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Golf’s Longest Week: When Sunday became Monday (then Tuesday) in Toledo

by Hal Phillips 1 Comment
This piece appeared in the April 2004 issue of LINKS Magazine. Above, George von Elm (left) and Billy Burke, combatants in the longest U.S. Open every contested..

TOLEDO, Ohio (April 10, 2004) — The next time you play a round of golf in some modicum of heat and humidity, the next time you trudge up the 18th fairway and feel a bit of lactic acid building up in your thighs, spare a thought for Billy Burke and George Von Elm. These unflinching principals squared off golf’s longest week, the most extraordinary physical and competitive test the game has witnessed. The 1931 U.S. Open was held some 86 Julys ago here at The Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio. Grantland Rice called their duel there “the most sensational open ever played in the 500-year history of golf.” Burke and Von Elm required 144 holes of medal play to produce a winner: Burke, by a single stroke.

Take a moment to think about the parameters here: 72 holes contested over the first three days, followed by 36 playoff holes on Monday and 36 more on Tuesday. Waged in the midst of a stifling, July heat wave — in an era devoid of fitness trailers, cushioned in-soles, and air-conditioned clubhouses — this match proved golf’s precursor to the Bataan Death March, the games original Duel in the Sun. It was and remains, needless to say, the longest playoff in U.S Open history. Supreme Court cases have taken less time to adjudicate.

Or so it appeared during the morning round on Tuesday, July 6, 1931, as Burke and Von Elm — with 126 holes behind them and 18 still to negotiate — staggered off the 18th green toward the clubhouse for lunch. Even the most callow observer could see the quality of play eroding, under the enormous dual burdens of fatigue and Open-playoff pressure.

Yet Burke rallied to play his finest golf of the tournament over the final 18 holes. Von Elm, too, rose to the occasion and finished but a single shot in arrears.

“I looked for a rather ghastly finish to a grand struggle,” wrote O.B. Keeler in The American Golfer. “Instead it was, and ever shall remain in my mind, the most remarkable exhibition of recovered stamina and poise and of sheer staying power and determination I have ever witnessed.” Legend says that Von Elm, a lithe figure with little to lose, shed nine pounds during the championship, while the stocky Burke managed to gain two. “A circumstance,” Keeler mused, “which, if accurate, gives rise to wonder as to his diet.”

Golf’s Longest Week required No Jones

The first major of of 1931 was the first “Jones-less” U.S. Open since 1920. The Emperor had retired from competitive golf following his epic Grand Slam the year before, and while he was on hand at Inverness, the golfing public was anxious to see just who would fill the considerable void. Golf’s professional class was especially keen. Bobby Cruickshank admitted he and colleagues were delighted to see Jones in the gallery, as opposed to the field.

Nineteen thirty-one was also the year competitors were obliged to deploy the so-called “balloon ball” during Open play. This larger and lighter spheroid didn’t prove popular at Inverness, as competitors complained loudly that mis-hits were exacerbated by the new-fangled thing, which neither carried nor rolled as far. After just one year, the USGA would junk it — returning to the previous, heavier guideline of at least 1.62 ounces, but keeping the balloon’s larger size (1.68 inches in diameter).

Yet the weather soon quelled all talk of balls and would-be kings The heat was oppressive by any discernible measure. Contemporary accounts of the championship are littered with modifiers like blistering, blazing and sweltering. Golf Illustrated‘s “special correspondent” noted that “The field was all on hand early for practice several days ahead of time, but so intense was the heat that on these practice days no one with any chances to jeopardize played more than nine holes of golf.”

The mercury registered 105 degrees on Friday, July 2, the first day of competition. It was no cooler on Saturday, when Von Elm served notice to the field with a 69, the tournament’s low round. His 36-hole total of 144 led 63 players who made the cut; Burke stood one stroke back. Thirty-four years would pass before before the USGA extended the Open format to 18-holes on four consecutive days, so Von Elm’s 73 on Sunday morning placed him two shots clear of Burke with the afternoon round still to play.

By lunch time, temperatures hovering between 97 and 99 degrees. Igniting one of his trademark cigars (he would go through 32 during the championship), Burke went off in the penultimate group with Johnny Farrell, while Von Elm and Al Espinosa formed the final pairing.

Espinosa and Farrell had fallen from contention with substandard third rounds; by Sunday’s final nine, it was essentially a two-man race, with Von Elm in the driver’s seat. Standing on the 12th tee, he led Burke by two strokes but Von Elm would stumble over the next six holes, playing them in four-over. Burke parred the 18th to post a 292, meaning Von Elm needed a birdie 3 to force a playoff. He did just that, calmly draining a 12-footer as the breathless, sweat-soaked multitudes gathered a green’s edge.

With its extraordinary fugue of physical demand and competitive drama, Sunday’s play (the presumptive 36-hole finale) might have gone down as one of the most thrilling days in Open history. As it turned out, the tournament was just half over.

Businessman Golfer vs. the Club Pro

A dapper, big-hitting Californian, Von Elm is one of those curiously recurring characters who isn’t particularly well known but nevertheless continues to crop up as one leafs through the pages of golf history. He won the U.S. Amateur at Baltusrol in 1926, defeating the great Jones, who had claimed the two previous titles and went on to win the Amateur in 1927 and ’28. Only Von Elm kept him from winning five in a row.

A seasoned 30 years of age when he arrived at Inverness, Von Elm was hardly new to golf marathons. During the 1930 Amateur at Merion, he played the longest extra-hole playoff in U.S Amateur history, going 28 holes before succumbing to Maurice McCarthy. What are the odds the same man would participate in both the longest U.S. Amateur playoff and the longest U.S. Open playoff — and lose both?

The defeat at Merion effectively ended Von Elm’s auspicious amateur career. From that point forward he would compete as a “businessman golfer”, meaning he would accept whatever prize money his finishes might earn. This proved a prudent if slightly unorthodox vocational step. According to Herbert Warren Wind’s Story of American Golf, Von Elm’s earned him some $8,000 in January and February of 1931 alone, a veritable king’s ransom in Depression-era America.

Burke, on the other hand, was a 29-year-old, bonified professional of the club variety, playing out of swanky Round Hill in Greenwich, Conn. Born Billy Burkauskas, the Nutmegger spent a portion of his young adulthood puddling iron in a Naugatuck, steel mill. His swing was a tad awkward, and Von Elm outdrove him on nearly every hole. That said, “Temperamentally,” Keeler observed of Burke, “it is difficult to suggest an improvement.”

Some have painted Burke’s showing at Inverness as something of a shock result, but contemporary accounts tell a different story. It’s true that 1931 marked the club pro’s first real foray into national, tournament competition. Yet Captain Walter Hagen shrewdly named Burke to his 1931 Ryder Cup team. Tthe matches took place a week prior to the Open, at nearby Scioto, where Burke won each of his foursomes encounters and his singles match — the latter by 7&6.

Indeed, his cracking Ryder Cup form made him something of a fashionable dark horse entering the U.S. Open at Inverness.

Timeless Terrain in Toledo

The 15th at The Inverness Club.

The championship layout at Inverness, like many of its early-20th century counterparts, has undergone considerable change over the course of a century. The course we know today was created by Donald Ross, who renovated an existing nine and added a companion loop prior to the 1920 U.S. Open. A.W. Tillinghast prepped the course for the 1931 event, and half a dozen different architects have tinkered with it since. Inverness held the Open again in 1957 and 1979, enduring pre-tournament preps each time. [Architect Andrew Green would renovate yet again in 2017, then revisit once more in 2024.]

Despite all this, the ground itself at Inverness has remained essentially unchanged since the last ice age, when a pair of rivers carved two distinct valleys from the sandy soil just south of Lake Erie. “The course has always been laid out across these two gorges,” explains Tom Walker, course superintendent at Inverness since 1980. “The elevation change is about 30 feet, which isn’t a whole lot. But you’re continually playing across these valleys, walking down and coming up the other side. I would not classify this as an easy walking course, not by any means.”

