indian wells

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. Nov. 25 ― Impervious to the whims of style, the ravages of time and even global warming, Fred Couples is still as cool as a fall morning in the desert. This has always been one of golf's sure things, and it remains unchanged. Only one thing in life can make Couples sweat, and Sunday his often-injured back felt good enough to prevent any beads from popping out on his brow.

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Fred Couples after a birdie in the Skins Game Sunday in Indian Wells, Calif. He won four skins and $325,000 in the event.


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Fred Couples, hitting out of the rough Sunday, had been sidelined from competition since April because of back pain.
This is a good thing, of course, for golf and for Couples, 48, who had been sidelined from competition since April. That was when, after playing through excruciating back pain while making the cut in the Masters, he was forced to put up his clubs until a few weeks ago. On Sunday, as he stood casually on a mound left of the 10th fairway at the Indian Wells Resort, preparing to hit his second shot on the final nine holes at the Skins Game, it was almost as if he had never left.

People leaned over the balconies and stood on the roof of the adjacent Hyatt Grand Champions hotel to watch as Couples surveyed the ball sitting atop the Bermuda rough. He delivered a shot worth watching, too, one of many he produced over the course of the two-day event. With a $250,000 carry-over skin on the line, Couples hit a tight draw from 158 yards to 5 feet. He won the skin with a birdie, giving him nine skins in two days for a total of $325,000 and the lead over the defending champion, Stephen Ames, and the Skins rookies Zach Johnson and Brett Wetterich.

Ames was laughing and applauding in the middle of the fairway. "Great shot, great shot," he said, quickly adding, "Hitting fairways is overrated."

It certainly was in the Skins Game, as Ames became aware and as Johnson, the Masters champion who missed only one fairway, found out. It was more about hitting the right fairway at the right time and making the right putt at the right time, as Ames did on the first and last holes. Ames's first skin Saturday was worth $25,000 and his last Sunday was worth $650,000, giving him the victory over Couples and shutting out Johnson and Wetterich.

"It's really just potluck," said Couples, known as the Skins King for the more than $4 million he has won in 14 Skins Game appearances. "If you win the right holes, you win money."

Couples's success stems from his acceptance of the vagaries of the Skins Game format.

"You don't come into these things looking to win them," he said.

Never has that been truer for Couples. He came into this event looking to hit some good shots, to shake off the rust, to test his back and to see what would happen to his swing when the red light came on the TV camera.

The answers he got were somewhat encouraging. Although he said afterward, "I didn't really play any better than anybody else," he did. Had their actual scores been kept, Couples would have finished with a six-under-par 65, three strokes better than Johnson's 68 and seven better than Wetterich's 72.

Ames was three under for 17 holes, but took an X on the 15th hole when he hit his drive in a flower bed and picked up. He took a double bogey to finish with a 71. More important than the score were the quality of the shots Couples hit during the two days.

While he acknowledged that the skins format is "hit and giggle," that did not mean he was not trying. When he was in his prime a little more than a decade ago, Couples was among the best ball-strikers on the PGA Tour, often going weeks without missing a shot. Other players would ask, only half joking, "Have you ever actually missed a shot?"

So to come into a competition as the featured draw having hit few shots recently was a little unnerving, even for the most unflappable of golfers.

"At first, I was a little hesitant because I have not played," Couples said earlier this week, "and it took, you know, a good couple days to ask a few people if they wanted to see my mug again. A couple people said, 'Of course.' So I decided to play."

Play he did. He averaged 299 yards on 14 drives, most of which hit the fairway. His only big miss with the driver came Sunday at the 14th hole, where he pulled his drive under a palm tree and was forced to try to hit a severe cut with a 3-wood ― a shot he pulled off. By and large, his trajectory was good, and he hit one 3-wood ― a 253-yard cut to 15 feet at the 12th hole ― that should have been framed.

Then there was the eagle he made by holing out from the bunker Saturday at No. 4. It was definitely not a fluke. Couples flayed his sand wedge on a slight downhill lie from 35 yards, dropped the ball softly on the green 35 feet from the hole and watched as it rolled like a putt and fell in.

It appears his recent work with Butch Harmon has been bearing fruit. He shot a 60 last Friday at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas, tying the course record held by Tiger Woods. He said he would play in the Shark Shootout on Dec. 5-9, then see how his back holds up after continued work with the specialist John Patterson, who also works with the Houston Rockets' Tracy McGrady.

For now, Couples dispassionately evaluates his progress by saying: "I came here without too many expectations and I feel like it turned out all right. I hit a few pathetic shots, but had decent control of my golf ball most of the time. I'm hoping it keeps getting better and we'll see what happens."

have been asking our city manager for three years about adding a traffic light on Indian Wells. I was first told that it was needed, but the funds weren't there. Now, after a "survey" has been conducted, the city feels there is not enough traffic on Indian Wells and that there haven't been enough accidents to warrant any changes.

Apparently, our city manager and his surveyors don't travel Indian Wells much. Now, to make matters worse, the city has placed a crosswalk on Cornell and Indian Wells. I have no problem with a crosswalk, but the "vegetation" on the corner of the water store lot makes it impossible to see. Some of the growth has been cut back, but now, with the crosswalk, you have to stay back even further.

What is going on here?