Bobby Earl Hurst lived the majority of his life in a part of the United States where his name carried incredible vocation versatility. A Florida resident, Bobby Earl Hurst could have been an SEC football coach in a Dan Jenkins novel. In a slight stretch, Bobby Earl’s voice and face had similarity to Bobby Cleckler Bowden, the legendary coach at Florida State, an ACC school and the favorite team of Bobby Earl’s daughter, Susan, who attended FSU.

How about Bobby Earl Hurst, elected official? Thankfully, no, that wasn’t his calling, either, which is not disrespectful but recognition that this country’s present political climate is already in enough disarray. Bobby did have a resemblance, my daughter, Joelle, first observed to me, to Lyndon B. Johnson, who perhaps Bobby might have lined up with politically at one point, both of them born in Texas. LBJ famously went nose-to-nose with both allies and adversaries alike and Bobby would have been the latter based on how his political opinions played out.

What about just Bobby Hurst, salesman? Now we’ve come to the man’s calling. Bobby Hurst became one of central Florida’s most successful boat dealers with his “Bob’s Boats and Motors” store on East Colonial Drive in Orlando. Bobby had married my wife, Mary’s, Aunt Lorraine Blondeel. To study the circular path Lorraine and Bobby took to meeting each other is to see the evidence of how Lorraine was Bobby’s one and only true love of his life. Lorraine was born on the family farm in Mineral, Illinois, on April 24, 1930. She went to Knox College in Galesburg and was living in Waukegan, Illinois, north of Chicago along Lake Michigan. Bobby was in the same vicinity in Great Lakes, Illinois, just south of Waukegan, stationed at Naval Station Great Lakes. He had been born in 1929 in Dalhart, a town located in the “chimney” portion of Texas. His family moved to the Oroville, California, area; Bob was the oldest of six siblings. After high school he went into the U.S. Navy, served four years, met Lorraine while at the Naval Base, and the two married in 1951. After his Navy stint, the Hursts, now with daughter, Susan, lived in Waukegan. Bob had gotten a job with Johnson Motors while Lorraine was a teacher in the town. While still in Illinois, Bobby was an usher at the wedding of Lorraine’s sister, Mary Ellen, on August 2, 1958, in Sheffield, Illinois, to William Hynd; the Hynds were my in-laws. The Hursts lived a short time in Kenosha, Wisconsin, before moving to Florida in 1959. Perhaps the Hursts had heard that yours truly had been born in May that year in Bloomington, Illinois, and wanted to get out of the Midwest!

In Florida, Lorraine provided the financial stability the family needed in her teaching job as the transition took place and Bobby could formulate a business plan. That was typical Lorraine. A more giving person you will never meet, a trait she lavished on her husband, daughter, grandchildren, great grandkids, other relatives, even people who didn’t know she’d helped them out because she did it anonymously. Life was never about herself or possessions, but about making a difference in people’s lives. She taught school in the Orlando area for 30 years, then retired as one of the most deeply loved teachers, adored for her intelligence about what life is all about, caring nature, abhorrence of selfishness and lies, sense of humor, and a crazy infectious laugh and smile. When she died on June 27, 2015, the family asked that in her memory everyone encourage, hug and laugh with a child.

Bobby operated his Bob’s Boats and Motors business from 1959 to 1998 and at some point his advertising jingle became the catchy and wildly popular, “How ’boutcha, Bob?” Bob’s success allowed him the heft to help create a group for the area’s marine dealers called the Central Florida Marine Trades Association. He also had a hand in forming the annual Marine Trades Boat Show. Notable success came selling the Bayliner brand after 1984. Bobby employed family at the shop, including Susan from 1984 to 1998 and, yes, Lorraine, who after her retirement continued being a team player in the family success and worked until Bobby sold his business in ’98. Bob’s “empire” included owning several properties in the area.

It was in his incarnation as marine wares entrepreneur that I first met Bobby, who died on August 19 at age 94. My wife, Mary, and I went to his and Lorraine’s beautiful home on Merritt Island in 1986, which had a canal in the back that led to the Banana River between the island and Cocoa Beach, a waterway where dolphins and manatees frolicked. We arrived by car on a weekend afternoon. Bobby had been sleeping on the sofa in just a pair of gym shorts. Hardly the attire for a boat-store kingpin or for someone welcoming guests, but it was part of his persona and at home he was casual and relaxed.

Like most of us, Bobby was a man of contradictions, mainly political in my view, but Bobby was strong at departmentalizing life. In contrast to his at-home leisure-wear, at work he wore casual slacks and short-sleeved button shirts, hair neatly combed, a professional look for all work occasions. A smoker, he was finally convinced he needed to quit and one time on a road trip took the pack from his pocket and threw it out the window, and that was it. Everyone who knew—and quickly loved—Lorraine wish she had followed suit.

Bobby knew how to wind down, too. I didn’t know too many other people who knew how to organize fun time as well as he could. When he wanted leisure time, he made sure the time was planned out and arrangements made so when he was ready to enjoy he enjoyed and it provided the desired effect. He told me once that when he took his frequent trips to the Florida Keys (he loved deep-sea fishing), pulling a boat on a trailer all the way from Orlando, he’d hear every clank and rattle and loose wrench from the rear but on the way back his relaxation was so complete that he didn’t hear a thing.