The U.S. Senior Open was held at Inverness in 2003. Sort of ironic, as it’s the only Senior PGA Tour event where the competitors are obliged to walk. As Burke and Von Elm learned — as Bob Tway learned, before he hold out on the 72nd green to beat Greg Norman at the 1986 PGA Championship; as modern seniors learned a decade later — holes 1, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17 all span at least one of these gorges. The other ravine requires similar hikes on holes 4 and 5. As the layout was configured back in 1931, no. 7 required yet another valley crossing.

Walker caddied at Inverness during the 1960s: “I didn’t necessarily enjoy it, especially in July. It’s no walk in the park. To think that these guys — and their caddies — walked 144 holes in five days, in that heat… I think that’s an incredible feat. Just the mental aspect, let alone the physical aspect.”

According to Walker, whose livelihood depends on an accurate meteorological understanding, a typical July day in Toledo is “muggy”, meaning 85-92 degrees with relative humidity of 50-60 percent. During the Open of 1931, these conditions would have qualified as refreshing cold snaps, as temperatures consistently soared into the upper 90s and beyond.

It was, in short, extraordinarily hot.

How hot was it? Nine players who made the cut at Inverness chose instead to withdraw, including two — Albert Alcroft and J.M. Hunter — who reportedly tore up their scorecards after the third round and went fishing. By comparison, at Interlachen the year before, just three Open competitors who made the cut chose to withdraw.

Either it was quite a bit hotter at Inverness, or the fishing just isn’t that good in suburban Minneapolis.

But seriously, folks: How hot was it? Here’s all you need to know: The USGA would never again stage its Open Championship during the month of July.

Monday, Monday: Head to Head

Burke watches Von Elm’s bunker shot come to rest during Tuesday’s final 36 holes at Inverness.

Following Von Elm’s 18th green heroics on Sunday, he and Burke rejoined their Open battle Monday morning. For the first time, the two combatants played alongside one another. The results proved predictably dramatic. “This playoff changed complexion at least 15 times,” Rice wrote in The American Golfer. Indeed, Monday’s remarkable give and take left the normally verbose Keeler at something of a loss: “I saw altogether too much… to make any sensible selection of features from such a wealth of them.”

Von Elm fell four strokes back at one stage, only to birdie four on the trot and reclaim a two-stroke lead. Burke was steadier, and by the time he reached the 36th tee — the 108th, all told — he held a one stroke cushion.

Then, as now, the 18th at Inverness is a short par-4 of just 330 yards. This is where Tway’s birdie from a greenside bunker defeated Norman during the 1986 PGA playoff. This is where Von Elm’s birdie at Sunday’s 72nd hole forced the 1931 Open playoff. Once again, on Monday, Von Elm needed a birdie 3 at the last to fend off defeat. And once again, he delivered — holing a 10-footer and forcing another 36 holes the following day.

Burke and Von Elm trudged on, playing the Tuesday morning 18 amid unrelenting temperatures — into the high 90s by 10 a.m. They played like the exhausted, punch-drunk combatants they had every right to be. Each shot their worst rounds of the tournament, though Von Elm’s 76 nevertheless afforded him a one-stroke advantage at the break.It looked for all the world as though the 1931 Open winner would be meted out by attrition.

And yet, as Keeler noted above, after lunch both players rose magnificently to the occasion. Burke went out in one-under 34, building a two-stroke advantage. Von Elm fought back and drew level with a par on 13. But Californian’s putter deserted him on 14 and 16, where three-putt bogeys essentially sealed his fate. The man whose putter had saved him Sunday and Monday betrayed him on Tuesday afternoon. He shot 73, with 35 putts.

When Von Elm’s long birdie attempt on 18 didn’t find the hole, Burke had the cushion he’d long lacked. Before addressing his own 25-foot birdie attempt, Burke was regaled by a green-side photographer: “Say, Burke, how about a shot?” With 143 holes behind him and poised to claim golf’s greatest prize, the unflappable Burke obliged the press corps by producing a winning smile. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ve got three putts to make it.”

He would use all three.

Despite this cautious lags on 18, Burke’s exquisite, even-par 71 was his lowest round of the championship. “There is no need to gild a par round at this stage,” the sage Keeler remarked. “It speaks for itself.”

Glass Slipper & Carl Spackler Be Damned: Golf Actually Hates a Cinderella Story

Glass Slipper & Carl Spackler Be Damned: Golf Actually Hates a Cinderella Story

by Hal Phillips 1 Comment

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla (June 14, 2017) — Keith Mitchell won last week’s Honda Classic, besting Brooks Koepka and Ricky Fowler with birdie on the 72nd hole. See above. The headline writers at the Palm Beach Post were less than impressed. Behold, more evidence that golf sorta hates a Cinderella story. Mitchell’s win in actually the latest case study in golf’s curious-but-pervasive Cinderella Complex.

That giant sucking sound you hear? That’s the disappointment of U.S. golf fans and sports writers made manifest. Yet another “nobody” had made off with a PGA Tour title that should have gone to one of our major champion darlings.

Intellectually, golf fans recognize that the lowliest shit-kicking tour pro can beat two-time defending U.S. Open champion Brooks Koepka on any given day — as Mitchell did so bravely and cannily here at last week’s Honda Classic. It happens all the time. It’s part of what makes tournament golf so interesting.

What’s less clear is why such a result leaves so many golf observers so very cold. Why are golf’s surprise winners Humpty Dumpty, not Cinderella? We quote Carl Spackler often enough. When an actual underdog comes out of nowhere, why do we root against him?

This phenomenon has been eating away at me for decades. Perhaps, like me, you’ve wondered aloud why golf fans rooted for Tiger Woods so ardently all those years, while rooting against the likes of Bob May, Y.E. Yang and Trip Kuehne.

There will always be a minority who root against Tiger or Phil or Justin, I suppose. But it is a distinct, vanishingly small minority in golf, especially compared to our rooting habits in other sports. Why?

Given a choice, we prefer to live in singular times. It’s one reason why we can’t take our eyes off Tiger, or Dustin, or Rory — and continually compare them to Nicklaus, Palmer and Trevino. They are the best of our time, and something inside us craves the inevitable comparison with previous “all timers”. This urge to confirm that our stay on Earth spans momentous periods in history is why Grampa still natters on about the severity of snowstorms in the 1940s, why he prefers ballplayers from the 1950s. It’s why we have something called The Greatest Generation.

Cinderella Story: Resisting the Irresistable

But we also root for underdogs because their stories are irresistible, right? Only a neutral cad (or a Patriots fan) could have rooted against the Rams in the most recent Super Bowl. Who but a Yankees fan doesn’t routinely back anyone who might face them in post season? When UCLA won those 88 games in a row under John Wooden, who didn’t root for someone to knock them off?

But golf, or some reason, is different.

It’s long been my feeling that we golf fans, we golf media harbor a most peculiar Cinderella Complex — an Underdog Aversion, if you will. When confronted with the prospect of a title going to Keith Mitchell, or (more to the point) a major title going to Todd Hamilton, Ben Curtis, Mike Donald, Rich Beem or Charl Schwartzel, a good many of us reflexively bridle. We root against them.

Think back to 2004, when Hamilton’s tentative 2-iron faded into the right rough on the 72nd hole at Royal Troon. This is where I first recognized this counter-intuitive emotional tug — in myself. Surely this is where the wheels come off, I thought, when Hamilton’s tee shot went astray. The steely, tactical golf he’d displayed through 71 holes of the Open Championship had been admirable and courageous on so many levels. But clearly, this was the first of several lug nuts to be loosened in the glow of Els’ consecutive birdies at 16 and 17.

And here is the truly dark and twisted part: The emotion we golf observers experienced at Hamilton’s apparent collapse wasn’t disappointment. It was relief. Deep down, something inside us wanted this to happen. Somehow we all felt it would be more satisfying to have a “name” victor. But honestly, why would I root against Todd Hamilton? Why would anyone?

Underdog as Interloper

We had the same feeling the year before when Ben Curtis, playing several groups ahead of the leaders, slowly emerged as the unlikely favorite at Royal St. George’s. As the no-name Ohioan waited in the clubhouse (he finished early and watched the leaders all fall away, you’ll recall), an anxiety permeated golf’s fandom and media horde. Surely, we reasoned, Tiger or Thomas Bjorn or Vijay Singh would do what their pedigrees demanded of them — what we demanded of them — and claim the Claret Jug from this… interloper! 

