Furniture Displacement Theory Spares Nothing, No One

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

The phone booth in question, which came from Boston’s Hampshire House — the restaurant above the Bull & Finch, the ‘Cheers’ bar of television fame.

Ed. — From 2000-2003, I wrote an op-ed column for the Portland Press-Herald, having been invited to do so by then editorial page editor John Porter. He had lined up 4-5 different people of distinctly different ages to reflect on their respective existences at these varied life stages. In fact, the regular op-ed feature was called “Stages”.  I was the ‘30something with kids’ columnist. As I’m now a 50something and my kids — the frequent subject of these columns — are off to college, I figured they’d make for some fun, retrospective fodder here at halphillips.net.

By Hal Phillips

First the good news: We’ve come into a lovely piano, a black upright that has been in my family since it was first purchased, new, in 1878. I frankly couldn’t believe my mother was prepared to part with such a hallowed thing, but why question serendipity?

It wasn’t completely random, this bequest. Periodically I’ll see something in my parents’ house, the place I grew up, and I’ll say matter-of-factly, “Will that to me, would you please?” With a sister and brother who share my basic tastes (they are, after all, frighteningly similar to me genetically and experientially) one can’t be too careful.

Anyway, I requested the Steinway at a later date and I’ll be damned if she didn’t offer it up forthwith!

As for the bad news, well, it’s become a running joke in my house… Basically, the place is only so big. As my wife and I get older and come into more compelling stuff, like pianos we don’t have to pay for, other things have to go. Invariably, what goes are my possessions — that is, those things I brought to the marriage seven years ago.

The dynamic is bittersweet: First, there’s the sanguine feeling of having acquired something really cool; then the downer — the realization that yet another of my things will soon be politely but ever so systematically removed from the mix.

Like I said, it’s become a comic, ritual dance between my wife and me. She’ll rearrange the living room and I’ll notice another of my things has been set to one side. “Where’s that gonna go?” I’ll ask, assuming my naïve role in the drama.

Her role? A pregnant pause followed by a sweet smile.

I know well this coy pause. It’s my cue to say, “You know, I bet that would look good in the barn.”

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Decade-old, Yank-laden Fulham Phenomenon Revisited

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

[Ed. Sixteen years ago, I ventured to the SW6 section of London to report on the Yank-laden Fulham FC phenomenon for espn.com. That piece, posted below in two lengthy parts, lived a good long life online but sadly, now it’s gone. It has been reprinted below — just in time to stand, as an EPL bookend, with newly Yank-infused Leeds United … For those whose memories may fail them: The Cottagers would survive the 2007 relegation battle referenced below, then spend another seven years in the Premiership, their  scrappy, mid-table tenure highlighted by a 2010 appearance in the Europa Cup final. After two promotions followed by quick demotions, FFC are back in the Prem for 2022-23  — with ageless American Tim Ream beside Jedi Robinson in defense.]

LONDON — There are moments, sublime moments, when spectators sitting in the Johnny Haynes Stand at Craven Cottage can look to the far corner of the ground — where the perpendicular, geometric grandstands fail to meet — and see straight through to the Thames. The river fairly well glistens on sunny spring afternoons like the one we spent late in March, watching Fulham F.C. and its sizable American contingent, players and fan, salvage a 1-1 draw with visiting Portsmouth. Through these gaps in the stadium seating, one spies Putney on the far bank before yet another eight sculls in and out of the V-shaped frame — a window, however small and diversionary, on why Fulham is one of the Premiership’s most compelling clubs.

American soccer fans might not know Fulham Football Club from Scunthorpe United if the two shared the same lower division and the same dearth of Yanks on their rosters. But Fulham does play in the Premiership — for now — and the club has made a habit of buying up American talent on the cheap, to the point where Craven Cottage has become ground zero for U.S. soccer fans heading to London to check on our boys.

That was exactly our charge in late March: To stop merely scouring the Internet for the odd mention of Brian McBride, Carlos Bocanegra and Clint Dempsey. To “just go” and see them in person, while sampling those venues where would-be Fulham fans might eat, drink and be merry on either side of Putney Bridge.