Let’s go back to the name game one more time. How about Bobby Earl Hurst, golfer? What a great name for a pro from the South (the late Chandler Harper, a Virginian, still carried my most favorite moniker for a tour pro). After Lorraine as Bobby’s greatest love, and family, golf was it for him. That was good for our relationship because I was a Golf Digest editor and the two of us connected well about the game. He loved to watch golf tournaments on TV and never missed a single one.  We played one or two rounds or hit the range every time we visited from Connecticut. The Schrocks loved Disney, so we made frequent trips spanning 30 years, 1986 to 2015.

It’s not certain when Bobby began playing golf in earnest. But he was known for hitting a bucket of balls every so often as a young man and he would bring Susan with him to hit as well. But because he was working seven days a week for many years to get his business up and thriving, he didn’t pick up the pace as a player until he was in his mid-50s, when he could afford more time away from work. When he sold his business in 1998, the golf floodgates burst open and he was playing a couple times a week, usually with a regular group of pals at places like Winter Pines (Winter Park Pines) in Winter Park and Wedgefield Golf Club in eastern Orlando. Bobby and Lorraine left Orlando in retirement to live in Merritt Island, but when they decided to go back to the city, to Longwood, Bobby still went way out of his way to Brevard County along the Atlantic coast to play with his peeps.

I would describe Bobby as the dream for every golf course, teacher, manufacturer, and, well, damn, as he’d use his favorite exclamation, any business having to do with the golf world! Susan felt he poured himself into being good at golf at the same measure he poured himself into being a good businessman. He took lessons from local pros, supported multiple courses, read every golf publication he could get his hands on, and was addicted to every golf infomercial on the air. Every time I saw him he couldn’t wait to show off a new driver he’d bought on the promise it was the answer to lower scores. I knew better but kept the thought to myself that for thinking of himself as a savvy businessman he sure was the ultimate gullible buyer in going for all the fads. But what I thought was nothing compared to what Lorraine had to endure, seeing her husband buy $500 drivers like they were candy bars; half-eaten ones at that because he’d use them for a while and see how fruitless it was to continue with the club. Lorraine once said they were going to go broke in retirement if Bobby didn’t stop buying. Bobby liked to bet with his golfing cronies but I would “bet” he saved Lorraine from knowing how much money he lost on his bad days, but the common belief is that he won more often than he lost. As an astute businessman he surely would have been more frugal betting if he was always on the losing end. It wasn’t too often that Bobby didn’t make the right bargain for himself and family.

Lorraine knew how to handle Bob’s guff about his golf feats when he would discuss his day’s results. She was an incredible note writer and belongs in the note-writing hall of fame, if there is one, and in one of her marvelous notes to us, dated November 24, 2008, she wrote, “Bob shot an 82 Friday, so he thinks he’s really fine.”

Bobby, right, is likely telling the author “better luck next time” in their golf match.

Bobby and I usually played as a twosome and I think we provided for the other person what you’d like in an intimate golf game: playing chit-chat, world affairs chatter, and personal heart-to-heart. We had so many conversations that the golf often was unimportant to the experience. As someone a year shy of my father’s age, Bobby meant a lot to me in a confidante/life advisor sort of way. When he talked his extreme conservative politics, I just said “uh-huh” through it all to indicate I “understood.” I firmly believe that we are such a diverse people that we can’t all have what we want and we need to compromise, as my founding father idol Benjamin Franklin taught. To do otherwise, well, we’re seeing what to do otherwise causes. It would have been futile to try to convince Bobby to admit he saw my point-of-view, and him convince me to see his, but I could have accepted we had differences as long as we agreed to progress on what we could accept between us.

Bobby and I often spoke about what it meant to be a good spouse and how easy it would be to mess up. Driving by an adult club one time en route to golf, he said, never go there: “Why would you want to when you got the real thing at home.” Getting serious another time in one of our latter outings, we talked about being alone if we lost our spouse. He said, if Lorraine died before him, he wouldn’t be long for this world. He said it somberly, almost in a scary sort of way, that made me worried if he would act upon that if it happened. But it made an impact on me of how deeply he felt for Lorraine and we all should be for our spouses, and he made good on that devotion when he tended on Lorraine through her illness and passing.

I want to bring LBJ back into this story because Bobby did speak almost exactly like his fellow Texan. Go to the YouTube video of Johnson announcing in March 1968 that he would not run again for president, and that’s an example of how Bobby spoke and his hesitant pauses. They were distinct and we all enjoyed mimicking him, especially when he was being goofy. “Good Cliff, hit,” would be his out-of-order verbiage when I’d drive. “Damn, Mary,” when my wife would hit a good one off the tee.

He was most endearing when he was goofy. Out at breakfast one morning, he instructed our then school-aged daughter, Joelle, to always go through the little tray of jellies on the table and make sure there were a couple of every flavor. It was important! After we had our last round with him on November 9, 2015—Mary, myself, Bobby, and Rob Clem, his grandson (and our ring-bearer in 1983!)—we are in the photo on the home page—went to the local Burger King, where Bobby and Mary donned paper crowns.

Bobby was average in height and build but his arms and hands were like sledgehammers, thick and meaty. As he passed through his 80s, though, his enthusiasm wound down as his body and game deteriorated. His goal of shooting his age faded as well. When his goal seemed unlikely, his energy level lagged. His final three years as a golfer were spent with Rob taking trips to Topgolf Orlando, at Rob’s suggestion. To do anything else would have been painful due to neuropathy in his feet.