I felt it, and it wasn’t a new sensation. I had the same feeling when Tiger and Bob May dueled at Valhalla in 2000. Great tournament. Great playoff. Great major victory. But would golf fans and media have thought so if May had prevailed instead? I don’t think we would. Why are golf fans so underdog averse?

The simple answer, though not the most flattering assessment, is that golf fans and golf media are flagrant front-runners. We want champions to win again and again, and we are curiously galled when someone like Curtis or Rich Beem or Orville Moody or Tommy Aaron wins/absconds with a major. Indeed, we find ourselves rooting against them as the tournament plays out. Looking back, we contort ourselves in order to explain them away. We even blame certain courses (Olympic) for not producing proper major champions.

I went back and checked the TV ratings from the 2004 British Open. Sunday’s telecast pulled a 4.6 — a solid number considering Hamilton, this relative unknown, came out of nowhere to hold off one of the sport’s biggest stars (Phil Mickelson) and nip another (Ernie Els) in a playoff. Compare that number to the record 6.4 share achieved on Sunday in 2002. That British Open, at St. Andrews you’ll recall, was done and dusted by Saturday noon. The entire Sunday broadcast was completely devoid of competitive drama, a simple coronation for Tiger Woods. Yet it was the most watched Open Championship in history.

The record U.S. Open TV rating? It came just a month prior, when Tiger won by 15 strokes at Pebble Beach. What else but overt front-running hero-worship could explain numbers like these?

This goes Deeper than Media Hype

It would be easy to blame the media for this phenomenon, which persists to the present day. With 24/7 capacity, it churns out a stunning amount of analysis and prognostication. Inevitably, all this talk, all these words and imagery ultimately center on known quantities — our stars, our heroes, the odds-on favorites. It’s not unreasonable to assume this would have an effect on our involuntary rooting interests.

However, I think it goes deeper than that and predates the modern media age.

Bobby Jones wasn’t just favored to win every time he teed it up; fans preferred that he win time after time. Ben Hogan had won 8 majors by 1955. Yet when he faced down Jack Fleck in the U.S. Open that June we didn’t root for Fleck. We preferred the Wee Ice Mon win another one.

Sometimes the outcome we staunchly prefer does hold, whereby a sort of anti-Cinderella justice is done (read: Van de Velde at Carnoustie). Other times the impossible happens (say, Fleck slaying Hogan at Olympic in 1955). In either case, we might have enjoyed the rags-to-riches theater through 70 holes, but when push came to shove we wanted the proven quantity to prevail.

The uncharitable way we view these David vs. Goliath duels, in retrospect, is revealing. Fleck, after all, is only a single letter from fluke. Fate clearly intervened on his behalf — and we’re still irked about it. Beat the Great Hogan? How dare he!

Admit it: When Steve Jones nipped Tom Lehman at the 1996 U.S. Open, when Scott Simpson held off Watson at Olympic in ’87, when unfancied Michael Campbell bested Tiger at Pinehurst in 2005, when Zach Johnson slayed Goosen and Woods in the ’07 Masters, when Lucas Glover outlasted Mickelson at Bethpage in 2009, the results were tinged with disappointment. In major championship golf, we want our stars to come through.

Y.A. Yang at the 2009 PGA: Were you rooting for him? I mean, why would you NOT root for the first-ever Asian to win a major. Still, I’m betting that you treated him exactly like you treated Rocco Mediate during the 2008 Open at Torrey Pines — pleased to see him fight so gamely, but ultimately hoping to see Tiger prevail.

I’m sorry. That’s twisted.

Unique to Golf

I don’t see this dynamic as nearly so fully developed in other sports. Yes, there are some who delight in team dynasties — mostly media, as it makes prognostication, the new modus operandi of sports punditry, easier — but no one begrudged the Patriots their miracle Super Bowl victory in 2001. In much of the country, rooting for the Yankees to win yet another World Series is akin to backing the tanks in Tianamen Square. And so we delighted in the Marlins and Diamondbacks having their moments in the sun, in 2003 and 2001, respectively.

Golf is different — but not because it’s an individual sport. Do we not root against Venus Williams, then Serena, now Federer and Nadal once their major victories become so common as to seem preordained? Okay, maybe in the quarters we root for Federer, to set up a killer final vs. Nadal. But in that final, should someone like Robin Soderling gain it, as he did in the recent French Open final, we root for him — the Cinderella story. Track and field history is littered with inspirational tales of underdogs who claimed Olympic gold and, by their unlikely efforts, our hearts.

But golf, for some reason, engenders a different sort of response.

There’s a corollary to this dynamic that pertains to venue. In retrospect, for example, some observers consider Open winners from the Olympic Club in San Francisco — Fleck (over Hogan), Casper (over Palmer), Simpson (over Watson), Janzen (over Stewart) — and conclude the course is somehow diminished because it doesn’t produce “great champions”, whereas a track like Pebble Beach (Nicklaus, Watson, Kite, Woods) does.

This, of course, is a canard of the first order, brimming with conceit. No one doubts the rigor and major-championship fitness of, say, Oakland Hills, even though it served up champions like Andy North and Steve Jones. Indeed, Hogan won there in 1951 and Gary Player in the ’74 PGA.

Conversely, does Tiger’s win at Valhalla peg the layout as “great champion producer”? I think not.

But you’ve heard these arguments. It’s part of golf trying to cover its tracks — those left by glass slippers. If Orville Moody wins the Open, there must be an explanation (Champions Club in Houston: poor venue). Yet behind this sort of prattle we see again the front-running gene seemingly inherent to golf’s rooting interests. When our heroes fall short of the brass ring, we politely applaud the underdog and blame the golf course.

We Overvalue Historical Affirmation

History, so central to golf, plays another role here. We prefer our championships, especially our majors) to be memorable affairs. Major titles are the sticks we use to measure a player’s place in the game’s ongoing epic. We want to believe Nicklaus won 18 majors for a reason. By the same token, we want to believe there’s a tangible reason why Colin Montgomerie and all the other unfortunate souls — from complete unknowns to those who’ve worn the Scarlet BPNTHWAM (“Best player never to have won a major”) — haven’t. The prospect of Mike Reid running away with the 1989 PGA just wouldn’t have satisfied. Thank goodness Payne Stewart eventually reeled him in, eh?

Basically, until you’ve won a major, you’re not even on the radar screen of history. At best you’re an outsider with delusions of grandeur, a bit player on a grand stage with the gall to challenge golf’s natural order. As golfers, we accept as fact that the crucible of major championship play will validate the winner as a “major champion”. Golf fans really, really want to believe that major winners are a breed apart.

It’s commonplace, of course, for lesser-knowns to win from week to week on The PGA Tour — more so nowadays when top 30 players are so rich, they play increasingly abbreviated schedules, thereby diluting fields. But we have different expectations for major championships. We expect them to produce something better. Otherwise, what exactly makes them so “major”?

Since 2002, there have been 64 major championships contested. Of those, “name” players have won all but 15 of them. That means nearly a quarter were claimed by underdogs: Cabrera, Glover, Cink, Yang, Immelman, Johnson, Campbell Hamilton, Weir, Curtis, Micheel, Willett, Schwartzel and Beem (I gave the benefit of the doubt to Geoff Ogilvy, Jim Furyk and David Toms who seemed just too well established to include here). Golf is actually in the midst of a relative Cinderella drought: Only Willett would qualify from any of the last 20 major winners.

Yet this truth remains; While winning a major championship might buttress the reputation of an established star, simply winning one does not validate an underdog as a “great” player. In an ass-backward sort of way, the victor validates the major — and the venue. This, in my view, sits at the heart of golf’s confounding Cinderella Complex. Despite all the drama such a Cinderella story might provide, ultimately we prefer that majors not be tainted by the ambivalence we attach to that sort of victory.

Coats, Ties and Foursomes: UK College Golf in the ’80s was a Breed Apart

Coats, Ties and Foursomes: UK College Golf in the ’80s was a Breed Apart

by Hal Phillips 2 Comments

SUGAR GROVE, Ill. (May 5, 2017) — For all the trans-Atlantic DNA we share with our British cousins, it’s easy and, I daresay, natural to assume that UK college golf is pretty much a comp for the exercise here in the U.S. Not so. Not today, not forty years ago when I played for the University of London.