We didn’t arrive in South London expecting to watch the club fight for its Premiership life. However, as it turned out, our late-March visit would prove the club’s last carefree weekend of the season. Having won only twice since Dec. 18, the Cottagers followed their home draw vs. Portsmouth with two successive defeats. Coach Chris Coleman would be sacked on April 11, replaced by Lawrie Sanchez, and Fulham’s precarious position — just four points above the drop zone — set the stage for a harrowing three weeks of relegation-avoidance.

None of this appeared at all probable just two weeks prior, when we alighted our District Line train into the spring sunshine. A quick, intuitive look at the London Underground map might lead one to exit The Tube at Fulham Broadway, but that’s miles away — and serves the other Premiership club in SW6, Chelsea. Putney Bridge Station is your best point of departure, your gateway to the ground itself, to a fine bunch of pubs and the folks who comprise Fulham Nation.

This tidy neighborhood on the north bank of the Thames has everything you need for pre-match entertainment. The closest pub to the Tube stop, however, the Eight Bells, is one designated for away fans. So don’t show up there in your Brian McBride replica shirt. The day we happened by, still some two hours before kick-off, Portsmouth fans had spilled out onto the surrounding sidewalk eight deep and there were dozens of policemen about, mounted and otherwise, to keep the peace.

We didn’t venture into the Bells. Too crowded. But we did, as clear Fulham backers, enjoy a pint and some pleasant chat with several Pompey fans in the Temperance, formerly known as the Pharaoh & Firkin, another de facto “visitors” pub serving Craven Cottage. Just that day, rumors were swirling that Michael Dell, of Dell Computer fame, was angling to buy Fulham F.C. (word of Wal-Mart billionaire Stan Kroenke’s new 9.9 percent stake in Arsenal emerged a week later). One Portsmouth supporter, Paul, politely bemoaned the fact that Americans George Gillett and Tom Hicks had already purchased Liverpool, Randy Lerner had snapped up Aston Villa, and Malcolm Glazer had assumed control of Manchester United, against the club’s will. “We didn’t think you Americans even liked proper football,” Paul said with a wry smile.

The best Fulham pub in this village is The Golden Lion, directly across Fulham High Street from the Temperance and teeming with locals. Game-day spreads are often served up gratis; the big screen beckons for those without tickets; there’s always someone at the bar ready, willing and able to talk Fulham footy; and, if you don’t fancy the menu’s standard meat and potatoes, you’ll find a great little curry house (India Cottage) right next door. What’s more, there’s an official Fulham supporters shop just around the corner.

There’s also The Larrick here for fans in need of another pint option but, truth be told, the best Fulham pubs are located across the river, on the south bank. Just over Putney Bridge — the very span featured as a shotgun-dump in the Guy Ritchie film “Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels” — and up a quiet side street sits The Bricklayer’s Arms, an old-fashioned, off-the-high-street, football-supporting, still-proper-pint-pulling public house if there ever was one. Another sign of its legitimacy? No TV. If you’re a purist, they reckon, you’re at the game and the other fixtures don’t much matter.

One Fulham supporter, John from Reading, explained to us that several “football” pubs on both sides have actually gone away of late, and not necessarily for lack of support: “What they’ve done with a lot of these pubs — The Cottage is a good example — is they’ll rip out the insides and turn them into nice, gentrified dining pubs. All the clientele disappear, of course, all the football fans. A good British business model that. Get a load of Ikea furniture and there you go, you’ve got an empty pub. Well done.”

Rest assured, plenty remain. The Whistle & Flute, Half Moon and Coat & Badge — each another block or so south of the Thames — are all cracking venues where, if you show up wearing FFC scarves, you’ll be among friends. But The Brick is the choice here for atmosphere, beer selection (pulled pints of Taylor’s; try the Landlord) and camaraderie.

