NO cheering in the press box. That's what all sportswriters are admonished as they watch games from the best seat in the house. Couples heads list
of personal favorites
in PGAGood thing it doesn't apply to golf, a game in which, unlike baseball, you have to play your foul ball.
That's why I'm cheering for a number of golfers in the PGA Championship, which began today at the Sahalee Country Club outside Seattle.
By Sunday, I hope one of these golfers will be in the winner's circle: Fred Couples, Davis Love III, Stuart Appleby, Tom Watson, Scott Simpson, Jim Furyk, John Huston, Paul Stankowski.
Anybody, really, except Tiger Woods, Mark O'Meara or Lee Janzen. May the bogeys be with them.
Nothing personal, mind you. It's just that if any of the others win, it would make for a far better story.
Couples, a Seattle native, could furnish the hometown-kid-makes-good story angle. And he'd like nothing better than to win the first major held in the Pacific Northwest since 1944.
"I would quit and go to heaven if I won the PGA in Seattle," Couples said.
A victory would put an exclamation point on a remarkable comeback year for Couples after back problems, a divorce and the death of his father made it a difficult 1997. Couples has already surpassed his personal single-season money mark with $1,495,089 this year.
What's Love got to do with it?
Who can forget Love's victory in the PGA Championship a year ago, when a rainbow broke through the clouds on the final hole at Winged Foot as Love finally won his first major?
With a victory, Love would become the first back-to-back winner in the PGA Championship since it went to stroke-play competition 40 years ago because of television.
If Appleby should win Sunday, it would be the most emotional sports story of the year.
He is playing in his first tournament since the death of his wife, Renay, on July 23 in an auto accident outside Waterloo Station in London following the British Open.
"Obviously, I'm not here under normal circumstances," Appleby said in a press conference that brought tears to even hardened journalists. "I have to start again sometime, somewhere."
The PGA Championship would be an opportune time and place for him. Imagine how emotional it would be if the 27-year-old Aussie wins it.
WATSON and Simpson are proving there's still life at fortysomething.
Watson won the MasterCard Colonial for only his second PGA Tour victory in 10 years, and Simpson broke through in the Buick Invitational before San Diego hometown fans for only his second victory in nine years.
Furyk, Huston and Stankowski are grouped together for the simple reason that they've all won the United Airlines Hawaiian Open.
It would be a nice hana hou in Hawaii for them because the PGA Championship winner gets to play in the PGA Grand Slam at the Poipu Bay Resort on Kauai Nov. 17-18.
There's no need to root for O'Meara and Janzen because they're already assured of spots in the Grand Slam. Janzen won the U.S. Open and O'Meara won the Masters and the British Open, creating the need for an alternate to round out the elite foursome.
Based on the PGA of America's point system to determine the alternate, Woods would be No. 1 if he finishes no worse than fourth this week.
So the best of all possible worlds for local golf fans would be Couples winning and Woods doing well enough to become the Grand Slam's first alternate.
Having two alternates in the PGA Grand Slam should O'Meara or Janzen win another major, to me, simply is not an alternative.