Corey Pavin’s bulldog reputation and faith outweigh his modest Ryder Cup pedigree making him the right man for the US job
SOME OF the best, and certainly the most spirited, battles you’d ever hope to see take place in the jockeys’ quarters at any given race track.
It’s easy to see why. Fellows who grew up the smallest kid in their class have been scrapping for survival against bigger and stronger foes for most of their lives. On the street and in the playground they learned to compensate for their disadvantage in size with an eye-gouging, hair-pulling, fists-flying fury.
So when you look at 6’1”, 220lb Colin Montgomerie and 5’9”, 155lb. Corey Pavin standing side by side your first reaction might be “good job they’re not settling the Ryder Cup with a wrestling match between the captains”, but even that might not be the mismatch it would at first appear. I don’t know for a fact that the other boys never tried to steal Monty’s lunch money, but when it comes to defending himself, I’m guessing that Pavin may have had a lot more practice.
In terms of background, temperament and sheer physical dimensions they are as different as night and day, yet of all the available analogies in the animal kingdom, each has been likened by his contemporaries to the same creature. It was his onetime Ryder Cup teammate David Feherty who famously described Monty’s dour countenance as that of “a bulldog that’s just licked piss off a nettle”.
Bulldog has been Pavin’s PGA tour nickname for nearly 20 years – since his fist-pumping, camouflagewearing performance in the 1991 Ryder Cup matches at Kiawah Island so fondly recalled by the US as “The War at the Shore.”
Monty isn’t particularly fond of the “bulldog” tag; Pavin embraces the moniker. At the New York press conference unveiling his four captain’s picks, he confirmed the “bulldog mentality” was a quality he had sought in picking a team that would reflect his own win-at-allcosts approach – one in which “every one of them is on a mission” to do “whatever it takes to keep the Ryder Cup in our hands.”
One suspects that some people who count at PGA of America endorse that same philosophy, which would explain Pavin’s being fast-tracked for the captaincy despite a modest pedigree. That Montgomerie, who represented Europe on eight
occasions (with an overall win-lose-draw record of 20-9-7), would one day be captain has always been taken for granted.
Pavin played in just three Ryder Cups, the last in 1995, and scored 8-5 as a player. His name did not even come up until two years ago, when he was named one of Paul Azinger’s deputies at Valhalla.
The exuberant behavior of some of the younger US players, combined with the unexpected victory, resulted in some reflected glory for Pavin. This year’s captains did have one head-to-head Ryder Cup encounter: In 1991 at Kiawah, Monty and partner Bernard Langer beat Pavin and Steve Pate, 2 and 1.
Pavin preceded Montgomerie into the pro ranks, but despite a four-year head start, has 27 worldwide tournament wins to Montgtomerie’s 40, but Monty, who never won a Major, would no doubt trade a baker’s dozen of his tournament titles for the US Open Championship Pavin won in 1995.
Pavin’s win at Shinnecock Hills was punctuated by a 4-wood to 3ft on the final hole. The shot remains one of the most remarkable in golfing annals, made all the more so by the visage of the diminutive figure with the Chaplinesque
moustache who struck it.
On his way to the 18th green that day, Pavin dropped to his haunches and offered up a silent prayer of thanks. He converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1991 (having been inspired by reading a book called Jesus was a Jew), is an enthusiastic member of the PGA’s “God Squad” and a regular participant in the tour’s weekly Bible-study group.
Pavin’s conversion inspired internal debate among fellow members of the tribe over whether he should properly be included on lists of great Jewish sportsmen. The preponderance of Talmudic thought appears to hold that whatever religion he practises, he remains ethnically Jewish. There are a lot more Jewish golf fans than there are Jewish golf pros, and he continues to enjoy their support.
Pavin’s counterpart on the European side has also been known to invoke Jesus’s name on the golf course. In the third round of the Open at St Andrews two months ago, Montgomerie missed makeable birdie putts on the sixth, seventh, and eighth holes that might have brought him into contention for the championship that had eluded him all these years.
As he stormed off in the direction of the ninth tee, he believed himself to be safely out of earshot of the spectators and the television cameras, but it might be noted that two of the four words Monty invoked on that occasion were “Jesus” and “Christ” (The other two were “f***” and f***”).
Given his religious commitment, it was supposed in some quarters that it seemed less than coincidental that three of Pavin’s four supplementary selections happened to be fellow members of the Bible-study posse (the fourth was Tiger Woods).
In his defence, the condition is so prevalent among US pros today that almost any random sampling would inevitably turn up at least a few faith-based golfers. What the US team members do on Wednesday nights is of less concern to Pavin than how they play on Sunday afternoons.