Experience Pays Off For Old-Timer Green

By Ken Klavon, USGA

Mamaroneck, N.Y. - Shortly after shaking hands with Danny Green in defeat, Spencer Levin apparently had enough of the hallowed Winged Foot premises.

The brash 20-year-old from Elk Grove, Calif., darted around the clubhouse saying nothing to anyone until he reached a shuttle that would take him back to his hotel. He tried merging with the back seat, morose, hoping to be left alone. Acrylic acid would have tasted better than how he was feeling, if the two can be compared.

A dour Spencer Levin can only watch while Danny Green putts on No. 15 Thursday. (John Mummert/USGA)

Losing 2 up to the 47-year-old Green wasn't the issue, nor was it personal. It had more to do with the vagaries of losing in general.

"It's not fun to lose," said the cantankerous Levin. "I hate to lose, and obviously I'm not in a very good mood right now."

On the flip side the self-proclaimed underdog, Green, wouldn't relinquish the lead. He was more like a hungry pit bull, clamping his jaw down on its prey. On this day it would be Levin, the guy who finished 13^th at the U.S. Open and started opening eyes with his performance this year.

When the emotional Levin started losing his composure on the sixth and seventh greens, twirling his putter high in the air after near misses, Green took mental notes. After all, the runner-up in the 1989 Amateur, the first Amateur he competed in, has played in enough USGA championships to know when an opponent's heart begins bloodying.

Levin played into the hands of Green, who is a master of subliminal intimidation. It was only two years ago that Green, once a tennis All-American in college, purposely wore a Masters shirt during the final round of the U.S. Mid-Amateur against eventual champion Chez Reavie. Traditionally the Mid-Amateur winner receives an invite from Augusta to play in the following year's event. Reavie wouldn't fall victim to Green's ruse, but the message had been sent: he was ratcheting up the stakes to win. Just as he was on Thursday by employing an aggressive strategy.

Afterward, the oldest competitor in the field was asked about going against all the young guns, about notching three victories thus far, about everything under the sun, including his herky-jerky swing from a low squat. The man who picked up the game after college, winning something in the vicinity of 27 straight amateur tournaments in a row, who has never taken a golf lesson, who has played in more than 40 USGA championships, took it as a slight.

"I wouldn't say it's what makes this championship special," said the 2003 USA Walker Cupper. "I would say that's what makes golf special, amateur golf special. You know, it doesn't matter if you're playing somebody like that at the Western Am or the U.S. Am. I play for the competition. I love to compete.

"I figured all the pressure was on Spencer. Everybody in the crowd thinks he's supposed to win. . If you ask the crowd out there, they will say every match I win is an upset."

Green grabbed his first lead on No. 6. Levin lipped a 5-footer, watched Green make his and then walked angrily to the seventh teeing ground mumbling under his breath.

Moments later, Levin yanked an 18-foot putt that brought another putter twirl, this time with more elevation. He didn't lose the hole, but he was coming unfurled like a flag in a stiff breeze despite evening the match by the end of No. 8.

Green secured the lead for good on the par-3 10th with some astounding scrambling. He first got out of a greenside bunker, hoping to bump the ball off a severe angle and close to the flagstick. It didn't materialize, stopping 50 feet well above the hole. Two putts later he carded a bogey. Yet Levin, in trouble of his own, three-putted for a double bogey.

Green increased his lead to 3 up by the time the two reached the 14^th teeing ground, only to see it be cut to one by the 18^th.

Levin might have known it was over after flying the green on his approach. While reaching for his head in disbelief, he knocked his visor off. It fell harmlessly to the ground just like his ball would off the back fringe, a measly 2 feet from the green.

By the time he reached his ball, the white towel had all but been waved.

"I bogeyed the last three holes, and you can't win when you bogey the last three," said Levin. "I just needed a break on that last hole and I didn't get it. If that shot is a foot shorter, it rolls back toward the hole."

So Green moves on to live another day. Asked how he's a different golfer than the Amateur final in '89, Green said he's got more game. For one thing, he couldn't hit a fade back then.

"If somebody told me I had to fade the ball or you lose your life," said Green, "I'd lose my life because I couldn't do it."

There's nothing complex about advancing in a championship like this, he added. Hit fairways and you've given yourself half a chance.

More important, though, he knows how to harness the emotions that bubble through in the heat of battle. That's what experience does. It conditions and teaches.

And that's why an incensed Levin inconspicuously searched for answers in a shuttle bus.