Club selection crucial at start of season
LA QUINTA, Calif. -- For the three days leading up to the Thursday start of the Humana Challenge, the driving range at the Palmer course is full of worried pro golfers who are in search of the equipment and golf swing that will help them jump-start the new season. The club manufacturers shuttle back and forth between their equipment vans and the players' stations on the range. Imagine these gear heads for a moment as waiters in a busy restaurant, running to the kitchen until they can give their dissatisfied patrons exactly what they want.
On Sunday before the start of the final round of the Sony Open, Spencer Levin cracked his 2-year-old TaylorMade Burner driver on the driving range at the Waialae Country Club in Honolulu. The 27-year-old Sacramento native had to borrow his dad's driver, but he couldn't find a fairway on his way to a 2-over-par 72 and tie for 23rd.
"I usually never bring a backup driver," said Levin. "But I'm glad I had one last week. A lot of guys I have talked to will bring one or two backups just for that reason. Eventually if you hit a driver long enough, something like that is going to happen."
The former New Mexico Lobo sent his caddie, Mike Hicks, to this week's tournament site to investigate his options with the TaylorMade equipment team, while he flew home to Sacramento to load his Lexus sedan with about 15 drivers from his storage shed for the 7½-hour drive down to the Palm Springs area with his girlfriend.
"My trunk looks like Nevada Bob's," said Levin, who will be playing this week with new irons.
Nearly a dozen drivers awaited Levin's inspection when he arrived on the range Tuesday morning. He spent hours testing different white drivers and a newer version of his old black-headed Burner, looking for the right mix of feel and performance. The one he will use when he starts on Thursday at 9:40 a.m. local time at the La Quinta Country Club is the last one he threw in his trunk on Monday night. It's a white driver that he had in his bag for about a month last season.
"I have always liked a little heavier feel in my driver," said Levin, who ranked 127th in driving distance with 286.3 yards last year. "I have a fast swing anyway, so more weight on the head helps my tempo."
Though he'll tee it up Thursday with that driver, he's still not sure it's the right club for him for the long haul.
"This is the best I got this week. I'm not 100 percent on it," Levin said. "But I hit some on the golf course today and I hit it pretty good."
Every player at some point during the season has a calamity like the one Levin experienced in Hawaii, but most players would prefer to sort out matters with their games at the beginning of the season, when the dew is still fresh on the ground, before things turn good or bad.
The Humana Challenge, formerly the Bob Hope Classic, is a new tournament after 52 years as a 90-hole event played over four golf courses. This fresh start to a storied tournament is welcome news to a Greater Palm Springs area that feared a year ago that its beloved event, which pumps millions into the local economy, would be lost.
To the players who didn't love playing the five-day, 90-hole event, the new Humana Challenge -- which has been scaled back to 72 holes, three courses and a lower profile for the pro-am portion of the event -- is a sign of progress. The friendly scoring conditions and perfect weather were never bothersome.
"I think everybody's going to like the new format even better," said Matt Kuchar, who finished in a tie for seventh in 2011 and tied for second in 2010. "It's been great to see the tour make these tweaks. I think this tournament has all of a sudden become a sought-after event and an exciting event.
"So I think that what kept people from coming maybe in the past was the five days, was the 12 different amateurs; it's not for everybody, for sure. I think the new format is much more appealing to everybody."
The tournament boasts its strongest field in decades. There are 85 players from last year's top 125 on the money list, 19 winners from 2011 and 12 golfers who played in the 2011 Tour Championship, including FedEx Cup champion Bill Haas. The defending champion, Jhonny Vegas, is also back after a strong rookie year that saw him finish 46th on the money list.
But perhaps the two biggest names in the field are two-time tournament winner Phil Mickelson and 56-year-old Greg Norman, who last played in the Humana Challenge in 1986, when he finished in a tie for 53rd.
On Saturday, Norman will play with Bill Clinton, who has put a jolt of energy in this event not seen since Bob Hope last presided here in the late 1990s.
Norman talked about his relationship with the former president on Wednesday. He told a story about how George H.W. Bush had persuaded him to play with the president, despite his objections to Clinton's political views.
"'Greg, he says, I'm going to give you a piece of advice. Respect the office of the presidency of the United States,'" Norman remembered Bush saying. "'You go play with the president, no matter how you feel.'"
After they played together at the New South Wales Golf Club in Sydney in 1994, Norman and Clinton forged a close friendship.
"From that moment onwards, because I prejudged, I became very good friends with the person that I prejudged in the wrong way," Norman said.
For a second-tier player like Levin, who is trying to join the top echelon, the Humana Challenge offers the chance to test his mettle early in the season against a very strong crop of players. Levin had a breakout year in 2011, with six top-10s, including a second-place finish at the Mayakoba Golf Classic, where he lost in a playoff to Johnson Wagner. Wagner, who won last week at the Sony Open, is also in the field this week, sporting his Marlboro Man mustache.
Levin came up $16,927 short of getting a spot in this year's Masters after finishing 31st on the 2011 PGA Tour money list. After a few years of being starstruck and a little too high-strung, he's finally settling into a mature tour player with a scrappy game and fighting spirit.
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"I used to think you had to hit every shot perfect to win, but I'm learning that's not really the case," Levin said. "It always comes down to the putter. I'm just trying to give myself more chances to make more birdies."
But first he has to find a driver that he can consistently hit long and straight. At the Humana Challenge, where birdies will be plentiful and the scores low, he'll need to hit a lot of good drives to beat a star-studded field. But we shouldn't worry much about Levin, because he'll keep going back to the woodshed until he finds whatever he needs to eke out a good living on the big tour.
Farrell Evans covers golf for ESPN and can be contacted at evans.espn@gmail.com.