Simpson and Olympic Deny Watson the Open

By MIKE DOWNEY

June 22, 1987 12 AM PT

<i> Times Staff Writer </i>

SAN FRANCISCO — USC today stands for United States Champion. Ten years ago, Scott Simpson won his second straight national college golf championship for the University of Southern California, at the same time he was receiving a degree in business administration. Sunday, Simpson won the U.S. Open. You might say he got his Master’s degree.

It was USC over Stanford in this one, with the two-time Pac-8 champion Simpson nosing out Stanford grad Tom Watson by a single shot. As happened here in 1955, when an Iowa club pro named Jack Fleck surprised Ben Hogan, and as in 1966, when Billy Casper somehow caught Arnold Palmer, San Francisco’s Olympic Club proved itself an equal opportunity golf course for giant-killers.

“If I could pick any tournament in the world to win, it would be the U.S. Open,” said Simpson, who was born 31 years ago in San Diego and still resides there. The victory made him $150,000 richer.

Simpson’s two-under-par 68 was one of only six sub-par rounds on the final day, as Olympic finally turned mean. It gave him a three-under total of 277 for the tournament and the slimmest possible margin of victory over Watson, whose 71 would have been a playoff-forcing 70 had his 45-foot putt on the 18th green not dodged the cup by a couple of inches.

Simpson and Watson turned out to be the only golfers to break par in the tournament.

Although Simpson had never won a major tournament before, Watson had won many, including the 1982 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. Watson, however, has not won any tournament since the 1984 Western Open, and, when asked while leading the second and third rounds here what winning this event would mean to him, he replied: “It would prove I’m back.”

Because he played so splendidly, Watson was asked if he wasn’t back anyway.

“No. I have to win to prove I’m back,” he said. “You have to win. Finishing second is no good.”

Although Watson’s resume is a little more impressive than Simpson’s, it is not as though he was defeated by a nobody. Simpson has won close to $1.7 million in his career. He, too, won a Western Open, in 1980, as well as the 1984 Manufacturers Hanover Westchester (N.Y.) tournament and this year’s Greater Greensboro (N.C.) Open, the week before the Masters.

At Augusta, he was 10 shots behind winner Larry Mize. But the tables turned in this, the second of 1987’s Grand Slam events. Mize stayed in the chase for most of the tournament, but ended up in a five-way tie at 283, six strokes behind the winner.

Seve Ballesteros was all alone in third place at 282, and right behind were Ben Crenshaw, Bernhard Langer, Ben Crenshaw, Bobby Wadkins and Mize. Not one of these six golfers could manage par on the final day, as Olympic’s mean greens played hard and fast.

How hard and fast? Well, they tortured the likes of Keith Clearwater, whose 64 on Saturday had tied the course record. Clearwater skied to a 79, taking a triple-bogey 7 on the 17th hole. The day before, this tour rookie had talked about third-round leaders who blew up to 78s on the final round and were quickly forgotten. They call this a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Who else got the Olympic shock treatment? Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman certainly did. They both finished with exasperating 77s. Nicklaus was 14 shots behind Simpson at the end, and Norman even farther back.

Norman took a triple-bogey 8 at the 16th hole, and a double-bogey 6 at the 17th. It was every bit as frustrating as the previous day, when his caddy was demanding that spectators put down t1751476594Greg’s wife, turned to Ray Floyd’s wife and said: “We’re getting real happy about pars now.”

As for Gary Hallberg, well, he might have sold his soul for pars.

Starting the day, the pro from Taos, N.M., was sitting pretty, four strokes off the pace. But in a round of golf that he will never forget and will definitely try to, Hallberg carded an 85, including a gruesome back nine of 47 in which he bogeyed the 10th hole, double-bogeyed the 11th, bogeyed the 12th, bogeyed the 14th, triple-bogeyed the 15th, bogeyed the 16th and triple-bogeyed the 17th.

Simpson had no such trouble, although his round did have its ups, downs and all-arounds.

After getting a birdie on the first hole with a 30-foot putt, Simpson bogeyed the 3rd, 4th and 6th. Fortunately for him, Watson was just as erratic, bogeying three of the first five. They were in the last two twosomes on the course, Watson paired with Clearwater in the last group.

