YOUTH will be served. Leonard's win puts him
in a special groupIt's interesting that just when PGA of America officials have decided to let youngsters -- accompanied by a paying adult -- in for free at the $1 million MasterCard PGA Grand Slam at the Poipu Bay Resort featuring the winners of golf's four majors, the cast will be its youngest ever.
When Justin Leonard, 25, won the British Open over the weekend at Royal Troon, Scotland, it became the first time that the first three majors have been won by golfers under 30.
Leonard has joined 21-year-old Tiger Woods, the Masters champion, and 27-year-old Ernie Els, winner of the U.S. Open, as the third member of 1997's fabulous foursome.
The winner of the PGA Championship next month at Winged Foot, N.Y., will round out the cast for the PGA Grand Slam of Golf set for the Kauai resort Nov. 18-19.
Now, if Jim Furyk, Phil Mickelson or Paul Stankowski, who are 27, or even Northern Ireland's Darren Clarke, who shared second with Jesper Parnevik at the British Open, can win the PGA Championship, we'd really have a Kauai Kiddie Korps.
Call it the Twentysomething Grand Slam.
IT would be a marked contrast with last year's event, when it was the Thirtysomething Grand Slam with winner Tom Lehman, Nick Faldo, Steve Jones and Mark Brooks. Of course, leave it to one of those old guys to spoil things by winning the PGA Championship.
Me?
I'm rooting for Furyk, the 1996 United Airlines Hawaiian Open champion who's having a marvelous year, or Stankowski, the 1997 Hawaiian Open champion who's 11th on this year's money list, to win at Winged Foot. They know how to win on Hawaiian soil, both having also captured the Lincoln-Mercury Kapalua International on Maui.
Actually, what we are seeing is a changing of the guard in golf.
Sure, we still have the Normans, Elkingtons, O'Mearas and Lehmans winning.
But have you noticed that the young guns are taking over in golf? Eight of the 19 top finishers in the British Open and four of the top seven money winners on the PGA Tour are under 30.
They'd better subscribe to the cartoon channel and get some video games for the upcoming Ryder Cup if this keeps up.
It took Leonard's victory at Royal Troon to make everyone sit up and take notice. One of the reasons for the neglect is that all the attention has been focused on Tiger Woods, deservedly so because he has taken golf by storm.
Els, golf's "Big Easy," deflected some of the attention from Tiger. And now, Leonard, from both of them -- until the last major to be contested and won.
IT was with mixed emotion that I watched Leonard's victory in the British Open, even if it were bleary-eyed from 4 in the morning on ESPN the first two days. More so, when the Texan won it on Sunday.
His victory came a couple of majors too late for me. In the spring of '96,when I was in Las Vegas, I noticed that Nick Faldo and Greg Norman were co-favorites in the Masters, which was to be held the following week. But the odds on them weren't so hot, something like 6-to-1. Big deal.
The odds on Leonard, though, were 50-to-1. Wow. Hoping for a killing, I plunked fifty bucks on him. He finished tied for 27th. Leonard tied for seventh at Augusta this year, and after Royal Troon, you can bet you won't ever get those kind of odds again on him.
And, as an aside, those watching the British Open on the "telly" had a chance to see the Royal Troon links course hard by the Firth of Clyde. It's the firth, Scottish for narrow arm of the sea, that inspired the name of the four-masted sailing ship anchored at Honolulu Harbor -- the Falls of Clyde.