TOM

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