John and Jean

Sporting Eye by Jeffrey Gantz

The newspaper headlines told a grim story: "farce," "folly," "infamy," "disaster." A television commentator called it "one of the stupidest things I've ever seen in my life."

John F. Kennedy Jr. trying to land his Piper Saratoga at night when he wasn't instrument licensed? No, actually they were all talking about Jean Van de Velde, the obscure French golfer who came to the last hole of the British Open with a three-shot lead and managed to lose it, and the Open title, because he wouldn't play safe.

In America, at least, sport is its own world, where winning and losing are life and death, and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, as Van de Velde did, is the stuff of Greek tragedy. Yet last Sunday the Frenchman's "disaster" was, literally, framed by a real tragedy, as ABC periodically shrank the golf screen to give us updates on the search for Kennedy and his wife and sister-in-law. In the wake of his 72nd-hole collapse and subsequent playoff defeat, Van de Velde conveyed his awareness of what was happening off Martha's Vineyard by pointing out to the press that "there's worse things in life . . . some terrible things are happening to other people," and that indeed his misfortune had sent thousands of spectators home rejoicing because it allowed Paul Lawrie to become the first Scotsman to win the Open on home soil since 1931.

We Americans weren't buying -- Van de Velde was just making jokes to hide the tears. The man had to be an emotional wreck after failing to observe the most elementary rules of winning golf -- in this case, a safe iron into the fairway of Carnoustie's difficult par-four 18th hole, a safe pitch short of the green, a safe pitch to the green, and two or, at worst, three putts for a bogey five or double-bogey six. Not an elegant way to finish the world's most prestigious tournament, but the way any sensible golfer would have chosen. Certainly any sensible American golfer. In America, as we all know, winning is everything. Any smart basketball or football team with a lead in the last few minutes tries to run out the clock; soccer and ice-hockey teams slow the action to a crawl. If they didn't, the fans would riot and the coach would get the sack.

Jean Van de Velde, however, is not American. Perhaps he saw himself as a swashbuckling sporting musketeer in the tradition of tennis player Jean Borotra and racehorse Ribot and skier Jean-Claude Killy and Formula One driver Jean Alesi and soccer star Eric Cantona, French athletes who won, and lost, with style. Of course it was foolhardy to pull out his driver (instead of the safer iron) on the 18th tee Sunday, but "the champion golfer" (that's how they call out the Open winner at the presentation ceremony) ought to be able to drive it in the fairway when the chips are down. Van de Velde didn't come close -- he wound up in the rough off the 17th fairway. So he had something to prove to the fans, and to himself. True, it would require a heroic shot to avoid the water and the sand traps and the out of bounds, but what good is being a winner if you're not a hero?

Six shots later, Van de Velde was not a winner. Not on the scoreboard, and certainly not in the hearts of the American media. But is he really such a fool? Even in golf circles, winning the British Open doesn't necessarily make you a household name. (Bill Rogers? Mark Calcavecchia? Ian Baker-Finch?) And even Americans have been known to prefer heroes to winners. Golf's most famous household name is Arnold Palmer, and what Arnie's most famous for is not his numerous victories but his loss in the 1966 US Open, when he blew a seven-shot lead over the last nine holes by trying too hard to set a new scoring record. Aussie golfer Greg Norman sells mind-boggling amounts of merchandise to fans who identify with his equally mind-boggling record of heartbreaking defeats in major tournaments; his record-breaking collapse at the Masters three years ago brought him more mail, more sympathy, than any of his triumphs ever did. The media portray Norman as King Lear and Job rolled into one; he should be demoralized, but with $200 million in gross sales last year, he's too busy filling out deposit slips.

Caution is a very real virtue when you're flying an airplane, where mistakes in judgment can truly be a matter of life and death. In golf, on the other hand, what we call caution was in a sterner age deemed cowardice. I suspect Jean Van de Velde will now be better known, and more popular, for pushing his luck (and he'd had plenty over the first 71 holes), for testing the limits of the universe, than he would have been if he'd limped home and lifted the claret jug. In a world where the fingers of one hand scarcely suffice to tot up the "world champions" in any of boxing's weight classes, winners are a dime a dozen. Heroes, even heroes who come up short, remain in scant supply.