lost perspective on what the match was all about,” Olazabal
said. “We have lost a precious man and someone who still
had good years ahead of him.”
France's Jean Van de Velde agreed.
“I'm devastated, totally devastated. It certainly puts
into perspective little things like missed putts,” Van de
Velde said. “My thoughts go to his family because he was
such a family man. He was a wonderful sportsman and wonderful
person.”
Outside the golf world, there was also reaction. Stewart was
a big Orlando Magic fan, and former Magic guard Penny Hardaway
knew him well.
“I know the guys in Florida are devastated right now,”
Hardaway said from Phoenix. “I knew his family. I've been
to his home. He's given me golf clubs. He's one of those guys
you either love or hate, and I loved him because you always knew
where he stood.”
Stewart's most indelible public image may be of his hands in
the air in the early evening at Pinehurst earlier this year, when
he made a 15-foot putt on the 18th green to win the U.S. Open.
It won't be what Crenshaw remembers most, though.
“I will always remember that smile and that laugh and
that beautiful, graceful swing,” he said. “It's hard
to believe we're not going to watch that effortless swing anymore.”
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