There is no tailgate scene here. All that social energy is funneled into these local pubs, where the home club and its fortunes are dissected, lauded and bemoaned en masse, by turn and according to a predictable fixture list. One Fulham supporter at The Brick summed it up quite neatly: “It’s a social life that I don’t have to organize.”

•••

It doesn’t much matter whether the pre-game pint comes north or south of the Thames. If one’s ultimate destination is Craven Cottage, one is pretty much obliged to approach the ground from the east — directly through Bishops Park, a stretch of riverside green space that surely stands as the most comely stadium walk-up in the Premiership, if not all Christendom.

It’s late March and we’re in town to watch Fulham F.C. and its bevy of American footballers play host to Portsmouth. The sun is shining and life is good. Over the coming 10 days, these Cottagers will fail to secure a single point from three games. In two weeks, Coach Chris Coleman will be sacked. Of course, as we traipse through Bishop’s Park on our way to face visiting Pompey, no one knows any of this. The mood is buoyant as we join thousands of Fulham supporters for a long journey that nevertheless passes quickly, as befits a walk in the park.

Craven Cottage was built in 1896 and hasn’t been significantly modernized since. Yes, the club has added seating on the Thames side, but the original Johnny Haynes Stand opposite — named for the man who played a club-record 658 games for Fulham and scored 158 goals between 1952-70 — looks all of its 110-plus years: well kept but truly ancient, right down to its original brick masonry, its lattice of exposed ductwork under the stands, and its wooden fold-down seats buffed smooth and dark by eons of intimate backside contact. Imagine Fenway Park, built for soccer and sitting right on the Charles River — with no plastic and better beer (at two-thirds the price). That’s Craven Cottage, the perfect venue for London’s oldest professional football club.

At halftime, with Fulham scoreless and trailing by a goal, we amble back down under the stand for the traditional beer and cottage pie — like shepherd’s pie, only with beef in place of lamb. We retrieve this sustenance at our leisure, unmolested by great masses of people. Craven Cottage is so small (capacity: 24,600) and, one could argue, so well designed, it never feels crowded. Even if the place is crawling with Yanks.

“Starting in the summer and throughout the season we’ve got loads of Americans coming over,” Graham James tells me. He’s the retail manager at Craven Cottage. “We have a big American fan base now. [Brian] McBride kicked it off really, being the most well known at the moment. Now with [Clint] Dempsey just kicking off his career, we have a younger element coming in. There’s been good progress for American players here, so it’s no surprise they’ve become supporters. And they do spend a lot of money.”

Despite the exchange rate. With banks trading nearly two U.S. dollars for every British pound, it’s ironic (if not surprising) that Americans spend so freely in the Craven Cottage Stadium Shop, where James chats amiably before touching finger to ear and excusing himself. Fulham has stockpiled U.S. players precisely because they are a cheap source of talent. In happier times, Coleman had said of McBride, “For the amount of money we spent and the service he has given us, it has got to be the best £700,000 that anyone has ever spent.”

A cynic would point out that American players provide great value these days while the American consumer, traveling to see them, gets precious little. A small price to pay, however, for nowhere else have U.S. players made such a positive impression on a foreign club, beginning with the 1999 arrival of keeper Marcus Hahnemann (now of fellow Premiership side Reading). Eddie Lewis came aboard in 2000 and while he didn’t exactly set SW6 on fire, his performance didn’t prevent the subsequent acquisition of Carlos Bocanegra, Dempsey and McBride, who, at 34, recently signed on for another season at the Cottage.

Nearly everywhere else Americans play British soccer, they are still seen as something of an oddity. Only at Fulham can supporters view their Yanks with an eye unjaundiced by anomaly.

“With the Premiership these days, it’s almost unusual to see a lot of English players in a side,” jokes John from Reading, whom we met walking back through Bishops Park after the match. “But I think the American players have made their mark now. There have always been good [U.S.] goalkeepers, but now you find them making their mark in the lower reaches of the Premier League. It’ll be interesting to see what happens in the next five or 10 years. If they make the next step in quality.”

