SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. -- Nine years can go by quickly, exceedingly so, almost like nothing has changed, the clock hasn't moved. You come back to a place you haven't been for years, and the good memories are predominant, good feelings pervade. Sights and smells take you back. You collect all of it, and you bring it forward with you to the present.
So nine years go by quickly -- or not at all.
Corey Pavin, self-admittedly, is not the same player he was nine years ago when he won the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. Diminutive but determined, he has trudged through seasons of disappointment while his throwback skills of shot-making and scraping got trampled by the modern power game. His swing "went south," as he described it, and he lost his confidence.
Sure, Pavin won again in 1996 at Colonial Country Club as part of a solid follow-up campaign that included nine top-10 finishes and 14 top-25s in 22 starts. However, his tie for 10th at the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am this year was his 10th top-10 finish since '96.
No, Pavin is not the same player, except perhaps on this golf course. Nine years go by quickly -- or not at all.
After completing a rain-delayed 3-under-par 67 early Friday, Pavin came back with a steady 71 and was in contention heading into the final 36 holes of the 104th U.S. Open. Pavin hasn't been this close to a lead in the national championship since, well, '95, when he was fifth after 54 holes.
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| Corey Pavin sits at 2 under through 36 holes. (Getty Images) |
Where it has put him is in the hunt, but he wasn't about to dwell on that, either, not when he has been there so little in the last several years. "I'm not going to think about a whole lot," he promised. "I'm going to go out and do what I've been doing the last two days, just hit every shot as good as I can and focus on each shot and play the most intelligent shot I can and just see how I am."
Pavin is not the same player he was in 1995. In some ways, he's better. Working under the tutelage of Butch Harmon the last 10 months, Pavin's swing has gotten wider, more dependable. In some ways, he's not where he was, at least mentally.
"I'm still struggling," he admitted before being asked if playing well in the U.S. Open was just the antidote he was looking for. "I don't know if this is the place (to regain confidence). Anyplace is the place. I just need to go out and execute. I don't know if it's the complete remedy. It helps, certainly. It's a spoonful of medicine, and I just need to keep taking it."
So far execution has been his forte, at least in terms of writing down a score that keeps him up with the pacesetters, just like he was able to do in '95. Here, at Shinnecock, Pavin is very much the same player.
"On this golf course, he can play," said Scott Verplank, who with Justin Rose was part of Pavin's threesome the first two rounds. "I see how he struggles on the courses we normally play. But he was born to play golf courses like this."
Through two rounds Pavin has hit 21 of 28 fairways and 18 of 36 greens, a decent performance, but his 52 putts is among the top five. In '95, he led the field in putting. It's no mystery to Pavin why he excels; the greens, heavy on poa annua, are similar in roll and slope to the ones he played as a boy growing up in California.
The clock doesn't move.
Pavin is not the same player he was nine years ago. But he is. He is the same player here. "The way to play the golf course," he explained, "hasn't changed tremendously. Still for me the bottom line is to keep the ball below the hole, and if that means missing the green and chipping it, that's OK, too."
That's experience talking, and the measure of time is palpable, tangible. Pavin brings back to Shinnecock the lessons he learned while realizing a life-long dream. The course -- a bit longer, its landscape altered -- has, like the player who last conquered it, metamorphosed. Yet on Friday nothing seemed different as the man traversed the course again. Nothing was different.
"Anytime I come back to a golf course I've done well on, I have a good feeling," Pavin said. "It doesn't matter if it's Shinnecock Hills and a U.S. Open or Colonial or Riviera or anywhere else that I've won, I feel good and it's a comfortable golf course, and there's a lot to be said for being comfortable on a golf course."
Nine years go by quickly. Or not at all.