What’s in a name? Bobby Earl Hurst, born on the Fourth of July, was a patriot who served in the American Navy. Bobby Earl Hurst, boat-store owner, was also known as Captain Bob at the store and by his friends and all his employees. Bobby Earl Hurst, who loved his family—and golf—lived his life exactly as he wanted to and lived it to the full.

How ’boutcha, Bob!

It wasn’t until the third hole that I fully realized I was at a golf location unlike any other I’d been to. Until that time the extensive travel distance from Connecticut and breathtaking scenery had done much to impact my sense of location. But the realization went well up when the largest rabbit I’d ever seen went sauntering across the par-4 fairway about 50 yards in front of me. It didn’t appear to be a jackrabbit. The ears were normal in size. But it was the Wilt Chamberlain of rabbits: tall, lean, built to run a fast half-mile. At his size in an Easter box as solid chocolate he’d have lasted all year with daily nibbles. By the time my boisterous gas cart got up to it, Mr. Rabbit had loped into the brush, not to be seen again, but like moose and other natural wonders his cameo was a memorable sight.

Such was the wonderment of golf in Alaska, which I experienced during a two-week Princess land-and-sea cruise last July. I’m revisiting the journey nine months later because at a time when golfers in the contiguous United States are delighted at the arrival of spring, I assure you Alaskan players have them doubled with delirium. They’ve emerged from the darkness to realize they have six months, if they’re lucky, to get their golf in before Mother Nature shuts them down once more. That’s how it is when golfers try to play on subsoil that is frozen for much of the year.

Black Diamond’s elevated first tee shows the raw conditions that will face the player. (Photography by Cliff Schrock)

The ambiguous but widely disseminated title, “The Final Frontier,” has been given to everything from space, the oceans, the earth’s poles to a Star Trek movie, an Iron Maiden album, and, distressingly, America’s political soul. Alaska, too, goes by The Final Frontier tag and I hoped on this cruise to expand my 50-year journey in golf by playing under evening sunlight, which is entirely possible in the “Land of the Midnight Sun”—another Alaskan label—and any region near the Arctic Circle.

Surely the meaning of The Final Frontier is apropos to Alaska in the golf sense. Alaska State Golf Association Executive Director Terry Thornhill told me there are just 1,700 members of the ASGA and he guesses three times that many golfers in the state, which has such harsh growing conditions that “golf course construction” is a term used loosely in most of the 49th state. It’s the 50th state when it comes to a ranking of the number of golf courses: just 20 to 25 depending on the source, all of them open to the public, the only U.S. state with such a distinction. Only a quarter of the courses have a traditional routing of 18 holes. With a population around 736,000 people, Alaska, if we use the 25 figure, has one course for every 29,440 Alaskans, which is not good for tee-time availability but the state’s first tees aren’t being crashed.

Fletch plays away on the fourth, with the green in front of the lone evergreen.

Alaska clearly attracts people because of the remote outdoors and scenery and mainly the mountains. But as Thornhill told sports writer David Droschak, “Golf in Alaska is not like golf anywhere else. We play the same game, we have the same rules, but we don’t have the same golfing environment. Most of it is prettier than you can imagine.”

Alaska has likely taken more derision than praise as a golf location. Eighteen years ago, when I compiled a list of the “Best in State” all-time from each state for Golf Digest, I had Derek Fyten, Jeff Nerland, and Danielle Gransbury repping Alaska, not quite a “who’s who” but a who’s they group. More recently, Greg Sanders would make the list, having won 10 Alaska state amateurs. Ketchikan’s Danny Edwards, who won five times on the PGA Tour and attended Oklahoma State, has more cache on the list as No. 1. And as of last August, the state itself can now feel it’s been fully accepted. For 10 years it had been waiting to get rid of the title “last state to never hold a U.S. Golf Association championship” and that was taken care of when Shelly Stouffer won the 60th U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur at Anchorage Golf Course in a 4-and-3 victory over Sue Wooster. As a Canadian, Stouffer was well trained to prevail in Alaska. As for the USGA brass, they were happy they finally made good on having the “United States” in their title for inclusion.

The par-3 6th, looking back toward the tee, which is hidden on the other side of the set of four trees.

In that sense, Alaska is indeed a final frontier as a region last to be explored or developed. The state’s meager course and golfer numbers don’t speak well of how avid golf is in Alaska on the surface. To the contrary, with such a short golf season to contend with, there is a core loyalty and enthusiasm for the sport. I can attest to how that carries over to tourists to the state as well. Every visiting golfer I encountered was ecstatic to experience the conditions and environment, particularly for nighttime golf, so that “golfed in Alaska” could be included in their golf obituary. Let’s be clear, I will be describing a course that was shaggy in comparison to the average Lower 48 layout, but it was fun! And the course conditions in Alaska, by and large, are good and getting better.

Unless you cross an ocean for your golf, playing in Alaska will be the most remote location you’ll play, although I can vouch for golf on Nova Scotia’s Cabot Trail being perhaps a notch higher because of better course conditions. Thornhill believes the Alaskan tourist trade still has great potential since those people on group tours often connect with nongolf excursions and bypass golf. If that switched around, golf rounds would pick up.

