TOM

By Tom Bedell

Robbie Burns’ natal cottage

I’m in Robbie Burns territory, the birthplace of Scotland’s national bard just up the road in the town of Alloway. Burns will get his due in a few nights’ time, but I can find no evidence that he ever actually played golf, or gowff, despite these lines, perfectly descriptive of the game:

The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft agley,/an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,/For promis’d joy!

One of the world’s loveliest golf courses, the Ailsa Course at the Westin Turnberry Resort here in southwest Scotland along the Ayrshire coast, is the site of the 2009 Open Championship–reason enough for a team of U.S. golf writers to try out the course by going head to head against a European squad.

Clearly this must leave one team joyful, celebrating with a wee dram, while the other writhes in grief and pain, drowning its sorrows with a wee dram.

But the competition is yet to come. Since I have to leave the event a day early, I arrived a day early, making the hour plus journey from Glasgow airport to Turnberry in the agreeable company of driver Ricky Fulton, formerly of the Royal Navy for 30 years, and hence up on his military history.

He pointed out, as we drove past the Fenwick Moor, that in May of 1941 Hitler’s second-in-command, Rudolph Hess, crash-landed a Messerschmitt in Fenwick Moor while on a bizarre personal crusade to sue for peace.

Otherwise, Fulton opined, “The only things that grow on Fenwick Moor are trees and sheep—or haggis on legs, as I like to call them.”

The Brig o’ Doon

Fulton took me on the scenic route into Alloway, past Burns’ natal cottage, his parents’ gravestones, the Brig o’ Doon (literally, the bridge over the River Doon), which figures prominently in his long poem, “Tam o’ Shanter.”

Fulton said, “Turnberry is actually closer to Northern Ireland than it is to Glasgow. It’s about 60 miles from Glasgow. But across the Firth of Clyde to Ireland is about 40 miles.”

On this hazy day, Ireland wasn’t visible at all, and neither was the totemic Ailsa Craig, a volcanic mound ten miles off the coast, but no scenic discount kicked in.

I played a jetlag round on the Ailsa course with John Butler from Houston, Texas, who told me he had paid something over £200 to play. With the current horrendous exchange rate, that’s more than $400 dollars, pricey for any round of golf. (According to the website, it was the highest rate going, for a weekend non-hotel guest in prime season.)

John played fairly well for his first go-round in Scotland, despite some eye-opening and repetitive work in the revetted pot bunkers. But say he had shot 100—that would have been about $4 a stroke. (“Count the lost balls,” John said, “and some would have been $8 a stroke.”)

A bunker oddity at Ailsa’s tenth hole

That’s some serious money, perhaps enough for a down payment on those new wood floors John’s wife has been yearning for. But he was well-armed with well-worn excuses: “It’s not every day you get to play a British Open course,” never mind that he was going to try to play the Old Course at St Andrews the next day. Another was, “I may never pass this way again.”

I think I’ve used that one myself. But, here I am again, having attended a similar event here back in 2004. That was my first time to golf in Scotland, and after a jet-lagged round at Royal Troon, the Ailsa course blew me away.

It was no less agreeable today, although my decent start gradually unraveled. By the time we reached the fifteenth tee I was able to point out to John the faint outline of the Ailsa Craig, but I was now deep into a double bogey shankfest. I chalked it up to fatigue, thereby bypassing excessive grief and pain.

Turnberry has a good deal of intriguing history attached to it (more of which to come), much of it well-documented on the clubhouse walls. There are also display cases of antique clubs designed by Old Tom Morris and other ancient artisans of the game.

There was one club, circa 1905-1910, that caught my eye: the Plain faced anti-shank lofting mashie. It looked amazingly like the F2 wedge now on the market from Face Forward Technologies. La plus ça change…. I had an F2 once, and now I’m wondering why on earth I gave the club away without checking out its anti-shank lofting capabilities.

