TOO bad if you find watching golf on television boring. You missed truly one of the most epiphanic moments in any sport when Davis Love III won the PGA Championship. Davis Love III is one
of golf’s true gentlemenYou would have become a true believer, seeing Love conquer all.
Not only the difficult Winged Foot golf course. Not only a dogged opponent named Justin Leonard, who is too young to know any better. Not only the pressure of being the best golfer who had never won a major.
Rain pelted down when Love was trying to secure his first major victory and Winged Foot's final four holes were treacherous enough. Yet, when Love got safely on the green in two at the 18th hole, the sun broke through, the clouds parted and a brilliant rainbow appeared.
Talk about incredible timing.
Ben Crenshaw, who credited winning the Pre-Tiger Masters in 1995 to the spirit of his late mentor Harvey Penick, couldn't help but feel that the rainbow had to be a sign from Love's late father, Davis Love II, who died in a plane crash in 1988.
Considering that Love's father never left his thoughts every shot and step of the way, the new champion thought so too.
"I'd like to think it was," Love told reporters about that brilliant signal in the sky.
And, as he hugged his brother, Mark, who caddied for him, his wife and his mother, we all got a chance to know Davis Love III for more than the golf champion he is. We saw him caring, his humanity.
GOLF is a gentleman's game and no one is more gentlemanly than Love. For that reason, his long-awaited victory was so well-received.
Leonard, who was trying to win his second major in as many starts, had the opportunity to be the first to congratulate Love as he walked up to the 18th green. "I'm disappointed, but I'm so happy for you," he told Love.
"This is one of the most popular victories I've seen at any golf tournament," said Mark Rolfing, a golf commentator for ABC-TV. "It's because of what Davis is, a genuinely warm human being."
Rolfing saw the final two rounds on videotape. But you couldn't blame him. He played 36 holes Saturday at Makena and and another 36 on Sunday at Kapalua's Plantation Course with a 4-handicapper by the name of Michael Jordan.
The Chicago Bulls' star also rooted for Love, who gave him some golf lessons.
However, if there's anyone who knows all about Love, it's Rolfing.
It was in 1985, just after Love successfully got his playing card in Qualifying School, that Rolfing met him in the Bahamas. Rolfing invited the rookie, who had yet to play a PGA Tour event as a pro, to the Kapalua International.
LOVE has been ever grateful for that exemption and they've become fast friends ever since. Love, who won at Kapalua in 1992 after finishing runner-up three times, has played in every tournament there except one. That was in 1988, when his father died in a plane crash.
Love never forgot Rolfing's invitation and wrote about it in his book, "Every Shot I Take," which he dedicated to his father:
"Mark invited me to play in the tournament in 1986 and 1987 and I was very pleased to be invited back in 1988, given how unspectacular my year had been."
Not surprisingly, Love has already committed to the last-ever Lincoln-Mercury Kapalua International in November, nine days before he'll appear in the MasterCard PGA Grand Slam at the Poipu Bay Resort with the winners of the other majors -- Leonard (British Open), Tiger Woods (Masters) and Ernie Els (U.S. Open).
The PGA Championship might have been the last of the year's majors. But it wasn't the least, especially this year with Love's emotion-filled victory.