Golf: What’s All the Fuss

Lord have mercy! I have long adored the game. Since I first began to hack away on a little nine-hole affair with no sand traps, it has been filled with pleasures, challenges, trials and tribulations. But, I give thanks that I was not, at the beginning, required to take it “seriously”. Don’t get me wrong—it is a serious game. It is perhaps THE most serious game.

No, I am talking about something else. Right now, I am having a hard time even reading about it. It seems that no news is good news. Oligarchs and sultans throw billions around in order to attract the best players and create a superior league of their own. International stars who used to dote on competing with each other have now devolved into bands of warring brothers hurling insults at each other across the gulf that has come between them. The old pursuit of par is now strewn with bogies or worse as tournaments have become merely media-driven events to entertain an adoring public. The American culture that worships celebrity more than friendship has co-opted the game.

What is a mere bogey golfer to do? The weekend tournaments now seem to lead nowhere. Even the majors are beginning to lose their luster. We, the golf underclass, are no longer inspired by a cadre of our heroes who show us the way. No, it seems that we mean nothing to them. They have not the time to devote to us and our patronage.

A story. In a golf galaxy far, far, away, there lived a five-year-old who had a golfing hero. As this player strode down the fairway, his freckled face and auburn hair and quick smile seemed the epitome of an all-American boy next door. One would not have been surprised to see a stem of wheat dancing at the corner of his mouth. And yet, when the chips were down, he took the bit in his teeth and began the race to the finish line. At the height of his game he seemed to dote on dead heats. Quite often, he found another gear, his whip was invisible, internal.

In the end, he came so close to wearing the crown of “the next big thing”, a member of golfing royalty. One is tempted to say that he might have been just a little too nice, but that would belie the truth. He was one of the finest ever. Some of his major championship wins are legendary. He beat the best at their own game. He did it with determination and grace.

The five-year-old had a father who played the game well. Coming from an extremely middle-class background and small-town life, he learned the game the old way—by playing a lot with little or no guidance. Yet, playing with a “baseball grip”, he managed to master a fairly rude, hometown municipal course. As the days went by, and the nuances of the holes emerged, he thought his way around. He knew that the left side of a par four was hard ground, higher than the rest of the fairway and a well struck, accurate drive might get twenty or so extra yards so that there was a chance of getting close to the green and a good chance at birdie The previous hole was an extreme right dogleg. If one was feeling good and confident, a high, hard drive had a decent chance of clearing a tall pine at the corner. From there a short club could get you to the green in two, eagle country. You get the picture. Golf back then could be enjoyed in many guises, well out of the public eye.

But this father was lucky. Growing up in the fifties and playing for free, this might have been the whole deal. But he got a good education, entered one of the so-called “professions” and led the good life. On a dream vacation with his brother, they played The Olde Course and Carnoustie on consecutive days for the astronomical fee of ten pounds each. Earlier, while matriculating, a good friend invited him to Hilton Head where his retired father lived on the third hole of the Sea Pines Ocean Course. (“let’s put out a crab trap and play the front nine before dinner!”) For two years they played Harbor Town regularly at resident prices—twenty-five bucks. Later, a faculty colleague went on sabbatical to Monterey Ca.—Pebble Beach and Spyglass, fifty bucks each.

These were luxury experiences, but they were accessible. Great golf adventures were not only for the privileged few. Looking back, he could hardly believe his good fortune.

Then, one year, a professional meeting took him back to Sea Pines. The Heritage was being played that week. In the eighties, it did not have mini-major status, but took place the week after the Masters. Some of the better players skipped it and took the week off. Tickets were reasonably priced and the boisterous crowds were smaller and more knowledgeable than they have become in the twenty-first century. I was not quite “party central” yet and attendees followed the participants with respect and with a true appreciation for the very technical and challenging nuances that Nicklaus and Dye had built into the very beautiful layout. In many cases one could walk right up to the ropes surrounding the green.