By Tom Bedell

The first charity tournament of the year at the Brattleboro Country Club also happens to be the best. I say this not because I’m the chair of the tournament, nor because the proceeds of the event go to the non-profit organization directed by my wife. Okay, they’re contributing factors.

But the other factors are more important for those who play in the tournament–it’s fun, we do have a bunch of good prizes, and we’re still a lean and relatively inexpensive tournament. It makes for a tasty combo–good golf, a modest investment, and the refreshing feeling that you’ve contributed to a well worthy cause.

The golf is different, too, not just the usual scramble playing at almost every other charity tournament, which never really feels much like golf to me. We still take the pressure off pure beginners by playing a Texas scramble–choosing the best drive on each hole, and then playing out one’s individual shots from there.

Then more fun kicks in with the Stableford format, scoring points for how the team does on the hole. Choosing the best ball score, the team racks up one point for a bogey, two for a par, three for a birdie and four for an eagle. (Score a double eagle and we’ll look at you funny.) Best scores win, gross and net.

We do have the usual bonuses–closet to the pin, longest drive, and other fun games along the way (putting for big bucks, hitting the green to win sleeves of balls). And then after the tournament we get down to some good eating and awarding of the lavish prizes and raffles.

The tournament is Friday, May 16, a noon shotgun start, so there’s still time to sign up. Call me at 802-348-7992 for more information, Lynn Bedell at The Gathering Place, 802-254-6559. ext. 11.

I’ll include an updated list of prizes to be raffled, given or auctioned away in the next day or so. Hope to see you May 16!

Meanwhile, here are some of the other charity tournaments coming up at BCC:

The 33rd Annual Brattleboro Rotary Charity Golf Tournament is Wednesday, June 4, with registration and a bag lunch at 11, the shotgun start at noon. A silent auction and raffle will begin at 6:00 p.m. The cost is $125 per player, all proceeds to benefit youth sports and educational scholarships. Call Cathy Coonan (who’s doing another stint as BCC president this year as well) at 251-3782.

The 9th Annual Austine School/VCDHH Golf Tournament is on Friday, June 27, the shotgun start bright and early at 8 a.m., the play followed by lunch. It’s $125 to play ($425 for a foursome), $175 to sponsor a hole. Call 258-9501 for more information.

The Youth Services Annual Golf Tournament is approaching the quarter-century mark; this is its 23rd incarnation, beginning with lunch at noon on Wednesday, July 30, with a 1 p.m. shotgun start and a scramble format. To register ($125 per player or $480 for a foursome), call Nancy, Gail or Allyson at Youth Services, 257-0361.

The Third Annual Retreat Healthcare Golf Tournament will kick off Wednesday, August 6, with lunch at noon and 1 pm shotgun start. A dinner buffet follows play, with the concomitant awards and raffle prizes. Contact Cathy Potter for more information about playing ($95) or sponsoring ($250 a hole), 258-3759.

The Chesterfield Lions Club Annual Tournament returns to BCC again, on Tuesday, July 15, with an 8:30 am shotgun start. The cost is $100 per player, and chair John Schlichting will happily entertain offers for sponsors. Call him at 603-363-4759 for information or to sign up.

There may be others to come, and we’ll update them here as we hear about them.

One extraordinary out of town event needs to be mentioned: Vermont golf writer Bob Labbance–and few have Bob’s depth of historical knowledge about the game–has sadly been diagnosed with ALS. A golf and auction benefit for Bob and his family will be held Monday, June 23 at the Ekwanok Golf Club in Manchester, registration beginning at 9:30 and play to begin at 11 a.m.

Aside from the golf, brunch and barbecue buffet, the auction will include rounds at some of the most exclusive clubs in the country–such as the National Golf Links of America, to name just one. Space is limited to 100 players. Checks ($500 per person), or donations can be mailed to: Labbance Family Fund; PO Box 53; Bloomfield CT 06002.

By Tom Bedell

It wasn’t a good way to start the season, taking a ten on a short par-4, an eight on a par-5, and a triple on a par-3. Notching four pars in the next five holes couldn’t really mitigate the damage.

