Columnist Ron Kantowski: Golf experts have a chip on their shoulders

Tuesday, June 28, 2005 | 9:25 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Some time after Annika's Soren-slam failed to materialize, somebody pulled out a calculator to deduce 15-year-old sensation Michelle Wie's final-round score and the other amateurs the TV executives and sports columnists were practically cheering out loud for fizzled, or at least were fizzed on, at the U.S. Women's Open on Sunday, the so-called experts went all Happy Gilmore on us, suggesting the women can't play, the course conditions at Cherry Hills Country Club were too diabolical, or both.

A Korean player named Kim won the tournament, and the odds were pretty good of that happening, given there were seven Kims who teed it up. But only one was aptly named -- or renamed -- Birdie, which is what the next of Kim made on the 18th hole with an amazing 80-foot blast from the bunker that sealed her victory despite the fact she shot 3-over for the weekend.

It was a shot seen 'round the world, or at least as far as Seoul. But all the local columnists in Colorado wanted to talk about was Wie's unsightly 82, Sorenstam's failure to mount an Arnold Palmer-like charge or one of those other teenagers who monopolized the TV coverage coming up a little short in the tall grass. And how nobody could have possibly enjoyed watching all that good theatre turn into a Three Stooges film festival.

Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

Well, this casual observer of golf soitenly enjoyed it.

In that I don't play the game anymore -- I hit my woods and long irons like Jean Van de Velde at Carnoustie, so I threw them into the burn before moving here -- I really don't mind watching the big hitters on the men's tour and the straight hitters on the women's tour get a little frustrated when they let the grass grow alongside the fairways and treat the greens with some space-age polymer that is slicker than Jerry Lewis' hair.

I also like when the wind blows harder than Simon Cowell and fox holes suffice as fairway bunkers, which is why I never miss the British Open.

I guess I'm just one of those old-school guys who believes the wall at the end of the baseball power alleys should be at least 385 feet from home plate, a basketball shot from the top of the key should count just two points instead of three and a birdie should be the exception rather than the rule in golf.

One of the Denver guys wrote that while nobody said golf was a fair game, it should not be rigged worse than the ring toss on the carnival midway.

But if everybody took home a stuffed animal, teddy bears would be an endangered species.

I suppose that most people who play the game for a living would prefer there be a happy medium when it comes to course conditions. I much prefer an outrageous small, as in room for error.

Brian Hurlbert, publisher/editor of Vegas Golfer magazine, is probably in the happy medium camp. But then he's probably got a closet-full of plaid pants and pastel-colored shirts.

"My take is that while it is interesting to watch the pros struggle, I'm not sure the way the (U.S. Open) courses are set up allows the best player to win," he said. "I'm all for hard courses ... but that brings in a lot of luck."

Maybe that's where that "I'd rather be lucky than good" axiom originated -- the fringe at Pinehurst.

Hurlburt said he has less of a problem with the British Open, because the game there is pretty much played in its natural environment. That is, the wind always whips off the Bay of Fundy and the fairways at St. Andrews always look like cow pastures.

He has a bigger issue with sadistic golf course superintendents using plastic explosives to chase gophers off the fairways on the eve of major tournaments.

But Dwaine Knight, who coached UNLV to a national golf championship in 1998 and flirted with doing it again this year, said players at the big tournaments know the rough stuff is coming.

"It definitely takes you out of your comfort level and it upsets your tempo and rhythm," Knight said. "But you also prepare all year to handle that. This year, we didn't handle it, and it cost us a national championship."

But Knight believes that unless the course conditions are totally extreme -- and he said last year's men's Open at Shinnecock Hills came pretty darn close -- the best players, at least on that weekend, almost always rise to the top of the leader board.

"I still think the test is correct," he said.

I'm with the coach. If fairway booby-traps and tabletops disguised as greens result in the two guys atop the leader board -- note I said guys -- posting scores like insurance salesmen (as Retief Goosen and Jason Gore did last weekend) so be it.

This is something I plan to remember the next time I make the turn at the local putt-putt and the attendant tells me to reinsert the plug to the motorized windmill.