Mary tees off on the home-hole ninth, in the glow of the nearly midnight sun at 10:30.

Alaska’s short golf season of April/May to September coincides with the benefit of the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. The Lower 48 enjoy longer days but in interior Alaska the days are eerily endless. In Fairbanks, there is just under 22 hours of sunlight around the longest day June 21, with sunset at 12:47 in the morning; the sun “comes up” at 2:57.

In my golf life I’d played mountain golf, desert golf, prairie golf, seaside golf, sandy golf, forest golf, and hit floater golf balls into a driving range lake. The coldest conditions I’d ever played were in the Frozen Open in January in Illinois 30-plus years ago on the Illinois State University (now Weibring Golf Club) Golf Course. On the par-4 ninth I holed out a 6-iron for a deuce; I could hear the ball thwack on the frozen green, take two big bounces and disappear in the hole. But I’d never played tundra golf, in Alaska, at 10:30 in the evening under the sun. Alaskan courses take advantage of the midnight sun and offer tee times well into the evening and also in the wee hours of the morning. Glow-in-the-dark balls? Not in fashion here.

The No. 9 green is exhibit A showing the effect permafrost has on growing turf.

My trek to Alaska was delayed two years due to the Covid pandemic. The trip, with my wife, Mary, finally took place last year, with one of the excursions offered a nine-hole round just east of Denali National Park in Healy at nine-hole Black Diamond Resort, which not too long ago was just a six-hole layout, a hole count many promote nowadays as ideal.

Like any golf played in conditions out of the temperate regions, you have to throw out all preconceived notions you have about course upkeep. Just let it go and just golf. Alaskan golf is a little rough around the edges, although courses in southern Alaska fare better. Fairbanks in south-central Alaska is the dividing line and northern boundary for legitimate golf conditions. Midnight Sun Golf Course is northeast of Fairbanks. Course turf doesn’t do well because permafrost prevents roots from growing very deep. Turf is covered with ice for months, cutting off oxygen and when the ice thaws the water turns grass into muck that is hardly receptive to new growth of real quality. The ice freeze that many courses fear in the contiguous U.S. over the winter from grass that’s ice-covered rather than snow-shrouded would be a minor inconvenience compared to what permafrost does. What does grow must be left a little shaggy but sometimes there’s not enough “healthy” growing and you’re left with bare spots. Half of the ninth green at Black Diamond was just hard-packed dirt, and on the day we played the hole was on top of a crown. If you couldn’t gauge the “punch” of your putt with the correct weight and gave it too much you went past the cup and down the other side running off the green.

You’ll have the feeling of being watched while in the Black Diamond grillroom.

That lack of growth and waffling effect wrecks the same havoc on fairway turf as it does to greens. What looks like a normal flat or gently rolling fairway from the tee is actually a pimpled surface resembling matzo crackers upon inspection.

While most golfers might consider themselves adaptable to whatever conditions they face, they might not be so agreeable over amenities. A “course” is a course, of course, but is a “resort” a resort? Well, a resort in Alaska is not the same breed as one in Florida. The amenities at an Alaskan resort are more rough hewn than the “normal” warm-weather resorts in the Lower 48. But to tweak an old saying, one man’s low-standard fare is another man’s high-brow pleasure. That’s how Black Diamond rolls. Located just outside the Denali National Park border, Black Diamond has a tie-in as one of the excursions for guests at the Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge. That includes anyone who wants to play in the evening as Mary and I did, joined by Fletcher, a travel companion of ours with his wife, Deb.

At the appointed pick-up time, the Black Diamond school bus transport picked us up at the lodge. The driver, Olivia, was a seasonal worker as most are at Alaskan tourist spots. From Arkansas, Olivia put heart into her job. During the ride to Black Diamond, she put some fear in us about potential rock slides and said if we saw a tree growing horizontally from a hillside that indicated a past rock slide. She told us the Nenana River we just drove over was 100 feet below us, was 38 degrees and fed by a glacier. Looking out for tourist photo ops, Olivia pulled over onto the shoulder so we could take pictures of a moose wading around in a pond.

When we arrived at Black Diamond, I was reminded of what the definition of a resort is, which is simply a place to go to for vacation or recreation, not necessarily a place that spent most of its budget on landscaping. We knew that Black Diamond was not only for golfers but for covered wagon rides, ATV use, and backcountry riding. Everything about it speaks to being outdoors. Since most writers use the word rustic to describe something less than pristine or impeccable and instead something plain and simple, let’s call black Diamond rustic. That would describe the dirt-road entrance, brown wood-framed clubhouse most of us would call a lake rec house, and the metal maintenance sheds and cart barns that are positioned with the same visual prominence upon arriving as the clubhouse.

If the modest arrival hadn’t done enough to prepare us for what it meant to play tundra golf, getting out to the first tee certainly did. The teeing ground was a mix of dirt and clumpy grass that had a tilt to the right. No need to look for your name on a tee sheet, it was drive up when ready and see if the tee was open. Directional aids to plot yourself through the nine holes were minimum but not needed. The routing was basically up and down with little hole curvature, unlike the part of the globe we were on. And whatever ruts and ground imperfections there were that sent the ball this way and that were all part of the challenge – and fun. Remember: playing golf at a new place means accepting everything about it and breaking out of your home-course routine.

