Man with the golden touch

Victoria Sun

Thursday, April 19, 2001 | 10:18 a.m.

Every now and then, Larry Nelson's right arm loses its feeling.

It may be because he slept on it wrong or tweaked it just so.

"I have days where on my right hand I feel like I'm wearing a big glove," Nelson said. "My touch kind of goes and comes."

But it never left him last year. After the 2000 Senior PGA Tour Player of the Year won the Las Vegas Senior Classic last year, he won a career-best five more tournaments.

Nelson is back this week to try to defend his title at the $1.4 million Las Vegas Senior Classic, which starts Friday at the TPC at Summerlin and concludes Sunday.

Entering the tournament, Nelson is first on the money list with $810,960, ranks first in putting average at 1.695 and first in birdie average at 4.80.

He won the first two tournaments of the year and finished in the top 10 in eight of nine tournaments entered.

The discomfort he sometimes feels in his right arm is a result of a neck injury he sustained his first year on the Senior Tour.

At the 1998 U.S. Open, Nelson knew something was wrong.

"I noticed it getting out of the bathtub that morning," Nelson recalled. "I didn't have as much strength in my right arm as in my left. And I thought that maybe somehow I had slept wrong or something.

"My arm just didn't want to do things the way I wanted to do it. When I'd get the club at the top, it wouldn't react and I'd hit every shot to the right (in the first round).

"So I said, well, maybe I'll just keep playing and maybe it'll get better as the day goes on because we who have been playing for 30 years can compensate for many things. I thought maybe I can get through the day, but as the round kept going, then it started getting painful. By the time I got to the eighth hole, it really was very bad."

Nelson withdrew from the tournament and was unable to play for eight weeks.

At first the doctor wasn't sure how Nelson injured himself or how severe it was.

All Nelson knew was that 50 percent of the strength in his right arm had suddenly disappeared.

"He (the doctor) didn't know at that point whether it was an injury that was career threatening or whether it would heal up," Nelson said. "He put me on some very strong anti-inflammatories to see if he could get the nerve repaired.

"At the time, I thought that I would not be able to play at a level that I would like."

Later he found out that the area that was afflicted was a nerve that helps rotate the shoulder.

"So sometimes it would rotate and sometimes it wouldn't," Nelson said. "That's the difference between 20 yards to the left and 20 yards to the right."

For 10 days, Nelson experience pain he likened to a "real bad toothache."

When the pain finally went away, he was hopeful that he would be able to regain the form that enabled him to win 10 PGA Tour titles, including three majors.

"It took me about two years to heal up 95 percent -- probably July of last year," Nelson said. "So from July until now, I'm actually playing pretty good."

Even better if you consider how Nelson mastered the game.

The former baseball pitcher said he bought his first set of clubs in high school, but later sold them along with a fishing pole after he was drafted into the U.S. Army and got married so that he could make some money.

"Those were the only earthly possessions that I had worth any money, but I had a cute little wife."

When he got out of the service, his wife bought him a set of Jack Nicklaus clubs with leather grips which he later exchanged for a set of Doug Sanders Ram clubs.

"One of my good friends in the army (Ken Hummel), he was a kind of big and burly guy," Nelson said. "I'd see him pretty much every year in Ft. Lauderdale.

"I asked him what he did -- I had always thought it was kind of a sissy sport -- and he said he played golf. So I said, 'Well, maybe I'll give it a try.' "

Nelson settled for golf because although he wanted to continue playing baseball, he had hurt his arm. His first round, Nelson shot in the 90s on a par-56. And in a year, he got his score down under 70.

Nelson's most recent injury has helped him appreciate what he has accomplished in his 30-year professional career.

"I think it reminds me of the fact that everything we have out here is kind of fleeting," Nelson said. "You know, when you just start out on the regular tour, you just can't see this stage of your life.

"As a matter of fact, you can't see 40. Because I know that when I was approaching my mid-30s, I didn't think I'd be playing golf this long."