Columnist Adam Candee: Surprise winners are a treat, but not for long

Adam Candee

Wednesday, June 22, 2005 | 9:12 a.m.

Adam Candee covers golf for the Sun. Reach him at (702) 259-4085 or by e-mail at candee@lasvegassun.com.

So you know all about U.S. Open champion Michael Campbell's perseverance, heritage, injuries, thoughts, hopes and dreams by now, right?

At least you glanced at the volumes written about all of those topics before tossing Monday's sports section into the recycling. Most will simply go back to caring about Tiger, Phil and Daly. No problem. That's what happens with all of the fluky major winners: passing interest followed by a return to the norm.

Want proof? Here's your litmus test: Name the winner of the 1999 British Open.

Any luck without help from Google or Johnny Miller? Of course not (and if you got it, get down to Jeopardy tryouts now). But what if the question was this: Name the player who somehow carded a triple bogey on the 18th hole of that Open when all he needed to win was a double bogey or better.

It probably took less time for you to come up with Jean Van de Velde than it did for the man to blow his best shot at a major championship. But he entered the history books, gaining more fame in infamy than Paul Lawrie, the Scottish winner in his home country at Carnoustie, did in glory after becoming champion following a three-way playoff.

(For further proof, I actually punched all of this into Google myself just to make sure I had the year and Lawrie's surname right -- and I'm the one who gets paid to do this.)

The clock is running on Campbell's 15 minutes. While he deserves every last one of them, chances are Lawrie will be waiting with an empty bar stool beside him in the bar of public disinterest in a couple of months.

That's not to discount Campbell's accomplishment, which is immense. With stars falling off the leaderboard all around him Sunday, the man held fast on a day when that course played as hard as it did all week.

Kudos to Campbell for showing overflowing amounts of guts to hold off Tiger. Though he wasn't playing alongside The Man, Campbell seemed to answer every Woods crowd-pleaser with a clutch shot of his own.

For all of the talk of other things about him, it's the, shall we say, chutzpah of Campbell that made the biggest impression on me.

What didn't make an immediate impression on me was Pinehurst No. 2, at least not when I first arrived at the facility. It's very nice, as you would expect, but nothing grabs you so instantly as does Augusta National.

From tee to fringe, nothing jumped out at me about the beauty or the challenge of the course. I was actually more struck by the aesthetics of Caves Valley Golf Club in Maryland, site of the NCAA championship earlier this month, than I was by No. 2.

But those greens ... I mean, wow. You read all about them, but here's a thought that will stick with me: I walked out to the back of the 13th green to check on a player, settling in behind the ropes as he made his way up the fairway. With a back pin, I could see the flag and a few feet of green, but nothing else.

Then I walked around to the side of the green and learned my lesson about why this No. 2 is even more complex than the one in the Austin Powers movies. I couldn't see about two-thirds of the green from the back because the slope from the middle to the front is so severe.

That's not even to mention the landing surface at par-3 No. 15, rightly reputed as the toughest green on the course. With the dry conditions, it is a wonder that any player could hold a tee shot on that miniature golf setup of a green.

The greens at Augusta National have a freeform wackiness about them, undulations and shapes changing out of nowhere to toy with the player. The ones at No. 2 have a sophistication that suggests a calculated challenge not only to putt them, but to keep a ball on them at all.

The beauty of No. 2 is simply subtle.