But at least I was out in the brisk fresh air with three-quarters of the MOTO Research Team, and we were, aside from our diligent investigative work, having fun as usual.

We played at Bretwood (see post below), and the course was pretty much as Fish described it in his April 13 post—a few mounds of snow floating like icebergs on the fairways, or nestled in the bunkers, but plenty of room to play.

I managed the ten on the first hole in crisp fashion: a drive way right, a hybrid right into a raging brook, another into a greenside bunker, four shots pounding sand, two putts, ten.

I called my fine bunker work a “double Fuehrer,” alluding to the golf terms that have been going around in e-mails everywhere, the “Adolph Hitler” referring to two shots in the bunker.

I have no idea as to the origin of the terms, many refreshingly tasteless, but if already well-traveled, they’re worth repeating here as a new season begins. From the looks of things, we may all need some laughs:

A Paris Hilton - one expensive hole

A Salman Rushdie - an impossible read

A Rock Hudson - looked straight, but wasn’t

A Cuban - needed one more revolution

An Elton John - a big bender that lips the rim

An Adolf Hitler - two shots in the bunker

A Saddam Hussein - from one bunker straight into another

A Yasser Arafat - ugly and in the sand

A Kate Winslett - a little bit fat, but otherwise perfect

A Glenn Miller - didn’t make it over the water

A Rodney King - over-clubbed

An O.J. Simpson - got away with it

A Princess Grace - should have taken a driver

A Princess Di - shouldn’t have taken a driver

A Michael Jackson - gradually fading

A Ladyboy - looks like an easy hole but all is not what it seems

A condom - safe but didn’t feel real good

A circus tent - a big top

An Anna Kournikova - looks great, but unlikely to get a result

A Brazilian - shaves both sides of the hole

A Jeb Bush - too far to the right and out of play

By Tom Bedell

Sure enough, it’s April, the sun is shining, the temperature is rising, and golf is imminent. So why did this feel like the winter from Hell? It was all that snow piling endlessly up. Would it even melt by May? was the dreadful thought going through some desperate golfers’ minds.

The par-5 seventh hole at Brattleboro Country Club

I took to driving by the Brattleboro Country Club (802-257-7380) to check on the progress of the receding glaciers, and wandered forlornly into the abandoned parking lot a few times. Finally, on Wednesday, I went to the maintenance shed and was pleased to see superintendent Phil Rollins putting flagsticks together and speculating on a possible opening on April 19. Whether the full 18 will be ready to go is still anyone’s guess; the ninth fairway in particular was still half rivulets on Wednesday.

Players will have an entirely new sensation when they finish a round at Brattleboro this year, Phil said, and I went out to have a look. Sure enough, about ten of the large pine trees encircling the back of the eighteenth hole were cut down.

The “Before” shot at the eighteenth hole

It was done mostly to give the green more light and air. There’s still a copse of trees further behind the green, but aesthetically the hole now looks wide open, and the forward pitch of the green more striking.

Pro Eric Sandstrum is settling in for his second full year at Brattleboro, which will follow its success with the Vermont Amateur last year with the Vermont Senior Amateur Tournament this September 3 and 4. The club is offering a variety of membership specials and junior memberships, all noted on the website.

Vermont

Elsewhere in Vermont, pro Michael Santa Maria at the Okemo Valley Golf Club (800-786-5366) said, “We’re hoping to be open by the weekend of April 26, and we’ll then be one of 70 clubs in the U.S. with the Nike 360° fitting cart and launch monitor.”

Under the same ownership is the Tater Hill Golf Club (875-2517) which usually opens seven to ten days after Okemo.

The Haystack Golf Club (802-464-8301) is under new ownership and will welcome new pro and general manager Jack Tosone when the course opens in mid-May. Competitive rates have swelled the membership over last year, and midweek rates (Monday-Friday) will be $49.

