Mahalo to another golf season

It's the start of a sport schedule that doesn't get the fanfare of Major League Baseball, the NFL or even NASCAR.  The PGA Tour kicked off it's 2013 season last weekend in Hawaii, in case you didn't notice and chances are you didn't.  I did, for a variety of reasons-some that go back years, some that go back 12 months.

I've been a golfer for about 30 years now and even before I started playing golf, I loved watching it on TV.  As a 13-year-old boy growing up in Lexington, Kentucky in a family that was at best middle-class, probably more accurately filed away in the lower-middle-class category, I was thrilled when Dad brought home our first color TV.  Even with only 4 channels to watch, (and one of those was PBS), I was mesmerized, mainly with how color TV brought sports to life.   Seeing the bright red helmets of my favorite baseball team with their high stirrups was thrilling after watching them in fuzzy black and white images in previous seasons. 

One sport that really came to life on color TV was golf.  It was just so beautifully green.  Plus, it didn't hurt that the best golfer in the world in those days was Jack Nicklaus.  He happened to not only be from my home state of Ohio, but he also went to the Ohio State, our family's favorite university.  Once I started playing golf in the early to mid 1980s, I really got into watching golf, an interest that was heightened when my favorite golfer, Curtis Strange, won back-to-back U.S. Opens in 1988 and 1989.  He was the first player to do that since Ben Hogan in the early 1950s and no one has done it since.  Not even Tiger Woods.  You remember him, right?

I don't watch every PGA event on TV, but I watch almost all of them, and I plan my life around being able to see the four majors.  That's been especially since we got Direct TV about 5 years ago.  Direct TV offers spectacular viewing options for the major tournaments.  Their coverage typically offers viewers the choice of three or four different channels to watch.  For instance, at the Masters, viewers can choose from the network coverage, Amen Corner, the par 3s, and the featured group.  As a passionate golf viewer, it doesn't get much better than that.  When the network coverage goes to commercial or switches to one of those tiresome maudlin features about some golfer who had something bad happen in his life (oh he's the one who had a parent die, boo-hoo!), I switch over to a shot of a player pondering the breeze over Rae's Creek, trying to decide if it's an easy 8 or hard 9.  I love that power. 

I gave up that power in 2012, as my wife and I quit our jobs, and took our 11-year old twins on a trip around the world.  Great adventure as a family, sucky time to try to follow the PGA Tour.  We launched the trip in December of 2011, going to Fiji while no Tour events were being held, then heading to New Zealand for the month of January.  Of all the places we stayed in New Zealand, only one had any golf coverage at all, and that was a place in Akaroa, where the Golf Channel was one of the featured channels.  We did manage to catch a bit of the Women's Australian Open while in Australia which was cool, but I really missed the steady, metronome-like progress of the PGA Schedule.

There's a great scene from Field of Dreams where James Earl Jones character talks about how baseball has marked the passage of time over the years in the US.  That's what the PGA tour schedule does for me each year, especially in the dreary winter months in Ohio.  If the tour is in Arizona, it's got to be late January and early February, where the images of the bermuda rough and palm trees with greens bordered by lakes and cacti help offset the gray tableau of snow-covered lawns and barren trees that linger outside my windows.  Then it's on to California for San Diego, LA and Pebble Beach, where the coverage of the beauty of the Monterey Peninsula is negated by the endless shots of hack celebrities hamming their way through mindless interviews.  Bill Murray is funny, Ray Romano is not. 

The first indication for me of the arrival of spring is when the tour moves to Florida.  By now it's March, and the players are gearing up for April and the Masters.  At this time, the weather is starting to improve in Ohio, and maybe we've even gotten to play a round or two of golf as the courses shed their coatings of snow and the tees, with greens and fairways starting to show evidence of new growth after about five months of slumber.  The courses of the Florida swing aren't that great, especially now that the Players Championship has been moved to May, but it still marks the inevitability of the changing of the seasons, and the surrender of winter to the unstoppable approach of spring. 

By the time the Masters rolls around, the weather is warm enough in Ohio where I'm usually playing golf often enough to whet my appetite and the golf schedule doesn't become quite as important.  I still follow the tour, and look forward to the US Open and The Open Championship, but the schedule doesn't have the importance to me that it does in January and February.  And it all starts with the first tournament of the year, the Tournament of Champions in Hawaii.

Hawaii is home to one of the best courses I've ever played.  The Prince Course at Princeville on Kauai is stunning in it's beauty.  The first time I played it was on my honeymoon with my second wife, (I call my first wife Mulligan) and it was fantastic.  The setting is amazing, with 360 degrees of Hawaiian beauty on every hole.  I had a great round that was almost marred by disaster on the last hole.  

