Current Biography Excerpts: Golf

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BRADLEY, PAT
COUPLES, FRED
CRENSHAW, BEN
FALDO, NICK
NORMAN, GREG
PRICE, NICK

BRADLEY, PAT
Mar. 24, 1951- Golfer.

Over the course of her distinguished twenty-year career on the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tour, Pat Bradley has been a standard-setter for the sport. Since turning pro in 1974, she has earned more than $4.3 million, an LPGA record, and she has won thirty tournaments, including six majors. More important, those thirty victories have gained Bradley a place in the LPGA Hall of Fame, which, with only thirteen members, is one of the most exclusive clubs in professional sports. The first woman to win golf's Grand Slam--comprising the sport's four major tournaments--over a career, she was also the first since 1950 to win three majors in a single year.

Bradley's accomplishments are all the more remarkable considering that at the peak of her career she was stricken with Graves' disease, a debilitating and potentially fatal thyroid condition, which went undiagnosed for a year and caused her to fall from first place in the world to number 109. After receiving medical treatment, Bradley fought her way back to the number-one position. Her success can be traced to a solid all-around game and a concentration so intense that the "Bradley Stare" is legendary on the LPGA tour. "If I could steal something from Pat, I'd swipe her concentration," fellow pro Muffin Spencer-Devlin told Barry McDermott of Sports Illustrated (September 25, 1986). Consistency is another Bradley hallmark, for she has finished in the top ten of more than half of the five hundred-plus tournaments she has entered, and she has more than fifty second-place finishes. "There are three things in life that are constant," the golfer Juli Inkster told Eddie Sefko of the Sporting News (August 11, 1986). "Death, taxes, and Pat Bradley somewhere on the leader board."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1994 Current Biography Yearbook.

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COUPLES, FRED
Oct. 3, 1959- Golfer.

In today's golf world there is no more nonchalant and artlessly graceful swing than that of Fred Couples, the sport's most accomplished naif. Couples's self-taught, big, slow, and easy hitting style, which gives him the power to drive the ball great distances as well as the capability of varying his shots, earned him the nickname "Boom Boom" early on. It was described by Dave Williams, his coach at the University of Houston, as "the way a twelve-year-old would swing if you handed him a club." When Couples turned pro, during the 1980 season, golf purists' expectations of how far his raw talent would carry him were low, especially since that talent was combined with a seeming lack of motivation and ambition and a definite shyness in the limelight. He performed in accordance with that expectation, winning only three times in his first nine seasons on the Professional Golf Association (PGA) tour, until he changed his attitude and his game. Between 1990 and 1993 he won seven titles, bringing his career total to ten, and one of the victories came in a major tournament, the 1992 Masters.

Couples led the PGA tour in lowest scoring average in both 1991, when he was the Professional Golf Association's player of the year, and 1992, when he attained the number-one position in the international Sony Ranking and was the leading prize-winner on the PGA tour. His combined income in 1992, from both prize and endorsement earnings, was between $4.7 and $5.2 million. Midway through the 1993 season, his career total in prize winnings alone was moving past the $6 million mark, and he ranked first in Ryder Cup team standings, which are calculated, on the basis of game points compiled from January 12, 1992 through the 1993 PGA Championship, for the purpose of choosing the team that will represent the United States at the mid-September Ryder Cup matches at The Belfry, Sutton Coldfield, England.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1993 Current Biography Yearbook.

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CRENSHAW, BEN
Jan. 11, 1952- Professional golfer.

Although some professional golfers have won more major tournaments and others have collected more in winnings, Ben Crenshaw remains after twelve years one of the most popular and talented players on the grueling PGA circuit. In spite of his roller-coaster career, his all-American looks, charisma, and grace under pressure have made him a gallery favorite from his days at the University of Texas, where he was heralded as the next Jack Nicklaus, to the 1984 Masters Tournament, where he ended a decade of frustration to capture his first major-championship title.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1985 Current Biography Yearbook.

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FALDO, NICK
July 18, 1957- British golfer.

The best golfer in the world today, in the opinion of most experts, is Nick Faldo, whose sterling record in golf's four major championships includes three British Open titles, two Masters Tournament victories, and six other top-five performances. A perfectionist and a fierce competitor, Faldo is noted for his single-minded dedication to playing golf to the best of his capabilities and for constantly striving to improve his game. In the mid-1980s, for example, his search for a flawless swing led him to hit practice shots until his hands bled, often driving as many as 1,500 balls a day. During an interview session after his 1990 British Open victory, Faldo discussed his achievements with Jaime Diaz of the New York Times (July 24, 1990): "I don't like to think about whether I'm the best player in the game. It's so much of a week-to-week thing; it's better to simply be concerned with improving. But when it's over, I'd most like to be remembered as someone who could really play the game. I want people to say in years to come: Did you see Nick Faldo play in his heyday? I did, and it was quite something.'"

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1992 Current Biography Yearbook.

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NORMAN, GREG
Feb. 10, 1955- Golfer.

With fans, peers, and experts alike, the most popular player on the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) tour is almost certainly Greg Norman, a gritty but good-natured Australian (who lives in the United States) with prepossessing sun-kissed looks, powerful athletic gifts, a dramatic, risk-taking game, and classy sportsmanship in victory or defeat. Norman has the highest-velocity clout in golf today, and Jack Nicklaus rates him "the longest straight hitter ever," with "virtually unlimited potential." A professional since 1976, Norman has won fifty-three tournaments worldwide, including one "major," the British Open, in 1986. Since qualifying for the PGA tour in the United States in 1983, he has won six tournaments and come excruciatingly close to winning the major American events--the Masters, the United States Open, and the PGA Championship. Consistently finishing in the money, the resilient Aussie led the PGA in earnings in 1986, and by the end of 1988 he had a career total of $2,260,698 in PGA tour prize money. He also holds the record for single-year worldwide winnings, with $1.3 million. In the Sony world-class performance rankings as of December 31, 1988, Norman was second, behind Severiano Ballesteros of Spain.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1989 Current Biography Yearbook.

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Price, Nick
Jan. 28, 1957- Professional golfer.

With a string of stunning victories and high finishes, Nick Price dominated the world of professional golf from 1992 through 1994 in a way that no one had since the early 1980s. Anything but an overnight success, Price, a native of South Africa raised in Zimbabwe who now lives in Florida, spent 15 unspectacular years as a pro golfer before rising to the pinnacle of his profession. By the time he joined the PGA, in 1983, Price had established himself as a promising newcomer on the African and European tours with a second-place finish in the 1982 British Open, and he made his mark on the American tour by winning the 1983 World Series of Golf. Over the next seven years, however, he did not earn another victory despite solid and at times excellent play. He finally ended his cold streak with two wins in 1991, but it was his victory in the 1992 PGA Championship, one of golf's four major tournaments, that marked the beginning of his two-year domination of the sport. During that period, Price won 11 PGA events, including two PGA Championships and, in 1994, a British Open championship. "I'm loving playing golf now. I've wanted to play this way all my life," Price told Larry Dorman of the New York Times (March 18, 1994). "I'm playing at a standard now that I've always dreamed of reaching." Slipping a bit amid all the attention in 1995, he has not won an event since his spectacular 1994 season. While his mighty golf game has earned Price championships, his personality has been even more winning, for he is routinely referred to by his adversaries on the course as "the nicest guy on the tour."

The complete article can be found in the June 1996 issue of Current Biography. An updated version of the article will appear on the 1983-1996 Current Biography CD-ROM (to be released in January 1997) and in the 1996 Current Biography Yearbook (to be published in December 1996).

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