The Mount Snow Golf Club (464-4254) has a tentative opening date of May 12, but definitely by May 17, when The Original Golf School (800-240-2555) begins its bargain two-day dress rehearsals (May 17-18, 20-21, 22-23) for $349.

The Stratton Mountain Country Club (297-4114) will also officially open its 27 holes on May 16, but weather permitting the Stratton Golf University will hold two-day spring training classes beginning May 3 for the bargain rate of $399.

They’re not yet manning the phones at some courses, so keep checking at Bellows Falls Country Club (463-9809), Crown Point (885-1010) and Sitzmark (464-3384).

New Hampshire

Bridge to fifteenth hole at Bretwood South

Head pro Matt Barrett at the 36-hole Bretwood Golf Course (603-352-7626) wasn’t about to guarantee it, but he said they hoped to open today. Rates are still reasonable at Bretwood, and the weekday golf-till-you-drop $70 all-day pass (including cart) remains tempting. I wrote a piece on Bretwood a few years back and, hey, whaddaya know, it’s still up on the web. Clearly, I wasn’t paid enough for that one.

Pam and Jay Clace at the nine-hole Hooper Golf Club in Walpole (603-756-4080) were being a little more guarded. “We’re hoping by the end of next week,” said Pam. “But the course is in good shape, considering the winter we just had.” Amen to that.

The nine-hole Pine Grove Springs Country Club in Spofford (603-363-4433) was set to open yesterday, with a members’ work day scheduled for tomorrow.

Callers to the Keene Country Club (603-352-9722) should ask pro Charlie Kamel how he liked his trip to Ireland, along with Brattleboro pro Eric Sandstrum.

Massachusetts

“We’re expecting to open tomorrow, although they’re predicting rain at the moment,” said James ‘Bucky’ O’Brien, heading into his 40thth year at the Country Club of Greenfield (413-773-7530).

The eighth at Crumpin-Fox

The old nine (the back nine) at the Crumpin-Fox Club in Bernardston (800-943-1901) was still pretty damp this week, but there are hopes of opening at least nine (the front) nine by late next week.

The nine-hole Oak Ridge Golf Club in Gill (413-863-9693) is hoping to open next Wednesday but, as with all the courses, call to doublecheck.

And a little further on down the road is the always ingratiating nine-hole Northfield Golf Club (413-498-2432).

By Tom Bedell

Speaking of Arnold Palmer, the King hit the ceremonial first tee at the opening of the Masters today, four days prior to the 50th anniversary of his first Masters win. Of course, he wasn’t the King then, but he did know the rules of golf, and he used them to his advantage in that tournament.

Augusta National had been pelted with rain the night before and morning of the final round, so players were permitted free drops from embedded lies through the green. But when Palmer overshot the par-3 twelfth hole rules official Arthur Lacey told him he couldn’t lift the ball from an embedded lie. Palmer protested, but he played the ball out of the lie for a double bogey, then played the shot over with a drop, and scored a three.

Palmer was playing with Ken Venturi that day, and in 2004 Venturi was still raising a bit of a fuss about the shot (and probably trying to boost sales of his autobiography) in suggesting that Palmer had misinterpreted the rule. But three holes later the officials ruled that Palmer had indeed scored a three, and he went on to win the tournament by one shot.

Palmer mentioned the incident in a book he wrote a few years ago called Playing By the Rules, and he recently teamed up with the USGA for a photo shoot to help illustrate the 2008 USGA Annual Rules Quiz, which anyone can take by following the link.

It’s a sobering enterprise, or was for me, at any rate. I thought I had a fairly decent grasp on the rules. I thought wrong. I missed more than fifty percent of the questions–and this was after I had started reading the newly revised The Rules of Golf, which became effective at the beginning of the year after four years of work by the USGA and the R&A.

There are only 34 rules of golf. However, they do span 79 pages of sometimes bewildering cross-referencing that a keen legal mind might find challenging. And there are further discussions and decisions regarding the rules on the USGA website. I guess I’d better keep reading.

