Even as he approaches his 62nd birthday, Raymond Floyd remains a study in contradictions. His proud, patrician bearing is carried on a delicate, almost feminine gait. The years have softened his aquiline features, but those pale blue eyes still size people up with the calculating air of a riverboat gambler. And although he has grown into the role of sober elder statesman, he has no regrets about his early years in the pro ranks, when he was a hell-raising Lothario and backer of a topless band. "I enjoyed playing and I enjoyed playing," he says.
As he walks off the 9th green at Valencia Country Club near Los Angeles after the pro-am at the Champions Tour's SBC Classic, Floyd ruefully shakes his head. "Today I played more like Ray Charles than Ray Floyd," he says. Truth is, he doesn't much care. Four decades after he was offered a contract to pitch for the Cleveland Indians, Raymond Floyd knows he has lost his fastball.
This month he will make his final U.S. Open appearance, at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, where the Floyd legend was etched in stone 18 years ago.
On that chaotic Sunday afternoon in 1986, nine golfers were tied atop the leaderboard, the biggest logjam in Open history. One by one they faltered, but Floyd went about his task with the clinical detachment of a pathologist. He snatched the lead with a twisting birdie putt at the 13th hole and never relinquished it, shooting 66 to become, at 43, the oldest Open champion.
Golfers everywhere instantly began imitating his swashbuckling swagger, the trigger-finger gesture as a putt disappeared and "The Stare," that unflinching gaze under which his rivals had wilted when it mattered most.
Today Floyd is a member at Shinnecock. He owns a house five minutes from the course in the village of Southampton. A nostalgic farewell on home turf could prompt an aging gunslinger to wonder if there's one last bullet in a chamber that has fired only blanks for years. But Floyd has no time for such misty-eyed notions. Being competitive means making the cut, nothing more. "I'm 61. I can't compete against those guys," he says. "My career is behind me."
This admission of finality -- and frailty -- is not something you expect from Raymond Floyd. He has been the game's most enduring competitor, a man who held off Fred Couples to win at Doral just shy of his 50th birthday, joining Sam Snead as one of only two players to win in each of four decades. He finished second at The Masters twice after turning 47 and took a break from the Senior Tour to dust Jose Maria Olazabal in a crucial Ryder Cup match.
Perhaps such an acknowledgment comes more easily when your best days aren't that distant in the rear-view mirror. Or maybe you're thankful you had a chance to prove yourself at all. Because, as Lee Trevino says, there was a time when you'd wake for the final round still wearing your golf spikes and clothes from the day before, with ice still melting in your glass.
The Last Gunslinger 
