Many majors have been played at the Oakland Hills Country Club in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., where the PGA Championship will start tomorrow. Canadians might remember the 1985 U.S. Open there, when Dave Barr tied for second place with Denis Watson and T.C. Chen. Barr, now 56 and living in Westbank, B.C., near Kelowna, certainly remembers what transpired there.
It was about the 14th or 15th hole on Sunday where Barr took a one-stroke lead, he remembered the other day after shooting 68 at the Kelowna Golf and Country Club, his home course. By the par-3 17th hole, Barr recalled being tied for the lead with eventual champion Andy North.
Barr had 206 yards to the hole. He hit a 3-iron, but pulled the shot through the green. He was left with a treacherous pitch over a big hump between him and the hole, which was cut toward the right front.
"I flopped it up on the hill, but didn't quite get it there," Barr said while taking a break from tossing a ball to the family dog. "It came down to the right, about 30 feet away."
Barr missed the par putt. He wasn't sure where he stood because, as he recalled, the scoreboards weren't up to date. He tried to hit his drive on the par-4 18th hole just over the left edge of a bunker on the right, 265 yards out. The drive plays downhill from the tee.
But he caught the bunker, and he had 204 yards to the hole. A high lip intervened between him and the air space ahead.
"I gambled with a 4, but should have hit 5," Barr said, calculating that he'd come up 25 or 30 yards short of the green, "and I caught the lip."
The ball bounded forward, leaving a wedge to the green. His shot went through the green, which ran away from him and down to the hole. He almost holed his pitch shot from the rough. Almost. His fate was to be what the British call a "nearly" man. He nearly won the championship.
"I've always looked at it as a positive," Barr said. "For the next nine years or so, I played some pretty consistent golf."
Barr had won on the PGA Tour, at the 1981 Quad Cities Open in Moline, Iowa. Later in 1985, he and Dan Halldorson played for Canada and won the World Cup. He won the 1987 Atlanta Golf Classic and, with fellow Canadians Rick Gibson and Ray Stewart, the 1994 Dunhill Cup at the Old Course in St. Andrews.
As a senior player, Barr won the first tournament of the 2003 Champions Tour. But he's since lost his card. Barr still hits the ball beautifully, using his natural, handsy swing. He's contemplating another run at the Champions Tour qualifying school in the fall, but knows his putter is his weak link.
"I can be like Tiger on the practice green," Barr said. "I make everything, but I lose it on the course. I don't feel comfortable in that four- to seven-foot range. It's fear, fear of hitting it too hard, going through the break. The tempo isn't there. My stroke isn't fluid."
Barr has tried 10 putters this year. "It's not the putter," he said. "It's the jerk at the end of the stick."
As the PGA Championship progresses, Barr will play the Helicopter Open at his club. It's a prelude to the Kelowna Open there.
Golfers of a certain temperament will know the term "helicopter." A player who throws a club in anger is said to have "helicoptered" it. The Kelowna club used to hold a competition on a particular hole to see who could throw a club the farthest. The winner was awarded an old clunker of a car.
Barr said a couple of fellows hung on to the club too long and threw it into the parking lot, leading to some damage. The throwing contest was cancelled about 10 years ago, but the Helicopter Open remains. Come the weekend, Barr won't play in the Kelowna Open, though. He's volunteered to man the scoreboard for a while during the final round.
He'll also try to catch some of the final round from Oakland Hills. Twenty-three years ago last June, he was right there as the U.S. Open wound down. Not until 18 years later did Mike Weir become the first Canadian to win a men's major, when he took the 2003 Masters.
But no Canadian has come closer to winning a U.S. Open than Barr, the nearly man who nevertheless had a distinguished career on the PGA Tour.
