Curt Sampson

From the Hearth -
Excerpts of a conversation with author Curt Sampson, author of Royal & Ancient that took place shortly before the events at St. Andrews.

The Hearthstone Review: Given what you know about Monsieur Jean, and with the advantage of hindsight, had his ball stayed up in the burn, as it momentarily did, given the moment, and the clamor that was taking place around him, do you think he could have pulled off that shot, gotten the ball on the green and two-putted for the win?

Curt Sampson: I think he definitely would have tried it, Jim. That's that devil may care, scarf in the wind, top down kind of attitude that he has for golf, and I assume life. He would've tried. It's not an impossible shot. I've asked around a little bit and it's been done, by the locals, by some members. They've never done it, of course, on the 72nd hole of The Open but he would've tried.

THR: Take us back to that moment. It'd been a very long day for the players, as it had been for the spectators. Then this whole thing started to unfold. He started to take off his shoes and roll up his trousers. Things must have just been in an uproar.

Sampson: It was a strange atmosphere. I was behind the 18th green going in and out of the ahem, tavern, there and there was a ho-hum feeling to start because here's a guy that nobody knew with a three-stroke lead and it was just going to be kind of an odd ending to an odd Open. And then he started to unravel and this air of disbelief and amazement descended like a cloud and then it started to appear that a Scotsman was going to be in the hunt if Van de Velde kept it up and that added a new twist to the feeling around the green, sort of a patriotic overturn. It was just a lot of fun. I've never experienced anything like it.

THR: Even watching on TV, the commentators were unraveling.

Sampson: Yea, I talked to [Curtis] Strange about that. I said, "You called this guy, this fellow golfer, stupid on the air." Apparently, Strange took a bit of heat for that, a lot of letters to the network. And, he said: "Well, I thought about it before I said it." In fact, Strange cleared it with a producer to use that odious phrase to describe the play. And he asked me, since I was talking to Van de Velde, to apologize, in a way, for him. I'm seldom a go-between between people like that but I did tell Van de Velde that Curtis Strange meant nothing personal.

THR: What was his reaction?

Sampson: Van de Velde said, "Ah well, people get all wound up in the golf even if they're watching and they take it personally, and not in the sense I just mentioned but they become so involved like it's them out there. So, Van de Velde took no offense.

THR: Well, after all, Van de Velde did hit a two-inch piece of scaffolding, as you go into, and those stands had not been there in previous Opens. Hard luck.

Sampson: It was a round support piece and a round ball. There seemed to be an infinite number of bounces it could take but he got just the wrong one. He would've even been better off if the ball had bounced straight into the burn. Then he would've been able to drop in some of the less dense jungle there and presumably play on. Instead, he just got into the worst lie on the other side of the burn, and we know what happened from there - he chunked it right into the burn on his way to a one-putt triple.

THR: It was a pretty amazing putt, when you think about it. His comments - and I didn't want to spend too much time talking about him - but it really was an amazing finish.

Sampson: I agree.

THR: They've been playing this tournament since 1860 and we'd be hard pressed to find another finish, especially at the 72nd hole, quite like this one. His comments afterwards seemed to baffle the media. He appeared to just shrug it off. And I think we could say with some certainty that had this happened to David Duval or Tom Lehman - or anyone - they would not nearly be so gracious and accommodating in defeat. What do you make of his comments and what all unfolded afterwards?

Sampson: Oh, you're so right, Jim. A lot of our players, you'd have to keep them away from sharp objects for awhile if they'd experienced what Van de Velde had. I just found the way he handled that extreme bit of adversity so refreshing. Golf is known for gracious losers, or some gracious losers. Nicklaus was a great runner-up. There have been a couple of others. Greg Norman, after he had his meltdown at the Masters. He was pretty gracious about it. Gosh, a triple on the last hole and then to lose the playoff? Um, it's as if Van de Velde just has a better perspective…really does realize that it's a game; it's his career but it's just a game like marbles or quoits, you know? He just, in a way, it didn't affect the deepest part of him.

THR: As in all your books, you provide some very interesting personalities, and there are some very compelling personalities in this book. Steve Elkington. Obviously, very old school. I remember this: at Doral, you write about it, he kicked a trash can and a reporter asked for his shoe side and he said: "Turn around and I'll show you." To me, he epitomizes the old school. Out on the tour, there are a lot of tough old birds. They're certainly not pals, are they?

Curt Sampson: No. Elkie, he's Australian and his mentor is now an old timer, a veteran named Alex Mercer, who gave him a certain outlook. His new and permanent mentor, Jack Burke Jr. at Champions, I think accentuated that outlook. He seems to view the scene in the eyes of a 60- or 70-year old guy. You know, remembering when giants walked the earth and 'Hogan wouldn't have said that.' That point of view.

THR: He doesn't use headcovers?

Sampson: No.

THR: Why is that? I guess he doesn't have a Krusty the Clown talking headcover, does he?

Sampson: No, no. The idea that all the heads are metal now; you might mar the beauty but you can't do any real damage by having your four-iron clink into your three-wood. So, in his kind of minimalist way he said to hell with the headcovers.

THR: You write that it, championship golf, attracts or encourages depressives. You're a good player. Is there something in the temperament, epitomized by Elkington, that this is just part and parcel of a champion?

Sampson: Maybe you're on to something there, Jim. I'm sure you've noticed from interviewing these guys as I have. They go into the interview after they've shot 65 and they find things that they did wrong, you know? 'I should've hit a three-iron or I got a bad break or I missed a putt.' It's this kind of quality control outlook, searching for flaws that seems to be a depressive trait. It might also be what makes them great, or part of it.

