8702040053 DETROIT FREE PRESS 870720 Monday, July 20, 1987 STATE EDITION

SPT

1F MITCH ALBOM SEE ALSO METRO FINAL EDITION CHASER 1F Copyright (c) 1987, Detroit Free Press AZINGER LIVES A LIFETIME IN ONE ENDLESS MINUTE MUIRFIELD, Scotland -- He was huddled against the cold with his wife and his baby daughter, just in front of the clubhouse and a few hundred feet from the bleachers around the 18th green, where, at the moment, the fans were on their feet. They were roaring for the British Open champion to come out. "ON THE GREEN! ON THE GREEN!" they yelled. It should have been he. But it was not he. Paul Azinger kissed his wife's forehead and looked off beyond this coastal golf course, beyond the North Sea, beyond it all. Something was happening. A storm was brewing inside his belly. One stroke. One stupid stroke. How could he have lost this? How could a handsome British golfer named Nick Faldo, who played a decent round, a par round -- aw, face it, he did absolutely nothing to take this tournament away -- how could he be walking out there with his hands held high, waving to the fans? "I wanted to be center stage so bad," Azinger would tell a group of reporters later, biting his lip, "I wanted to be leading this thing after the second and third rounds, and I was. I got to play in front of everybody in the whole world! And I played my butt off for 17 holes. . . ." Seventeen holes. They say you can live a lifetime in a single minute if the minute is the right one. What happened to Paul Azinger in the final hole of this bone-cold British Open, what happened in less than 60 seconds of real action, would indeed be enough for a lifetime. And then some. Azinger: Alone in a crowd You can forget everybody else who played this otherwise dull and weather-whipped affair. The big names like Norman and Langer were in the clubhouse long before anything important happened, and sentimental favorites like Tom Watson and Ray Floyd blew up early. A light mist settled on the course, the crowds bunched together, and suddenly, there was only Azinger, tall, bony, shaggy -- he looks like a supermarket check-out clerk -- and Faldo, 30, British golfing's answer to Gerry Cooney: high hopes, no payoff. And once Faldo sank a putt on 18 (finishing a round in which he had parred every hole on the course) it was Azinger alone. Alone. One hole to play. He had led by as many as three strokes on this final afternoon, had putted brilliantly on the front nine, but he seemed to exhale down the stretch, he bogeyed 10, 11, and seconds earlier, 17, and now, he was tied with Faldo at five under. And Faldo was inside a trailer office, watching on the TV screen. A minute. A lifetime. Azinger hit a nice tee shot on 18, but his second shot was bad. "Bleep," he said, loudly, as he watched it take off. It landed alongside the left bunker, curled, then fell in gently, like a roulette ball dying in double-zero. The Faldo supporters cheered the error (an outburst which would later be apologized for by a Muirfield official; such is the nature of golf in Scotland). Azinger began the long walk down the fairway. A thousand fans fell in behind him. If not for this or that, one club selection, one bunker, it might have been a victory march. Instead he was heading to an impossible shot. Growing pains of a champion? How fast did the rest of it happen? A minute? Less? For two days he had been atop this tournament, playing with a confidence that surprised even veteran golf watchers. True, he was the leading money winner this year, but he was still young, 27, and this was his first British. Only three men have ever conquered her on the first date. "So?" he had seemed to say. Now he found his stance in that bunker, he crouched like a man trying to walk around horse manure, and whacked the chip shot from sand to green. It stopped some 27 feet away. Seconds later he was standing alongside it, putter in hand. Tap! The ball rolled, someone screamed, it stopped one foot short and wide to the right. Over. A minute. A lifetime. He stared at the hole, he never took his eyes off of it, his jaws were clenched tightly together. ("Were you afraid you would cry?" he would be asked later. "I was shell-shocked," he would say. "I was on the verge of winning a major championship that would have put me in the history books. Don't write that I was teary-eyed.") But he was. Faldo had won in the warmth of an office. Azinger had lost in front of the world. He tapped in, exited, hugged his wife and daughter, then turned away and slapped himself. For several minutes he did not want to speak. But eventually he did. And this is what he said: "Don't feel sorry for me. This is not the end of the world. I put myself in a position where a lot of people would be throwing up. And I wasn't afraid. That's why I'm going to be a great player someday. I wasn't afraid. I learned a a lot out there today. I'm gonna benefit from this. I guarantee it." His eyes were dry. His voice was steady. A minute. A lifetime. He had endured a moment as tough as they come. Something was happening now to Paul Azinger. This is what was happening. He was growing up. COLUMN;END;BRITISH OPEN;WINNER; LOSER;PAUL AZINGER;NICK FALDO