Today, top players from the U.K. (and mainland Europe) routinely travel stateside to hone their games at American colleges and universities. At scale, this “study abroad” drains the bBritish collegiate game of talent, obviously. Indeed, many of these men, women and their games will be on display here later this month (May 19-31) at Rich Harvest GC, site of the 2017 NCAA Championships.

But why do they make this trip in such appreciable numbers? Because collegiate golf in the U.K. — like all college sports there — is decidedly low-key, even compared to the low-stakes Division III golf I played at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., during the early 1980s.

For my money, however, one can place UK college golf alongside proper ale and period cinema as something the Brits still do better, with more nuance and panache. Yes, our universities turn out more tour professionals, but for the majority of college golfers, in both countries, that’s not the point. It’s about competition and its sensible integration with the game’s social niceties — and no one does that better than the British upper crust.

That posh ethos dominated my university golfing experience abroad: Coats and ties, foursomes in the morning, singles in the afternoon, and no less than two proper English piss-ups sandwiched between them. You can have your vans, your matching shirts and golf bags. To Yanks, collegiate golf in the U.K. may look and feel more like a club sport. Having played both sides of this fence, I’ll go with the Pommies.

UK College Golf: No Vans

At mighty Wesleyan, a perennial golfing doormat, the exercise during the ‘80s remains recognizable: Throw on a pair of khakis and a golf shirt; pile into a van and meet a different college team, or two, at the course venue. We’d play 18 holes of medal, shake hands, tally up the scores, pile back into the van and drive home to campus. Big-time Division I golf schools don’t play many dual or tri-matches like these any more, I understand. More often they play various invitational tournaments whereby dozens of schools show up in one place, seven guys from each team play medal, and the best 5 scores count. We did this, too, though only once or twice a season.

Collegiate golf in England during the mid-1980s, when I played for the University of London, was nothing like this. Nothing. For starters, and perhaps most important, we rarely played other schools. Instead, university teams were hosted by golf clubs themselves, which trotted out their best players for a day of intergenerational match play and assorted reverie. Here’s a typical match-day regimen:

Put on coat and tie, pack some golf clothes in your golf bag and hump it to the nearest Underground station. Yes, we all got ourselves to the golf course, somehow — by bus or subway or some teammate’s car. We played a lot of matches in Greater London, at places like Roehampton and Royal Wimbledon, and I fondly remember riding the Tube with my golf clubs in tow.

Having arrived at the club, we would literally partake of tea, crumpets and scones with our opponents. As with most British golfing clubs back then, coat and tie were mandatory in the clubhouse, hence the need to dress for breakfast. The University of London Golf Team never once faced another school the entire semester I participated. We played the top 7 amateurs at various clubs who had deigned to host us for a day of matches. They were damned good players, as you might imagine, and they took great delight in showing off their home courses and, more often than not, kicking our asses around them.

The 13th at Royal Wimbeldon GC.

Thirty-six holes, Two Outfits

Our first change of address took place in short order, after tea. We’d slip into golf attire and head out for 18 holes of foursomes, or alternate-shot, at match play. This was great fun but very, very difficult. We typically see this format only in the Ryder Cup or President’s Cup contexts. Even then, a world-class professional, if just a bit off his game, can make life truly miserable for his partner. Just imagine teaming with a 7 handicap who’s probably hung-over, hasn’t picked up a club since the last match two weeks prior, and is seeing some course for the very first time.

Ater this first match, we’d change back into coat and tie for lunch. There were matches where we convened for casual buffets “at luncheon,” but more often than not these were grand affairs: four-course meals with elaborate place settings replete with wine, port and various toasts (read: shots of whiskey). If we students had fared well in the morning, the object of our hosts was mainly to get us as drunk as possible in preparation for…

Afternoon singles. Having changed back into golfing attire, we played 18 holes of singles, at match-play, of course. Depending on the luncheon miniseries, these could be quite entertaining affairs.

To complete the golfing day, one more costume chjange — back into coat and tie so as to hang around the clubhouse bar drinking pints of properly pulled ale with our new, middle-aged friends. Sometimes there were “antics”. At Roehampton (or Royal Wimbledon; I can’t remember which), someone suggested a 1-club tournament, whereby we went back out onto the course, at dusk, still dressed like Harry Vardon, pint in hand, to play a short loop of holes using but a single club. Great fun. I recall choosing a persimmon 4-wood. Remember them?

I honestly couldn’t tell you the first thing about whether we won, lost or drew any of these overall matches against the golf club teams. First of all, from a team perspective, I don’t think it mattered to anyone all that much; second, by the end of these marathon golfing days, I was far too drunk to give a fig.

The Semester’s Final Match

Oldest club in England
Royal Blackheath GC

I do remember well my last match before heading home to America, however. It was played at Royal Blackheath, which, if memory serves, is the oldest golf club in England, i.e. south of the Scottish border. We had arranged this match because a fellow on our team has been a member there growing up. He arranged it and, for him, the exercise prove equal parts homecoming, competition and piss-up.

Luncheon had been a complete free-for-all. Some two hours of eating and drinking had finally given way to the singles matches. Our Blackheath alum went out first against one of his oldest friends, while I — because it was my last match before going home, back across the pond — was given the honor of going out last vs. the club captain. He was 50-something fellow who kept offering sips from his flask all along the outward nine. I politely declined; I was plenty buzzed from lunch and wanted to win my swan song. On 12, I went 3 up and we set about finishing his brandy together.

When we arrived at the tee box serving the par-3 15th, our match nearly decided, we came upon the first group. They had decided to park themselves on a bench, wave everyone through, and concentrate on their drinking, reminiscing and needling. In the three years of college golf I played at Wesleyan, the idea that my opponent and I might blow off or otherwise back-burner our match in favor camaraderie like this? Never have occurred to us. Pity, that.

As we gathered in the clubhouse bar that evening, my teammates — in honor of my pending departure — presented me with a formal and quite stylized summary of the day’s results, complete with my skunking during the morning foursomes and my full point (!) from the singles. I’ve just gone and consulted this document in a scrapbook I keep. It was a touching gesture…

The fact that someone like me — an American, but really just a guy who showed up entirely unannounced, for a single semester — could join the golf team, compete in 5 or 6 matches, and be so thoroughly welcomed, then bade such a fond farewell. It speaks both to the informality of the collegiate golf exercise as it existed in England back then and to the oft-maligned English social character. Yes, they can be a bit stand-offish at first but once they let you in, perhaps with the aid of proper lubrication), they are great fun, quite warm and perhaps more prone to overt sentiment than we Yanks.

I don’t honestly remember how I got home from Royal Blackheath that night. My last concrete memory is playing snooker with several guys in the club’s ornate billiard room, a vast mahogany-paneled expanse beneath impossibly high, pressed-tin ceilings. cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke settled over the tables. Every once in a while, people find out I played college golf in England. They often ask, “So, what was that like?”

In a word, exhausting.

The Only Way to Fly: Playing Golf in Scotland, by Rail
The estimable Balgownie Course at Royal Aberdeen GC

The Only Way to Fly: Playing Golf in Scotland, by Rail

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments
St. Andrews poster
This piece was published in LINKS Magazine in fall of 2005. I returned to Aberdeen by train, by way of Dornoch, as recently as 2025. It remains the only way to fly…

WHEN GOLF was first conceived, participants arrived at the course by foot or on horseback, or, if the company was honourable enough, by carriage. For this reason, the game remained for centuries a parochial, largely Scottish pursuit. In the 18th and 19th centuries, however, all of British culture was transformed by an industrial capacity that among other things launched a transportation revolution. Golf in Scotland was forever changed.

In particular, completion of the Forth Rail Bridge, in 1890, widely exposed the bounty of Scottish links courses for the first time — to the rest of newly mobile Britain and ultimately the world, which still marvels. The advent of train travel did something else truly marvelous: It spurred the development of “new” Scottish links built specifically to accommodate the rail-enabled.

Golf may not have been formulated with trains in mind but the idea and practice of “golf by rail” shaped and grew the game during the late 19th century, its first true boom period, an age we now drape with garlands like “golden”, “timeless” and “classic”. The railway made the game what it was, what it remains today in the minds of many modern golf travelers. Without this transformation, the romantic images we so idealize — the ones we still travel to Scotland to find — might never have materialized.

