The year Beem’s bravery got rich reward

RICH BEEM’S PGA Championship victory on the major’s last visit to Hazeltine National in 2002 may still seem unlikely, given his singular lack of success since, but the Beemer’s performance that week in Minnesota was definitely no fluke.

Not only did Beem emerge victorious from what was a record-breaking field, containing 98 of the world’s top 100, he did so having withstood a vintage final round from world No 1 and at that point two-time PGA champion, Tiger Woods.

For Beem, a couple of weeks short of his 32nd birthday, it was the third victory of an eight-year professional career and the $990,000 (€700,000) prize money from that one week has eclipsed his total money won in every year since, with the exception of 2003, when he pocketed $24,000 more from 26 tournaments he played.

Yet for that weekend in Minnesota, no-one, not even Tiger, could match Beem. He had won his last tournament, the International, and an opening, level-par 72 put him four shots off the lead taken by round one leaders Jim Furyk and Fred Funk.

Beem made his move on the Friday with a 66 that put him into a five-way lead alongside Funk and three former major champions, Justin Leonard, Mark Calcavecchia and Retief Goosen.

Leonard shot a 69 for the low round on a tough day in the third round to take the 54-hole lead, three shots clear of Beem and five ahead of Woods heading into Sunday’s final round.

Sunday would not be Leonard’s day, a 77 put paid to the Texan’s hopes. And it soon emerged that Beem, his playing partner in the final group, was the man with the fate of the championship in his hands.

Beem, from Arizona, had adopted the philosophy to never let up. He and his caddie agreed as that final round reached the seventh hole that having not laid up all week, “Why should we start laying up on Sunday?”

“I had, like, 260 (yards) to the hole or something and my caddie goes, ‘Well, what do you think?’” Beem said seven years ago.

“I go, ‘well, we haven’t backed off all week. Do you think we ought to now? I don’t, hit the wood’.

“I pulled out the 3-wood and hit it; I didn’t hit it great, I heeled it a little bit. I knew if I was going to miss it, I was going to miss it to the right and had a putt up over the hill and made birdie there.”

Seven years on, and Beem says that approach had been the one they had taken from the off.

“Sitting on number seven it was kind of the beginning of it but to be honest it started on Thursday from the opening tee shot.”

The tendency for most golfers would have been that having moved into a lead, the time to start protecting it was on the way home in the final round. Beem begged to differ and so was born the shot of the tournament, his second on the 11th hole.

“Well, no lead is ever safe, particularly with Tiger involved but we were playing fantastic and we had a perfect number on No. 11 and there was really no reason to lay up.

“We just had to pick the club to hit up there.

“We had a little north wind off the tee, right to left, and I had been hitting my driver perfectly all week.

“I just happened to catch a perfect drive and it hit just over the downslope of the bunker and it kind of kicked forward.

“I do believe we had about 248, 247 yards to the front (of the green), 265 to the pin or something like that, the numbers are a little fuzzy.”

Beem let rip and almost hurled his fairway wood after the ball with a bellowing “come on!” as it rolled to within 10 feet for an eagle putt which gave the underdog a three-shot lead over Woods, who closed with four birdies but still came up one stroke short of victory.

The club, what Beem calls a five to seven wood, that produced the magic is no longer in his bag, having been donated to the PGA of America. Beem got to the 72nd hole to seal a four-under-par 68 and spark unlikely celebrations on the 18th green.

“I remember coming up the 18th and I was exhausted and still nervous knowing that even though I had a two-stroke lead and all I had to do was basically just three-putt.

“But I wanted to see if we could finish in style and if we could get it done in two. I had a very long first putt and I rolled that one by about 10 or 12 feet and actually had a very quick putt for my second but actually got it down close enough not to think too much about the last (putt).”

Then came the celebrations. Beem raised his arms and began to wiggle his hips in a dance not commonly seen on 72nd holes of majors.

“I was just glad it was over and I could always just see myself kind of doing a little dance and enjoying the moment and that’s what came out.”

Weirdly, Beem’s abiding memory of the whole tournament has nothing to do with that final day.

“Probably the third hole I played of the tournament at Hazeltine,” he said referring to his opening round. “I started on No. 10 and I bogeyed that hole and then barely made par on 11, and we got to No. 12. I hit my second shot just over the green.

“I hit it an awful chilly chunk wedge up there about 40 feet short of the hole and literally I’m looking at the putt thinking: ‘Won last week, next week is up in Seattle, I have a buddy up there; you can miss the cut, catch a flight up, shoot some pool, dinners’, this and that, and all of a sudden I made that putt. I’m like, ‘Oh, all right. Maybe I shouldn’t be thinking that way’.

“All of a sudden, I fought pretty hard the first day and things snowballed from there. But I remember that third hole. Everybody remembers everything else and I remember that third hole, ‘Man, I could catch a flight here soon’.”

As for regrets at having not been able to build on that victory with other tournament successes, Beem is having none of it.

“I would not take back anything that I ever did. “I learned from it. I don’t feel remotely disappointed in anything that I’ve done.”