“You take a player like Brian McBride,” interjects Ferret, another Fulham lifer now ensconced with us at The Bricklayers Arms, the Fulham pub across the river in Putney, “and I think people see him for what he is: an English-style forward, in the Teddy Sheringham mold. Teddy had skills, wasn’t completely full of flair but he looked after himself, worked very hard, put his head in, and thinks about it.”

Even before Coleman’s departure there had been grumbling, from some quarters, that while he was a shrewd judge of young talent, the coach didn’t necessarily develop said talent. John from Reading, for one, fears for Dempsey’s future with the club. “I’m a bit worried about him because I think he’s got a lot of promise. He’s certainly not playing much now, through no fault of his own.”

Indeed, Dempsey did not feature in the 1-1 draw with Pompey. He sat out a subsequent loss at Everton, and only came on for the final 20 minutes in another defeat, home to Manchester City. John from Reading’s mate Tristan reckons Deuce may end up signing next season at a newly relegated Premiership team, or another Championship side, where he’ll get plenty of playing time.

Today, Cottager fans on both sides of the Atlantic are hoping that newly relegated Premier League side isn’t Fulham itself. The April 9 loss to Man City put the club within four points of the relegation zone with five to play. Fulham has 35 points and while no top-flight team with that many has ever gone down, the club’s two remaining home fixtures are no bargain and the team hasn’t won on the road in 13 attempts.

It would be crying shame for Fulham to be relegated. Here’s an underdog club that has gallantly and cleverly carved out a credible spot in today’s top flight; a mere 10 years ago they were a third division side, four levels down. Fulham has earned everything it’s got — unlike the blue-shirted, free-spending bunch who also reside in SW6. If one can get past the fact that Hugh Grant and Daniel “Harry Potter” Radcliffe are counted among FFC’s celebrity supporters, and the club is owned by arch media hound Mohamed Al-Fayed (owner of Harrods, father of ill-fated Dodi), this is a club anyone could get behind.

But the reality isn’t nearly so sentimental. If Fulham does go down, its Americans go down with it. How long will we wait before another Premiership club fields three Yanks? Hard to say, but this much is clear: You can still see them all, in Fulham jerseys, at Craven Cottage on April 21 (v. Blackburn) and May 5 (v. Liverpool). Catch them playing Premiership football while you can.

­—30—

Welsh golf exceeds the hype, in unexpected ways
The 11th at Royal St. David's (photo courtesy of Brandon Tucker/WorldGolf.com)

Welsh golf exceeds the hype, in unexpected ways

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

Royal St. David’s Golf Club and its singular Welsh backdrop, Harlech Castle

 

The British Open is nearly underway, and naturally there are myriad reasons to visit the U.K. with your golf clubs and, well, none of them have much to do with the British Open or any of the courses that host the Open Championship. Look at Wales, which is right next door to Birkdale (to all of England, to be honest) and the Open has never been held there. Yet the golf up and down the northwestern Welsh coast is outstanding. What’s more, when you venture into this section of the British Isles, you enter a region so remote, so removed from modern resort and tournament conventions, that a golf journey there feels almost, well… Arthurian.

Indeed, a hefty chunk of the King Arthur legend is Welsh, drawn from early poetic sources such as Y Gododdin that are, like the Welsh language itself, pre-Christian. The Druids, the priestly class of the class, considered the Welsh island of Anglesey sacred, and this ancient, mystical feeling still pervades the country’s dark hollows, its untamed coastline, even its trees (The Celts thought them sacred, you know).

Here’s an example of how this world and the modern golfing world can interact:

About 15 years ago my girlfriend, Sharon, who would later become my wife, and I went to visit friends in Market Drayton, Shropshire, just over the Welsh border, in England, and not far from Birmingham. In fact, I was there on assignment, writing a travel piece re. where to play in the Midlands while attending the 1995 Ryder Cup (and we can see what sort of promotional effect that story had; when was the last time you heard of anyone visiting Edgbaston, Beau Desert or Hawkstone Park?).

