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CARY, NORTH CAROLINA | For his 60th birthday on Oct. 3, Fred Couples attended a taping of The Ellen DeGeneres Show and a Los Angeles Dodgers game.
For Couples, it doesn’t get much better.
“It was a great birthday,” Couples says, strolling through the autumn sunshine at the PGA Tour Champions’ SAS Championship, chasing a big finish to a good-but-not-yet-great season.
For many of us, it’s hard to believe that Fred Couples, the coolest guy in golf for the past 35 years or so, has hit the big 6-0. Except for his back, which went bad prematurely, Couples has seemed perpetually young even as his thick shock of hair has been salted with gray.
He will forever be Freddie, the guy with the impossibly limber shoulder turn and a movie-star quality that reached beyond the gallery ropes and television screens, making him bigger than the golf he’s played.
Ask golf fans of almost any generation which player they’d like to spend time with and Couples will be near the top of the list. And he’s great at hanging out, watching games and talking to people, which is why he’s so good hosting his own satellite radio show.
On the practice tee at Prestonwood Country Club before their Thursday pro-am rounds, Couples and Davis Love III – who were Butch-and-Sundance charming when they ruled the golf world in the early ’90s – talked more than they hit balls but that’s not unusual.
It was perfect that they were paired together the first two rounds, each shadowed by their glory days but still playing in the sunshine of their lives.
Love recalled spending time with Couples and Raymond Floyd in 1992 when Floyd won on both the PGA Tour and the senior circuit. “I will never play the Champions tour,” Love remembers telling Floyd. Couples said the same thing.
“You will,” Love remembers Floyd telling them.
“He was right,” Love says now.
“I’m sure I said that,” Couples says, nodding at the memory.
It’s easy to measure Couples’ career by numbers and they’re impressive. He won 15 times on the PGA Tour, 13 times on the Champions tour and a total of 62 times around the world. He was PGA Tour player of the year in 1991 and 1992, when he was ranked No. 1 in the world. He won the Masters and two Players Championships and was voted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2013. Some critics carped that Couples’ achievements weren’t Hall of Fame worthy but Couples has always been more than the scores he shot.
When two youngsters asked Couples for his autograph during his pro-am round, he invited them inside the ropes with him. A volunteer running a player shuttle had a white visor his wife had sent with him asking for one autograph – Freddie’s.
When Scott Verplank asked Love what Couples did as a Ryder Cup vice captain, Love said, “He’s cool and the players want to talk to him.”
That’s Freddie.
“He makes it look so easy,” Love says. “It’s like watching Gretzky skate. It doesn’t matter what Fred shoots. You just like watching him play. It looks so natural and easy.
“Fairly good looking (too), according to my wife.”
Did turning 60 cause Couples to reflect on his career?
“When I sit around, I think about everyone else’s,” Couples says.
“You get asked what do you think if your back were better? I think that’s obvious. I think if Bill Walton had never gotten hurt, he might have gone down as one of the best basketball centers to ever play.”
That prompts Couples to tell a story of battling with Nick Price in the early days of what’s now the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow. Couples was near the lead when he leaned over to mark his ball in the third round.
“I was not missing a shot, and I bent down on the 10th green and I never got up,” Couples says.
“That was when I was playing unreal. Would I have gone on to win? No, but would I have gone on to fight with Nick Price. Maybe.”
There is a sense of what might have been with Couples. What if his back hadn’t exploded on him on the practice tee at Doral in 1994? What if he pushed himself a little harder?
He’s wondered the same thing. If he has a regret, it’s that he didn’t play a few more times in his prime on the PGA Tour and into his early years as a senior. That’s one reason he made the cross-country trip to the SAS Championship, a spot he typically skips.
Couples feels good and he wants to play. He’s bugged by how he finished the Boeing Classic in his hometown of Seattle in August. Leading by five entering the final round, Couples shot 76 and missed earning his first victory since June 2017.
“That was horrific,” Couples says.
There are times, Couples says, when his game feels as good or better than it ever did. He’s not as long but he has a better sense of control.
There are other things in Couples’ life beyond golf. He spent more than two years building a house in Palm Springs, Calif., and with that finished, he turned his attention to building a home in Newport Beach, Calif., where he’s lived for a while. It’s finished, just waiting for him to move in.
Some people live to a driving backbeat. Couples prefers the pace of a comfortable hammock rocking in a warm breeze.
When he’s home, Couples doesn’t necessarily have an agenda. When the mood strikes, he’ll fly to San Francisco to watch the Golden State Warriors or go to Colorado to watch his buddy Nolan Arenado, the Rockies' all-star third baseman, play baseball.
“Time just goes,” Couples says. “If I’m really bored after three or four days, I’ll hit a bucket of balls or two and I’ll bump into someone and they’ll say do you want to play Saturday and I’ll play at 8 on Saturday. Then another week goes by.”
That’s the rhythm of his life. Some people live to a driving backbeat. Couples prefers the pace of a comfortable hammock rocking in a warm breeze.
It reminds Love of the time Couples wanted to stay in an RV like the one Love took from tournament to tournament. Love made the arrangements and Couples’ rolling home was parked beside Love’s.
Couples arrived before his friend and when his satellite television was not working, Couples talked to the person in charge of the RVs into letting him into Love’s motorhome.
“I get there and Fred’s in my bed watching TV,” Love says. “That’s Fred.”
This is the busy season for Couples. Baseball playoffs. Hockey season has started. It’s football season and the NBA season starts soon. So much to watch. So little time.
But he still has time for golf.
“I would like to win again and I’m going to work really hard to win another Champions tour event,” Couples says. “I know people do it in their 60s. If you can play, it’s a big feat but it’s not like, ‘Oh my God.’ I do want to win one more time.
“After I do that, what am I going to do? I don’t really know. I wouldn’t really walk away but … ”
In the glow of the afternoon sunshine, Couples walks down another fairway, forever Freddie.
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