Indeed, the very idea of golf travel was born in this Victorian Era. By 1890, the railways had cozied up to several superb, existing links in the Scottish lowlands. This happy coincidence also made sense: Rail connected population centers, which lay mainly along the coast, close to sea level where terrain was flattest and bed construction easiest. Just a short walk from these new “centre city” train stations lay the common lands, the linksland where, for example, East Lothian,clubs like North Berwick, Muirfield and Gullane already resided. Today they remain as practical to play by train as they did in the 19th century — which is to say, perfectly practical for golfers with a sense of history and adventure.

Golf in Scotland: Feeding the Faithful

The passage of time has obscured the vital role trains played in golf’s growth and mythology. The Forth Rail Bridge, the world’s first steel span over a major British riverway, made this travel scenario a practical reality in Fife, revealing the birthplace of golf to the game’s myriad new zealots. “As the train neared St. Andrews and I noted the gradually increasing numbers of the faithful,” wrote A.W. Tillinghast on his first trip to “that Mecca for golfers”, in 1895. “I marveled that the popularity of the ancient game had continued, unabated throughout the centuries.”

The new line Tillinghast had taken north out of Edinburgh served those adherents. It’s likely that he traveled north along Fife’s coastal route, which connected the links of Leven, Lundin, Elie, Crail and St. Andrews like pearls along a double-railed chain, to borrow and adapt a phrase. This development may appear divinely inspired, but it was merely a logical-but-happy byproduct of the new transportation revolution — a phenomenon that, in Fife, proved all too fleeting.

Soon after Tilly’s visit, the Firth of Tay separating St. Andrews from the Tayside and Grampian regions had its own rail bridge and even more trains sped north — past Scotscraig, Monifieth and Montrose to the superb links at Royal Aberdeen and neighboring Murcar.

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Baronets & Collieries: Exploring Beau Desert, Fowler’s Unsung Heathland Gem

Baronets & Collieries: Exploring Beau Desert, Fowler’s Unsung Heathland Gem

by Hal Phillips 2 Comments
Herbert Fowler heathland
This story appeared in the February 2002 issue of LINKS Magazine. A shorter version posted in 2011 can be found here. I stumbled upon Beau Desert on assignment for GOLF Magazine — researching one of those “where to play when attending a nearby tournament” stories — in this case, Birmingham, when attending the 2002 Ryder Cup at the Belfry. I arranged a game at swank Little Aston but everyone in the know, on the ground, told me Beau Desert was way better. They were right.

HAZEL SLADE, Staffordshire (Sept. 13, 2001) — Herbert Fowler is one of those architects whose name, curiously, isn’t readily attached to the many great golf courses he laid out and/or substantially retooled. Cruden Bay? That’s a Fowler. Royal North Devon? Fowler’s fingerprints are all over this west country antique. Indeed, his renovation of the Old Tom Morris original (a.k.a. Westward Ho!) fairly well accounts for the course we know today.

This lack of name recognition begins to explain why a venue like Beau Desert Golf Club, which Fowler designed nearly 100 years ago in the Staffordshire hamlet of Hazel Slade for the Sixth Marquess of Anglesey, rings few bells. Yet a better heathland course golfers are unlikely to come across, as indeed many have not.

For his own part, The Marquess (née Charles Henry Alexander Paget) recognized immediately that Fowler had created something extraordinary on his Beaudesert estate. Upon the layout’s completion in 1913, Paget whisked Fowler off to the family’s “other” ancestral estate at Plas Newydd on the Welsh island of Anglesey. There the architect laid out a second course for the Marquess, Bull Bay GC, another sterling Fowler product you’ve probably never heard of.

The majority of Fowler’s brilliant work resides in his native England, but he did get around. Fowler was the man who transformed a ho-hum par-4 at Pebble Beach into one of golf’s most heroic, par-5 finishing holes. His Cape Cod design at Eastward Ho! — whose peculiar moniker now makes perfect, book-ending sense — is an old-world delight. Fowler also refurbished the ancient Welsh links at Aberdovey where venerated golf writer Bernard Darwin learned the game and played all his life.

Fowler Beau Desert
Herbert Fowler

Darwin would complete the Fowler circle by eventually visiting Beau Desert’s 160 acres of elevated, exposed ground some 25 miles north of Birmingham. Afterward he asserted that, “Here might be one of the very best of courses, for the turf is excellent and there is a flavour of Gleneagles about it. It stands high and is pleasanter in hot weather than cold, for the wind can blow there with penetrating shrewdness.”

The Ryder Cup may have been contested nearby, at The Belfry; Little Aston may be the region’s most fashionable golfing address. But the finest course in this part of England is Beau Desert. And yes, Herbert Fowler designed it.

Beau Desert: “Beautiful Wild Place”

If you believe folks too often misapply the term “links” (and they do), “heathland” has proved the source of even greater misunderstanding. To grasp the qualities of heathland golf, think links. The soil is similarly sandy — only inland, upland and very much bared to the elements. Walton Heath is a celebrated prototype (Fowler did that one, too) and Beau Desert (www.bdgc.co.uk) is a worthy sister, laid out on the once treeless heath known as Cannock Chase.

It’s not treeless any longer, of course. Many heathland tracks, even the very best ones, haven’t survived to the present day unchanged. Not by a long shot. After decades of tree growth, most heathland designs don’t look anything like they did immediately post construction. What’s more, many tree-infested heathland courses not only look but play very differently, as they’ve become veritable parkland hybrids.

But some still play as a heathland course should and Beau Desert is one of these. Its trees are numerous but, in the main, they merely frame the broad, menacing rough areas that, in turn frame generous fairways. If one could reach them, the trees that loosely border the magnificently blind, Himalayan 15th would prove preferable to the rough. This mindset, this value system is another sure sign you’re playing a heathland layout.

The Old Course at Walton Heath was Fowler’s very first design job, one he secured only because his brother-in-law was an investor. Yet Fowler proved a quick study. A world-class cricketer, he was 35, for example, when he first took up the game of golf; within two years he played off scratch. Walton Heath was his first foray into golf course architecture and he nevertheless produced one of the world’s great layouts; the New Course, also Fowler’s work, is no slouch either.

Why Fowler’s name doesn’t roll off the tongue alongside that of Morris, Mackenzie or even Colt is a mystery. He was certainly in their class. After all, this was the man who would go on to design both 18s at Saunton and another pair of superb courses at The Berkshire. This was the fellow entrusted with the sweeping and well regarded redesigns of Royal Lytham and Ganton, homes to Open Championships and Walker Cups by turn.

Beau Desert may not ring many bells but it, too, belongs in this rank. It’s perhaps best heathland course you’ve never heard of, much less not played.

Baron-owned, Commoner-administered

Heathland fowler
The miniscule, make-or-break target at Beau Desert’s driveable par-4 9th.

When he commissioned design of Beau Desert some 100 years ago, the Marquess of Anglesey lived in the ancient Hall at Beaudesert, a splendid country manor dating back to 1289, when it was occupied by the noble Trumwyns of Cannock. Known in 13th century Latin deeds as Bellum Desertum, “beautiful wild place,” the estate later housed all manner of British peerage. Indeed, the place is cited by name in Sir Walter Scott’s epic poem, “The Lady of the Lake.” The Pagets didn’t come into the Hall and its attendant properties until 1549, when they acquired the estate from a family friend: King Henry VIII, who threw in a baronet for good measure.

The ninth Baron Paget of Beaudesert, Henry, was the son of Caroline Paget and Sir Nicholas Bayley of Anglesey. Henry’s son, Henry William, the First Marquess of Anglesey, earned his title in appreciation of his services at Waterloo, where, thanks to French mortar fire, he parted with a leg. [Legend has it that upon receiving this not-insignificant wound, the future Marquess exclaimed to Wellington, “My God! I’ve lost my leg!” His Lordship dryly acknowledged this fact by remarking, “My God. So you have,” and promptly returned to his spyglass.]