My keeper wife, Annie, was enjoying some spa time at the Princeville Resort while I enjoyed all 18 fantastic holes.  As I drove up the cart path on the left side of the fairway, I thought I spotted Annie up at the clubhouse.  Turns out it wasn't her, and when I realized that, I turned the cart to the right toward the right side of the hole, which is where my tee shot was.  I made that turn without taking a close look at where I was headed, and before I knew it, the front right wheel of the cart was dangling in the air, about six or seven feet above the bottom of a fairway bunker.  Somehow, I managed to yank the wheel back to the left without the rear right wheel also finding the bunker, which would have sent me and the cart cartwheeling into the bunker, probably leaving me with some sort of disability, or at least a bill for destroying a golf cart at a pricey resort course.  

My second round at Princeville also left me with a story to tell.  Annie and I loved Kauai so much, we returned there two years later for a getaway just after Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately, it was during a rainy week in Hawaii, while Ohio happened to have record-setting warmth.  I managed to squeeze in a round of golf on one of the few sunny days we had, and was pleased when I got paired up with an older fellow, who had a gentle and pleasing disposition from our initial meeting on the first tee.

He was good company, and we had a great time talking about life and golf.  The discussion turned to our beginnings in golf, which for me, was a move to the Carolinas in the mid-80s, where working on a morning show on a radio station in Raleigh gave me time to play golf almost year-round.  For my playing partner, Bill Easterbrook, the game was handed down to him from his dad, Sydney.  

Turns out Sydney was not just some pharmacist or life insurance agent who raised his son in a country club atmosphere.  Sydney Easterbrooke played for the Great Britain Ryder Cup team in 1931 and 1933, securing the cup for GB in 1933 by beating Denny Shute.  How cool is that?  Bill was one of the most enjoyable playing partners I ever had, and I let him know that at  the end of our round as we shared handshakes that can only be shared between two people who were strangers a mere four hours before, but were friends thanks to the game of golf. 

Howling Hawaii winds last weekend unfortunately kept the TOC from getting in 72 holes.  Instead, Tour officials wound up with a schedule of 36 holes on Monday and 18 holes on Tuesday to make it an official 54-hole tournament.  Dustin Johnson cruised to a four-shot win over Steve Stricker, extending his streak of seasons with a win since coming out of college to six, the first player to do that since some guy named Tiger Woods.  You remember him, right?  Johnson has some serious talent, contending in majors in the past, and look for him to be a force at Augusta and also at the PGA at Oak Hill.  The U.S. Open this year is being held at Merion, which is not a bomber's course, so that doesn't set up well for DJ.  (I use that moniker of familiarity  because I've been to Myrtle Beach a few times, and that's his home town.)

The Tour stayed in Hawaii for the second tournament of the season, the Sony Open in Hawaii.  It's not a tournament I normally pay that much attention to, in part because it usually falls on the same weekend of the Divisional Playoff games in the NFL, which typically produce some of the best football action of the year, and this weekend followed that pattern.  The main story line was the play of two rookies, Russell Henley and Steve Langley.  The two newbies are good friends and Henley picked up the win in his first tour event as a PGA Tour member.  His play down the stretch (five birdies over the last five holes!) was very impressive and set him up as a player to watch in 2013.  

The PGA Tour heads to the California Desert this week for what's now called the Humana Challenge in partnership with the Clinton Foundation.  It's what used to be known as the Hope and is the first of a series of events that tortures us with the presence of amateurs playing on TV.  I loathe watching hacker celebrities and corporate CEOs just butcher a golf course.  I'll be paying more attention to the action on the European Tour which is holding the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship at the Abu Dhabi Golf Club.  Abu Dhabi is about as European as Nebraska, but I happen to have a golf shirt from the Abu Dhabi Golf Club from our trip around the world last year.  And there is a Cincinnati connection to my round there.  More on that next time.

Explaining a man crush on a golf course architect

I first became aware of the name of Tom Doak in the early 1990s when I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina.  At that time, Charlotte had something of a golf course shortage, and playing a decent course usually meant a drive of about 30-45 minutes from where I lived in the suburb of Mint Hill.  That changed when the Charlotte GolfLinks opened just south of town, leaving me a drive of just about 15-20 minutes.  I was so pumped to play it that the day it opened I had the third tee time of the day.  I loved the way the course, despite being brand new, looked like it had been there forever.  Turns out that is the hallmark of most courses designed by Tom Doak.  He is a traditionalist and believes in simplicity in design.  He has become well-respected in the industry, and his most well-known design is Bandon Dunes in Oregon.  Doak is also an author, having written the Confidential Guide to Golf Courses, in which he critiques golf courses around the world.  Back in the mid-90s, I bought one on sale for about $20 or $30 at Jo-Beth Books.  They now sell on Ebay for hundreds of dollars at times.  I still have mine at home. 