I had not played since fall of 2021, so my first two tee shots were snipey hooks on the par 4s. But with the holes playing just around 360, I still had short irons in. On the rabbit hole, the par-4 third, 378 yards, I put a 5-iron down the left side, which was more than sufficient to leave an 8-iron in. But without yardage markers and trying to gauge my distance, the ball airmailed the green, one-hopped off a maintenance building and ricocheted onto the green. But then I three-putted. I was adding my own element of theater to the experience. (Mary and Fletch each had par!)

Mary and I, still in daylight at 10:30, with the Denali Park mountain range in background.

We had begun around 8 p.m. in light that looked like it was 7 in my native Illinois. As we went along and I looked at the time to see it slowly approach 8:30, 9, 9:30, I was delirious with the experience of seeing the sun still well above the horizon. It was approaching 9:30 when my big moment came on No. 4, just 230 yards. My golf muscles returned and I made a useful swing with my way-too-flat lie angle rental driver and hit the ball hole high to the right. I amazingly nearly holed a 25-yard chip-and-run to just tap-in range that even a shaggy green could not prevent me from holing out. A birdie on my fourth hole of tundra golf in Alaska! My golf cup overfloweth with blessings!

Most of the holes made sense for the routing but when we got to the 164-yard, par-3 sixth, the direction of the slightly elevated tee had us looking straight at a tall, skinny evergreen tree 80 yards from the tee, with no green visible as the ground fell away behind it. With no one behind pushing us, I drove up to see that the green was 50 yards past the tree. The play was to hit over or curve around the tree to reach the green. I christened the hole the Tundra Wundra for the riddle it posed. We all lost track of my tee ball and it never materialized up by the green so I fudged my score (another Alaskan first for me) with a scorecard double-bogey. (Mary was finding Alaska to her liking; she also had pars on five and seven, nearly driving the green on the latter as she challenged trees down the left side.)

If you do anything in Alaska, see Mount Denali, the highest mountain in North America at 20,310 feet. Temperature at the top in July likely zero degrees. Only 30 percent of visitors see Denali because of cloud coverage. (Photo by Cliff Schrock, taken on iPhone viewed through binoculars.)

As we got to the ninth green, it was nearing 10:30 p.m. but the sun was still above the treeline. We were giddy at the thought we could play another nine and still have enough light to do so. But having achieved our goal and with our Midwest and East Coast body clocks telling us it was really 1:30/2:30 a.m., we held off. Mount Denali awaited us after all in coming days and rest would be needed! But we couldn’t stop being amazed at how awesome it would be to live in Alaska for the summer and basically play anytime of the day. The funny statistical analysis was that I shot in Alaska what I shoot anywhere for nine; had an eight-over 42, with a birdie, two pars, three bogeys, and three doubles. I’d hit six of seven fairways, had four GIR and 18 putts. All my normal stuff. (The USGA would be pleased that the Black Diamond scorecard proclaims, “USGA Rules Govern All Play”.)

I grew up a public-course golfer and was more into the on-course golf than in-house grillroom ambience but I could have been fine hanging out a bit in the Black Diamond grillroom with animal heads staring at me, but we drove back talking about how this course experience had been as unique as any you could have in golf. I thought of how with Mary we started our marriage with golf on our honeymoon at Tan-Tar-A Resort in the Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri, and 40 years later golf still keeps giving us thrilling experiences. Blessed by good health and longevity, golf will give you experiences as vast and as full of adventure on the course as any sport. Alaskan golf in the land of the midnight sun had been one of our greatest adventures, which we could now tick off the proverbial bucket list.

For a moment I paused from the conversation and looking at views of distant mountain ranges and read the Black Diamond publicity card I’d picked up. There in the blurbs were two claims I could witness to if I was hauled into golf court right then and there.

The first, “Are you rough enough? Tundra Golfing, golf like nowhere else.” The second, “The only thing a golfer needs is more daylight…Alaska! Play anytime! Play at midnight!”

There was a marketing writer to admire. No exaggeration or false hope, no bull. Alaskan golf had delivered plain and simple…and memorably, all night long.

The truism that you can’t pick your relatives usually pertains to the immediate family you’re born into—mom, dad, brother, sister. But how does it relate to in-laws? Given the fact that you don’t woo your future spouse’s parents and siblings first—if, in fact, you even meet them right off the bat—to see if they’re desirable family surely shows you can’t pick your in-laws, either. You fall in love with your mate first and then it’s potluck who comes to the door when you make your first visit to meet your special someone’s parents.

During my youth through college, I had already found myself drawn a lot to the families of friends who exhibited a Cunninghams (“Happy Days”) or “The Waltons”-type traditional and normal home life. When it came time for me in the early summer of 1982 to see if my potluck options were going to be pleasing or distasteful, my plate overflowed.

On the big day my future wife, Mary, was to introduce me to her parents and family, I learned before I even got into her house that I would have to overcome my innate shyness and reserved nature. Following our two-and-a-half-hour drive, we had barely stepped foot onto the family’s enclosed front porch when mom, Mary Ellen, came out first and planted a full big kiss on the lips followed by Bill, with both arms extended, taking my right hand and shaking it vigorously while smiling broadly.

Hello Cliff! We wish to welcome you to the Hynd house!