The historical serendipities attached to this land and its aristocratic governors would fill several chapters of a book. Indeed they already have; “Beau Desert: The Marquess of Anglesey’s Course” was published in 1992 (and reissued in 2013, to mark the club’s centennial).

Yet for all but six years of its existence, Beau Desert GC has been a local club, played and administered by local commoners.

From the beginning, the Sixth Marquess extended play to a favored group of area businessmen, most of whom worked for nearby mining concerns. “Permit Holders,” these unlanded folks were called. When Paget abandon his estate in 1919 — when many British peers did the same, due to heavy tax burdens assessed following World War I — he first leased the course to this group of proto-members. Then, in 1932, he sold it to them.

Gloriously Underexposed

Beau Desert 18
The finishing hole at Beau Desert. Its massive green takes a full hour to mow.

Unlike the Pagets’ great Hall — demolished for scrap during the Depression — the clubhouse at Beau Desert has always been a modest affair, befitting its middle-class membership (that’s British middle class, mind you). This remains a very low-key place. Its “common” sensibility, its distance from Greater London begin to explain why few Americans have heard of the place, much less played it.

There is another distinctly working-class legacy at Beau Desert, a peculiar one having to do with the fluid, physical characteristics of the golf course itself. Fowler laid out these 18 atop an abandoned network of coal mines. As such, the ground at Beau Desert GC literally buckles and shifts with regularity, as ancient, subterranean shafts slowly deteriorate and collapse. The folks at Beau Desert refer to this phenomenon rather clinically as “subsidence”.

Some of these transformations are subtle. Others are fairly dramatic, such as the lengthy 4-foot depression that abruptly positioned itself in the 2nd fairway a few years back. This “ditch” was eventually filled in for safety reasons by the National Coal Board, “whose staff,” according to the club history, “are regular visitors, repairing subsidence damage as required by the terms of the Deed of Sale.”

Big or small, these changes tend to occur quite suddenly in the context of 100 years’ time. “The hills and hollows on the greens seem to change from one year to the next,” the club history reports. “Hardly a year has gone by without plans being made to level at least one.”

Some have been leveled, though these patches aren’t easily identified. As a group, the 18 putting surfaces at Beau Desert remain most flamboyant. They are, in short, some of the wildest, most interesting greens in the Midlands. In 1974, the club consulted with British architect Fred Hawtree about “leveling” a few. To the members he wrote, “There are a great many eccentric contours on greens which lead to approaches and putts which go beyond a spirit of adventure.”

Ultimately, the club implemented but a few of Hawtree’s proposed changes, suggesting the membership here smartly adheres to Goldwater’s golfing corollary: that extremism in defense of high adventure is no vice.

It’s very much in vogue today to develop golf courses in and around abandoned quarries or gravel pits. Beau Desert was a forebear in this regard, as Fowler routed his 18 holes amid and directly atop centuries-old coal-mining operations, the last of which ceased activity only in 1993. Indeed, the opening drive here plays across a derelict collier works, dead uphill to an inventively canted punchbowl green. Check out the club’s online photo gallery featuring this and the other 17 holes here.

Fowler particularly liked his cross-bunkers and cross-mounding: Beau Desert is replete with these perpendicular hazards. At the 2nd — a titanic par-4 that plays 458 yards along the crest of Cannock Chase — he coyly positioned one well short of the putting surface. It juts in from the left and appears to closely guard the green. This is the illusory gambit Fowler creates here for A) those unfamiliar with the course; or B) those with short memories.

The bunkering at Beau Desert is uniformly strategic and comely. Deep and rugged-looking, the greenside hazards complement well the hugely pitched, severely undulating putting surfaces, which come in all shapes and sizes. The 9th for example is situated at the business end of a 263-yard par-4; it’s drivable, in theory. But the volcano green is so small and severely tilted right-to-left that approaching it with a sand-wedge is harrowing enough.

At nearly 10,000 square feet, the 18th green is one of the largest in England and chock full of cunning movement. It has more pin placements than you’ve had hot dinners (!). Cutting this behemoth with an old 14-inch greens mower required the operator to walk some 6,300 yards, Beau Desert’s full yardage from the back tees.

Fowler also indulged in a bit of elephant-interment here — in some unlikely places, such as along the perimeters of putting surfaces. The humps at nos. 4 and 5, for example, are most disconcerting as they obscure portions of their respective greens from the landing areas. They also make putting anywhere in their general vicinity a stern test (read: complete nightmare).

The one-shot holes at Beau Desert are all strong, yet the best one (the 167-yard 7th) is also the longest. Some might find fault with four par-3s all measuring between 142 and 167, and this begins to explain why the par-70 course measures just 6,310 yards from the tips. Yet length has little do with the challenge here. The trick is negotiating the greens and keeping the ball out of the ubiquitous rough areas, a roiling sea of hillocks and hollows covered with heather, bracken and knee-high native grasses — no small task in Beau Desert’s ever-present wind, as Darwin made clear.

The R&A held final British Open qualifying here for 17 consecutive years, ending in 2000. Former Club Secretary John Bradbury noted that many players preferred Beau Desert as a qualifying site “because they knew good golf would be rewarded. In other words, it was possible to qualify and still be over par.”

International Olympic Committee Learning the Hard Truths of PGA Tour Incentives

International Olympic Committee Learning the Hard Truths of PGA Tour Incentives

by Hal Phillips 1 Comment

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (May 8, 2016) — The life of an elite professional golfer is one of great privilege, born of great skill. This spring, the International Olympic Committee has learned what organizers of PGA Tour events have known for some time: Getting elite players to schedule your event is like trying to lure multi-millionaires to time-share presentations. When it comes to PGA Tour incentives, piles of money aren’t what they used to be.

The news that Adam Scott won’t be competing in Rio broke just as the Tour’s traveling road show stops this week in Charlotte for the Wells Fargo Championship, a top-tier event not just on account of its huge purse and quality golf course (Quail Hollow GC), but for the way it has traditionally pampered competitors. This aspect of tour life is seldom discussed outside the most wonky, Tour-obsessed websites and cable channels. However, the last decade has witnessed a startling arms race of perks and incentives, all bestowed with an eye toward delivering “name” players to individual PGA Tour events.

It’s a hard trick to turn, making elite players show up. As the IOC is now learning, top-shelf professionals have no real incentive to show up anywhere outside the Majors and World Golf Championship events, as they set their own schedules and money no longer motivates them. Olympic glory? Representing your country? Cementing golf as an Olympic sport after a 112-year hiatus? A familiar 72-hole stroke-play format (as opposed to the team formats first advanced by Olympic organizers)? Today, all these prospects, conceived to excite and allure, are likely to be met with indifferent yawns.

And why wouldn’t they yawn? Top players are so well compensated, the incentive to play 25-30 events per year — thus spreading around to many events the Tour’s considerable star power — has largely been removed. The fallback position for event organizers: lavishing\ perks and niceties on players and their families.

At The Players Championship, conducted over Pete Dye’s TPC Sawgrass course each May, a purpose-built 77,000-square-foot clubhouse sports a cavernous locker room, a separate champions locker room, and a full-on spa that, during the tournament, dispenses free services — not just massage but manicures, pedicures and hot shaves — to players and their family members. The gourmet vittles served here are considered the best on Tour.

PGA Tour Incentives: It’s about the Experience

There was a time when tour events burnished reputations by serving really good milk shakes and providing courtesy cars. The latter are today de rigeuer for all players, at every tour stop, but Charlotte takes it up a notch. Each golfer there is provided a silver Mercedes-Benz S-300 or S-500 for the week. They are also entitled to police escorts if they happen to encounter something unseemly, like traffic congestion. Free valet parking at Quail Hollow? Of course — even the caddies get that!

Event organizers here have recognized that cosseting players (and caddies) is good, but indulging their wives and girlfriends is equally vital. During past Wells Fargo events, Tour WAGS have been flown by private jet to visit the Biltmore Estate, the enormous Vanderbilt mansion in Asheville, where the movie Being There was filmed. Players themselves have, in the past, been ferried by helicopter to the Loews Motor Speedway, where they get behind the wheels of NASCAR rigs.

