Does Freddie Couples deserve to be in golf’s Hall of Fame?
If he won the Northern Trust Open at venerable Riviera on Sunday at the age of 51 — and become the PGA Tour’s oldest winner in more than 35 years — he’d be getting two very enthusiastic thumbs up from me.
It wouldn’t have quite been Tom Watson winning the British Open at Turnberry at the age of 59, but lifting the trophy on the PGA Tour over the age of 50 just doesn’t happen.
It would have been some feat.
But, of course, Couples didn’t close the deal at Riviera.
And that, frankly, has too often been the case with a golfer who’s a Mozart with a 5-iron but whose frailties many of us have been willing to overlook because he’s one of the good guys in the game.
Unlike some other popular, high-profile golfers who aren’t what they seem, what you see with Freddie is what you get. He’s as down-to-earth as they come. He’s funny, accommodating and just a pleasure to deal with.
But, let’s be honest about this: Throughout his career, he has gotten the apple stuck in his throat too many times, just as he did on Sunday.
Sports Illustrated once called Couples “the 71-hole champion of the free world.” Tom Weiskopf went a step further.
“Great talent,” he told Golf Digest of Couples, “No goals in life. Not one. He's not as easygoing as people think. You can see that the pressure does get to him.”
Tony Jacklin went one step further still, employing the most unkind word in golf.
At the 1989 Ryder Cup at The Belfry in England, the European captain told Christy O’Connor to just hit the green on the last hole, even though Couples had a 9-iron in his hand and needed just to tie for the US to win the Cup.
“Couples will choke,” Jacklin told O’Connor.
As unpalatable as that characterization was, he was right.
“I’d seen him fold like that before,” Jacklin later said, “He just doesn’t react well to pressure. He can’t handle it.”
What’s exasperating about watching Couples is that such an analysis isn’t always true.
He can be brilliant in the heat of battle, too. Ask Vijay Singh, who has lost three out of three times in the Presidents Cup against him.
And let’s not forget how deadly Couples is when money’s on the line. The now-defunct Skins Game became Couples’ personal annuity, and let’s not talk about how many times he has gotten into the wallet of his good friend, Michael Jordan.
On Sunday at Riviera, he began his final round with three straight birdies.
He really did seem destined to make history on what is his favorite course.
“When he got off to a good start, I was like, 'Freddie looks like he's going to have one of those days where he's going to play great,' ” said Aaron Baddeley, the tournament's winner.
A bogey out of nowhere on the sixth hole seemed to dent Couples in a way it shouldn’t have.
His tee shot on the seventh — in the hay, way right of the fairway — was, in hindsight, an act of sabotage, the sort of thing Jacklin was talking about.
“That started the comedy of errors,” Couples said later. “Hitting it down there in that stuff on the right on No. 7, you just can't play out of there.”
He made a double bogey “on a hole that's a 3-wood and a 9-iron”.
His chances were essentially over. Swinging so hard out of the hay seemed to aggravate his chronically bad back, and Couples said later that he didn’t hit another good iron for the rest of the day.
It was, in the end, a repeat of the storyline from last year’s Senior U.S. Open. Playing before a partisan crowd in his hometown of Seattle, Couples had a one-shot lead with 17 holes to play. Then, inexplicably, he drowned a wedge from 65 yards on a par 5, took a triple bogey and effectively handed Bernhard Langer the title.
He should have won the Senior PGA last year, too, and could have won on the PGA Tour in Houston but finished the tournament with three bogeys.
So, given this fragility, is just being good people really enough to qualify Couples for the Hall of Fame?
It’s not just that his resume isn’t good enough, because there are others in the Hall who have sketchy resumes.
Does Isao Aoki, who won only once on the PGA Tour and spent the prime of his career happy to be the big fish in the small pond of Japan, deserve to be there if performance were the only criteria? Does Charlie Sifford?
Tommy Bolt won only 14 Tour events, including a U.S. Open, and Jackie Burke had 15 wins, though two of them were majors. Did they really do enough?
Lanny Wadkins underachieved with only one major, yet he‘s in there. Tom Kite’s a member with 18 wins, but only one major, which isn’t a much better return than Freddie’s 15 wins, including the 1992 Masters.
The problem Couples faces is that of expectation.
He won his first tournament on Tour, the old Kemper Open, in 1983, back when Ronald Reagan was president and gas was cheap. Back then, there was no limit to his potential.
But he hasn’t lived up to that potential, and that’s what hurts him the most — not that his record’s complete garbage but that it doesn’t remotely approximate his talent.