There’s a handy golf bag pocket-sized flip guide for $9.95 that might help: Golf Rules Quick Reference 2008-2011. It’s waterproof, illustrated, with quick reference tabs keyed to parts of the course–the tee, the fairway and rough, bunkers, hazards and so on, so players can flip to a quick answer out on the course, rather than trying to parse the intricacies of, say, the actual Rule 26-2, b., (iii), Note 1, while holding up the foursome behind.

The author, Yves C. Ton-That, has a law degree, but he’s also a rules official. Of course, even rules officials get it wrong sometime. Ask Arnold Palmer.

By Tom Bedell

I had a bit of a chin wag the other day with my old pal, Arnold Palmer. I say that because I had the pleasure of playing 18 with Arnold a few years back, after which we shared a couple beers in the Bay Hill clubhouse at the King’s winter domain in Orlando. It remains one of the great highlights of my golfing existence. I can’t vouchsafe the same for Arnie, who politely feigned remembrance when I reminded him of the historic occasion.

The reason for my call was an article for a new magazine, Tee It Up, that my colleague and friend George Fuller is starting up out in California. Part of the inaugural issue is to include a tip of the golf cap to Palmer on an actual occasion, his first Masters win, also his first major win, in 1958.

Palmer’s last round card at the 1958 Masters

Arnie took the time, albeit all of twenty minutes, while preparations were going on for the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill–which Tiger Woods won today with an electrifying birdie on the 72nd hole, moving him two past Palmer on the all-time PGA career wins list, and tying him with Ben Hogan. Palmer gave Woods a big hug as the champ walked off the green, and both were grinning ear to ear.

Tiger hoists his 2008 Arnold Palmer Invitational trophy

I was ten years old when Palmer, 28, first slipped on the green jacket. I wasn’t aware of him then; few were. Though he had been on the PGA Tour for three full years and had won eight tournaments, no one paid as much attention in those days. But Palmer was about to change all that, his charging style of play converging with and energizing the early days of golf on television. (The Masters was first televised in 1956, though only the last four holes were covered.)

Palmer became the lightening rod that made the PGA Tour what it is today, with a little help from Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. Tiger Woods is carrying on as the cynosure of today’s golf world. He has a strong supporting cast, but they don’t seem to offer much competition. On Sunday afternoons most fold like cheap lawn chairs.

What most struck me about the conversation with Palmer was how genially he agreed to it in the first place. There was nothing in it for him. But golf gave him everything he has, and he seems genuinely concerned in giving back.

Palmer (left) and Sam Snead were tied at the top after three rounds of the 1958 Masters

Tiger can sure light up the post-tournament interview with that thousand-watt grin of his. And his fire and enthusiasm on the course is thrilling to see. No one currently playing seems able to match Tiger’s will to win. Still, once the lights go down, Tiger withdraws as well.

Tiger gives back plenty in terms of his charitable foundation. But I know I’ve had no luck collaring him for an interview beyond press conference questions; few have, since a profile in GQ magazine early in his career depicted him telling some off-color jokes. The drawbridge has been pretty well up ever since, the moat patrolled by his agency, IMG. Curiously enough, that’s Palmer’s agency, too.

Palmer made a handshake deal with Mark McCormack in 1959 that eventually evolved into IMG, now the largest sports management firm in the world. But in 1959, Palmer was McCormack’s sole client.

Sure, plenty has changed in fifty years. The sheer growth of the media (and its increasingly morbid curiosity) undoubtedly creates countless demands on Tiger’s time, so that the negative default response becomes almost understandable, if no less irksome to a working stiff.

And, sure, Tiger still has plenty of tournaments to win, while Arnold Palmer’s main task these days is to be Arnold Palmer and, when asked, to cast his mind back to the glory days, which he does in peerless fashion.

