Tuten, Frost Withdraw Due To InjuriesBilly Tuten withdrew from the 2012 U.S. Senior Open Championship on Thursday because of a wrist injury. Tuten, who qualified for the U.S. Senior Open with a 71 at The Resort of Tapatio Springs in Boerne, Texas, on June 18, has twice won the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship.
The alternate who will take his place is Dan Bieber, an amateur from Alamo, Calif., who competed in sectional qualifying on June 25 in Green Valley, Calif. (Green Valley Country Club). Bieber, who will play in his third U.S. Senior Open, shot a round of 72 to earn first alternate position.
Bieber will tee off at 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday from the 10th tee with Brian Fogt and Robert Thompson.
In addition, David Frost withdrew from the 2012 U.S. Senior Open Championship on Thursday because of a back injury.
Frost withdrew after eight holes of his round. He started on the 10th tee at 8:50 a.m. and was playing with Barry Lane and David Eger.
Senior Open Test Begins
Lake Orion, Mich. – No one here preparing for the U.S. Senior Open is saying that the Old Course at Indianwood Golf & Country Club is the most difficult layout that they’ve encountered on the Champions Tour. But it’s definitely the most difficult they’ll face this year.
“That’s the way it should be,” said 1982 U.S. Open champion Tom Watson. “That’s what you’d expect in a USGA championship.”
The 33rd U.S. Senior Open begins at 7 a.m. Thursday in this suburb north of Detroit, and players 50 and over are bracing for an examination that is both complete and complex.
Indianwood’s Old Course, designed by Wilfrid E. Reid in 1925 with an assist from William Connellan, features small, sloping greens and narrow, rolling fairways lined by thick rough and tall fescue that infuse it with a Scottish links personality. It measures 6,891 yards, a decent length for a par-70 layout.
But it’s not length that will be the key measure of a man’s capabilities this week on the sun-dried green canvas. It’s everything else, both tangible and intangible, that will be paramount.
“Don't let that fool you,” said Jeff Hall, managing director of rules and competitions for the USGA, of Indianwood’s relatively short profile. “It's going to be a solid test of golf. Very small greens. Fairways are pretty tight. Indianwood has never been about the overall length of the golf course. It's going to be about producing quality golf shots throughout the 72 holes that we'll play.”
“This is some golf course,” said two-time U.S. Senior Open champion Allen Doyle. “This is a toughie … very tough. Everybody better tighten their belts.”
While Indianwood will test players throughout their 14 clubs, Watson, a three-time runner-up in this championship, said one area of the game will likely make or break the contenders.
“Getting right to the point about this golf course, if you don't drive the ball well, you have no chance. Absolutely no chance. None. Zero,” he said emphatically. “The rough is so deep, so penal, and the fairways are pretty narrow. If you don't drive the ball – listen, 70 percent of the fairways, which is really driving the ball well. If you don't drive it 70 percent of the fairways, you're not going to win.”
“You know this is a major by the height of the rough,” said Loren Roberts, who holds the U.S. Senior Open 18-hole scoring record with a 62 in the 2006 championship at Prairie Dunes G.C. in Hutchinson, Kan. “It’s almost hack-out kind of rough, which means it’s a penalty to be in it, just like a usual U.S. Open setup. I think it’s great. It should separate the field.”
Defending champion Olin Browne said that one of the most interesting facets of the layout is that “The hard holes are easy when you play them well, and the easy holes are hard when you mess them up.”
Winner last year at another classic course, Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, just a few hours south of Indianwood, Browne agreed with Watson and Roberts that the USGA setup formula is largely void of secrets or surprises.
“It's been my experience that getting prepared for the Senior Open is probably the easiest tournament to prepare for, because the formula is the same, and it's the U.S. Open, too,” Browne said. “Hit the ball where you're aiming it, make a couple of putts and get out of Dodge without making too many mistakes. That's a little tongue in cheek, but the bottom line is the USGA sets up the courses to challenge us to the max of our abilities, and my experience has been in the three Senior Opens that I've played that that has been the case. The scoring has been a little bit more volatile than you might imagine in years past, but still great golf is required.”
So is great thinking. And great patience, too, perhaps the virtual 15th club in the bag at any USGA championship.
“In these kinds of tournaments, you know you're going to be frustrated a few times,” said Michael Allen, who last month competed in, and made the cut in, the U.S. Open at The Olympic Club, where he’s a longtime member. “You're going to hit some shots that don't turn out as well. You've got to have a lot of patience out here. You've got to go through it and kind of stay in the ballgame. You're going to have bad stretches and good stretches. You've got to get through those bad stretches and try to get through with the least amount of damage. And hopefully, you have two or three good runs out here where you can make up some ground.”
“I played a few weeks ago at Congressional [site of the 2011 U.S. Open and host of the AT&T National on the PGA Tour], and I can tell you that it was a U.S. Open-type test,” said Tom Pernice, who bounces between the regular and senior circuits. “This place here isn’t as long, but it has the same kind of overall toughness to it. You better be thinking clearly and ready to hit good golf shots. Simple as that.”
Bodybuilder, WWF Villain, In Senior Open
Lake Orion, Mich. – Gerry James was sitting on his sofa in his rented condo with little to his name other than a pair of California state bodybuilding titles and enough money to buy formula and diapers for his 3-week-old son, Justin.
“My wife came [into the room] with a baby that I could literally hold in my hand,” said James, whose steel frame measured 6-foot-4-inches tall and 263 pounds with 3 percent body fat.
Call the moment an epiphany or an awakening or a rebirth, but in those morning hours of a late spring day in 1990, James came to a decision. He could either continue the bodybuilding path with all of its single-minded selfishness and steroids or begin a new life as a father with a renewed faith.
