The unnatural: Tom Kite goes back to the PGA Tour to test the young guys

Golf Digest, May, 2005 by Tom Callahan

THOUGH TOM KITE WAS ALWAYS MORE OF A CHARACTER actor than a star (he played Tony Randall in a series of Ben Crenshaw-Doris Day movies in the 1970s and '80s), Kite would have been great as the old ballplayer Roy Hobbs, choked up by his love for baseball. "I love this game," Kite says. "I don't know what it is. I love the competition. And I still don't know how good I'm going to be. I haven't given up the notion--and I know this is a little over the edge--that I might not have reached my prime yet."

At 55, Kite has busted out of the World Golf Hall of Fame and returned, at least in part, to the regular PGA Tour. How he plays in junior tournaments will determine how many junior tournaments he plays, but it is already noteworthy that only two of his first six 2005 events were on the Champions Tour, where he was third on the money list a year ago. "I don't understand why he's going back," says Fuzzy Zoeller, who is two years older. "Tom better be ready to eat a big piece of humble pie." In one sense, Zoeller gets it. "I sometimes miss playing with the youngest guys myself," Fuzzy says, "the kids just starting out. It would be nice if one or two times a year we could mingle. But do I miss competing with them? Not in the least."

"I miss competing with them," Kite says. "That's the main reason I'm going back, not just to put faces with names. The tour was my home for, what, 30 years, 28 years, whatever? I knew how my friends out there would react to me, but no fewer than 15 young players--some I never met before--have come up and told me, 'It's so neat that you're playing on the PGA Tour again, and we wish you the best.' It's always nice when you can go somewhere and feel like you're home."

Kite is especially heartened by the hospitality of the younger pros because, in recent years, he had been hearing that the latest generation of golfers has a much less cultivated sense of history. "When I came up," Kite says, "I had the opportunity to play with Sam Snead and Tommy Bolt and Jim Ferrier and Jerry Barber. Arnold Palmer wasn't just competitive, he was very competitive. So was Sam. The first tournament my wife, Christy, watched me play was the L.A. Open in 1974. We weren't married yet. She was teaching school and flew in for the weekend. Whom do I get paired with on Saturday at Riviera? Snead. And he shoots 66. How old was Sam then, 61?

"I'm not of the mind-set that everything was better when we were younger, but how can they possibly have the same sense of history that we had, when the history's no longer right there in front of them? If the history runs off to the Champions Tour--not 'runs off'; that's the wrong way to say it, but 'moves on'--how are the guys in their 20s ever going to know how good, say, Hale Irwin, is?"

If at the top of his game Kite had a forte, it was wedge play. He was the father of the multiple wedges. But his real strength was a lack of weaknesses. Tom specialized in versatility. For two months short of six years, he stood No. 1 on the all-time money list. The figures sound quaint now, but he was the first man to $6 million, $7 million, $8 million and $9 million. Tom won the U.S. Open, and all but won the Masters. He was the Rookie of the Year, the Player of the Year and the holder of the Vardon Trophy. He played in seven Ryder Cups and won all of his singles matches. Sandy Lyle was six under par for 16 holes and lost to Kite, 3 and 2. What does Tom have left to prove?

"I might not have anything to prove to somebody else," he says with his old edge. "I never have played for anybody else, though. I only play for me. It's great to have a support team around you that really wants you to do well, but you can't play--or, I can't play--for that support team, for my friends, for my family, for my fans, and play well. I have to play for me."

So, what are his goals?

"I still have goals," he says. "But they're still my goals, not for anybody else to know."

And the hard work doesn't come harder now?

"No."

On both circuits, Kite started 2005 slowly. But he begins his last sentence in a matter-of-fact tone of voice: "When I start playing well again ..."