When we first started planning this trip and decided to make New Zealand one of our first stops, I had hopes of playing Cape Kidnappers.  It’s a Tom Doak design on the North Island just south of Napier.  I knew we’d be going to Napier since the town features a great collection of Art Deco architecture as most of it was destroyed in a powerful earthquake in the 1930s and was rebuilt with one of the preeminent design styles of that time period.  Cape Kidnappers was built along spectacular fingers of land that jut out into the ocean and the fairways look like they are melting down the sides of the bluffs and cliffs.  

It also comes with a frightening price tag of over $400 for a non-New Zealand native.  Once we booked a cottage in Napier and I had a definitive set of dates for our stay there, I sent Cape Kidnappers an email.  I laid out the details of our trip, how I was a serious admirer of Tom Doak’s work, and how I was blogging about playing golf around the world.  With that, I also asked if there was any way I could get the local rate or any sort of price break.  During our stay in Napier, I never got a reply, so I figured my request had been ignored.  Turns out that wasn’t the case.  Once we had taken the ferry to the South Island, I got an email saying they could offer me a media rate of about half of what the non-New Zealander rate was.  That was a body blow, kind of like that cheap shot block Hines Ward laid on Keith Rivers a few years ago.  Despite my disappointment, I figured at the time that somehow, it would lead to a memorable experience down the road.

With Cape Kidnappers and New Zealand a memory, I played my first golf in Australia in Lorne.  It’s a town on the coast along the Great Ocean Road, about an hour or 90 minutes southeast of Melbourne.  Lorne Country Club is a nine hole track carved into a hillside with some nice ocean views.  The first view you get is from the first tee, looking back toward the ocean and the beachfront at Lorne. 

The second one you get is on the approach shot to the par-five first hole.

That view was the first time I pulled out the sacred BANGERT golf ball, the personalized Titleist NXT Tour ball I brought with me on the trip, with high hopes of making it all the way around the world and back home.  It was the first time Annie played golf on the trip and we enjoyed walking the simple, yet well cared for course.  Being built on the side of a hill, there were several holes where your tee shot had to be aimed at the higher part of the fairway, knowing the slope would bring it back toward the fairway.  A nearby course in Anglesea boasted of being home to several kangaroo, but we saw none of them at Lorne Country Club.  And I've seen what geese and their droppings can do to a golf course, I could only imagine the impact kangaroo hopping around would have.  

The only wildlife to speak of was a kookaburra bird we saw near the fourth tee.  It appeared that at one time or another there was some wildlife of the human variety as there was a small wooden structure at the fifth tee with a sign saying Maudie’s Bar. 

Maudie was nowhere to be found, and with nothing but our imaginations to toast her memory, I hit one of my best tee shots of the day on the hole, a downhill par 3 of about 110 meters or just over 121 yards, one of the prettier holes on the course. 

My rental clubs were a variety of off-brands, including a three-wood and five-wood, a 3,5,7 and 9 iron along with a sand wedge and a putter that looked like it had called a mini-golf course home at some point in its existence.  

I pured the 9 iron, and the BANGERT ball landed on the front of the 5^th green and spun back just onto the fringe.  It left me a putt of about 25 feet, and for some reason, I really wanted that putt and sure enough that desire managed to guide the ball into the hole for my first birdie on the trip. I judiciously used the BANGERT ball the rest of the round with no peril at any point along the way.

The final few holes were fairly unremarkable until we got to the eighth green.  The ninth hole was up the hill to the right of the eighth hole, and to the right of the 8^th green was a sign with two sets of directions to the 9^th tee.  One set pointed straight up the hill, while the other pointed to the left and had the words "tow rope" on it.

Channeling our inner Magellans, we had to explore this!  The 9^th tee was about 50 to 60 feet up a fairly steep hill and a tow rope had been installed to aid in making the ascent.  There was an on and off button and a sign with some instructions for using the rope.   

Annie went first with me right behind her and we were doing just fine until we got to the top and a water bottle that was in a compartment at the bottom of her golf bag got tangled up in the tow rope!  Sensing immediate disaster, I told her to hit the red off button, thinking it was within easy reach, which it wasn’t.  I tried to untangle the bottle from the still moving rope while trying not to lose any fingers or other larger appendages, and she managed to stretch out one of her long, elegant arms out and mash the red “off” button just in time to avoid permanent or at least temporary injury. 