THR: Well, certainly Van de Velde doesn't fit that mold. Nor does Andrew Magee, who you follow at some length.

Sampson: No, Magee is a little more on the Van de Velde side of the meter. Trying to make a point of enjoying himself. I think telling himself every day that you only live once so let's have some fun here. He's willing to talk to you at almost any time about almost anything. One of the guys who loves to have a beer with you, especially if it's a Coors Light, which he now endorses.

THR: I remember Julie Inkster, when asked what kind of Snack Wells cookie (a sponsor) she was going to have after winning the LPGA Championship, she said a Snack Well's Coors Light! One last Shoeless Jean question. . .I feel compelled to ask this: They always talk about being in 'The Zone.' All of us who play have at least a recognition of what that is. Inner peace, focus, whatever you want to call it. Jack Fleck said he felt it when he beat Hogan. He can't remember anything about it. I thought this was interesting. He said only that he had "a good feeling in his hands." Venturi, when he won at Congressional, he can't even remember how he got out of the locker room to play in the afternoon, but Van de Velde is the first incidence of someone who was in a calm state, in a zone, as we say, playing exactly the opposite of the type of golf we normally associate with that state.

Sampson: Wow. I hadn't thought of it that way. Yes, he did say and act as if he was in full control of his faculties throughout his fiasco on the 72nd hole. That's an interesting observation. And he recounted what he was thinking for the press an hour later, after the playoff was over and he reflected on it some more and I've chatted with him a couple of times about it. Yea, the funny thing is, he thinks he made only one mistake and he's not even sure that was a mistake. That was, of course, the wedge shot into the burn. He said his lie was so bad that he might've considered playing sideways for the fairway but again the lie was so bad he wasn't sure he could even get it to the fairway reliably.

THR: We go back to St. Andrews this year, the Millenium Open, Jack's last. So many historic things have happened there. I have to ask you about one that is certainly a blight on the ugly American aspect of our participation, and that would be Sam Snead who went over there after the war when conditions were not very good. He won there. He played well enough. He just didn't get it, I guess.

Sampson: No, Sam served, fought the battle of what? Corpus Christi? Or did he fight the battle of San Diego? In other words, he wasn't fully aware, I think, that there been a war over there. And food rationing, and gas rationing, and bombs and so forth. Sam, great player that he is, was still a bit unaware of the bigger picture when he criticized the conditions, the food, the whole thing. His talent was such that he won but his attitude was such that he never went back.

THR: Has he ever recanted or backed off some of the things he said?

Sampson: No, I think he's come to view them in a humorous light though and recognize that they were a mistake but, no, I don't think he's tossed and turned.

THR: No. And Ben Hogan never played the Old Course?

Sampson: No, he didn't. You know, he was right in the neighborhood. It's not that much of a drive from Carnoustie to St. Andrews and he was over there for, what was it? 17 days or something like that. He got there extra early. He may have taken a day trip to see the birthplace of golf, or its real home but he didn't. And thus became the only really great player in golf history never to have played the Old Course.

THR: You've hit Hogan's clubs at Shady Oaks, under the spectre that he might be in the vicinity. And you hit a ball off the 18th hole at Carnoustie on the morning of the final round of The Open. These are sobering experiences, I would imagine.

Sampson: They are. I really enjoyed that. No, not enjoyment, but oh, enjoyment mixed with fear hitting golf balls off the 18th tee at Carnoustie on the final day. I won't go into the long story. I think it begins. . .

THR: You snuck on. . .in the company of the superintendent. . .

Sampson: Yea, the assistant superintendent who'd been setting pins with the Royal and Ancient staff all week and was just so bloody fed up with them and wanted to kill them. And he saw that I happened to have a driver with me and some golf balls and while they went up to set the hole on #18, he and I went back in his cart to the tee and we each blasted out, using that word blast inaccurately, two drives each. None of them were any good. But it was fun and informative to see just what the golfer faced on that tee, which was frightening.

THR: You've been to the other majors. This is the real deal, isn't it?

Sampson: Yea, you know there is a certain feeling you get at Augusta that's unique. Um, and the PGA and the Open have their auras but this one is so old…you know, 72 years more history than the Masters, and they put that claret jug out on a little old table on the first tee and you're in Scotland on a links course and it all comes together and you really feel connected to something really old and really important.

THR: A lot of delicious detail in this book. At pro ams, does Lanny Wadkins really introduce himself by saying: "Hello, I'm Lanny Wadkins and I'm not going to help you look for your ball in the rough?"

Sampson: You know that's the story. He may have said it once and it wouldn't surprise me.

THR: And the setup for St. Andrews, I don't know what you've heard. You can certainly spray the ball a little more. Is there any reason to suspect that we won't have at least as entertaining an open as we've had in the past?

Sampson: I'm just hopeful. They've been great, haven't they? I mean, who can forget that what was for me the previous most memorable Open with Rocca stubbing his chip and then holing a seventy-foot putt and that look on John Daly's face. I just loved that Open. I hope we get one half as good.

THR: One of my favorite shots. What a moment! We talked with Doug Sanders. Nicklaus almost drove that ball out of bounds there, in 1970. Just a few feet.

Sampson: What a party it would've been had Dougie won, huh?

THR: Thank you, Curt. -0-

© THR, 2000

Talking Points - Edition I - Ron Green
Talking Points - Edition II - Dr. Patrick Cohn
Talking Points - Edition III - Bradley S. Klein
Talking Points - Edition IV - Doug Sanders