Andy Bean Has Started Swinging for Fairways Instead of for Fences

You can tell right away what’s wrong with Andy Bean as a golfer. You can tell right away he’s not Ben Hogan.

He’s too big. That ball is too far away. He’s like a batter that’s got too much strike zone.

You line yourself a profile of the average successful pro on the Tour over the past decades and you come up with a guy who’s 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighs anywhere from 165 to 180 pounds. He’s got this compact little swing and he doesn’t look like a bear trying to open a walnut on the green. Your great players have been within this silhouette range from Bobby Jones to Jack Nicklaus.

But none of this reassures the Tour players. To a man, they are secretly convinced that some day a guy will show up on the tee about the physical dimensions of Wilt Chamberlain or any large mammal. He will have steel shafts one foot longer than the modern player, he will have this big arc in his swing and the ball will tend to disappear over the horizon any time he lets out the shaft. He will win everything in sight.

Tour players are always afraid of the newcomer who can reach the par-5s in two. This guy, they fear, will reach them in one.

It’s a recurring nightmare. The trouble with it is, it never comes to pass. In golf, too, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Still, Andy Bean is the latest of the troglodytes to shake up the great game. Andy soared 6-feet-4 in the air and weighed in at a linebacker’s 225 when he came on the tour. He had to build up shafts one inch longer than regular to accommodate the radius of his full swing.

He hit the ball higher, farther and harder than the average Tour player--but not necessarily straighter.

It was an old story. Normal pattern for the big hitters in this game is that they do one of two things: They either shrug off the whole game and concentrate on the part game, focusing their attentions on getting the ohs and ahs of the galleryites; or they say: “This is very nice but it doesn’t win tournaments,” and devote their energies instead to putting the ball where they want it to go, instead of where it wants to go.

Golf has had its legendary long hitters before. Jimmy Thomson, George Bayer, Marty Fleckman. Nice to watch, risky to bet on.

Andy Bean seemed to bid fair to belong to their unillustrious company. To be a kind of complicated sideshow.

Andy Bean appears to have declined the honor. Andy Bean is leading at Round 2 of the Bob Hope-Chrysler Classic down here this week precisely because he has chosen to play position golf instead of power golf. He’s not exactly like a ballplayer who has learned to bunt instead of homer. It is more analogous to a ballplayer who learns a home run merely has to go over the fence, not over the flagpole.

Jimmy Thomson himself once ruefully allowed as how Ben Hogan--no short hitter at all, himself, but not a man who tried to hit the moon with every swing--”had three fairways, center, right and left--the rest of us were lucky we had one.”

On the 18th hole at Indian Wells Thursday, a 501-yard par-5 patsy that had two eagles scored on it the day before and had yielded to an average score of 4.6, Andy Bean came to the tee 13 under par for the tournament and hungry for a bird.

The old Andy Bean would have unbuttoned his collar, unnotched his belt and gone after it as if it were a snake he found coiled on a bed.

But, a slanting rain was cutting across the golf paradise this afternoon--clouds scudded down the valley, drenching the greens and fairways--and Andy Bean sighed and put back the driver and took a 3-wood out of his bag.

“I couldn’t believe I was laying up on a par-5 off the tee !” he was to laugh later. “I don’t think I’ve ever done that before in my life.”

Neither could the rest of golf. Bean is supposed to go after par-5s like a lion after a steak, with a driver and an 8-iron. He toured this one with a spoon, a 1-iron and a sand wedge. Even then, he had to lip out a 15-foot putt not to make a birdie.

Andy Bean may yet be that creature golf has been hiding in the closet from. A study of his own statistics from a year ago shows the metamorphosis of his thinking. He still ranks 13th in driving distance but the old Andy Bean would have wanted to be no worse than third.

And, though he was 44th in keeping the drive in the fairway, he was fourth in reaching greens in regulation, indicating those drives were winding up in locations that kept the pins in sight and didn’t run into unplayable gullies and hazards.

He also was fourth in money won--$491,938--and he won his 10th and 11th tour tournaments, a total only the better tourers achieve.

History has shown that players in golf with reputations for being big hitters become more dangerous when they throttle back the trajectories to hit balls where they want, instead of how they want. Like a Mike Souchak before him, an Andy Bean is more a threat sometimes with a 3-wood off a tee instead of the big lumber.

The public likes the home run hitters, the knockout punchers, the ace servers and the long ball swingers. The banks like the guys who play for the money, not the tape measures. Andy Bean, the player, not the hitter, may make the game’s worst fears come true.

Some years ago, the great Hogan was playing with some young belter from the amateurs who was proud of his long-driving ability. He was out-driving Hogan on every hole, a fact that seemed to be escaping Ben’s whole-hearted attention. At least, he kept silent about it.

Finally, the kid could stand it no longer. “Mr. Hogan,” he blurted, “what do you think of my game?”

Hogan, startled, asked: “What part of it?”

The kid didn’t hesitate. “My driving!” he said proudly.

Hogan looked at him. “Your ball runs too much,” he said flatly. End of discussion.

Bean’s ball doesn’t run too much anymore. Neither do his scores. He’s not only big and long, he’s good and straight.