If you're a golfer, you probably know the feeling. You are about to hit your second shot after a decent enough drive when suddenly another drive comes whistling past, rolling much farther down the fairway. You look back at the group behind you with a mixture of annoyance for the impertinence and admiration for the prowess.
Welcome to the 1997 P.G.A. Tour. It began as the Year of the Tiger, what with Eldrick Woods winning the Masters by an incredible 12 strokes just four months after his 21st birthday. But it has become the Year of the Young Lions. For the first time in history, the first three majors have been won by players under age 30, with Woods getting the green jacket, South African Ernie Els, 27, collecting his second U.S. Open trophy and Texan Justin Leonard, 25, taking home the claret jug of the British Open. All in all, twenty-somethings have fired enough 60-somethings to win 15 of the 30 events on the tour this year. Five of the Top 9 money winners, and 10 of the Top 38, are in their 20s. If Woods or Els or Leonard doesn't win the P.G.A. Championship, which will be played at Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, N.Y., this week, then Jim Furyk, 27, Stuart Appleby, 26, Phil Mickelson, 27, Paul Stankowski, 27, David Duval, 25, Stewart Cink, 24, or Robert Damron, 24, just might, and thus give the under-30s a clean sweep of the majors. In a sport that usually demands 10 or so years of servitude, these upstarts are clearly playing through.
Generation Tee is of particular interest to tour veteran Tom Kite, 47, who, as captain of this year's 12-man Ryder Cup team, could take as many as six of the kids to Valderrama in Spain the last week of September for the much ballyhooed match between the U.S. and Europe. "No, I don't plan to make them take naps in the afternoon, or anything like that," says Kite. "But I am trying to line up Pampers as an official Ryder Cup sponsor." Seriously, Kite says he's thrilled with the young makeup of his team, and of the tour. "They're really bringing new excitement to golf. The galleries are larger, younger, more exuberant. And it's not just Tiger the fans are following. "
Why the sudden blossoming of talent? Kite chalks it up to the cyclical nature of the game. "When I won the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach in '92," says Kite, "it was, 'Oh, no, another 40-year-old wins a major.' There just weren't a lot of 20-year-olds out there at the time." Indeed, golf history seems as well-ordered as Sunday afternoon groupings: Hogan, Nelson and Snead, all born in 1912; Palmer, Player and Nicklaus, winning 10 of 16 majors (1960-63); Watson, Kite and Crenshaw, turning pro one right after the other.
The next threesome up on the tee remains to be seen, but clearly Woods will be one of them. In a way, he is responsible for the esprit de kiddie corps. "There's definitely a Tiger effect," says CBS golf announcer Jim Nantz. "Once the other young golfers saw Tiger bypass the customary apprenticeship, they thought, 'Hey, I can do that too.'" Leonard said as much after his British Open victory: "Having seen Tiger do so well, having seen Ernie do so well, maybe I thought it was O.K. to go out and win a tournament like this being the age I am."