The experience closed out what was a memorable round of golf, our first, but not our last, in Australia.  Little did we know we had some Tom Doak in our future.

Me and Tiger

 

There are only three golf courses I can think of that both Tiger Woods and I have played.  One is Pinehurst #2 which I played in the mid-90s on a trip to the Carolinas and which hosted the 1999 and 2005 US Opens.  The 1999 edition was won by Payne Stewart a few months before he died in a plane crash, and the 2005 Championship was taken home by New Zealand native Michael Campbell.  Another is Muirfield in Dublin, Ohio outside Columbus, which I got to play in a couple of media day outings around 2008 and 2009.  Actually birdied the 6^th hole there, a par four.  Tiger Woods has had some great moments there, famously chipping in on the 14^th  hole as he fist-pumped his way to Akron.  The third course that I have played golf in Tiger’s footsteps is the Waikanae Golf Club in Waikanae New Zealand.  It wasn’t until I was on the 5^th hole that I became aware of this information.

I walked into the golf shop at Waikanae on a Thursday afternoon around 3.  It was a mostly cloudy day, rain was forecast for the following day and the air already had a feel of precipitation.  The course is a short drive from the house we are renting for two nights on the west coast of the North Island, about 65 kilometres north of Wellington.  It’s in the community of Waikanae Beach, and it reminded me of beach communities I had been to in the Carolinas, with no high rises and tightly packed beach homes built into the rolling sandy landscape. I scoped out the actual beach after inquiring at the golf course about the greens fees, along with rental clubs and their policy of someone showing up looking like a backpacker from Germany wearing socks with sandals.  With an ominous forecast for Friday, Annie dropped me at the course then hit the beach with the kids.  

Unlike the rental set of clubs I had in Fiji, the set I got at Waikanae actually had matching irons, made by Nike, along with an off-brand sand wedge, a knock off of a Ping Anser putter and a Goldfern Oversize three wood and SuperHead five wood.  No driver.  No problem.  As I found out with the relics I played pretty well with in Fiji, it’s the Indian not the arrow. 

After securing 4 golf balls from the fish bowl on the golf shop counter for $9, I headed toward the first tee, which was open with no one in view down the fairway, always one of my favorite sights.  I forgot to grab some tees in the golf shop, so I gathered some up from the tee box and teed up the newly-acquired Srixon and grasped the three wood, feeling the unfamiliar feel of teeing off without a glove, since that’s one of the many golf-related items I didn’t bring on this trip.   I didn’t tee up the BANGERT ball (my personalized Titlest NXT Tour ball that is the only piece of golf equipment I brought with me) because I wasn’t all that confident of where it would be going due to the fact that I hadn’t played in the more than two weeks and I was playing with rental clubs.  With all that going on in my head, I managed to stripe the Srixon down the fairway, finishing its journey in the right center part of the tightly mown grass.  I was unsure of the distance because the discs in the middle of the fairway were set in meters, not yards, and I figured I was about 160 meters out, which translates to about 175 yards.  I put the BANGERT ball down and hit a six iron fat, leaving myself about 20 yards from the green.  I chipped long and two putted for an opening bogey.  Not a bad start all things considered.

I immediately had a good feel for Waikanae Golf Club and it only improved on the second tee as I looked around at the setting.  No houses in sight, gently rolling hills, some of which were covered with heather with some low-lying trees and shrubs. In the distance, mountains covered with pine trees, providing a dramatic backdrop to the serene setting.   

The second hole was about 183 meters which converts to about 200 yards so I took the five wood out, teed up the Srixon again and hit it pin-high about 10 yards to the right of the green.  I dropped the BANGERT ball, chipped long again and two-putted.  Behind me, I noticed a husband and wife already approaching the second tee.  That kept the BANGERT ball in my pocket as I tried to pick up the pace, and I paid the price. On the third tee,  I pushed my three-wood into the trees on the right, failed to extract myself from said woods in one shot, punched out into the fairway before launching a crisply-struck 6 iron onto the green from about 160 yards away.  I could see another couple in front of me leaving the green on the next hole, making me realize at some point I was probably going to be playing with them or the people nipping at my heels. 

