Why Vijay is Vijay: Singh is least understood just when his game demands that we should know him better

Golf Digest, Jan, 2004 by Jaime Diaz

AS VIJAY SINGH PONDERED THE VARIOUS ways to hit a chip from Bermuda rough during a mostly solitary practice round in late October, Scott Verplank, one of several pros who would play through, interrupted the reverie to acknowledge the heat the man from Fiji had both taken and applied in 2003.

"What's up, Singe?" said the drollest of the Dial Tones. "Not much, bro," answered Singh in his high-pitched lilt. "Just trying to figure out this game."

"Yeah, I know you're having trouble," said Verplank, shaking his head with feigned concern. "Struggling to get to $7 million and all. Must be tough."

Indeed, that Sunday night, Singh had won in Orlando for his fourth victory of the year (the key shot a chip-in from greenside rough), taking command of the PGA Tour's money race and rising to No. 2 in the World Ranking behind Tiger Woods. But what remains obvious, and what Verplank was polite enough to leave alone, is that in the game off the course, Singh at 40 still has plenty to figure out.

This year, amid the finest golf of his life, Singh found a way to become pro golf's bad guy. And no one who has held that unofficial and somewhat oxymoronic title in the modern era--from Dave Hill to Ken Green to Colin Montgomerie--ever received the comprehensive pounding that Singh absorbed after he expressed to the Associated Press his wish that Annika Sorenstam miss the cut at Colonial because "she doesn't belong out here." The subsequent invectives that rained down on Singh from the nation's media included "sexist oaf," "big, whiny, whimpering baby," "Vijay the Villain," "The Sinister Pig," "the world's most boring athlete," "the Fleein' Fijian" and, inevitably, "The Cheatin' Fijian."

The onslaught was so intense that even the fiercely stoic Singh couldn't help admitting, "Those things kind of hurt me."

Along with creating a new scar, the prolonged ordeal opened a lot of old ones inflicted during a series of Pyrrhic victories. When Singh broke through for his first major victory, at the 1998 PGA, his newfound celebrity led to unflattering examinations of a two-year ban from the Asian Tour for allegedly altering his scorecard at the 1985 Indonesian Open. After his victory at the 2000 Masters, his late-evening parking-lot comment to his agent, Clarke Jones--"Kiss my ass, everybody"--was noted by a lingering reporter and opened up a firestorm of speculation. (Singh said the comment had nothing to do with Augusta National.) In May, when Singh showed amazing focus by winning the same week he uttered his incendiary comments about Sorenstam, the news became his last-minute bailout from the inquisition that would face him at Colonial. Even when he shot 63 a month later at Olympia Fields to tie the one-round U.S. Open scoring record, the emphasis was on his role in having a pro-Annika heckler escorted from the course.

Whereas Hill, Green and Montgomerie used quick tongues to fend off and even charm the Fourth Estate, Singh remained churlishly aloof. But regarding Sorenstam, less was less. He fell short of apologizing to her, clumsily saying, "What I said about her missing the cut was, 'If I miss the cut, I'd rather she miss the cut as well, because I don't want to have a woman beat me.'"

He also squandered an opportunity to lighten things up, turning down a six-figure commercial with Sorenstam in which he was to respond to her dilemma over crispy or regular Kentucky Fried Chicken with the comment, "You know how I feel."

Such choices have led to criticism of Singh's management for poorly advising a clueless client. But Jones says, "Vijay is a grown man with his own mind. One thing he isn't is a phony. He has his views, and they're strong ones. We can advise, and we do, but he makes his own decisions."

"Vijay has been hammered, and I think he's just taken the attitude, Who needs it? I don't care," says Dan Forsman, one of his friends on tour. "But that just makes him easier to pick on. The media doesn't know him, and he's too distrustful to give them a chance to. So it's a vicious cycle."

"Vijay feels like he can't win," adds Tom Pernice, "so why play?"

Eventually, Singh says, his freeze out will thaw, but his psychic underbelly remains vulnerable. In Orlando, he exchanged pleasantries with a writer who followed him throughout his practice round, but afterward politely declined to be interviewed in-depth for this story.

"I know I haven't given my side of things," said Singh, the new soul patch under his lower lip giving him the thoughtful bearing of a jazz musician. "I appreciate what you're asking. Right now, though, I'm going to leave it alone. I think that's the best way for me. Time is the great healer. I need some more time."

In the interim, Singh is least understood just when his remarkable game demands that we should know him better. Some things are immutable: the odyssey from impoverished South Sea archipelago to burgeoning Hall of Fame candidate, the fluid power and artful long lines of a swing that evokes Sam Snead, the languidly intense practice sessions that have made him the most relentless improver since Tom Kite.