Anyway, we decided to head west a couple hours, over the Welsh border to seaside Harlech, home to Royal St. David’s Golf Club. I had written a letter to the club secretary requesting the courtesy of the club (remember letters?), and he had kindly obliged. Still, we arrived in coat and tie, ready for an audience and perhaps a drink in the bar before teeing off.

Now, Sharon was a pretty rank novice at this stage. She had her own clubs and arrived at the club looking pretty darned smart in a turtleneck and one of my vintage sport jackets with the sleeves rolled up (remember the ‘90s?). Still, the club secretary was dubious. I don’t know whether he suspected her inexperience (none of us had handicap cards), or he was merely a mild sexist when it came to sheilas playing the course. Whatever the case, he followed us to the first tee to witness our inaugural drives. I’m not sure who was made more nervous by this, Sharon or myself, but she drilled one right down the middle about 230 yards and off we went. Come to think of it, that may have been the day I decided she was the one…

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The 1931 U.S. Open: Golf’s very own Bataan Death March

by Hal Phillips 1 Comment

George von Elm (left) and Billy Burke, combatants in the longest U.S. Open every contested..

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 were the unflinching principals in the most extraordinary physical and competitive test golf has ever seen: the 1931 U.S. Open, held some 86 Julys ago at The Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio.  As the central characters in what Grantland Rice called “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 was golf’s precursor to the Bataan Death March. 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, quite understandably, 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 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.”

Read on to sort through, with me, the fascinating details of this extraordinary championship, staged 80-plus years ago this summer by two fascinating figures whose stories have been obscured by time, during a period when American golf was wildly popular but still adjusting to the loss of its first truly dominant figure.

•••

The 1931 Open was the first since 1920 without one Bobby Jones in the field.

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Glass Slipper Be Damned: Golf’s Underdog Complex Continues to Puzzle

Glass Slipper Be Damned: Golf’s Underdog Complex Continues to Puzzle

by Hal Phillips 1 Comment

Keith Mitchell won last week’s Honda Classic, besting Brooks Koepka and Ricky Fowler with a 72-hole birdie. Headline writers at the Palm Beach Post were underwhelmed.

That giant sucking sound you may hear is the disappointment of American golf fans made manifest, as yet another “nobody” had made off with a PGA Tour title that might have gone to one of our 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 Keith Mitchell did so cannily at last week’s Honda Classic.

What’s less clear is why such a result leaves us all so cold. Why are golf’s surprise winners Humpty Dumpty, and not Cinderella?

When a man like Mitchell 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 “all time”. This urge to confirm that our stay on Earth spans momentous periods in history is why Grandpa 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.

Still, in the world of sports fandom, while we recognize and quietly root for dominant teams or individuals to achieve this greatness (a greatness we can brag about to our grandchildren), there has always been room for Underdogs. We also root for them 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, or UConn those however many under Geno Aurriema, 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 to Todd Hamilton, Ben Curtis, Mike Donald, Rich Beem or Charl Schwartzel, a good many of us reflexively hold our noses and root against them.

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Published Letters and Iberian Slang

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

A bit of housecleaning here at halphillips.net: First, I coined a useful, new word a while back. See below and feel free to deploy as part of your common parlance going forward:

Smoor n. archaic, 13th century Iberian slang for a mixed-race resident of Andalusia during the Muslim occupation of what is now modern Spain; one of mixed parentage with chocolate-, graham cracker-, or, less frequently, golden marshmallow-colored skin; one who stands to be roasted over an open fire for this crime of miscegenation.

•••

Next, I had a couple letters to the editor printed this spring in the Portland Press-Herald, not technically my “local” paper (those have folded) but published only 20 miles south and still the largest daily in Maine. See below, and if you want to check out the comments, visit here (you’ll find a pretty typical right-left troll exchange therein).

