Columnist Dean Juipe: No slippage as Jim Furyk throttles field

Dean Juipe

Monday, Oct. 19, 1998 | 11:08 a.m.

After teeing off at the 10th hole, Jim Furyk wolfed down the banana he had picked up at the turn and tossed the skin into some nearby bushes.

It was a lapse in judgment, to be sure.

"Golfer Slips On Peel," the headlines could have said.

Or, "Banana Causes Gallery To Split With Furyk."

Yet before Furyk could be environmentally chastised, he came to his senses. Backpedalling, he stepped into the bushes and grabbed the remnants of what had been his lunch and found a marshal willing to take it off his hands.

By the time the afternoon was over, a different headline had come to mind: "Crowd Goes Bananas As Furyk Wins."

The new Las Vegas Invitational champion didn't monkey around Sunday, extending what had been a three-shot lead at the beginning of the day to six before closing one better than Mark Calcavecchia. It was a popular, if less than strenuous, victory for a stylish golfer with a quirky swing.

Tension?

Aside from a hint of it on No. 18, there wasn't any.

Drama?

No, not this time, although Furyk's final putt had a mischievous look to it before it dropped in.

This was an old-fashioned rout with a deceptive final score. It was like a football game that was 24-0 after three quarters before the spunky if already beaten challenger manages a flurry of meaningless scores to bring the final to 24-21.

Calcavecchia made it look good, but Furyk was never out of control. Those simply reading the scores in Dubuque must think the LVI had quite a donnybrook, except it really didn't play out that way.

While Calcavecchia could argue he simply ran out of holes, Furyk was coasting to the finish line. Their two-horse race may have ended with Calcavecchia in a sprint, yet, by then, Furyk was already adding up his chips.

His $360,000 windfall allows him to leave Las Vegas with two victories here in four years. As the LVI's first repeat champion, Furyk has come to symbolize the type of player it takes to master the TPC at Summerlin layout: A skilled marksman.

Big hitters do well at Summerlin but a guy who's throwing darts at the pins is really the one who has it made. If it was distance only, John Daly would win here every year no matter how much he drank.

Furyk is winning on this course because he doesn't stray. The scrambling he does is limited to his eggs.

Sure, he was dangerously close to letting the championship get away from him at 18, although he saved par with a slick putt from eight feet. That closed the book on Calcavecchia, who proudly birdied three of the final four holes to finish with his chin up after having his head in his hands just a few holes earlier.

"Ugh," Calcavecchia uttered at No. 12 when Furyk one-upped him with a shot closer to the pin than the one Calcavecchia had launched moments earlier. It was an expression of surrender.

The duel, however friendly, went to a crosshanded putter who didn't have a round in the 60s last week at the PGA Tour stop in Virginia but who had five of them in Las Vegas. He starched the field and bettered Bill Glasson's 1997 winning score by five strokes.

It was impressive, with Furyk playing the role of precision-minded executioner.

There was no faulting his play or his character on a day when his only trip into the brush was to snap up some debris.