Stewart was something special, on and off the course  PGATOUR.com Contributor There is little that hasn't been written on this subject. But the day passed, without mention, without notice, and somehow that is wrong. The day passed like any other Thursday on the PGA TOUR. But it shouldn't have. We should remember.  Payne Stewart celebrates his U.S. Open win in 1999. (Getty Images)
Eight years ago Thursday, the plane carrying Payne Stewart, his agents Robert Fraley and Van Arden, golf course architect Bruce Borland and pilots Michael Kling and Stephanie Bellegarrigue crashed in South Dakota. As you know, there were no survivors. That it has been eight years is astonishing. What we are left with are images. There is perhaps no greater image of sportsmanship that comes to mind than Payne gripping Phil Mickelson's face on the 18th green at Pinehurst after he made the putt to win the 1999 U.S. Open. After one of the greatest triumphs of his career, Payne wasn't thinking solely of himself. He was telling Phil, whose wife was pregnant and would deliver their first child the next day, that the titles would come but that no victory is as important as family. We didn't know at the time that five months later, he would be gone. Tragedy can't be predicted. But for a sport that reveres its history and loves its heroes, it is incumbent upon us not to look so far into the past that we overlook what has happened more recently. Payne was special in ways that can't be quantified in record books and statistics. We have a tendency to immortalize our heroes, and I think that Payne would have hated that. He was human in so many ways. Although he was more than part of golf's hierarchy, he never set himself apart from anyone in the way that some of the greats do. He didn't judge others by the leaderboard. I didn't know Payne as well as I would have liked. I did have dinner with him several times, mostly in Vancouver. He loved the now-defunct Air Canada Championship, although it was a title that eluded him. He loved the city and the people, and they embraced him. After all, he was the biggest star in the field. At dinner, though, Payne went unnoticed. In jeans and a jacket, he was unrecognizable to the public. Without the trademark knickers and cap, he looked more like a fishing guide than a TOUR player. If you only saw him on television, you had no way of knowing that Payne was actually well over 6 feet and built more like a strong safety than a golfer. In public, in plain clothes, the shock of blond hair and that salt-water tan didn't give him away. Not that he shied away from his fame, but it didn't define him, either. Since that fateful day, the game hasn't been the same. Maybe enough time has passed that we have started to forget what it is that we are missing. Payne was never afraid to show his love of life, his passion and his joy. He never said the right thing because it was the right thing to say. He was an obvious throwback. His manner, as much as his outfits, was from the old school. After the U.S. Open victory in Pinehurst, Payne stopped by the Pine Crest Inn. He signed his name above the door in the men's room, and the management put a sheet of plexiglass over the signature to preserve it. The years have faded the scrawl a bit but it is still there. Most people don't know that the next day, he played a charity outing in Burlington, N.C., that Mike Hicks, his long-time caddy, had organized weeks before. That is just the kind of guy that he was. There isn't anyone in the game who compares to Payne these days. His unmatched elegance on the golf course was musical. His zest for life off the golf course was intoxicating. For all who knew him, it is impossible to reconcile the man we knew with the untimely tragedy that took his life. Even as the TOUR celebrates its most successful year in recent memory, it is a lesser place today than it was eight years ago. It is lesser because of what it lost that day. |
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