Haas, Strange never left friendship in their wake
CONCORD - Golf brought them together more than 30 years ago and their friendship has remained as close as the mere 33 minutes that separated them on the pairings sheet in yesterday's first round of the
For Jay Haas and Curtis Strange, it has never been a good walk spoiled, not with a combined 38 wins and $31 million earned on the PGA and Champions tours. But on a road that has blessed them with Hall of Fame status (Strange), nearly 29 seasons of tour competition (Haas), back-to-back major victories (Strange), and Champions Tour domination (Haas), the starting point in their friendship remains the most special.
Wake Forest.
"Probably most people will tell you that college was the best time of their lives and it certainly was for me," said Strange. "And not just because of the golf, but because that was when real life kicked in."
Haas was already enrolled at Wake Forest when Strange arrived in the fall of 1973, and if there was a glue to their relationship, it was this: "He didn't have a national name. I didn't have a national name," said Strange. "We were just kids living our dreams, going to Wake Forest and playing golf."
Thirty-five years later, they still are playing. Haas at 54 and Strange at 53 are both grateful the Champions Tour has enabled them to maintain this love affair with a game and to more easily sustain their friendship. For so many years after they left the bucolic campus in Winston-Salem, N.C., Strange and Haas would play practice rounds together and share dinners to ease the grind of travel.
If it was Strange who had the more distinguished PGA Tour career (17 wins and US Open victories in 1988 and '89; Haas had nine wins), it certainly has been Haas who has kept the luster on his game (12 wins in 72 starts since joining the Champions Tour full time in 2005; Strange has yet to break through). One thing has remained constant, however, each man has been the other's biggest fan.
"I think people forget how great Curtis was," said Haas. "When he was in college, he was long, really long, but he changed some things in his game. He sacrificed length to become a better driver, to improve the control in his game."
Said Strange: "Jay's got that sixth sense as an athlete. He's really played some phenomenal golf and it couldn't happen to a better guy."
Strange and Haas added the latest chapters to their golf careers yesterday at Nashawtuc. With early birdies getting them both under par quickly, there were stumbles on the back - Haas a bogey at 12, Strange bogeys at 12 and 14 - before they settled for rounds of 68 and 70, re spectively. They finished the day well behind Tom Kite's blistering 63 and have a lot of work to do over the next two days, but all of that is now.
What still resonates is when that was then.
If there was an aspect to Wake Forest that hit home it came courtesy of coach Jesse Haddock.
"We had played as individuals for so long, but Coach told us quickly that it was a team sport. He sold that to us," said Strange, who remembers being humbled a bit early in his freshman year when he went onto the course with Haas and the other team members, Dave Thore and Bob Byman.
"Every afternoon I'd say to myself, 'These guys are really good,' " said Strange. "But I guess they were saying the same thing about me. Coach did a nice job, because we had a good mix."
Having won its first Atlantic Coast Conference title in 1963 and then the first of 10 straight in 1967, the Demon Deacons were a national power before Haas and Strange arrived, but had not won the NCAA title. That's what made 1974 and '75 so special. Haas, Strange, Thore, and Byman, a onetime US Junior Amateur champion, powered Wake Forest to back-to-back titles, the first in stunning fashion, the second in record-smashing style.
It's all subjective, of course, but when those Wake Forest teams are suggested as being the best in NCAA history, Strange smiles. Others would be willing to debate the issue, but he knows this: "We went back-to-back and won by a whopping 36 shots [in 1975], which is a record."
True enough, but if there is a collegiate memory that stirs the emotions, it's how Wake Forest won the 1974 title with a shot Haas can still see falling out of the sky at Carlton Oaks Country Club near San Diego. The drama was scripted by Strange, whose team had a one-stroke lead over Florida as he played the 540-yard, par-5 18th. Adding to the theater was that Florida's Gary Koch, who held a one-stroke lead over Strange, was paired with the Wake Forest anchor.
"Curtis knew what was at stake," said Haas. "We all did."
Needing to match Koch's score to clinch the team title, Strange watched his opponent hit a fairway wood to the back fringe at the 18th, then he stood over a shot on which so much was riding. He delivered an unforgettable shot - a 1-iron from about 230 yards that came to rest some 8 feet from the hole. With the eagle putt, Strange assured Wake a two-stroke win and himself a one-stroke individual title over Koch and Florida's Phil Hancock.
"He gave us a glimpse of things to come," said Haas of Strange's heroics, as a freshman no less. It was a reference to the steely-eyed focus and determination that would come to define Strange as he committed himself to winning the US Open. Some 12 years after turning pro, he made that dream a reality, in 1988 at The Country Club in Brookline, not far from Nashawtuc. When he won again in 1989, Strange became the first since Ben Hogan in 1951 to successfully defend his US Open title, and no one has done it since.
A significant achievement, no doubt, but it is held no nearer to his heart than those college days.
"I can never overestimate how Wake Forest had such a huge role in developing me," said Strange. "We would play golf every day. We learned to play by playing against three very good players every day."
Haas, most of all, and when he won the NCAA individual title in 1975, it gave the two accomplishments around which they could frame their friendship, one that has been accompanied by the requisite amount of kidding, of course.
"I think the media would come to talk to me because they'd be afraid to go to Curtis and they'd say, 'Let's go talk to Jay,' " said Haas with a laugh.
"He's gotten great mileage out of that," said Strange, also chuckling. "Let's face it, he hasn't been one of my best PR agents."
Truthfully, Strange was always tougher on himself than he was on the media. Competitive as they come, Strange could beat himself up pretty good, but in Haas, he had the perfect friend.
"We gravitated to one another," said Strange. "I think we were good for each other. I could get him going and he had a way of keeping me in the moment. We were opposites, but he understood me."
It's what friends are for.
Jim McCabe can be reached at jmccabe@globe.com.