To the editor:

In this day and age of reckless, willfully obtuse, anti-government bloviation, it’s important to be clear about how/why government functions as it does, why it’s rarely “perfect”, but why it is nevertheless worth defending and maintaining. Today’s case in point: Kevin Miller’s April 25 story re. L.D. 1379, which would allow the Dept. of Marine Resources to more actively police (via GPS) disputed fishing boundaries. I’m no lobsterman. I’ve no dog in this fight. But here we clearly have an industry that cannot or will not police itself in civil fashion. All parties agree that escalation, even violence will ensue if nothing is done. Like so many prickly deals in a country of 330 million people, responsibility for any potential solution falls to government.

This scenario is typical. Government action is by nature reactive. It works slowly. It can be unwieldy. But when there’s a problem — when human nature and/or the “unerring” profit motive fail to address (or utterly pervert) that problem — it is the authority of last resort. That’s the story with L.D. 1379, and it’s the story behind 90 percent of the regulatory measures on the books today. Right-wingers are convinced that bureaucrats sit in rooms all day wondering how they can extend their unelected influence over this business sector or that public domain. That’s just not how it works. Observe the gestation of L.D. 1379. That’s how it works.

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Frank Rodway, MTM & TBR: RIP

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

When I moved to Portland, Maine, in 1992, abandoning Greater Boston for what I then considered the ends of the Earth, I lived at the expense of my new employer for those first 2-3 weeks in the city’s lovely West End. It reminded me of the Back Bay and my temporary residence, the modern art-strewn Pomegranate Inn, was so cool — and my apartment over the garage so spacious and funky — I’d have just as soon stayed there forever.

I met Frank Rodway because eventually I had to find my own place. At that time, Frank was owner and proprietor of Thomas Brackett Reed House, a 19th century brownstone once inhabited by and now named for the Maine Congressman and Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives at the turn of the 20th century, when America was slowly transitioning from insular, adolescent republic to imperialist bestrider of worlds. Frank was then a small, trim, 60-something fellow with a fit, vaguely military bearing. Before he even walked me upstairs to the third-floor apartment then available for rent, I mentioned my two cats, Scott and Zelda. “Oh, well, we don’t take pets here,” he said. Frank showed me the place anyway, which gave me the chance to pursue an historical charm offensive. The space was great — 13-foot pressed-tin ceilings; windows stretching from the floor to somewhere above my head; $525/month, heated! What’s more, I had just finished The Proud Tower, Barbara Tuchman’s magisterial history of Thomas Brackett Reed’s very heyday. We mixed it up, Frank and I, trading Mark Hanna anecdotes, book citations and recommendations. Half an hour later as he and I were walking back downstairs, I said it was too bad about the cats. “Oh, don’t worry about them,” he said.

Frank Rodway passed away this past January at the ripe old age of 91, the result of a fall on icy pavement as opposed to simple old age. I was among five former residents of Thomas Brackett Reed House who showed up to his memorial service in South Portland. TBR House was a different sort of rental property: An historic landmark, for starters, watched over by a guy, Mr. Rodway, who knew that history but also how to engender esprit de corps. This quite elegant building had a guest apartment on the first floor that tenants could rent for $25 a night. I routinely stashed my parents and visiting Greater Bostonians there. Every Christmas, that guest room and the entire first floor played host to Frank’s holiday party, a shindig that routinely proved the event of the season, as current and former residents alike renewed old acquaintances and partook of Frank’s legendarily strong and plentiful punch. I should never have known Steve Weatherhead and his lovely wife Annetta; they departed TBR just before I arrived. But I met them at these Christmas parties, along with longtime golfing buddy Michael Moore. At Frank’s funeral service, Steve recalled these parties among other things, but not before answering the question that opened his remarks: “I mean, who goes to their former landlord’s funeral?” Well, if it’s Frank Rodway, you go. He was one of a kind, as this obit (clearly written by the man himself) attests.

Another former TBR denizen in attendance this past January was one Mary Fowler, my upstairs neighbor and probably the first real friend I made in Maine. She remains one, but I thought of her again, in the immediate aftermath Frank’s memorial, when Mary Tyler Moore passed away.

Mary Fowler and I had a running joke, each of us claiming to be the Mary to the other’s Rhoda. “Hal,” she would start in, with not inconsiderable finality, “Rhoda was the loud Jew and Mary was the tactful WASP. And my name is Mary. Clearly, I am Mary and you are Rhoda in this relationship.”