This is just a sampling of what has, in the past, been done for players and their families. I’m not exactly sure what goodies and jet-set diversions were supplied to them in Charlotte this week. The Tour has wisely stopped publicizing this stuff, as it can appear out of touch or unseemly. But there remains the very real expectation that tour-event organizers must continually up the ante in this regard, or else “name” players simply won’t schedule you. The purse — $1,134,000 to the winner in Charlotte this year — is almost an afterthought.

This is what the IOC is up against in Brazil. Forget the romance of lodging alongside triple jumpers in the Olympic village. These guys are used to the availability of private homes. Throw in the Zika virus, plus the sheer distance, and I think we can all see what’s coming. Olympic rosters for the 60-player men’s and women’s fields will be finalized July 11. Between then and now, expect a parade of polite declinations, citing the need to spend more time with family, the safety of those families, and perhaps the quality of milk shakes in Rio.

Recalling, Replicating Scenes from the Parking Lot at Ponkapoag
My dad on the 8th green at Nehoiden, right across the street from the house where grew up. It's late November; the greens have been staked for fencing at the first snow. We sprinkled his ashes here, and there's a memorial bench for him just right of this frame, on the 9th tee. There is no headstone in any cemetery for him. This is his spot, for all eternity.

Recalling, Replicating Scenes from the Parking Lot at Ponkapoag

by Hal Phillips 2 Comments

H9

My dad with his dad, the original Harold Gardner Phillips.

I try to write each August about my dad, Harold Gardner Phillips, Jr., as he passed away (all too soon) at the end of this month back in 2011. This exercise is equal parts homage and memory aid as I suppose one fears these recollections, now perfectly strong, will somehow fade with time. This year the jog happened naturally, as today I stand poised at the fulcrum of a generational see-saw: My son Silas goes off to college tomorrow, and so the memories rush back re. the day my dad saw me off, out of the nest and into the world.

As is the case with so many stories I’ve shared about my dad, golf plays an intersectional role. This one’s even more fitting because it centers on Ponkapoag Golf Course in Canton, Mass., a municipal track we played dozens of times growing up. One used to be able to see it from Route 128, the frenetic inner ring road that circles Greater Boston, though methinks ever-maturing trees now obscure that view. Today there are only 27 holes at “Ponky”, but there used to be 36. The course one used to see from the highway was nothing special. The other 18, however, was a Donald Ross design from the 1930s that, despite the rigors of time, high traffic and miniscule maintenance budgeting remained damned sublime.

My dad and I played Ponky together on a several occasions, but this was mainly a place where he, my mom and various other parental figures dropped my friends and me for an entire day of golfing adventure. It also served as venue to a pair of tournaments: The CYO (that’s “Catholic Youth Organization” for those who may not have grown up in Boston, where the Church held such wide-ranging cultural sway) and the New England Junior Championship.

That day I left for college, a cloudy late August morning in 1982, I was scheduled to play a quarterfinal match at the New England Juniors, as I had qualified earlier that week for what stood to be a potentially anti-climactic match-play portion. I had packed our Dodge Omni that morning with all my stuff. Win or lose, I would decamp for Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., some 100 miles southwest, directly from the golf course.

As it happened, I won the match, bettering a kid from Rhode Island named Fred, 3 & 1. I signed my card, informed a quite delighted Fred that I would be withdrawing, told the officials, and walked off to the parking lot.

There to my surprise I found my dad, who had just rolled up.

As a kid, my competitive golfing career would never prove particularly extensive. Indeed, this tournament and the New England Juniors the year before were the only two events I had ever played, to that point. Golf was a fall sport at my high school, as was soccer, which took clear precedence. In other words, while my dad had played hundreds of rounds of golf with me over the years, and we maintained a spirited, running match for decades, he had never seen me play a proper tournament match against anyone else.

One time, in college, he showed up at Pleasant Valley Country Club near Worcester to see me play a collegiate match featuring Wesleyan, Springfield College (I think) and Assumption. I know the latter to be true, for certain, because I ended up facing a guy from Assumption that day named Frank Vana, who would go on to win multiple Massachusetts Amateur crowns. My dad worked near PVCC and he showed up on the 9th or 10th hole, at which point my game imploded. He scurried off after we finished 13, not wanting to cause/witness any more carnage.

For many years, I was never sure what exactly he meant to “do” that day — in the parking lot at Ponky. We had said our goodbyes that morning, and it wasn’t as though I was going off to war. But today, I can see he probably wanted one last moment with his boy, who would soon leave and return in some way, shape or form, a man.

I’ve been trying to remember what exactly my dad and I talked about during that moment in the parking lot. I surely went over the match with him, and the curious aspect of my winning but withdrawing. I don’t remember that we got into anything particularly deep. I remember being touched that he had shown up, but there were no tears. I’m pretty sure we shook hands.

See here a relevant excerpt from the eulogy I delivered for him in 2011:

My dad was not a particularly emotive man, not for most of the 40 odd years I had a clear picture of him. I remember one time I came home from college and was determined, in the sure and committed way of college students, to simply start hugging him and telling him that I loved him. I had seen other dads do this and had been impressed — that a father and son could be so open and physical in their affection for one another. I wanted that for my dad and me, to be honest. So I started out with hugs and, well… the man never really got comfortable with it. It just wasn’t his way. I remember telling him during this same period that I loved him, and noting that, to some extent, one is obliged to let people know that this is so, to verbalize it, to say it plain. He said that wasn’t his way, that he instead showed people he loved them. I remember thinking, at the time, that this was something of a cop-out.

But the man knew himself. As I grew older, I better recognized the ways he expressed intimacy and let you know how he felt. There are no rules or universalities for these things, I’ve learned, as I myself have grown as old and, in some ways, as wise as he. The more I observed this, over time, I can report that my dad did practice this sort of behavior consistently, with all sorts of people.

I think one of the keys to understanding and appreciating my dad is this: If he enjoyed something, his greatest joy was to share that enjoyment with you. If there was a piece of music that he found thrilling — and the man enjoyed a notably wide musical taste — he wanted you to listen to it and, ideally, derive the same thrill, too. If there was something he had seen on PBS or C-span, he wanted you to see it, too. If there was food item he had acquired or my mom had made, he wanted you to consume it. Right then. His enthusiasm for this sharing was really quite intimate, almost childlike in its enthusiasm. You might walk into my parents’ home, having not seen him for weeks, and his most deeply held desire was to have you sit down and watch an interview with the historian Gordon Wood, right then, so soon as you put your bag down.

And there was another aspect to this: He wanted you to listen or watch or taste or, to the extent possible, read this stuff WITH you. He wanted to sit right next to you while we watched the Gordon Wood interview, together — so he could pause the recording and discuss it. He wanted you to put the earphones on while he would stand right there beside you, grinning giddily, as you listened to some choral piece by Arvo Part. He would call just to see how far you were in a book he had recommended, to get updates on your progress…

I loved my dad but I, like many sons, have fashioned a great deal of my life in response to his. When Silas heads off tomorrow morning, there will be hugs. There will be tears. That said, I expect that whatever I’m feeling at that moment, is the same thing my dad felt that day, some 32 years ago, in the parking lot at Ponkapoag.

Silas is flying to Montana tomorrow morning, with his mom. I suppose that if I could practically meet them in Chicago for one last goodbye, I’d do it.

New US Soccer Jersey Fitting — For Quick 18

New US Soccer Jersey Fitting — For Quick 18

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

US soccer jersey 2014

As there is little media crossover between the golf and soccer worlds, allow me to relate one such news nugget re. the sartorial tempest now brewing over what the U.S. soccer team will be wearing when they take the field at June’s World Cup, in Brazil.

See above. Apparently this is the new U.S. Men’s National Team home jersey for the upcoming tournament, soccer’s quadrennial world championship. Notice anything familiar about it? Yep, it looks remarkably like a golf shirt — and early returns from soccernistas the world over have not been positive. See here some of the chatter the new shirt has generated online.

One could reasonably argue as to why anyone should care. But considering the blockbuster sales opportunities represented by futbol jerseys, here and abroad, it was an odd choice by U.S. Soccer and its official outfitter, Nike. There are undeniable similarities between traditional soccer jerseys and modern day golf shirts, namely the collar and button-style placket. But it’s odd that U.S. Soccer and Nike would appear to have missed the mark by two years — this looks like something Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson would wear to Brazil in 2016, when golf makes it return as a bona fide Olympic event.

