Columnist Dean Juipe: Els only two shots better than Venturi

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, June 17, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

ANYONE WHO reads the sports pages even intermittently has probably seen the ad. It has run, virtually verbatim, for something like 20 years in an assortment of papers across the country.

Its message is simple, if exaggerated.

In type that was once thought to be eye-catching, it trumpets a "revolutionary" ball that promises to make every existing golf course "obsolete." It touts the ball so unabashedly that the reader pictures himself rifling shots 300 or more yards at will.

It even throws in a few exclamation points for heightened emphasis.

Longer yardage! Lower scores! Do your part to make your favorite course obsolete!

Sounds like fun, although, needless to say, since the ball and the ad's debut not a single golf course has been seriously affected. Imperfect shots still outnumber those that travel in a beeline and traverse 300 yards.

The game is fundamentally the same regardless, or in spite of, super-fly balls. It also hasn't changed that much tee to green despite seemingly incredible advances in club technology.

While everyone has a friend immersed in the golf-equipment revolution who has added yardage and maybe taken off a stroke or two, the traditional full-length course is far from obsolete.

The U.S. Open that concluded Sunday at the Congressional Country Club outside Washington, D.C., proved it.

Ernie Els won with an aggregate score of 276, or four under par for four days. It was a grueling tournament on a tough layout that severely penalized any shot that went astray.

And here's the kicker, the punch in the stomach, to all those draining their bank accounts in an effort to keep pace with the exploding golf-technology industry: Ken Venturi won the 1964 U.S. Open at Congressional with a score of 278, or two under par.

Thirty-three years between Venturi's win and the one posted by Els and the difference in the scores was only two strokes even if the difference in their equipment was supposedly night and day. Els has the full, modern artillery right on down to his titanium shafts, while Venturi was out there plodding around with persimmon woods and assembly-line irons.

Congressional, at 7,213 yards, was not about to be relegated to the obsolete. It stood up to Els and the U.S. Open field just as it stood up to Venturi and his cohorts 33 years earlier.

Its eight par-4 holes that run in excess of 430 yards apiece were just as tough this year as they were when Venturi played, even if the 1997 players were attacking the course with superior equipment.

Technologic improvements have added distance, improved trajectory and contributed to the enjoyment of the sport, but golf is still a game that rewards skillful shot making above all else. The biggest hitters aren't necessarily the lowest scorers.

And those with the ultramodern equipment and the longest-flying balls are still struggling to get the dang thing in the hole -- just as they were in Venturi's day.