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Twisted Humor Neal Lancaster, the Tour's resident comedian, played some funny golf on the final hole in Canada, allowing John Rollins to have the last laugh
His week of mirth and merriment had turned into a bad joke, but
Neal Lancaster (a.k.a. Cuz) kept his sense of humor on Sunday.
Needing only a bogey on the 72nd hole to win the Canadian Open,
Lancaster yanked his approach way left of the green, hit a poor
pitch, then three-putted for double bogey. That left him at 16
under par and in a playoff with Justin Leonard and John Rollins.
When Lancaster joined them on the 18th tee a few minutes later to
commence sudden death, he walked up to Leonard, stuck out his
hand and said simply, "You're welcome." Then Lancaster turned to
Rollins, shook his hand and repeated the line. Naturally, Cuz got
a smile out of both of his opponents.
Lancaster's final-hole meltdown was a cruel twist--the critical
three-putt was his first of the week at Angus Glen Golf Club,
outside Toronto--but the worst was yet to come. In the playoff
Lancaster's tee shot on the 455-yard par-4 landed in the fairway,
same as in regulation. But he again pulled his approach shot,
this time into a bunker, and once more failed to get up and down.
When Rollins rolled in a 20-footer for birdie and the win
(Leonard had made par), there was no way Lancaster could
sugarcoat what had just happened, although Cuz had a funny way to
describe it. "The bottom line is, I choked," he said. "I blew the
tournament. I guess I know how Jean-Claude Van Damme, or whatever
his name is, felt."
Lancaster's crash wasn't as high-profile as Jean Van de Velde's
collapse in the 1999 British Open, but it allowed Rollins, 27, to
win for the first time on Tour and jump from 53rd to 26th
($1,583,974) on the money list. In only his second year on the
big circuit, Rollins now stands a good chance of finishing among
the top 30 in earnings, which brings an invitation to the
season-ending Tour Championship and assorted other lucrative
goodies. Despite all that, he didn't really feel like
celebrating. "I feel bad for Neal because he played great all
week," Rollins said. "I don't wish anything bad on anybody. We're
all friends out here."
The lugubrious denouement was at odds with the joyful aura that
had enveloped Lancaster, who will turn 40 on Sept. 13, for most
of the week. A self-described hillbilly from Smithfield, N.C.
(pop. 11,600), Lancaster may be an unknown to casual fans, but he
has long been a hit in Tour locker rooms. "Everybody knows Neal,
and everybody likes him. He's absolutely hilarious," says Greg
Chalmers, who tied for fourth, a shot out of the playoff.
A self-made player, Lancaster didn't take a lesson until he was
30. His only Tour victory came at the so-called Half Nelson in
1994, when rain shortened the Byron Nelson Classic to 36 holes
and Lancaster won a six-man playoff. Nevertheless, Cuz has made
only one return trip to Q school (in 1999) in his 13 years on
Tour.
The Canadian fans weren't sure what to make of Cuz--some
encouraged him by yelling, "Go, Texas!"--but he played with such
joie de vivre that he was easy to root for. "I thank God I'm not
in an office every day," he said after the second round, when he
shot 67 to take the lead. "I could be back home selling cars with
my dad. When I was young, I told my mom that I wanted to be a
garbage man because they used to come by on Tuesdays and
Thursdays. I thought those were the only days they worked."
Lancaster spit out such homespun pearls all week. Asked whether
he was Smithfield's most famous resident, he said, "No, Ava
Gardner is. She's dead, but she's still more popular than I am."
Of his 7:30 a.m. tee time on Friday he said, "The only time you
should play golf that early is if you can't get a tee time or you
have a wife you need to get away from." Then there was his riff
on what it was like to play in the 2002 British Open, in which he
made the cut in a major for the first time in six years: "The
greatest part was after I got done on Friday, I had a few beers
with a bunch of Scots. I talked to them for 30 minutes, they
talked to me, and nobody understood a word--and we were sober."
Lancaster had an ideal sidekick at Angus Glen in fill-in caddie
Kenny Doig, a ponytailed 48-year-old chain-smoker from Seaforth,
Ont. Lancaster had called Doig after his regular bagman, Dave
Beighle, had car trouble in Pennsylvania and couldn't make it to
Toronto. Lancaster and Doig have some history. Doig was on the
bag when Lancaster shot his nine-hole-record 29s in the 1995 and
'96 U.S. Opens. Last Saturday, after Lancaster holed a 15-footer
for birdie at the 11th to go three shots up on the field, Doig
told his boss that he wanted some airtime, too, and ran to the
hole and plucked Lancaster's ball out of the cup in front of the
TV cameras.
Lancaster and Doig chatted incessantly on the course--"He actually
didn't talk for 50 yards on number 10," Lancaster said on Friday.
"I thought he might've had a heart attack or something"--but were
strangely silent on the back nine on Sunday. Lancaster admitted
that his nerves got the best of him, and wondered how many
opportunities he had left. "It's so hard to get into contention,"
he said. "Then once you get there and don't win, you feel like a
total failure. I'll get over it, but right now it's hard."
Hard or not, the stand-up comic was a stand-up guy to the end,
answering every question and accepting every condolence. Late
Sunday evening, as he rushed through the parking lot to catch a
flight back home, Lancaster stopped to pose for a picture with a
tournament volunteer. He told Doig to go ahead and get the car,
adding, "Don't let me drive, though. I'm liable to go 150 miles
an hour through that clubhouse."
When the volunteer gave him a startled look, Lancaster shook his
head at her and smiled. Cuz was only kidding, but this time the
punch line fell flat.
COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANK GUNN/AP [Inside Cover] CANADIAN OPEN Double Trouble on Final Hole KO's Neal Lancaster KICKED AWAY
COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY PAUL CHIASSON/AP MOVING UP Rollins, the 13th first-time winner on Tour in 2002, probably earned a spot in the Tour Championship.
COLOR PHOTO: PHOTOGRAPHS BY PAUL CHIASSON/AP MYSTIFIED Lancaster (right) and Doig were left to wonder why the golfer's first three-putt had to come on the 72nd hole.
