Holiday treats : What to give the player who has everything - Brief Article

Golf Digest, Dec, 2000 by John Hawkins

Every day is Christmas on the PGA Tour, making it somewhat difficult to distinguish Dec. 25 from, say, the opening round of the National Car Rental Golf Classic. One peek inside John Daly's locker at a tournament this spring revealed a bounty of freebies any 12-handicapper would envy: several boxes of new Titleists, two pairs of unworn FootJoys and a sack of goodies from Oakley, the nouveau-hip sunglasses manufacturer.

All this for a guy who was last seen tumbling down Mt. Endorsement faster than a Spice Girl in spiked heels. "Santa Claus doesn't give me golf stuff," Fred Funk says. "He knows there's nothing he can give me that I don't already get."

Christmas and golf have always been an incongruous mix, being that half the United States is playing temporary greens (if at all) while the other half is doing all it can to avoid the dreaded snowman. "When I was a freshman in college, our family decided to go to Disney World for the holidays," says Tom Lehman. "We left Minnesota and all the white snow, the trees and the lights, and went down to Florida, where it was 60 degrees and sunny.

"We played golf for two or three days, went to the park, and by the time it got to New Year's Eve, we realized none of us wanted to be there," Lehman says. "We missed all the things about a Minnesota Christmas, so we packed our stuff, went to the airport and flew home."

Long before PGA Tour players became PGA Tour players, Christmas produced its usual share of wide-eyed reverence. Second-year tour pro Joe Ogilvie received his first club--a 16-inch Ben Hogan Series putter--from Santa at age 4, beginning a tradition (one club for Christmas, one for his birthday) that lasted until he reached the 14-club maximum. Paul Goydos recalls finding his first set of irons under the tree at age 12. Those Pings were good enough to carry him through high school.

Nowadays? "Most [golf-related gifts] I get are gags," Goydos says. "I might get a packet of tees with dirty jokes on them."

Larry Rinker: "I got my first real set of clubs on Christmas in 1968. It was a ladies' set of Spaldings with the birds on the back, four woods, plus a new bag and head covers from mom and dad. I remember feeling really lucky that year. I had a textbook swing when I was 11, and I've got the video to prove it."

Even as an adult, some of Rinker's most memorable presents were of the golf motif--The Hogan Mystique, a coffee-table book, plus a collection of bronze statues of Hogan, Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. Then again, the same can be said of Scott Hoch. "No matter how old I get, my mother gets me junk--golf-related stuff she thinks I can use, but it's stuff an amateur wouldn't want," he says. "I don't know how many times I've told her, 'Don't waste your money.' I'm talking about those little saucers you putt into, back when everybody had shag carpet. Like that's really going to help me."

Ogilvie admits to owning everything Harvey Penick ever wrote--"I get two or three of his books every year," Ogilvie says. "I must have 20 copies of the Little Red Book, and they're all inscribed, so I can't re-gift them. We're probably the hardest people in the world to shop for."

So what do you get the man who really does have everything? Beverly Janzen gave her husband, Lee, a satellite dish one Christmas, a massage chair another. All Funk really wants is some nongolf clothes--casual shirts and underwear are fine. Amy Mickelson's gifts to Phil have included surfing lessons, a replica of the U.S. Amateur trophy he won in 1990, scrapbooks, a handmade quilt ("And I'm not exactly the crafty type," she says) and an Iridium phone ("A waste of money, a very expensive mistake").

"Any bottle of wine is kind of fun," Ogilvie says. "And it's always nice to get some street clothes--anything but the golf costume. You don't want to be going to dinner with a big Shell Oil logo on your chest."

Amy Mickelson describes her husband as a Christmas fanatic. The tree and outdoor lights go up Nov. 1, and during the final two months of the year, only holiday tunes are allowed at home and in the car. There's an annual shopping excursion to New York, a sleep-under-the-tree night before they depart for Phil's hometown of San Diego, then a Christmas-morning flight to see Amy's family in Utah.

Five days later, Tiger Woods celebrates a birthday. "So his first Christmas was when he was almost a year old," Earl Woods says. "We got him a putter, and he was so excited, he didn't fool with any of his other presents at all. He dragged that putter all over the place. The following year, he did his first interview, and Jim Hill asked him what he wanted for Christmas. He said he wanted a 2-iron, 'because that's what Daddy hits.' Not long after that, he was hitting mine."

Inside the ropes

Knock on wood: In an age when "spring-like effect" has little to do with April showers and May flowers, Bob Estes turned a few heads in August when he switched back to a persimmon driver. "Equipment companies are designing all their [high-tech] clubs for amateurs, but they want us to play them," Estes says. "They think if they pay us enough money we'll use them, and some guys may be able to, but I can't."