Going strictly by a count of majors won, Jack Nicklaus is still the greatest male golfer of all time. But surely Tiger is the best to ever play the game, an otherworldly, perhaps celestial talent.

The fiftieth anniversary of Tiger’s first Masters win, and his first major title, will arrive in 2047. I’ll be 99, and I hope I’m around to scribble a few lines.

I’m not holding my breath about it, or over ever playing 18 with Tiger. It surely would be quite a thrill to play with the best there ever was. Still, it wouldn’t shoot to the top of my list. There’s only one King, and that round is already in the books.

By Tom Bedell

In my last post I mentioned a long history of twisted swing thoughts, best illustrated by this drawing a member of the MOTO Research Team sent me awhile back. It’s presumably been making the rounds since 1995. No one seems to know what genius concocted it, but if anyone ever finds out or the artist steps forward, let’s give a tip of the golf cap for this expert rendering, which hilariously captures the essence of the cranial eruption that is the golf swing, said to occur in 1.5 seconds.

The mixture of axiom and admonition here, wonderfully contradictory with the jocular exhortation to, “Have fun!!” finds its literary equivalent in “Swing Thoughts,” by John Updike, part of his collection Golf Dreams (Knopf, 1996), which would first on my list of desert island golf books, and quite possibly sufficient to the job.

By Tom Bedell

My man Fish, cigar aficionado that he is, would have enjoyed my recent trip to the Dominican Republic and Roco Ki, the emerging resort community on the country’s eastern shore. Not only were the cigars being hand-rolled on the spot, but everyone and their mother were smoking them.

The cigars were just an amenity, of course. The point of the visit was a preview of The Faldo Legacy Course and the Westin Roco Ki Beach & Golf Resort, which will initially anchor what will ultimately be a whopping four-course development with luxury real estate offerings. Actually, the real estate opportunities are already being snapped up. Tee times and hotel reservations may still be a bit premature. The course should be finished in August, and designer Nick Faldo will show up for the grand opening in December, when the hotel is scheduled to be completed. Stay tuned.

We played eight holes of the course for a few go-rounds, doubling up on what will be hole seventeen. This is an easy par-3 from an elevated tee, a mere 120-yard poke. Easy, at least, for blind golfers. The sighted will have too much information to contend with, on what promises to become one of the most photographed holes in golfdom. So why not get started?:

Feel something tightening up? What should be a fairly simple wedge shot is now complicated by sea, sky, rocks, wild vegetation, crashing surf, wind, and a long mental history of twisted swing thoughts. Probably a good time to swing fast and look up. Maybe the view from a helicopter will help?:

Well, maybe not. Still the shot is more visually than technically daunting, and easier from an alternate tee box that doesn’t require crossing that yawning rocky gap. But that initial view is from a tee box shared with the eighteenth hole. Turn around and another startling tee shot is at hand, this a par-5 that crosses the sea twice:

A look at the unfinished holes suggest that Faldo really puts the hammer down on the course from the fourteenth hole onward and finishing up with these two beauties, but it will be a resort course, and hence the right tee choice should yield safe options for all.

Faldo first visited the property six years ago. The six-time major winner felt the property was exciting, with its Cambodia Meets the Monterey Peninsula look, but took on the project with a certain amount of apprehension. According to Nick Edmunds, the managing director of Faldo Designs, the chief said, “If we don’t create one of the world’s great golf courses here we will have failed.”

Time will tell, but Faldo also said that hole seventeen, in the wind, “Will be one of the most enjoyable sixes of your life.” And he was right about that.

By Tom Bedell

I’ve been less than enthusiastic about this day arriving–my sixtieth birthday. Now that it’s here, in conjunction with the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, I guess I can deal with it. I’m happy he was alive, and I’m happy I’m still here to be happy.

I’m also pleased to have a sense of just how far this country has come since King’s turbulent days leading the civil rights movement. The best current symbol of this is Barack Obama. No matter one’s political persuasion, the simple fact that Obama is running for (and may become) the President of the United States is a persuasive argument that our country is not as backwards as it sometimes appears to be.

