A Trip to the Dark Side

The best read in golf today is Alan Shipnuck's long journey into the tortured mind of Kevin Na.  I know, but bear with me here, as it's the perfect storm, a game with a unique ability to torture it's practitioners taken up by an obsessive individual with many dark places into which he retreats.

Here's Alan's table-setter:

The nightmares were the first sign that golf was not going to be kind to Kevin Na.

Sometimes he missed a putt on the last green, or he hit a ball in the water on the 72nd hole, or maybe another player produced a heroic shot to beat him, but the result was always the same: Na would lose the tournament and then awaken in a panic, his heart jumping out of his chest. He would be haunted for a decade, even when he was playing his best golf. On the eve of the final round of the 2011 PGA Tour stop in Las Vegas, Na went to sleep tied for the lead. He was in his own bed, in his adopted hometown. His mom was staying with him for the week, cooking his favorite meals. And yet the nightmare returned. "I woke up that morning, and I was so pissed," recalls Na. "Why then?"

Surprisingly, since Na's career is noted for his squandered chances, that's the one time he got it done.  But in a moment of cosmic irony, the win qualified him for a trip to Kapalua, where some of the severe shots he faced cause him to start balking, unable to even take the club back, ultimately leading to that tortured weekend at Sawgrass that will always define his career.

Of course the other moment that defines him was his play on the ninth hole in the first round of the Texas Open:

The 9th hole of the Oaks course is a straightaway 474-yard par-4 with a relatively narrow fairway. Na's drive was a wild slice deep into the forest. He hit a provisional ball, yanking it far to the left. After an extensive search Na found his first ball, but it was in an unplayable lie. Since there was no decent spot within one club's length to take a drop, he made the walk of shame back to the tee. Standing there, stewing, was the man who for so long haunted his nightmares, Ogilvy, along with Adam Scott and his caddie, Steve Williams, as well as Angel Cabrera, the brooding two-time major champion who is among the most intimidating men in golf.

Shipnuck devotes another four full 'graphs to his blow-by-blow account of the hole, which resulted in a sixteen, better known as a duodecuple bogey.  Stevie shows up later in all his typical Stevieness:

Na sees a double standard in that when other players struggle and play slower, it is

excused as a bad day, but he is never shown the same courtesy. In September 2014, at the Deutsche Bank Championship, he and playing partners Adam Scott and Chris Kirk combined to make four bogeys and two doubles in the first five holes of their opening round. All of this bad golf took a long time, and they were out of position for much of the rest of the round. Na could sense that Steve Williams was stewing. The following day, as Na labored to a 74, he believed Williams was giving him the stink eye and says that at round's end, the caddie avoided shaking his hand. 

"In the scoring tent," Na says, "as I was about to leave, Stevie looks at me and goes, 'Do you ever watch a bad movie again and again?' I didn't really know what he was talking about, so I just said, 'Uh, no.' He goes, 'That's what you are, Kevin, a bad movie. I never want to see you play again.' And I looked at him, and I said, 'Stevie, you're out of line. If Adam has a problem with my play, he has every right to say whatever he wants. You're in no position to tell me what you just said to me.' He got real close to me and was saying basically that he could say whatever he wanted. It was getting pretty heated, but one of the Tour officials stepped in and said, 'Guys, not in here.' And that ended it." (Williams declined to comment.)

The famed Stevie stink eye...  And don't worry, Kevin's also got a Tiger story for us:

At last year's PGA Championship, Na approached Tiger Woods on the practice putting green and asked him to autograph a hat for Nam. Tiger knows Nam from junior golf and is well aware that he is a fixture in Korean tabloids for having romanced a well-known actress and a former Miss Korea, among others. 

"Is Nam still getting a lot of ass?" Na recalls Woods asking.

Na replied that the hat was for Nam's latest girlfriend. 

That was an acceptable answer for Woods: "If it will help him get laid, I'll do it." The two cracked up, leaving the hundreds of fans surrounding the green to wonder what was so funny.

Errrr...perhaps you shouldn't go there, Tiger?