Changes In Attitudes

Sport psychologist Dr. Richard Coop says trying to describe his friend, Payne Stewart, is a little like the blind man describing the elephant -- it depends on which part you touched.

Stewart was "Avis," the gifted player with the sweet tempo who couldn't seal the deal. And he was the man who posed for a Golf Digest cover with a chimpanzee on his back after he did, eventually winning a PGA Championship and two U.S. Opens.

He was forever the auctioneer, the emcee, the fellow at the microphone. He knew not from shy. If there was a chili dog to be bought at 5 a.m. after an all-night flight, he was first in line. He played Bruce Springsteen for reveille at Ryder Cups, squeezed toothpaste into his friends' loafers when they beat him and, once, lost a playoff and wouldn't shake the man's hand.

He gave away the entire winner's check at Bay Hill and sold his game to the Spalding company to build a big house, then fulfilled the contract even after he knew it was a bad fit.

He was the man who slowly walked his mother, Bee, so tiny beside him, from the parking lot to the clubhouse before he lost the U.S. Open at Olympic Club. And he is the man who fell forever in love with his wife, Tracey, the second he saw her in a string bikini.

He took Phil Mickelson's face in his hands at Pinehurst, picked up Colin Montgomerie's ball at The Country Club and mugged unashamedly for the television cameras while Mike Reid broke down in the '89 PGA.

He traveled with a trunk full of clothes so distinctive that when he wasn't wearing his uniform of knickers and cap he became virtually anonymous. And he took his recipe for barbecue sauce, with its dash of liquid smoke, to the grave with him. "That's the one thing I've never forgiven him for," laughs Coop.

If ever there was someone who deserves his own adjective it is the late Payne Stewart. He was a "simplicated" man, a human jigsaw puzzle, sometimes maddening, often joyful, increasingly serene. He was not so much a man in full as he was overflowing. A man worth finding.

Springfield and Brother

Springfield, Mo. (population: 151,580), is one of those red-state cities that is bigger than you think. It has spilled out of the old downtown, sending out low, flat shopping malls like crawling ivy. The airport would be the gateway to Branson if Greyhound buses could fly. The Stewarts lived in a one-story ranch-style house on Link Street and never saw a reason to leave. Stewart's father, Bill, was a bed-spring salesman and his mother, Bee, filled the front yard with political placards like dandelions.

"Because of the knickers and the blond hair and the sports cars and the silver-toed shoes and everything," says his teacher Chuck Cook, "he comes off as this real urbane, Great Gatsby type of guy and, really, he was a Missouri mule. Just a country boy from Springfield. He's this country guy whose dad was traveling all the time so he was with his mom and sisters. He had a lot of girl in him. Ironed his own clothes. He loved to cook. He liked to dress up. Then, when he'd be with the boys, he'd be about as macho as anybody. He wasn't afraid to try to outdrink you or outplay you or anything else."

Stewart was featured on a local cooking show making French toast when he was 3 years old. "Payne learned to cook at a very early age, as I did and my sister [Susan] because my mother was a terrible cook and burned everything," says Stewart's sister, Lora Thomas. "The next summer [the show] had all the neighborhood kids on for a 4th of July, hot dog barbecue. So, the host asks Payne to introduce everybody, and he introduces the whole neighborhood. I was the last one and he looks over at me and says, 'And this is my stupid sister, Lora.'"

Jim Morris was Bill Stewart's best friend. Bill called him "Brother" and, even though he's old enough to be Payne's father, Payne did, too. Or pigeon. Morris likes to say after Bill Stewart, a fine Missouri amateur, died in 1985 -- Bee died last month -- he saved $20,000 a year in golf bets. Most Sundays, the Morris and Stewart families sat together in the balcony of the Grace Methodist Church, seats everyone preferred because, Morris says, "his dad sang so loud, and Payne was so dang fidgety."

Brother took me to eat crispy waffles and ham at Aunt Martha's Pancake House in Springfield. He says Willie Nelson used to wash dishes in the original one. Did Payne get into much trouble as a youngster? "Just every day he got up," says Brother.

"Bill was the tough end," he says. "Bee was happy-go-lucky. You understand, Payne could run harder than all of us. That bride of his [Tracey] kept that leg tied to the ground, and his dad kept that leg tied to the ground. I always called him a throwback. You know what a throwback is? A cross between a pointer and a setter. You got one of both. He had one of both with Beezy and Bill."

"If you had to rank him on a 1-to-10 scale," says Dan Pohl of Stewart's fishing acumen, "I'd give him about a four." "Payne was never a world champion fisherman but he loved to fish," says Morris, who grew up guiding fishing trips on the White River and knew all the cuts and limestone bluffs on the James, the Finley and the Niangua, too. "We'd had about six or seven hours. Sun's hot. Payne stands up in the front of the canoe at the end of the day. Had about three martinis. Talks about the beauty of the Ozarks. How much he loved it. If he went to heaven, he wanted to bring the Ozarks with him. Over the side he went. All I saw come up was the top of his pole. Pohlcat and I loaded him in the back of this old jeep we had, take him to town. He was supposed to cook for the family at six. We have to keep him an extra 30 minutes so we can bring him home. Shower him up. Start him over. Get his engines running."

Grand View Municipal, a piece of open prairie renamed Bill and Payne Stewart Municipal, is where Payne started playing golf, though he grew up mostly on the small greens at Hickory Hills CC. Horton Smith and Herman Keiser played at Hickory Hills, too. They don't press there, they "huckle" and there's an awful lot of hucklin' going on. Payne once got himself in a chipping contest against the eccentric hustler and player, Ky Laffoon, a man who favored canary yellow socks and sweaters.

Having been successful in insurance and investments, Morris splits his year between La Quinta, Calif., and Springfield. He and Payne won the Pebble Beach Pro-Am together, and one of their pigeons in Palm Springs was Donald Trump. "It's easy when you got a New York ego that big," says Brother. "First of all, Trump was about five minutes late. Payne and I had already teed off. Trump hollers at us from the tee, and Payne hollered back, 'Trump, this ain't one of them corporate meetings. It's one o'clock and you're either here or you ain't here.'"

The Fan

"He was an awful fan," says John Cook. "Just awful."