TOM

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