I’m particularly remembering that dizzying day at this special time of year because that excited man, William Dale Hynd, was laid to rest today, at age 87. In the early hours of Christmas Day last week, Bill went to be with God on the same celebration day that Christ was gifted to humankind. Bill had been weakened in recent years from a mind too confused and unclear to function at full capacity and, most critically, in recent weeks by the cruel Covid virus that he had caught in his nursing-care facility. Damn that virus and all the misery it has heaped on our world!

Cub fan Bill Hynd and his Cardinal fan son-in-law make peace outside the Baseball Hall of Fame, 1986, in this portion from a photo scrapbook.

When you learn that Bill was the father of six girls (lovingly raised by him and Mary Ellen in a Christian team effort), it may seem curious why he was so happy. Beaten down and weary, yes, but happy!? To begin, that was Bill’s nature to be contented and blissful. That was clear on that first day at dinnertime. Five of the six daughters were present, gathered around the table, with Bill at one end and Mary Ellen at the other, closest to the kitchen. I was not used to family-time dinner, and as we ate there arose such a clatter that I thought something was the matter. But as I turned my head from one side to the other as at a tennis match, I saw this was the normal routine. All the time, Bill sat quietly, eating at a leisurely pace but then, lo, he stirreth to speak and as he did it was as if we were filming an EF Hutton commercial (go ahead, look it up on youtube.com). All the girls stopped in mid-sentence and listened to Bill speak his peace. When he went back to his plate, the girls went back to yakking, with momentary breaks to eat.

I like people who aren’t demanding and who don’t require any complicated conversation, just casual and comfortable. Bill was one of the most unassuming persons I knew, and it could be quibbled he wasn’t one to take the bull by the horns often enough. You did have to drive the conversation with Bill, but it wasn’t because he was aloof or didn’t want to speak with you. He was just The Quiet Man before John Wayne made the movie as one. He was extremely comfortable in his faith, his work ethic to make a living for his family as a tool-and-die maker, to being a role model for the girls: Theresa, Mary, Eileen, Patty, Karen and Janet. He adored Mary Ellen, the Hynd family heritage in the Quad Cities, family gatherings, being thrifty and wise in spending, recycling was one of his many simple pleasures, his yard work, riding his bike, supporting his children during their education, taking pride in his grandkids and pleased to be a great-granddad. He served his country in the Navy.

I have no recollection of Bill doing anything remotely mean-spirited to anyone or saying an unkind thing. If he felt that way about someone he kept it to himself, but something tells me it wasn’t in his blood to be spiteful or have unkind thoughts. When I eventually came to Moline to ask for permission to marry his No. 2 daughter, I found him out in the garage. As I explained my purpose, he was relaxed and calm in getting me through my nervousness as he said go ahead, get her off my hands. Can you fathers out there imagine having to marry off six girls!? That Bill did and I think he was over the moon excited that after each ceremony he had added a son to the extended family.

With Rodeo Bill at one of his favorite events, a relaxed family gathering.

As a golf-writer/historian, I thought it was meant to be that I’d marry someone whose father was born on September 10, Arnold Palmer’s birthday (four years after Arnie in 1933). Bill has now bookended that date with another notable golfer’s milestone: four-time Open champion Young Tom Morris died on Christmas Day (1875). Bill had a taste for all the classics in life: Abraham Lincoln as president, favorite hobby was reading, candy was jelly beans, card game was 500, flower the rose, and singer Frank Sinatra plus his song, “Young at Heart.”

Bill was a keen attendee at Notre Dame football games, taking the five- to six-hour bus ride to South Bend from the Quad Cities in trips led by Patty’s ND-alum husband, Tony, who Bill is now in reunion with in heaven. Patty and Tony’s son, Alex, who is now attending Illinois State University, was another object of Bill’s affection as he watched him play dozens of baseball and football games.

Bill was a marvel in some of the things he did and to some degree overachieved from normal life: 62 years married, six girls, 40ish years at one company, 40 years in the same family home, and he loved Christmas as his favorite holiday so much he left us on it. Then there is this: after retirement, he would go on all-day bike rides on the Mississippi River bike path on a one-speed bike! To commemorate his cycling prowess Mary and I doctored up a Lance Armstrong photo image on a Sports Illustrated cover to convert it to a Bill Hynd face and framed it.

Bill became “Rodeo Bill” in 1983 at my wedding to Mary when at our reception at the local American Legion Hall we served Rodeo Bill potato chips from Aldi. I think he liked the moniker, not only because it probably spruced up his image to have a nickname but Bill was universally known to savor his food. For some reason in my life, both my father, Donald, who died in 2003, and father-in-law, Bill, could spend all day eating a plate of food but not gain weight. They ate slow and in small bites and were easily distracted by the conversation to go even slower. If they went back for seconds, you had better tip your waiter NOW because they would go off-shift by the time you had to pay. Our daughter, Joelle, and I would deliberately try to go slow and outlast them but I don’t think we ever “won” nor did they know we were goofing with them.

Bill’s favorite season was summer and sport baseball. He was my kind of Cub fan. Being a Cardinal fan from central Illinois, in the middle between Chicago and St. Louis, I know all about the Cardinal-Cub rivalry. I want the Cardinals to beat the Cubs, but I’m not obsessively idiotic about it like some fans can be. Baseball is a sport, it’s not a critical life or death event. We have seen in 2020 what life and death is all about. Bill supported his team and loved Ernie Banks, but he was very composed about it. As Bill got older and still hadn’t experienced a World Series title and as the Cubs started looking like a contender, our thinking was “if the Cardinals don’t win it, we got to have the Cubs win for Bill.” It was fun to see how their 2016 championship delighted him.