In terms of racial balance or justice, golf has been plenty backward, dragged into reality much later than other spectator or participatory sports. Tiger Woods is the best prevailing symbol here that race is almost a non-issue. I say almost because a recent incident involving Tiger showed that it will take another generation or two before the present outweighs the past.

The moment came during a Golf Channel telecast of the second round of the Mercedes-Benz Championship. Analysts Nick Faldo and Kelly Tilghman were bantering about what young players would have to do to become competitive with Woods, when Tilghman said they’d probably have to, “Lynch him in a back alley.”

It was a poor choice of words. But what seems clear in retrospect is that it was said jokingly, with no ill intent, and probably would have been a complete non-issue if she had said the players would probably have to, “Break his kneecaps.”

Tilghman, friendly with Woods, called him to apologize, and he accepted her apology. Tiger’s agent issued a statement that that was that, the whole incident was a complete non-issue and he considered the case closed.

It should have been. But it wasn’t. Tilghman issued an on-air apology in round four of the tournament, and a few days later the Rev. Al Sharpton weighed in with a call for Tilghman’s firing on a CNN news show (while referring to her as “him”). The Golf Channel suspended Tilghman for two weeks. One might have hoped that that would have been that.

But it wasn’t. Golfweek ran a Jan. 19 cover story about the incident that revisited all the particulars, and in a particularly bone-headed decision ran a cover photo of a noose swinging in the breeze. The reaction to the cover was swift in its unanimous repugnance, and Golfweek’s management was equally swift in issuing an apology and firing vice president and editor Dave Seanor, who bore the responsibility for the cover.

His firing came in the midst of the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando, the mammoth annual trade show meant to launch the new year with a heavy jolt of optimism. Neither the Golfweek cover nor the Seanor firing fit well into the script. I ran into Seanor down at the Show, but although I don’t know him well, I know him to be a respected editor and a decent fellow. One can only hope that his misfortune is truly the end of the whole sorry mess. But I’m beginning to doubt it.

I prefer to remember an incident from seven years ago, when I was playing with a group of mostly northern golf writers at the Quail Hollow Golf Course, a pleasing Arthur Hills track within the Percy Quinn State Park in McComb, Mississippi. In the fiery days of the civil rights movement, Mississippi was the crucible of intolerance. But on this quiet day, five of us had bunched up, but eventually three players (white) caught up to us, so we naturally let them play through.

Soon a single player (black) also caught up to our group, and we sent him on ahead as well. And then we pondered what kind of reception he might receive. A hole or two later we saw all four men playing together like countless contented foursomes. It was an unremarkable moment, but we all remarked on it, since it spoke volumes about the struggles gone through to reach such a moment. And then we moved on.

Moving on is what we do, in golf, in life, in the struggle to find balance, peace and justice. And that should keep the fires of enthusiasm burning.

By Tom Bedell

(Photo by Will Doak)

After heavy snows in December and on New Year’s Day, the club of choice here in balmy southeastern Vermont has been the ice scraper or snow shovel. This is actually tolerable for awhile. It’s not bad to take a vacation even from golf, to head out in the backwoods on snowshoes, pondering animal tracks instead of tracking a wayward golf ball. Or to strap on the cross country skis and ponder a different sense of balance than the usual worries about reverse pivots.

I began writing about golf more than a decade ago, and ten years ago precisely for the local daily here in southeastern Vermont, the Brattleboro Reformer. What it pains me to admit is how little my game has improved overall in that time.

Then as now, I’m still struggling to break 90 on any kind of consistent basis. Worse, I’m ten years older. According to the National Golf Foundation, which provides statistics to the golf industry, I’m still pretty much an average golfer: “The average score on an 18-hole regulation golf course was 98.3 in 2005. Average score was 96.4 for men and 108.1 for women.”

