Tee Time Is Right Down the Alley of This Briton

RANCHO MIRAGE —  Just when golf needed it, along comes this big blonde buster of the ball. Hits it out of sight. A short game you could grow orchids with. A putting stroke made in heaven.

Not one of those clones. Not a “Which one is that?” blonde out of Brigham Young or Wake Forest. A belter. A highly recognizable silhouette on the tee.

Veterans stand in awe at the drives. They can’t believe the fairway woods. They step off the 1-irons, take a tape measure even to the short irons. Not since the young Nicklaus has anyone seen this kind of shocking ball-bashing. Competitors shake their heads and grind their teeth.

A familiar scenario? A new Jack Nicklaus? Six Masters, clusters of British Opens, PGAs, U.S. Opens coming up? Should Arnie’s Army re-up?

Who said anything about Jack Nicklaus? Arnold Palmer?

The bad news is, this golfer will never win a Masters. Never finish second in a whole bunch of British Opens.

But this golfer can do a lot of things Arnold and Jack can’t. Wear earrings, for example. Eye shadow. Talk soprano. Play in shorts.

That’s almost the only difference. The game is the same. Only the gender is different.

The ball doesn’t know the difference when Laura Davies hits it. The ball probably thinks, “Take it easy, Arnold!” “Ouch, Jack!”

Laura Davies may not be the next Jack Nicklaus. But, she’s at least the new Babe Didriksen. She hits the ball like a Texas tomboy. Or Texas boy, period.

Which is amazing. Because Laura was not born where the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play. She was born an English gentlewoman in Surrey.

The Bronte sisters would be dumbfounded to see her whack a golf ball where she does. She’s supposed to be good at tea and Keats, not birdies and bogeys, right?

She’s supposed to be walking around with a parasol and hoop skirt, not a 1-iron and short shorts. She’s supposed to have gloves that go all the way up to the elbow, not ones to protect the grip.

What’s a proper English lady doing in a sand trap? Shouldn’t she be riding sidesaddle after a fox, or tending roses in the Cotswolds?

It would be one thing if Laura had this delicate little game where she just popped the ball low and straight and putted masterfully, a female Deane Beman, Paul Runyan. But Laura not only hits the ball like the young Jack Nicklaus, she looks a little like him, too. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a Golden She Bear.

There’s a lot of her and it all gets behind every shot. Other golfers aim for a target. Laura aims for the horizon.

Bobby Jones once said of Jack Nicklaus, when he first came out on the tour, knocking these incredible tee shots, hitting 8-iron second shots where the rest of the field was using 4-woods: “He plays a game with which the rest of us are not familiar.”

Mickey Wright, the women’s tour legend, said somewhat the same thing about Laura Davies.

Women, particularly British women, are not supposed to play the power game. Their short game is meant to be impeccable. From 100 yards in, they’re supposed to be the equal of any man who ever played. Laura Davies is their equal from tee on in.

The first professional tournament Jack Nicklaus ever won was the U.S. Open. The first tournament Laura Davies won in this country was the U.S. Open. She won it the same way he did--in a playoff.

Laura Davies, like Nicklaus, was already a legend before that historic win. Jack was a double U.S. Amateur champion and the man who had almost won the U.S. Open as a 20-year-old amateur.

Laura Davies was the best player in Europe almost as soon as she began to tee it up. She turned pro in Europe in 1985 and promptly won the women’s Belgian Open and was first in the European Order of Merit. She was the only one in the field for whom the North Sea was a realistic hazard, in fact, the only one who had to tee it up with a 4-wood to keep it in Belgium.

She may be the only one in the field at the Nabisco Dinah Shore down here this week who has to choke up to keep it out of Indio.

In the men’s game, when a talented foreigner emerges, it’s customary to find loopholes to keep him out. Nicklaus is lucky he was born in Ohio and not, say, Santander, Spain.

Women, as usual, are more practical. When Laura Davies won the United States Open, the Ladies Professional Golf Assn. membership immediately amended the bylaws to admit Laura without the bothersome technicalities of having to go through qualifying school.

The thinking here is that anyone who can hit the ball 341 yards upwind, as Laura did in Hawaii recently, should not be playing in countries where her shots have to go through customs.

And, besides, after Laura Davies has hit her tee shot, no one in the gallery is ever apt to ask, “Which one was that?”

Nobody ever mixed up Babe Ruth with anyone else either. No one ever said “Which one’s Nicklaus?” Nor will they say, “Which one’s Davies?”

When they come on her ball, they may be surprised that someone named Jack--or Arnold or Sam--didn’t put it there.