The L.A. Open : The Player : When Fred Couples Isn’t Winning Golf Tournaments, He’s Thinking About Golf, Watching Golf, or Hanging Out With His Golf Buddies

He’s young, he’s a millionaire, he’s about to be single and if he’s not the best golfer in the world, well, then he’s probably the best dressed.

All right, don’t take just anybody’s word for it. Try John Ashworth of Charter Golf in Carlsbad, the clothier responsible for Fred Couples’ golfing wardrobe. Like this golf sweater? Bet you won’t find a hole in one. Needless to say, polyester is not spoken here.

“Comfortable, classic, contemporary,” Ashworth said. “And golf is such a classic game. We don’t need anyone out there who looks like a joke on the fairway.”

Or consider Lynx, the golf club manufacturer, the people who put the sting in Freddy’s swing. They are paying Couples $4 million simply to wear out their clubs.

Lynx is coming out with a new Couples signature driver, the “Boom Boom,” the subject of a television commercial filmed recently at the 14th hole on the Stadium Course at PGA West. In the commercial, the golf ball nervously awaits contact, then lets out a scream when Couples socks it.

It’s all a scream for Couples, who is actually sort of the quiet type, about as controversial as Wheat Chex. Don’t forget Cadillac, also a Couples endorsement that makes sense. What’s the only thing that drives farther than Couples? A car, right?

Mix in $50,000 per exhibition, $1.34 million in official earnings last year, $982,000 in unofficial earnings and you can easily see that the best tools to track this star’s ascent are telescopes and cash register receipts, not merely scorecards.

Right now, let’s hit the 19th hole. It’s probably a good time to meet a few Fred Myths head-on. Some of them irk Couples to this day, which is understandable. What is not so easily understood is why, since Couples is responsible for creating many of them himself.

--Remote control: He once said he didn’t read and said he loved nothing better than lying on the sofa and watching television. Not at all true, said Couples, who insists he prefers attending sporting events to watching them.

--Goals: Tom Weiskopf wrote this about Couples in Golf Digest in 1991: “Great talent. No goals in life. Not one. You can see the pressure does get to him. He has great touch and power, but if he only had Jack Nicklaus’ goals. . . . “

Weiskopf works the Masters for CBS with primary announcer Jim Nantz, Couples’ buddy since their days on the golf team at the University of Houston. Nantz said Weiskopf felt terrible about his comments. “He wrote a handwritten letter to Fred and apologized,” Nantz said. “Fred never opened it. He threw it away.”

Said Couples of Weiskopf: “To read my mind is crazy.”

--Turn off the limelight? Here is the complete text of Couples’ acceptance speech when he was named PGA player of the year for the first time in 1991: “I really don’t want to talk about myself. I want to talk about what the PGA means to me. It means hanging out with my buddies. I don’t do much else but sleep and eat, and because of all my friends, they voted me No. 1. Thanks a lot.”

Said buddy John Cook: “If I had the same exposure, I would have holed up and nobody would ever have gotten to me.”

Couples said he isn’t all that different anyway.

“I’m just a normal person,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve changed at all, and I’m not going to change for too many people. I’m certainly not Charles Barkley, who says whatever he feels, but I also don’t want to be in the papers as the nicest guy in the world. I’m a competitor. I think I’m going to be much better, and I don’t think I did too bad last year.

“I’m a golfer.”

This is not in dispute. The gallery that is lined four deep at the 10th tee at Bermuda Dunes suddenly parts like the Red Sea scene in “The 10 Commandments.”

Couples climbs through the ropes, his spikes gleaming, shirt tucked in, not a wrinkle on his sleeveless sweater, the crease in his slacks and the smile on his boyish face both remarkably intact.

Repeated whispers of “There he is!” ricochet off tanned faces until you almost expect somebody to hang a ribbon around his neck and hand him some flowers. For your basic white visor/red sweater/front tee set, who think happiness and Foot-Joy are pretty much the same word, the actual sighting of Couples is not to be lightly regarded. In fact, the only thing better than seeing Couples stick his tee into the grass is seeing him swing a club.

That part is simple for Couples, who has the kind of swing you could put a frame around and hang up over that Henredon sofa in the living room next to that suddenly ragged looking Manet. Now watch as Couples knocks the ball halfway up the San Jacinto Mountains.