The average score has changed little over the years despite the improvement in equipment, except for those at the top of the game. (The rich get richer.) That’s because there are always new and lesser-skilled players joining the throng, says the NGF.

The organization also said, in a chilling note, that, “…average score increases as golfers age, which tends to balance out better scores by younger players.” Great. But I’ll try to keep my ripening envy in check. Attempting to keep up with the youngsters will surely promote fierce and hurried swings, and more trips to the backwoods.

Barely one in five adult golfers breaks 90 in an average round. One might presumably take some comfort in this, but all the caterwauling out on the course suggests otherwise. Only about one in five golfers maintains a handicap, and the average is 15 for men, 23 for women. There, alas, I’m currently slightly above average, despite flirting with 15 last season.

Still, I have in no way accepted that I’ve begun my inevitable golfing decline. I’m still convinced I can improve, especially if I work on my short game. There’s always hope.

Ten years ago I wrote the following, all still utterly true: Every winter, my golf game improves considerably. This is because I think about it, rather than actually play it. When I think about golf, I’m quite the strategist, and see clearly how simple a game it is. With superior course management in mind; with my easy swing, honed through endless repetition from December through March; with my steely putting, sharpened by countless rolls across the living-room carpet; with mental images in mind of holes actually played though actually lying in bed at night, I survive winter buoyed by hope.

Why do we bother?

We bother because we love the game, of course, and because we’re driven by hope. The legs may be the first to go, but lose hope and we’re lost indeed. The NGF noted 15,990 facilities with at least one golf course in the U.S. at the close of business on December 31, 2006. Of those, 11,608 were public courses. All the fields of hope.

In terms of travel, I was probably slightly above average again last year. I played in five countries, most exotically in China, most thrillingly in Scotland.

Both trips could bear long tales at another time. In Asia I played about a half-hour north of Hong Kong at the Mission Hills Golf Club, and it was the experience at a place like this that the term mind-boggling was meant for. Except there isn’t quite another place like Mission Hills, the world’s largest golf facility, with 12 courses, more than 4,500 acres (roughly equivalent to five Central Parks), three clubhouses (one the largest in the world at 650,000 square feet), three golf academies and a Chinese menu of resort facilities.

There are 10,000 club members at Mission Hills. Yet the logistics of moving members or guests around the site seem staggeringly efficient. Our group would show up at our appointed course staging area to find the uniformed, red-clad ranks of the 3,000-strong caddy force ranged at attention, all women in their mid-twenties and indefatigable in their golfing duties. Mission Hills hosted the Omega World Cup of Golf this past November, and will continue to do so through 2018 on the Olazabal Course, each of the dozen tracks sporting name designers–Nicklaus, Norman, Faldo, Ernie Els, Annika Sorenstram, Vijay Singh, Pete Dye and so on.

The stars had varied input on the designs. Most were done in collaboration with golf architects Lee Schmidt and Brian Curley out of Scottsdale, who created some real wizardry not only in the consistently high quality of the courses but in their sense of variety. But while I saw nine, I played but eight, so a return trip seems essential.

I went to Scotland in April, and it wasn’t cruel at all. There was nary a drop of rain the entire time I was there, enjoying an extended stay at the Fairmont St. Andrews and making raids on one great course after another: Cruden Bay, the Jubilee Course at St. Andrews, Kingsbarns, Carnoustie, Crail, not to mention the two tracks right at the Fairmont, the Torrance and the Devlin, and Panmure, a hidden gem.

Still, it would have been difficult to top my initial, jetlagged round, a few hours after arriving in St. Andrews. It might have seemed unfortunate to play my first round at the venerable Old Course in winds gusting to 40 mph, but it actually seemed perfectly apt. When the announcement came over the loudspeaker, “The 3:40 group, play away,” I was thrilled to set out on this venerable golfing ground at last, and never emerged from an exalted sense of thrall.

It helped that I played pretty well, for an average golfer. Heck, if not for a few closing doubles, I might even have broken 90.

Old Tom on the Swilcan Bridge