The fourth hole was another decent-length par three of 180 meters and once again I hit a five wood pin-high about ten yards right of the green.  After taking a couple of pictures on my Iphone of the nice views, I put down the BANGERT ball and pitched it stone dead, inches from the hole.  I glanced behind me, disappointed that the couple tailing me missed my bit of brilliance.  I had to wait some on the next tee to let the couple in front of me to put enough distance between us, which was difficult to accurately judge considering I had never played the course before.  That scenario played out again after I hit my tee shot a safe distance short of them, as they had to wait on a twosome to complete their efforts on the green before they could hit their approach shots.  The man in the couple waiting in the fairway was just over the crest of a hill and he was clearly there to let me know that his wife still had to hit her shot, as she was out of my view just over the rise in the fairway.  I could see her club come back and go through and see her ball head toward the green, just after I glanced behind me and saw the other couple waiting for me to hit.  After waiting a few moments to let the couple in front of me get safely out of the way while not wanting to hold up the pair behind me, I drew back the 5-wood and hit a surprisingly solid shot right down the middle, the ball landing what I thought might had been a bit too close to the couple I was trailing.  They showed no obvious sign of displeasure, playing out the hole, which I did as well a few moments later in six shots, one over the par of five for the hole as I missed the green on my approach. 

The couple in front of me had just hit their tee shots on 6 as I approached that tee box and I casually mentioned that I hoped that my shot on the previous fairway didn’t get too close to them.  The woman, probably in her late 60s said that it had actually gone past her.  Appropriately horrified, I apologized profusely, explaining I had never played the course before, was playing with rental clubs and that it was actually my first time playing golf in New Zealand.  That got me the conciliatory response that I was hoping for, and the man in the group, who looked to be quite a bit older than his female companion, invited me to join them.  After I hit another decent tee shot, I introduced myself to Roy and Valerie.  They were locals who were retired and she was wearing a shirt with the Waikanae Golf Club logo on it, so clearly they were regulars. 

I conversed mainly with Roy as we proceeded toward the green, and learned that he had been retired for 26 years after a career in civil engineering.  After some small talk about children, I asked Roy how old he was, figuring he was probably late 70s, and he told me 89.  I was stunned--other than some age spots on his skin, he certainly didn’t look or act like most people I know in their late 80s who are mostly dead.  He was walking at a good pace, carrying his own clubs and hitting the ball a decent distance.  He then shared with me how it came to be that Tiger Woods played this course. Steve Williams, a New Zealand native who caddied for Tiger for many years, was once a member of Waikanae and played there a lot.  As a favor to Steve, Tiger played in the New Zealand Open a few years back, which was played at a course not too far from Waikanae.  While in the area, Steve took Tiger to Waikanae and they played a round.  I asked what Tiger shot and Roy and Valerie didn’t know the answer to that.  I then recalled seeing a framed picture of Tiger in the Golf Shop, which I hadn’t paid much attention to when I first saw it.  Now it had a bit more significance.  

By now we had gotten to the 8^th tee.  It was a short par three, only 115 meters, but the green was on a table top, with dense bushes and trees behind it, and a deep gully in front of it.  Roy responded to my question by telling me the gully was dry and not a threat, so I pulled out the BANGERT ball, grabbed a 9 iron and made good contact with the ball.  It went right at the pin, landing on the front of the green about ten paces away from the hole.  Roy had pulled his tee shot well left of the green but not in trouble, while Valerie got a member’s break after hitting a mulligan which was a low liner that followed the contours of the gully and rolled onto the green.  My attempt at birdie was online but just short, so I headed to the tee, happy to have a bar, but somewhat sad that we were already at the 9^th hole, which would be my final one of the day.

The 9^th hole at Waikanae is a par five with some thick woods on the left and some thick heather on both sides of the fairway about 240 yards out, just as the fairway rose and disappeared over the hill.  I really wanted the BANGERT ball to make it out of New Zealand in my possession, to I hit a Black Diamond ball I bought in the Golf Shop, and hit a solid three wood down the left side, just short of the hit and the ball gobbling heather.  We couldn’t see the green from where we were short of the hill, but Roy helpfully explained that the hole was a dog leg to the left.  I figured a six iron would put me in good position for my approach to the green, but I pulled it some and it clattered around in the pines before coming to rest on some sandy ground covered in pine needles.  I had one or two tree branches about ten yards in front of me about 15 feet off the ground, but I figured I could navigate my way safely from there to the green, so out came the BANGERT ball.  The pitching wedge I pulled from the bag made solid contact and the ball landed on the green, about 25 feet left of the flag.  After giving a golfer’s head nod to the compliments on my shot from Roy and Valerie, I strolled to the green, two-putted for a par and shook hands with my new friends from New Zealand.  I hope to make more friends on the golf course in the coming weeks and months, as that’s where I’ve met some of my best friends in my life.