The father had a four-day pass. It matters not to this story who won and how. Only one memory remains. As he was leaving home for the long drive through the South Carolina low country, the five-year-old approached the car. “Daddy, if you see Tom Watson, tell him Stuart says hello.” They had watched him on TV several times together. He was in his prime. The father remembered the “Duel in the Sun” at the British Open with, still, a sense of wonder that a young player could go head-to- head with Jack Nicklaus and beat him at his own game—long putts and unbelievable pitches and sand shots on, it seemed, every hole. Watson came from three shots down to win on the eighteenth.

In the end, the competition said a lot about both players. Consider this;

“On Saturday July 9, 1977, Tom Watson turned to Jack Nicklaus and asked a simple question.“This is what it’s all about isn’t it?”

“You bet it is,” the Golden Bear responded.

When it was over:

The runner-up immediately offered a magnanimous handshake to the Champion before Nicklaus and Watson left the 18th green as one, their arms draped over each other’s shoulders.”

Jack Nicklaus knew how hard it was to win, and showed his respect for the game just played.

The point of this is, that at Hilton Head, Tom Watson was not a middle-of-the- pack, also ran. By 1983, he was a genuine star. The five-year-old had no idea of the enormous irony of his request (or the impossibility that it could happen). That is the absolute beauty of childhood.

Three days later as the Father came away from the ninth after following several players around the front, a group of players was leaving the practice tee after preparing for their start of the third round of play. Serendipity stepped in. From the milling group of spectators, Watson emerged. At first, the father hesitated, fearing that any player on the way to the first tee would be offended by his approach. However, love took over. He fell in step, and said gently “Mister Watson, I have a five-year-old named Stuart who idolizes you. When I left home, he said ‘Daddy, if you see Tom Watson, tell him that Stuart says hello.”

Watson stopped in his tracks, looked the father in the eyes and said “That is so nice. Tell Stuart Hello for me.”

It was then that the game of golf, starting out on a nothing course, in the company of friends in childhood, became manifest. There, in that very moment at Hilton Head, it was phenomenally apparent that dreams can come true. That little five-year-old, with his innocent request, could not have foreseen the road that forever connected father and son together for eternity.

That is what the “fuss” ought to be about. All the rest is a mirage. It would be a great thing if traditionalists like me had the capacity to start over. Organize our own league. Make it a thing where, perhaps, amateurs and professionals held joint tournaments in addition to the current formats. Fund it so that there was not, from the beginning, a monetary basis for joining. Maybe it could function as a kind of mentoring relationship where not only expertise was exchanged, but mutual love of the game. Maybe that would make the pain of future disappointments easier to bear.

[A footnote: the Father/Watson story was not over. In 2009, as all real golf fans know, Tom Watson at fifty-nine, almost became the oldest player to win a major tournament. He was beaten in a playoff by Stuart Cink—the only major title of his career. The five-year-old was now forty-one. We had played the game, very convivially, any number of times. Though we never actually competed, there was concern about scoring. He was a competitive child, but he was hardest on himself. He almost had a hole in one at a very early stage of learning the game. We watched the Open together. We retold the Watson story once again. In the end we grieved together, for ourselves as golfers, but especially for the man whom Watson had become to us. Compare this with the current stage of the game that we love and of its so-called heroes.]

[Copyright E. Clayton Hipp, Jr., 2/1/24, do not use without permission.]

I speak here of human interactive experiences.

I have lost my enthusiasm for most “sports” which have been infiltrated and overtaken by professionalism and greed. I played baseball from my earliest memories. As a pitcher my job was to fool the batters (turnabout is fair play—I was never more than mediocre as a hitter). I came to appreciate that baseball was essentially a hybrid game-a combination of individual skills played as a team effort. I also in later life appreciated the pace of the game and the fact that a variety of sizes and abilities could play the game (compared to speed and power that were needed for football and basketball for instance).

My other lifelong pursuit has been golf. It is the only game where the competition is between the individual self and topography, natural problems to solve. It can be turned into a player versus player thing but need not be. Certain board games have appealed but only those that have captured my mind (though chess has completely escaped me!)

Who knows where this will be going?