The reaction in the gallery is nearly always the same: “Easy does it” . . . “nice and easy” . . . “what a swing” . . . “ohmygod!”

And so it goes for the winner of the best-golfer-in-the-world category, PGA Tour division. (Nick Faldo, who probably gets more votes almost everywhere else, remains a huge Couples fan: “He gets so hot he must wear asbestos shorts.”)

But for Couples, the 33-year-old who still looks like the boy next door, the reluctant superstar, the PGA player of the year two years running, the Masters champion who won more money than anyone else last year, this is also his curse.

The problem is, he makes it look too easy. Of course, it isn’t, not even for Couples. In the six years between 1984, when he won the Tournament Players Championship, and 1990, when he won the Los Angeles Open for the first time, Couples won one tournament.

This would have been bad enough, except that at the same time Couples was becoming known as an underachiever. Davis Love III, one of Couples’ best friends on the tour and the player who lost to Couples in a playoff at last year’s L.A. Open, said the label is ridiculous.

“Freddy may not look that serious, but he wants to win,” Love said. “He wouldn’t play as well as he does if he didn’t have the desire.”

The desire issue is actually a Couples criticism of long standing. The year after he won the L.A. Open, Roy Firestone asked Couples on ESPN’s “Up Close” what position he would be satisfied with in defense of his title. Couples said if he played a good tournament and still finished third, well, that would be fine with him. This rankled Jack Nicklaus, who said he couldn’t fathom such a comment.

“You get criticized all the time,” Couples said. “When you read Monday’s paper and the guy who won will always say ‘My goal this week was to win,’ I just think it’s just so funny to hear that.

“If I can play some great golf, then I am going to have a chance to win tournaments. But I certainly can’t come in here and say on a Tuesday or a Wednesday that my goal is to win this week, because if it’s not, no matter how good golf you’re playing, your goal should be to play your best.

“Years ago, I said, ‘Yeah, I think I’m a good enough player that second isn’t all that bad.’ For Jack Nicklaus to say ‘What’s he saying? That’s not right.’ I don’t think it’s right for the best player in the world to critique everybody else.

“If he wants to, you know, say that this guy has a lot of talent (but) he’s never going to be any good, that’s his business. But 10 years from now I’m not going to look back at Tiger Woods and say, ‘Well, because he didn’t win any tournaments he’s just another player,’ because this guy is going to be great.”

Last year, Couples was not merely great, he was sensational. In addition to the Masters, he won the L.A. Open and the Nestle Invitational at Bay Hill Club in Orlando, Fla., and posted 12 top-10 finishes in the 22 tournaments he entered.

Couples won the Vardon Trophy with a 69.38 stroke average. But as well as Couples played, he wasn’t as successful off the course. His 11-year marriage fell apart, and Fred and Deborah Couples started divorce proceedings.

“His life ran the whole gamut last year,” Cook said. “From being the best player in the world to his personal life torn apart. You can’t imagine how well he dealt with everything.”

Couples didn’t want to worry about being separated from his wife, so he decided not to stop playing when the regular PGA Tour schedule ended. He played in so many far-flung special events and tournaments that his passport was smoking.

After tying for fifth in the Tour Championship at Pinehurst, N.C., on Nov. 1, Couples played with Love in the World Cup in Madrid, then committed to the PGA Grand Slam, the Kapalua International in Hawaii, the Franklin Funds Shark Shootout, the Skins Game, the Million Dollar Shootout in South Africa and the Johnnie Walker World Championship in Jamaica.

Couples took last week off for divorce proceedings in West Palm Beach, Fla.

“It’s not sad,” he said. “A lot of people worry about me and are worried about her. Hopefully it will all get over and I can stop worrying about it.

“But, you know, I don’t think it (has affected my play). Maybe it has, and I’m too naive to figure it out. But the only thing that really bothers me is that it happened. I wish it wouldn’t have. . . . I’m not a big company, we don’t have that much to figure out except what’s right for her and right for me.”

According to a circuit court judge in West Palm Beach, what’s fair for Deborah is $52,000 a month in temporary support until her divorce from Couples becomes final. Deborah Couples testified Friday at a three-hour hearing that she needed $168,000 for each of the next three months to cover expenses for her polo interests.