Simpson began his Open-winning charge with a birdie at No. 7 on a 10-foot putt. Then came the stretch that won it for him--consecutive birdies at the 14th through 16th.

At 14, he hit a 7-iron four feet from the hole and dropped the putt. At 15, his 8-iron landed 30 feet away, and that putt went in as well. At 16, Simpson deposited a 15-footer. “I’ve never putted so well in my life,” he said.

It was at this point that Simpson looked at the leader board for the first time all day. “I resisted the temptation because in the past, I’ve looked at it and invariably it’s hurt me more than it’s helped. I usually lost sight of what I was doing.

“I didn’t look at it this time until after the birdie putt at 16, and I saw Tom was still there at 2-under. I thought at that point, I might have built up a bigger lead. It was then I knew that there was a lot more golf to play.”

Watson had rallied with a 20-foot birdie putt at No. 9, and another one from that distance at No. 14. He still had a chance, and, at the 17th, after Simpson had applied the pressure, Watson responded with a brave 6-foot putt to save par. He wasn’t even distracted by an ABC-TV antenna that swayed directly overhead, brushing tree branches and making a lot of noise.

Watson went to the 18th needing a birdie to tie. His 2-iron off the tee was fine, but then he tried a pitching wedge from 113 yards out, when he should have, as he regretted later, selected a 9-iron. The ball struck the green perhaps 25 feet short of the hole, and spun back to 45 feet away, on the fringe.

Watson made a lovely putt that missed by the length of his putter blade. USC had whipped Stanford in the last minute.

The golfers tried every device imaginable to putt these greens successfully. Jack Nicklaus abandoned his big-mama Response putter, the one he used to win the 1986 Masters. Ballesteros had his brother, Vicente, hold the flag, even on short putts. Langer eventually gave up putting cross-handed. These guys did everything but croquet the ball, Sam Snead style.

Mac O’Grady, playing right-handed but putting left-handed, toured the front nine in 34 and made a run at the leaders, but settled for a 72 and a tie for ninth place. “Playing this course is like Russian roulette,” was O’Grady’s outlook. “One bad shot and it’s all over.”

There was one point, within a minute around 2:45 p.m., when three different golfers sank birdie putts to grab a piece of the lead. Watson birdied the 8th and Mize the 10th almost simultaneously, and Mize’s partner, Crenshaw, quickly followed suit. They were playing musical leader board.

Sixty-four holes into the tournament, not one golfer was under par. Simpson was the only one at even par. And he remained there through the 14th.

By then, though, all of the contenders other than Watson had faded. No one else was within two of Simpson. It was a two-man tourney: The Kansas City bomber and the San Diego charger.

Watson, the more successful of the two, was also the more jittery. “I was very nervous today, but I was very nervous last night, too, so it didn’t make any difference,” he joked. Whereas Simpson said he had considered himself fortunately merely to have survived the 36-hole cut. He was nervous, but only a little.

Simpson finished ahead of Watson. At the 18th, he was 20 feet from the cup and could have put Watson away for good with a birdie. But that green is super-fast and also has some speed bumps, so he had to lag. As Nicklaus told a television audience: “I don’t think he can afford to try to make it.”

Simpson knocked it six inches from the cup, tapped it in for his 68, then stood by as Watson came down the 18th fairway.

With his ball 45 feet away and nestled against the fringe, Watson was in trouble. But, he took his putter and took a run at it. “If there’s one guy who makes impossible shots, it’s this guy,” said Nicklaus, who lost the 1982 Open when Watson sank a pitch from the rough at Pebble’s 17th hole.

Not this time. Watson could afford to go for it; he couldn’t afford to do anything else. Leaving it short would have been crazy. Watson could have clubbed it 15 feet past, because not only was the $30,000 difference between second and third place of secondary importance to a millionaire, but he already had a four-shot cushion between himself and Ballesteros.

Watson left it left, and a hair short, leaving Simpson grinning ear to ear.

“To win the U.S. Open, I can’t imagine anything better than that,” Simpson said.

Well, maybe beating UCLA.