Furyk Finding All the Loop Holes

So just what did Jim Furyk look at to come up with his golf swing? A pretzel?

The last time there was anything with as many loops as Furyk’s swing, it was an explosion in a cursive-writing class.

Look at Furyk when he swings a golf club. Watch the clubhead loop outside. Now watch it loop underneath. Sort of like tying shoelaces.

The darned thing is so unorthodox the 26-year-old Pennsylvanian is only one of the top players on the PGA Tour, with two victories in three years and more than $1.5 million in the bank.

If you’re going to start making fun of the way he swings, go right ahead.

“Jim Furyk is one of the great young players we have on this tour,” Mark O’Meara said. “He’s already won a couple of times, and I think he’s capable of winning his share more.”

O’Meara is a pretty good critic of the golf swing, mainly because his is so smooth you might find a picture of it in a geometry book. Furyk’s is just the opposite. You need a map to follow the path of the clubhead.

But just as you may follow two roads to get to the same place, Furyk’s unorthodox swing has proved quite capable of getting him into the winner’s circle. He won at Las Vegas in 1995, his second year on the tour, then won again last year in Hawaii.

He led the tour in putting in 1995 and was tied for second in birdies, then made almost $740,000 in 1996. This week at the Phoenix Open, he probably will get lost in the Tiger Woods mania, but the former Arizona star is someone to watch--and not only because of his swing.

It has been quite a climb for Furyk, from playing high school basketball and golf at West Chester, Pa., from $10,000 mini-tours and state opens, to qualifying school, to the Nike Tour to the PGA Tour to losing the first event he had a real shot at winning--the 1994 Las Vegas tournament, where he shared the 72-hole lead.

“If I sat here and said I really took a beating and I worked really hard and things weren’t going my way and all of a sudden I broke through, I mean, there are a lot of other guys out there who had it a lot rougher than I did,” Furyk said.

“This game is so tough. You have to be so focused that sometimes you forget to sit back and smell the roses. Then again, you don’t want to smell too long because everyone will come by and beat your brains in.”

Furyk wasn’t sure if he would ever be in such a position growing up. The son of former teaching pro Mike Furyk, young Jim wasn’t allowed to play golf on his own until he was 12 because his father didn’t want him to feel too much pressure. As soon as Jim turned 12, he played for 60 consecutive days. Mike Furyk has been his son’s only golf teacher.

Furyk said he always has been a good athlete, so it was natural for him to play golf by feel, rather than mechanics.

“My swing is always going to look a little unorthodox,” he said.

He didn’t know how unorthodox until he saw taped highlights of all those loops in his swing at the Phoenix event in 1994.

“I thought, ‘You know, it doesn’t really feel like that,’ ” Furyk said. “It was strange.”

Winning a lot of tournaments may soon become Furyk’s trademark, but right now it’s his swing.

“It kind of gave me my identity, a way to get out,” he said. “People recognized who I was. You can watch me swing from the green when I’m on the fairway and everybody knows it’s me.”

MAGIC MEETS TIGER ON WOOD, NOT GREEN

You can imagine how the introductions went last Friday on the basketball court at the Forum.

“Capt. Magic, meet Capt. Tiger.”

“Capt. Tiger, Capt. Magic.”

Some friends of actor Kevin Costner rented the Forum to play some pickup games for Costner’s birthday. Woods is a buddy of Costner, who is scheduled to be his partner next week at Pebble Beach, so he was there. And when Costner’s friends asked Lon Rosen, Magic Johnson’s agent, if Johnson might surprise Costner at the Forum, Johnson brought his whole traveling all-star team for the occasion.

Woods wound up playing basketball on the same court with Johnson, but it wasn’t the first time they had met. Woods and Johnson had met earlier in the day at a photo shoot in Beverly Hills for Johnson’s concert business.

Johnson came away impressed with Tiger.

“He’s really a down-to-earth guy,” Johnson said. “He’s a great inspiration to African Americans, and I’m just real proud of his accomplishments.

“Now, maybe I’ll take up golf and have Tiger give me some pointers.”

ST. ANDREWS STORY: LONG AND SHORT OF IT

They are hard at work at St. Andrews, lengthening the Old Course by about 200 yards. In a project that began in November, the tees on six holes are being pushed back, and that means bunkers will be brought back into play on Nos. 3, 6, 10, 13, 15 and 16.

Seve Ballesteros, who won the 1984 British Open at St. Andrews, said it’s a mistake.

“The Old Course is the home and history of golf and it should be treated as a national monument that should not be changed or altered,” he said.

“The fact that an American [John Daly] who hits the ball 300 yards comes along does not matter. Leave this beautiful golf course, the ‘holy ground’ of golf, as it was and as it always should be.”

SENIOR PGA: ‘HELLO, DE SADE TRAVEL AGENCY?’

The distance from John Bland’s hometown in South Africa to the big island of Hawaii is about 13,000 miles as the crow flies, though a crow probably couldn’t fly that far unless it was sitting in first class on a 747.

Anyway, here is the itinerary Bland followed to get to last week’s tournament at Kailua-Kona: From Kynsna, South Africa, to Miami to Dallas-Fort Worth to Honolulu to Kailua-Kona. Total flying time: 25 hours.

Vicente Fernandez must have had the same travel agent. His route was Buenos Aires to Miami to Atlanta to Honolulu to Kailua-Kona. Total flying time: 28 hours.

Fernandez tied for seventh and Bland tied for ninth.

Jack Nicklaus had a noticeable limp when he shot a 78 in the first round at Kailua-Kona, and although he wound up tied for 14th, his arthritic hip bothered him greatly. He had an MRI exam recently that confirmed his condition.

Nicklaus said he intends to continue playing but hinted he might need to scale back.

“I’m going to try to do what I have to do and see what happens,” said Nicklaus, who turned 57 Monday. “If it doesn’t work, I’ve played enough golf in my career.”

LPGA: THIS WHAT YOU MEAN BY ‘BIRDIES’?

Kate Hughes hit her drive straight down the fairway on the 15th hole at the Lake Buena Vista, Fla., course during last week’s tournament. As soon as the ball stopped rolling, a sea gull scooped it up and dropped it about 20 yards farther down the fairway.

Hughes waited for a ruling, and Cindy Figg-Currier’s group played through. When Figg-Currier got her shot on the green, a flock of gulls swarmed the ball and somehow managed to roll it off the green into a pond.

By that time, both players must have thought they didn’t need rules officials as much as ornithologists.

Rule 18 of the Rules of Golf, which concerns what to do when a ball at rest is moved by an outside agency, dictated that Hughes drop her ball near the original drive and that Figg-Currier replace her ball on the green.