Maybe you’re like me, in that you’re a bit sensitive about golf’s less-than-stellar track record in the duds department. We’ve made some admirable progress in this regard, I think, as it wasn’t that long ago that outsiders considered golf a game for rich white guys in bad pants. It’s unfortunate enough that a) the good folks at Loud Mouth are trying to bring back utterly ridiculous trousers; and b) white belts have successfully wheedled their way back into the golf couture (somewhere, Greg Brady is laughing).

Now we have soccer fans ragging golf, indirectly, for the plain-vanilla, markedly uncool nature of golf shirts, which, thanks to clothiers like Nike, have actually come a long way.

The whole thing is a bit mystifying, and it’s hard to see how golf gains . Nike is known for pushing the envelope with its golf stylings. What could possibly have moved them to put forward something so lacking in flash? If this was an attempt at something retro, I, as a soccer fan, don’t see the reference point. I think it’s safe to say that if one can plausibly wear a soccer shirt for a round at dad’s club, and it doesn’t look out of place beneath a blue blazer, the youth market will not be impressed.

 

10 Questions for Guan Tianlang

10 Questions for Guan Tianlang

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

Guan Tianlang web

How many 14-year-olds do you know who warm up for a star turn with Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy by defending the most coveted amateur title in Asia, in hopes of re-punching his ticket to The Masters? That is the quite extraordinary story of Guan Tianlang, who, as we speak, is teeing it up at the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship (AAC) in China’s Shandong province, at Nanshan International GC. The AAC runs Thursday to Sunday — winning it means a Masters invite (Augusta National GC is a tournament organizer) but also a final qualifying slot for the 2014 British Open. So soon as his AAC has concluded, Mr. Guan (surnames first for the Chinese, of course), flies south to Hainan island, where he will participate in a morning Skills Challenge with Messrs. Woods and McIlroy, at Mission Hills Resort Haikou (that afternoon, the two pros will contest The Match at Mission Hills to be held over the resort’s Blackstone Course). Guan, of course, made Masters history earlier this year — competing as a 14 year old and making the cut on golf’s biggest stage. I recently had the chance to sit down with Guan to discuss the state of his game, his travels, his history with Tiger and Rory, and his relationship to Mission Hills, where he’s been a fixture at junior tournaments since 2008 (he’s a native of nearby Guangzhou). Oh, and for the record, all this talk about being a precocious 14 year old goes away this week. Guan turns 15 on Friday, Oct. 25.

 

Q: You are quite famous, internationally, following your performance at the Masters in April 2013. Tell us what you’ve been doing since that time.

Guan Tianlang: The Masters did make me better known than before. I played several PGA Tour events after The Masters, including the Zurich Classic, HP Byron Nelson Championship, The Memorial, and FedEx St. Jude Classic — before taking the whole summer off for fitness training and catching up with school work. I played one Japan Tour event, the Vana H Cup KBC Augusta, after coming back from the States. Now I am going to school as a normal student and getting ready for the Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship in late October.

Q: The slow-play penalty you incurred during the second round at The Masters gained a lot of attention, as well. How do you view that episode now? Do you play faster, or do you think the penalty was perhaps unfairly applied?

GTL: As I said back then, I respect the decision and I accept it completely.  It was a tough day. The weather was bad and it took more time to make the right decision, and you know, it’s The Masters! I have a good routine and I haven’t changed much because of the penalty. But yes, I do pay more attention to my pace and I think I have been doing well on that part. Overall, it was a very valuable experience.

Q: Describe your history with Mission Hills. You have worked on your game there? Competed in tournaments here?

GTL: I have participated in more than 10 junior golf tournaments hosted by Mission Hills, since I was seven. And I won several championships there. The courses are beautiful and challenging. Actually the second time I met Tiger Woods was at Mission Hills Shenzhen. A great memory.

Q: There are many courses at Mission Hills — 12 in Shenzhen and 10 on Hainan Island. Which is your favorite course?

GTL: My favorite one must be the Mission Hills Norman Course. But I haven’t been to the Haikou Mission Hills. I hear it is amazing and can’t wait to play there!

Q: You will appear at a junior clinic and skills challenge prior to Tiger Woods’ and Rory McIlroy’s Match at Mission Hills on Oct. 28. You already have a history with both players.

GTL: Yes, I’ve met both of them before. I met Tiger at the HSBC Championship when I was 12, and we played a par-3 hole together. Met him the second time at Mission Hills Shenzhen and received a trophy from him. And, of course, I got to play with him for 9 holes at Augusta National on the Tuesday of the Masters; it was a dream come true, as everyone knows he is my idol. I haven’t played with Rory before but we had a nice chat at the Masters. He was very supportive and said he wasn’t as good as me when he was 14. He is humble and a very sweet guy. A great player as well!

Q: Have you attended similar junior clinics as a spectator? If so, what did you take away from the experience?

GTL: I have attended some junior golf clinics, when I was younger. The one hosted by Mission Hills with Tiger Wood was one. I can’t say how much in terms of golfing skills I have learned from the instructor, but I shall say the whole experience did inspire and motivate me to practice harder and become a better golfer.

Q: Was Tiger Woods always role model for you? Are you old enough to have the same thoughts about Rory McIlroy?

GTL: Tiger Wood has always been my idol. I believe he is the role model as a golfer for many, many people out there. Look at him: He won 5 PGA Tour events in one year and he is now the world No.1. He is the greatest player of his time and perhaps will become the greatest of all time soon. Rory is such a mature and great player. I can see how much more I need work on myself — to grow into a player like him. Both of them are the players I look up to. I’m very excited to get the chance to challenge them.

Q: What advice did Tiger give you during that Masters practice round — anything that helped you during the tournament, or with your golf going forward?

GL: Yes, it was a great experience and probably the most nervous 9 holes in my life. He is my idol, after all. We did chat a bit during the practice round and also off the course. Lots of advice. But the one piece, as other great golfers also offered to me, is enjoying your game and embracing your experience at The Masters. It was my first Masters journey, and I hope there will be many more coming.

Q: You turn 15 on Oct. 25, just before The Match at Mission Hills. You remain a young man, but do you feel as if golf is more popular today, in China, than it was five years ago? If so, how can you tell?

GTL: I believe so, absolutely.  First of all, you can see more and more media are paying attention to the sport. Second, more and more juniors start to pick up the game, which makes the future of golf in China very promising.  The golf community in China is expanding with its addition to the 2016 Olympic. Golf will become more and more popular here for sure. It is a great sport, why not?

Q: When will American golf fans see you again? Does your tournament schedule bring you to North America in 2014?

GTL: I hope everyone who supports me will watch me and root for me when I play other events outside the U.S., such as Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship. Augusta National is an organizer [winning this event last year earned Guan his Masters place in 2013] and it is the best amateur event in the region. I am going back to defend my title and I hope they will be watching. I haven’t planned any tournaments in North American next year. Hopefully I will win my ticket back to 2014 Masters.

 

FootGolf? Yes, FootGolf. Where Do I Sign…

FootGolf? Yes, FootGolf. Where Do I Sign…

by Hal Phillips 3 Comments

 

Here’s all I have to say about the advent of FootGolf: “It’s about freakin’ time.” Anything that essentially combines my two favorite participatory sports — and knee-high argyle socks — has my full attention and support.

I knew there was something out there like this, but until I read this piece, I had no idea it was so well developed, and so intrinsically awesome. As a devotee of disc golf, I embrace the game in all its alternative forms. But this one takes it to a new level. There’s even a rule book, to be consulted in the event one’s approach hits the pin and ricochets backward into a lake. (Of course, if that should happen, the ball would be floating on the surface and could presumably be retrieved, prior to a legal drop).

Soccer and golf have a long and distinguished history together. There’s the dreaded foot wedge, of course. And there was that time Alan Shearer played through our group at Gleneagles. I’d love to see him hole out with a proper foot wedge and run the length of the hole with his signature hand held high.

Check out more information here. There’s apparently a FootGolf facility in Las Vegas, but that’s awfully far away. If anyone out there knows where this activity can be pursued here in New England, I’m all ears. After all, there was a FootGolf World Cup held in Hungary in 2012. I now have my sights set on 2016.