The way Bill was about sports was how he was with most things in life. Neither too high or too low, and now that he’s passed, I feel similarly serene in my heart with my memories. I’m so glad I knew him, although it wasn’t even for half of his 87 years. I’m very glad that Joelle got to experience a grandfather in her adult life and that Bill got to meet the man she married, Josh, and vice-versa. And I’m glad for the memory Mary will have of her good FaceTime visit on December 21st with her father. On one of his good final days, he knew it was his Mary Margaret, his trouble-maker (relatively speaking, of course) of a daughter who he told “needed to behave” and then he told her to always help people and do kind things for people. He kept repeating that message over and over in the FaceTime chat, still dispensing fatherly advice.

It is often said at the time someone dies following an illness in which the person deteriorates into someone “we don’t recognize” anymore that we want to remember them as they were. I will still remember the older Bill because he was someone of value to cherish and it completes the total view of him. But the Bill of 1982, in his mid-40s, is looming large for me right now and probably always will. My first vision of him—of a man enthused to meet a potential future son, a man in full flight and in full vigor—that image will never be diminished or lost in time. God’s peace be with you, Bill.

In the nine months after I got married in 1983 I celebrated my first Christmas as a married man; moved into an apartment; found out my bride didn’t like bills sitting around longer than 24 hours; settled into a third year as a sports writer; took my first commercial airline flight and interviewed for an editor’s job at Golf Digest, nearly buying the farm driving home in a late-winter ice and wind storm from Chicago; said farewell to my hometown of Bloomington, Illinois, and moved 1,000 miles east to Connecticut; celebrated my wife obtaining a position in GD’s production department; played Winged Foot West; went on a business trip to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and had ribs at Dreamland…

Wait a second, I should slow down? What was that one? Let me write it more broadly: Played the West Course at Winged Foot Golf Club, Mamaroneck, New York. That would be historic Winged Foot, home to the Tillinghast-designed West and East courses, up to that moment the famous three-time U.S. Open site, ready to have a fourth in June 1984. The West was where Bobby Jones won in a playoff in 1929; Billy Casper won in 1959 with some of the best putting and most creative strategy imaginable, and of course, the Winged Foot of 1974 massacre fame, which Hale Irwin survived and Tom Watson fumbled. The place where a sixth U.S. Open, the 120th, will be played this week, and of the first five, just one winning score was below par.

My wife and I had crammed about as much as you’d want in nine months of marriage (no, there was no honeymoon baby). But Winged Foot? About a month into the job? Isn’t that too much too soon? I’d been hired to work on Golf Digest’s trade magazine, Golf Shop Operations, and by the end of 1985, I had moved over to the big book as Assistant Managing Editor.

But getting to play a course like Winged Foot wasn’t one of the job perks I recall talking about during interviews. Applying for GSO, the chat was more about what I knew of the golf shop business. But the Winged Foot invite likely came as I sat in my cramped three-person office and Jerry Tarde, a Winged Foot member and soon-to-be GD’s Editor-in-Chief, asking me if I wanted to play. Now, I have recently turned 61, and I still think of myself as some rough around the edges kid from the cornfields of Illinois, which is what I was in 1984. I knew my golf, having worked as a sports writer on The Daily Pantagraph, the same paper where Dave Kindred and Golf World’s Ron Coffman had apprenticed, but prior to Golf Digest, the grandest place I’d played golf was Cog Hill No. 4, the lauded “broad-shouldered” layout that required high approach shots that could hold the greens.

However, Cog Hill was not in Winged Foot’s league, but not many are. The history of American golf can be traced through Winged Foot. The separate golf shop from the main clubhouse, showing how pros were kept away from the members in the early 1900s. The classic Tillinghast features on two top 100 courses. The architectural wonder of the clubhouse with an immense two-story locker-room and side-room lounges. The legendary oversized shower heads that feel like you’re standing out in a warm rainstorm. The large-sized dining area and grillroom and hallways featuring historic items from its major championships, which trace the great champions of the game.

It was all there on Sunday, April 29, 1984. How do I know the date? I’ve kept a log of all my golf rounds since moving to Connecticut, so that’s 36 years’ worth. Besides, to apply the adage “you always remember the first time” to golf, I still retain several memories of the day. I recall playing with Jerry, senior editor Ross Goodner and GD Schools director Andy Nusbaum. (Pardon the interruption, but a moment of tribute for Ross and Andy, who have both passed away. Ross was that veteran staffer who you could go to as a young writer and gain as much knowledge as possible about the business. It’s a learning path that young staff members rarely take advantage of these days. Andy ably ran the Golf Digest Schools at a time when it was loaded with hall of fame talent: Toski, Flick, Love, Runyan, Lumpkin and many more, including guests Snead and Middlecoff.)

Winged Foot was just a 40-minute ride down the Merritt and Hutchinson parkways. We had lunch and I tried my best not to gawk at the large bar and grillroom walls with the club’s history of winners on numerous boards. I remember little details of our meal. We sat at the near wall to the entrance. Jerry had a transfusion, the first time I’d heard of the drink. His variety was grape juice with ginger ale, so I had to try that. I remember Andy did something simple with his oversized potato chips. Instead of crunching into them and having them break into a mess, he simply broke them with his index finger on the plate and ate the smaller pieces. I thought, Wow, how brilliant, how refined! I’m really going to learn key stuff here!