“Everything that I had done up to that point was for my own ego, to win this championship,” said James, whose career had taken numerous twists and turns to get to that seminal moment. “I wanted to watch that kid grow up, and doing as many steroids as I was doing to win the Mr. California Body Building Championship, I had a good chance that I wouldn't see him grow up if I kept on that track. So I just quit.”
He was born again.
At this week’s U.S. Senior Open at Indianwood Golf & Country Club, James, 52, is a story of faith, losing his way and how a baby crystalized his purpose in life.
A Battle Of Good Vs. Evil
James was born about three hours due west of here in Grand Haven, Mich., the first of five children and the only boy.
“Nine years old, I got on a little bus that led me to vacation Bible school,” James said. “From that day on I was a child of the Lord.”
His youth, though, was not easy and not without wayward moments.
Along the way, James moved in with his grandparents for a spell after the family’s house burned down. His father was an alcoholic. He played most sports, but developed low self esteem in his late teens.
Faith gave way to questions. He wanted off the farm, away from the rural lifestyle.
The motivation came from a bodybuilding magazine cover featuring Robby Robinson, who won Mr. American, Mr. World and Mr. Universe titles.
“I said, ‘Man, I want to look like that guy,’” he said. “I said ‘That dude, he looks like somebody.’”
James sold his possessions, packed a suitcase and proceeded to Los Angeles with $400.
With a visual image of what he wanted to be – basically Arnold Schwarzenegger – James went to work perfecting that image at Gold's Gym until he looked the part.
“A man is what he wants to be, whether good or bad,” James said.
The 1980s were filled with unusual work experiences for James. He attended a USFL tryout and was signed by the Oklahoma Outlaws, only to be cut a year later when the franchise merged with Arizona.
From there he went into the choreographed world of professional wrestling. For a time, he played a hero, known as Gerry America, clad in a red, white and blue cape, Spandex uniform and calf-high boots, wrestling against opponents such as Andre the Giant. Later, James joined the WWF as a villain, the orange-masked Agent Orange, until that ran its course.
“It wasn't really anything that I wanted to do long‑term,” he said. “It's a very harsh business.”
So James went back to bodybuilding, a slightly more dignified profession.
At some point, James rationalized his move to steroids as a way to compete at the highest levels.
“I thought I could be the biggest muscle guy in the world just training, because I thought that's how they did it,” he said. “After I got around those guys and just working as hard as they worked, after four years I think I was 235 pounds naturally. And I was probably benching 330.”
Juiced, James grew exponentially. He bulked up to about 300 pounds and could bench nearly 500 pounds. The means justified the end when he won the 1990 Mr. California Bodybuilding Championship’s heavyweight and overall divisions.
“I'm a very, very strong Christian man, and there's a verse in the Bible that says, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,’” James said.
There remained a void, however.
Golf As The Holy Grail
When James decided to walk away from bodybuilding, a poignant question remained unanswered.
“I said, ‘Well, what now, Lord?’” he said. “I really went back to church and got serious about my faith, and started going to the driving range and just fiddling around.
“I believe the Lord just replaced my competitive juices with golf.”
As a kid, James played golf in the summer with his friend, Jay, who is caddying for him this week. Jay would “throttle me pretty good in golf. I didn't like that much, so I kind of quit the game,” he said.
Upon James’ return to the game later in life, his physique aided his ability to drive a ball to extreme lengths. In 2003, he was runner-up in the World Long Drive Championship’s Open division, then won the championship’s over-45 division in 2005 and 2006. His longest officially measure drive was 473 yards, 2 feet, 6 inches at Park Hill Golf Club in Denver, Colo. Today, James estimates his average driving distance is in the 320-yard range.
“But I didn't have any technique to know exactly where it was going time in and time out,” said James, who works as a PGA golf instructor at Center Force Golf Systems in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., where he lives today.
“So that bugged me. I started to refine that, and thus I'm led to here.”
Here is this week’s U.S. Senior Open against a field peppered with veterans of the game and major champions – players who for years honed their craft while James was pursuing other interests. James qualified for the championship by shooting 70 at the Belden, Miss., sectional qualifier.
“I don't have any expectations of grandeur coming into here,” said James, who now has a second son, Taylor. “I realize I'm competing against the very best in the world, and so I will do what I can. I've competed against the best in the world before in different arenas, and so this is just another step.”
Fred Funk, the 2010 U.S. Senior Open champion who James befriended at TPC at Sawgrass, does not believe James’ chase is mere folly.
“It's tough and it’s never easy,” said Funk, citing Mike Goodes and Jay Sigel as two players who were successful career amateurs until they turned 50 and have done well on the senior circuit. “There aren't many guys that come out that haven't played competitively their whole career who try and beat guys who have been competitive their whole career. It's not easy to do.
“He's got a lot of talent. Obviously incredibly strong and big and hits the ball a mile, but he hits it incredibly straight for a guy who hits it that long. Really works hard at his game.”
On Tuesday, James played a practice round with Ronnie Black, a 54-year-old veteran, who won twice during a 16-year career on the PGA Tour and is in his fifth year on the Champions Tour.
“He looks like a guy who is learning the game a little late, so I was trying to help him out with some of the nuances around the green and things like that,” Black said. “The two most important parts of the game are driving and putting, and he putts it very well and hits it fairly straight for a guy who hits its as far as he does.
“But he has a lot of desire, has a great heart, a good guy.”
Funk said that James has an intangible quality, alluding to James’ Christian faith.
“That's probably his strength right now, that he has that at his back,” Funk said.
James, who conducts ministries in maximum-security prisons, admits he had it all along.
“You do what you do and the Holy Spirit is talking to you and you’re going ‘No, no, no,’” he said, alluding to that day in 1990. “That kid woke me up and that did the trick.”