Couples said that he and Deborah probably would not be getting divorced if she had not “gone overboard” with polo.

“It’s been a struggle, but I think it hasn’t affected me golfwise because I’m pretty good about getting things out of my mind,” he said. “My wife had so much going on for her and I had so much going on for me, but it came to the point where her fun was away from what I was doing. And I respect that. I don’t blame her one bit for not wanting to come to golf tournaments and watch me play golf. I want somebody who really enjoys what I can do golfing. For the longest time, that’s the way it was. I know golf is pretty boring for a wife to come out and watch. Something’s got to give, and I’m certainly not going to give up golf.”

How Couples picked up golf couldn’t be a much better story. The son of a parks and recreation worker and an administrator for an aeromechanics union in Seattle, Fred scooped up range balls during the day and hit them at night. Because gloves were expensive and ruined by the rain, he didn’t wear a glove. He still doesn’t, which apparently has secured another place in golf lore for himself--the first gloveless Masters champion since Ben Hogan.

As a freshman at Houston in 1977, he shared a dormitory suite with Nantz. Blaine McCallister was on the same team. Nantz remembers the first time he saw Couples swing a club at a team get-together. It was a time to scout the competition for a place on Coach Dave Williams’ team.

“You got a quick glimpse of who could play and who couldn’t,” Nantz said. “I knew right away I couldn’t. But Fred could. The buzz going around that day was all about Fred. Everybody knew then that something special was going on.”

Couples was medalist at the 1980 U.S. Amateur and lost in the quarterfinals of match play. He didn’t return to school. Instead, Couples and Deborah went to Long Beach, and Couples entered the Queen Mary Open as a pro. Two months later, he entered qualifying school and made it on the first try. In 1981, Couples made $78,939, more than any other rookie on the PGA Tour.

“The rest, as they say, is history, I guess,” Nantz said.

Of course, Couples’ history is still being made. But is there anything to be learned from the history lesson so far? Does history repeat itself?

“The pressure of last year is over and I know this year, I’m probably not going to do the same thing I did last year,” he said. “I really think that once I get going I can pick it up to where I was, but I don’t think I’m going to be No. 1 on the money list. I can. I’m going to do my best to do that, but that’s not what I’m setting a goal for right now.

“For me, the whole thing is enjoying, not golf, but my golf game. I’m not a Fuzzy Zoeller or a Chi Chi Rodriguez, but I really get excited when I play golf.”

This is interesting because he doesn’t look like it out on the course. There is this lingering image of Couples walking down the fairway idly swinging his putter at wayward bugs, like Opie on his way to the fishing hole.

There is also the image of Couples slipping on the green jacket last year at the Masters after finishing two strokes ahead of Raymond Floyd. The underachiever issue could drop off the face of the earth or into Rae’s Creek, which is about the same thing. The ceremony was smooth, and Couples put the coat on without a hitch. Once again, he made it look so easy.

The Couples Line

Fred Couples was the PGA Tour player of the year in 1992 for the second consecutive year, finishing with victories in three tournaments (L.A. Open, Nestle Invitational and the Masters) and No. 1 on the money list. He entered 22 tournaments, made the cut in 20 and was in the top 10 in 12. THROUGH THE YEARS

A look at Couples’ annual earnings and placement on money list.

1981 $78,939 53rd 1982 $77,606 53rd 1983 $209,733 19th 1984 $334,573 7th 1985 $171,272 38th 1986 $116,065 76th 1987 $441,025 19th 1988 $489,822 21st 1989 $693,944 11th 1990 $757,999 9th 1991 $791,749 3rd 1992 $1,344,188 1st

1992 PGA TOUR STATISTICS

A look at how Couples ranked in several statistical categories.

*

Scoring average 69.38 1 Greens in regulation 71.4% 5T Putting 1.748 8T Eagles 11 12T Driving distance 274.8 5 Driving accuracy 64.8% 136T Sand saves 57.8% 30T Birdies 363 25

*TOURNAMENTS WON: 1983 Kemper Open. 1984 Tournament Players Championship. 1987 Byron Nelson Classic. 1990 Los Angeles Open. 1991 St. Jude Classic, B.C. Open. 1992 Los Angeles Open, Nestle Invitational, Masters.

CAREER EARNINGS (through ‘92): $5,466,915.