PLAYER FEELS FOR KIM
AUGUSTA, GA.— Easily the grisliest sports video of the week was that poor young South Korean golfer, I.K. Kim, missing a one-foot putt that would have given her the Kraft Nabisco Championship, the first major of the women’s pro season.
Any mention of it around Augusta National seems to be accompanied by a shudder and an outburst of sympathy and none other than Gary Player, one of the sport’s immortals, brought up the subject when someone asked him about the impressive way Rory Mcilroy shrugged off his final-round collapse here last year.
“I don’t often watch golf, but on Sunday, I watched this lady miss a putt this long,” Player said, holding his hands a foot apart. “She could knock it in at midnight. She could knock it in blindfolded. She could knock it in with one hand. She could kick it in. And she missed the putt.
“I pray that it doesn’t have an affect on her career, but it could. It could ruin her career. I don’t say it will, but it’s possible. My heart bled for her.”
Player put it up there with great train wrecks of the past, including Jean Van de Velde at Carnoustie in 1999 and Lee Trevino beating Tony Jacklin in the Open Championship at Muirfield in 1972, when Jacklin led by two shots with three holes to play. At the 16th hole, Trevino bladed the ball out of a greenside sand trap and it was screaming for deep rough and a certain bogey or worse when it hit the flag and dropped straight into the cup for a ridiculous birdie. At the next hole, with Jacklin laying 15 feet for birdie, Trevino knocked his approach over the green.
“He’s complaining and mumbling away and hits the chip, gets it down the hill, runs down and goes in the hole,” Player said of Trevino. “Jacklin three-putts and Trevino beats him. That’s when he said the famous line when they asked how he beat Jacklin. ‘Don’t forget. God’s a Mexican.’
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” Player added. “And Jacklin never really played well after that.”