“But May-uh,” I’d say in my best Brooklyn accent, “while all that is true, you live upstairs in the apartment crowded by charming eaves, while I reside in the open and airy apartment downstairs. Cultural heritage has nothing to do with it. It’s all about upstairs and downstairs. All the action takes place here, in my apartment. There are no eaves here. These are 13-foot, pressed tin ceilings. It’s all about the eaves!”

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Coats, Ties and Foursomes: Collegiate Golf in the UK

Coats, Ties and Foursomes: Collegiate Golf in the UK

by Hal Phillips 2 Comments

For all the trans-Atlantic DNA we share with our British golfing brethren, it’s easy and, I daresay, somewhat natural to assume that college golf here in the U.S. is pretty much the same as it is over there. Not so.

Top players from the U.K. (and mainland Europe) routinely travel stateside to hone their games at American colleges and universities. Indeed, many of these men, women and their games will be on display 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.

Yet, for my money, one can place collegiate golf alongside beer and period cinema as something the Brits still do better, with more nuance and panache, than we do. Yes, our universities turn out more tour professionals, but for the majority of college golfers, in both countries, that’s not the aim. 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, whose 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, but having played both sides of this fence, I’ll go with the Pommies.

At mighty Wesleyan, a perennial golfing doormat, the exercise we underwent 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; play 18 holes of medal (maybe match play, on that very rare occasion); 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:

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B-listed by the USGA, Riviera Ponders What Might Have Been

B-listed by the USGA, Riviera Ponders What Might Have Been

by Hal Phillips 0 Comments

 

[This piece was first posted in 2011. It seemed a good time to revisit, with the U.S. Open visiting yet another public course this June… hp]

I suppose we should count our blessings that a magnificent course like Riviera — a 1926 George Thomas design firmly ensconced in all the Top 100 lists that matter — still deigns to host PGA Tour events. As recently as 2001, when Riviera hosted the USGA Senior Open, club ownership was hell bent on securing a U.S. Open. There were multiple regrassings of the greens, which had not fared well during the club’s last major championship engagement, the 1995 PGA Championship, where our lasting image is a ground-level view of Steve Elkington’s winning putt bouncing frantically into our living rooms while traversing a hefty portion of Riviera’s pockmarked 18th green before disappearing into the cup. The 2001 Senior Open was to be Riviera’s chance at redemption, a very public audition for club ownership, tournament organizers and the course itself.

Looking back, the greens held up well enough but attendance was poor and it turns out not to have mattered a lick. The intervening years have witnessed a sea change in the USGA’s attitude toward the siting of its marquee event, and Riviera isn’t much discussed at all when future U.S. Open sites are the subject.

Why? Well, the 2002 Open at Bethpage really changed the way the USGA views itself and the national championship. The PR value of holding the tournament on a truly public course proved an undeniable boon to the USGA’s image and coffers. Crowds were huge, TV ratings soared, merchandize sales went nuts, and the USGA found a truly effective way to fight the impression that golf is game played exclusively by rich guys in bad pants. Private clubs weren’t barred going forward, by any means, but look at the list of Open sites played since 2002 and scheduled through 2017:

2017 – Erin Hills Golf Course, Erin, Wis.

2016 – Oakmont Country Club, Oakmont, Pa.

2015 – Chambers Bay, University Place, Wash.

2014 – Pinehurst No. 2, Pinehurst, N.C.

2013 – Merion Golf Club, Ardmore, Pa.

2012 – Olympic Club, San Francisco

2011 – Congressional Country Club, Blue Course, Bethesda, Md.

2010 – Pebble Beach Golf Links, Pebble Beach, Calif.

2009 – Bethpage State Park, Black Course, Farmingdale, N.Y.

2008 – Torrey Pines Golf Course, South Course, La Jolla, Calif.

2007 – Oakmont (Pa.) Country Club

2006 – Winged Foot Golf Club, Mamoroneck, N.Y.

