Tough Team To Beat
If the 2010 U.S. Ryder Cup squad follows captain Corey Pavin's example of tenacity and resilience, it will be one ...
The words "survivor" and "grinder" and "gritty" come to mind when people think about Corey Pavin, and he doesn't mind the characterizations. Pavin even welcomes them because he knows they represent the truth. The newly appointed U.S. captain for the 2010 Ryder Cup in Wales has been through plenty as a player and relishes the role of point man for a competition he loves, and one in which he has compiled an 8-5 record in three appearances. Pavin was on the 1993 U.S. team, the last to win on foreign soil. He means to win again in Europe.
"The object is to win, absolutely," Pavin says one evening from the home in Los Angeles that he shares with his second wife, Lisa, and their daughter, Alexis. "It's a friendly competition, but it's also heated, and you can have both."
It's three days before Christmas and four days before the Pavins will celebrate Alexis' first birthday. The family's Christmas card shows Alexis wrapped in an American flag. The card reads, "What a year we've had … and [we're] looking forward to all the years to come."
The photo shoot for the card occurred on Thanksgiving, but the Pavins couldn't send it out until after Dec. 11, when the PGA of America announced Pavin's captaincy in New York City. That was also when Lisa could sign off e-mails with a Ryder Cup message. Clearly, one reason the Pavins are looking forward to all the "years" to come—with the word in italics on their Christmas card—is because the Ryder Cup means so much to them. "I think if you cut my arm open, Ryder Cup would bleed out," says Pavin, who turned 49 in November.
No wonder, then, that Lisa has been bothered by stories suggesting her husband is the wrong choice for captain, and that he might not make an effective leader. "The press wants to believe he's the old Corey, not the new one," she says. "One article said that the Ryder Cup will be a snooze with Corey as captain. I find it funny when I see articles like that. You'll miss out if you think that's Corey now."
Pavin acknowledges that he walled himself in during the years following his 1995 U.S. Open win, when his career went south and he went north, as in cold to many people. His marriage to his first wife, Shannon, the mother of their two sons Ryan and Austin, was failing. He had been turning away even from members of his own family. When Pavin's father died suddenly in 1997, he took it hard because he realized he hadn't spent enough time with him.
"That was a very hard time in my life," Pavin says. "Nobody wants to go through a divorce. It's no fun."
Pavin won the MasterCard Colonial in 1996, but he finished 169th on the money list in 1997 and 155th in 1998. The next year, when he finished 70th, was better, but Pavin wasn't fooled. He knew he was in trouble, as his swing and his personal life deteriorated. He had grown apart from his older brothers Matt and Fletcher, both of whom work for Titleist. His mother, Barbara, couldn't count on him and Shannon to join them when she invited them for dinner. The walls were closing in. Pavin was in retreat. He was disappointing the people closest to him and in danger of losing his game.
Pavin filed for divorce in November 2000, when Ryan was 14 and Austin was 7. A sensitive and questioning person who had converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1991, Pavin was a lost soul. Who was he? He didn't know.
Earlier that fateful year of 2000, before Pavin filed for divorce, he and Shannon were looking for somebody to help them out in their daily lives. Through his then caddie and conditioning coach Chris Noss, they were told about Lisa Nguyen, a young woman who was looking to start her own business as a personal assistant. Noss was helping her meet some golfers. The meeting didn't lead to a job then, but Pavin did hire her as his personal assistant after his divorce. A romance started three months later; they became engaged in January 2002 and were married a year later. Lisa started to help Pavin find himself.
"Corey had no confidence in himself," Lisa says of the man she met. "He was a wounded bird. It was heartbreaking."
Pavin refers to an "emptiness" about him when he and Lisa met. "Lisa helped me a lot with opening up to other people and getting some friendships going that were right there for me. Meeting Lisa helped me a lot. It was just the way she reacted with people. I learned by being with her and watching her."
- Keywords:
- lorne rubenstein,
- golf,
- golf world,
- PGA Tour,
- 2010,
- ryder cup,
- corey pavin
