THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 11, 1994 TAG: 9407110152
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C01 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JIM DUCIBELLA, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
If he were music, Mark McCumber would be a jitterbug, never a waltz.
If he were a car, he'd careen along the Autobahn, never transport the family groceries in his trunk.
If he were a horse, he'd carry a jockey on his back, never a plow behind him.
The latest two-time champion in Anheuser-Busch Golf Classic history - there was Calvin Peete and re-Peete - knows only one speed at which to walk, talk, live. Full throttle.
Six hours of sleep is hibernation for McCumber. He estimates he works 100 hours a week. He doesn't walk. He flits.
When he sits, as he did after his 3-shot victory Sunday at Kingsmill, something has to be moving. A foot is tapping, a hand is reaching to adjust a cap, the other hand is fiddling with a shoelace.
``My whole life is geared to getting excited,'' said McCumber, 42. ``But that's tough on the body, especially as you get older. If I'm playing without adrenalin, I feel like I've been hit by a truck.''
The reason lies beyond genetics. McCumber once was a 25-year-old landscape architect who could beat the field at the club championship in Jacksonville but had no professional experience.
In 1974, his brother Jim borrowed $4,000 to defray Mark's expenses after he joined the tour. The youngest, smallest McCumber - he's barely 5-foot-8, his brothers all 6-3 - the McCumber who always finished second to the others, felt a consuming need to made the investment pay immediate dividends.
He won at Doral in his 12th professional start, but that burden to succeed never has dissipated. And on those eight occasions when he has achieved the ultimate, when he has been better than everyone else, McCumber admits he hasn't allowed himself to enjoy it.
``I would win, and within a week I'd be back on myself again,'' McCumber said. ``I'd be like, `C'mon, you can do better.' ''
A friend and former pro, Bert Yancey, approached McCumber one day, befuddled at his attitude.
`` `You've got to savor the wins because they don't happen that often,' '' McCumber recalled Yancey telling him. `` `You've beaten (Tom) Watson face-to-face, you've finished second in a U.S. Open, you've won tournaments.'
``I never felt I could be at peace with myself for what I've accomplished in golf. That's changing.''
Only McCumber knows precisely how much pressure he put on himself to win here this week. But he hardly slept Saturday night, playing the key shots he'd need to win again and again in his mind. That's normally such bad strategy that it invariably ends in disaster the following morning.
``I actually played one shot better here than I did in my mind,'' McCumber joked.
That was possible for several reasons. First, the competition wasn't up to putting any real pressure on McCumber. His nearest pursuers, Glen Day and Justin Leonard, are tour rookies.
Day was playing in just his 19th pro tournament; Leonard's appearance was but his third. And while this year's NCAA champion may not have been surprised at his performance, the 16 consecutive pars he made Sunday showed he wasn't going to push McCumber anywhere McCumber didn't want to go.
Then there was McCumber himself, and an enchanted round of 5-under 66 in which he twice chipped in for birdies.
By the time he reached 18, McCumber was so comfortably ahead that he allowed himself to hit an errant drive into the right rough, rather than risk knocking a shot into the same pond that gobbled up Bob Lohr's ball and chances at victory Saturday.
``I owed it to myself,'' he proclaimed.
As much as McCumber had tried to balance his play with his successful golf-course design work, it clearly had taken a toll on his career. He'd go to the corporate outings that make up a player's mad money and would be introduced as, ``Mark McCumber, winner of seven tournaments, now concentrating on his course-design business.''
It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the truth. He'd always been busy with design, even in his most fruitful seasons.
``People were making excuses for me,'' he said. ``I didn't like it.''
No excuses needed now. McCumber is back, and he says there's lots still to do. Fast. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by BILL TIERNAN
Glen Day of Little Rock, Ark., plays on hole 3 as members of the
gallery follow the flight of the ball.
by CNB