15 PGA wins. That’s how many victories Fred Couples has in his long and esteemed history. It seems like it should be more, doesn’t it? That long, loping swing, the PGA Tour Player of the Year awards in 1991 and 1992, the Masters victory in ‘92, all those Skins Game wins, and most importantly from a public perception standpoint, the value of the name. Couples’ name has a weight to it equivalent to any post-Nicklaus/Watson and pre-Tiger golfer you’d care to mention. But those 15 wins and one major through all these years put Couples alongside Tommy Bolt, Jim Furyk, and Corey Pavin – great golfers all, but hardly Pantheon-dwellers. Those numbers put him behind contemporaries like Greg Norman and Nick Price, though his reputation as a pure shotmaker remains undiminished.
The decline after those early triumphs was less a matter of the yips, and more a case of one swing sticking half a fork in a career filled with so much potential. "It was at Doral [in 1994]," Couples told Golf Digest in April of 2009. "I was on the range with my teacher Paul Marchand, and I hit a shot and it was like a bomb went off … I’ve been living on Celebrex my whole life. Now I’ve stopped that and I take two Aleve in the morning and one before I hit the sack. I feel like they help, but am I going to take 900 of these things a year?"
While getting ready for the U.S. Senior Open this week, Couples talked on Wednesday about where the back problems are now. Friends say that he’s never been so fit, and though there’s a good reason for it, Couples said that the alleged cure doesn’t always meet up with reality. "Well, I’ve been dating a girl for about four months and she works out in the morning and the afternoon and at night, it seems like. She works out a couple of times a day. And I go to the gym with her and she does her thing, and I just walk on the treadmill and she gives me a couple of other things to do.
"But she’s very athletic, and I’ve lost some weight walking. I’m not doing anything I have a back guy that’s wanted me to lose some weight, but my back actually feels worse today than it did three months ago when I started walking a lot. I just get on a treadmill while she’s exercising and doing her program. I just go walk on a treadmill. I have lost some weight. It’s been very good. But my back is very tight."
The course he’ll be playing this week, as close to his hometown of Seattle as it may be, presents its own series of pains. Sahalee is tree-lined target golf to an extreme degree; only the most accurate off the tee and with the approaches need apply. "The firmness of the greens … I can’t say they’re the hardest greens I’ve ever played on, but they were the hardest greens on Tuesday that I’ve ever played. I didn’t really make a ball mark. And I played at nine yesterday and nine today, and you’re not making many ball marks … This is brutal. If you ask me what the lowest score I think shot was going to be shot this week, if you laid the line on 67, I wouldn’t go under it. It’s just that hard, because of the way the course is, how long it is, and the greens are going once you get it in the fairway, you know, you’re hitting a lot of 5 and 6 irons on the greens. It’s hard to stop it right where you want to."
Couples will be going off with Tom Watson on Thursday and Friday – between that and the Seattleites who desperately want their favorite son to do so well (even at the practice rounds, the crowds for Couples dwarfed all others), is making a stand near the home front a distraction or an inspiration? "First of all it’s a U.S. Senior Open, so that would be incredible," Couples said when asked what it would mean to win here. "It would rank right up there with any other tournaments, probably, besides Augusta. When people talk about the majors on the Senior Tour, you know, I played in Denver, I thought it was a very tough course. This is just like a U.S. Open; no one’s going to tell me any differently. It’s very tough out there. And I’m from Seattle, so it would be a great, great accomplishment … it would be very special for me."
But in relation to PGA wins, how special are Champions Tour victories? Couples has won three of his first four tournaments since joining the Champions Tour this year. Watson, who was asked on Wednesday about the importance of Champions Tour wins in Hall of Fame consideration, was succinct (and most likely, not alone) in his evaluation. "I think if you’re looking at the Hall of Fame, I think the regular [PGA]Tour really takes precedence. We play some quality golf, but we don’t play against the best. And that’s what the Hall of Fame is all about, the best. That’s the way I assess it."
An easy assessment for a man who has 39 PGA wins and eight majors to his name. Watson has seen (and been) the best for far longer. For Fred Couples, who found an unfortunate detour on the way to greater things, the here and now still provides compelling drama.
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