2005 – Pinehurst Resort and Country Club, No. 2 Course, Village of Pinehurst, N.C.

2004 – Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, Southampton, N.Y.

2003 – Olympia Fields (Ill.) Country Club, North Course

2002 – Bethpage State Park, Black Course, Farmingdale, N.Y.

That’s 16 events, fully half staged at courses the public can play. Bear in mind that the USGA, starting in 1895, didn’t hold the Open at public course other than Pebble Beach until it visited another very expensive resort venue, Pinehurst No. 2, in 1999. The chances of a legitimately great but still private club cracking the rota of courses for Open consideration have literally been halved, and a place like Riviera doesn’t have a prayer.

Of course, there are other considerations when choosing Open venues. The USGA likes geographic diversity; it seeks to move the event around (again, to fight the image that the game is run by northeastern elites). It attempted for many years to find a Midwestern venue that would suffice. Medinah and Olympia Fields were found wanting — enter the public Erin Hills, in Wisconsin, scheduled to debut as host in 2017. The same issue applied to west coast venues (which also afford the USGA and NBC the opportunity to televise, very lucratively, weekend rounds in prime time). Pebble Beach is a natural (and technically public) but it’s interested in hosting only once a decade. This was the opening Riviera was hoping to fill, but instead that tryout went to Torrey Pines in San Diego, in 2008. Then it went to Chambers Bay, yet another muni, in Tacoma, Wash.

There are other aspects to the USGA’s formula. Opens require a vast amount of space these days. Note the presence of multi-course public facilities on this list, allowing onsite parking and space for long rows of hospitality tents and merchandise tents worthy of Barnum & Bailey. At Riviera, squeezed onto a superb but tight piece of ground, densely flanked by fancy homes, the window of opportunity appears to have closed for good.

Candide’s Political Shuttle of the Absurd, Philly Edition

by Hal Phillips 2 Comments

A federal Homeowners Loan Corporation 1936 security map of Philadelphia showing redlining of lower income neighborhoods. Households and businesses in the red zones could not get mortgages or business loans.

So I was preparing to fly back home from Philadelphia last week when I briefly made the acquaintance of someone on a rental-car shuttle bus. I never got his name. He was sitting up front, in the passenger seat, a huge, broad-shouldered white dude of middle age in a blue blazer and buzz cut. The poor sap had a flight leaving in less than an hour, whereas I had plenty of time, so we commiserated over this inequity before eventually getting to the obligatory, “You headed out or headed home?” He was headed home, to Cincinnati, after attending a “military justice convention” in southern New Jersey. Unbidden, he indicated that he couldn’t get out of Philly fast enough.

I asked him what he meant because, with Clara in school there, Sharon and I are spending our first-ever, legitimate leisure time in Philly and we’re frankly a sucker for its many charms. “It’s just so dirty here,” this guy said, adding that while Cincinnati has its own problems, “there are just so many homeless people here. It doesn’t feel safe.”

Doesn’t feel safe?

“Like you feel when you’re on the south side of Chicago.”

Well, this was all the code language I cared to exchange with this fellow, a 265-pound military justice professional who presumably has an understanding of actual war zones but nevertheless is made uneasy by urban surroundings — or, more likely, by the sensation of minority status in a country one believes to be “white”.

This is where we are today, people. Rhetoric matters. How does one avoid tying this guy’s attitude directly to having a political candidate, and now a president, who talks incessantly about the “carnage” of American urban life? [When he’s not talking about the bodily fear we should feel in the presence of brown people, be they Hispanic or Arab?] For more than three years now he’s been trotting out this fear-mongering (as opposed to solutions) from a place of high visibility and authority. Seems to me it has colored the way a whole lot of white people view urban areas, people of color, homeless people, even the global universality that is urban grit and grime. More likely, they’e long felt this way and now feel emboldened to verbalize it.

The south side of Chicago reference was the kicker: Straight from Steve Bannon’s white nationalist gob to this guy’s ear, via Twitter and Fox News.

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