I had not played golf since leaving Illinois, but I had gone out and played nine holes at the Red Course at Fairchild-Wheeler in Fairfield the day before but shot a shocking 50. When you have a self-taught swing, all the bad habits surface when you are under pressure, and the pressure wasn’t much worse than playing Winged Foot West basically cold. I was feeling it the day before!

There is just one shot I recall vividly out of the 89 on my scorecard. The first hole is called Genesis, appropriate for anyone feeling they are blessed to play a round at Winged Foot. But the word emphasizes the initial hole of the day and that you’re about to embark on something spiritual. The hole is a dogleg left par 4 of average length; the infamous green is the main feature, Jack Nicklaus putting off it in the 1974 U.S. Open and four-putting. But putting was my forte and I was only worried about any of my bad swing habits settling in all day long. So I am trying to stay positive when it’s my turn to hit my “in the beginning” shot. I send the ball up and off to the right. It’s not a bad hit, but I watch it with dread because it’s sailing and sailing…onto the practice range to the right of the first hole. The range is still in use today; read Max Adler’s essay from the latest Golf Digest at https://www.golfdigest.com/story/Winged-Foot-US-Open-editors-letter.

Yeah, what a plunker. I hit my first tee shot at Winged Foot onto the practice range. Am I going to have to do the embarrassing thing of hunting for my ball among the practice balls? But this hole with the Biblical name inspires compassion. I was granted a lunch ball, a mulligan; Winged Foot was, after all, the place David Mulligan introduced the do-over shot on the first hole. This one I put in play.

I recall no other specific shots but the course routing and holes are etched in my memory, and the challenges and features they presented were elements I’d not experienced before and did not have the game to play well. It was fun to see that the awesome par-3 10th hole really was, as Ben Hogan said, “a 3-iron into someone’s bedroom” (some say he said “living room”) because your aiming point is a house on the edge of the course in line with the hole. I don’t mind fast greens, but I had no bite on my shots and had little experience hitting out of high-lipped bunkers. I finished off a mulligan-ball 89 and hoped my pathetic game wouldn’t forever keep me away from being invited again. Even though Shinnecock Hills would be the pick I would make if I “just had one course left to play,” Winged Foot West would be a close second. I did get to come back a few more times, and even birdied one hole—the 11th—but the last time I was there was November 2016 for a dinner.

Which brings us to this week. I recall that night in 2016, walking out of the club after dinner and stopping to look out at the 18th and 9th greens. It was a clear evening and the club’s outdoor spotlights lit the area well. I remember thinking to myself: Will this be the last time I see the magnificence of Winged Foot? With the 2020 U.S. Open this week, I had been given new hope. My wife and I had tickets for Friday’s second round. She had gone with me to the 1984 U.S. Open that Fuzzy Zoeller won. We were looking to bring our Winged Foot experience full circle and see an Open there 36 years after the first time. But the COVID pandemic has kept spectators off the course, and like many life moments it has affected, we will be forced to change plans and watch from our home.

As I watch players tee off No. 1, I’ll think about my right-to-right shot onto the practice range on my very first shot at Winged Foot in 1984 and wish I could have hit my “Sunday best” instead.

Growing up in the central Illinois town of Bloomington in the 1960s and 1970s, I lived roughly halfway between Chicago and St. Louis on the old Route 66 line, now long since converted to I-55. Being able to travel the “Mother Road,” which went from Chicago to Los Angeles, is now nothing but a nostalgic memory. But 66 played a part in how I selected my favorite sports teams because the pro teams at each end of 66 were what I was most familiar with.

When it came to baseball, I had Chicago’s Cubs and White Sox at the north end of the state or the Cardinals of St. Louis right across the Mississippi River, both cities reachable by taking 66, Chicago a half hour closer. Going either direction had its plusses. Going to Chicago allowed stops at relatives who lived in Kankakee plus, of course, once in Chicago seeing the great museums and points of interest. And going to St. Louis took us through Springfield and all the Abraham Lincoln history and in St. Louis itself was the Arch, the river and Mark Twain influence, which I loved.

I played American Legion Little League baseball, and even though Wrigley Field was the first pro baseball field I went to as part of a paperboy trip, I was drawn to be a Cardinal fan, probably because they were winning the World Series at my impressionable age and the Cubs, well, they were the Lovable Losers, but I wasn’t feeling the love. Also, I recall our family going to Cardinal games but never to Cub games, and I probably took that as a sign of who I should root for. But how is this for a convincer: On the day I was born, May 24, 1959, the Cardinals and Cubs played at Wrigley Field, with St. Louis winning, 7-3. I guess you could literally say I was meant to be a Cardinal fan from the day I was born.

As a kid, you always knew the names of every baseball team’s starting eight and pitching staff. The Cardinal teams of the late 1960s were awesome: Cepeda at first, Javier at second, Maxvill at short, Shannon at third, Brock, Flood and Maris in the outfield, McCarver catching and a pitching staff led by Bob Gibson.

All of the childhood joy of being a Cardinal fan has been revived with me since the news of Lou Brock’s death on Sunday at age 81. And if ever the timing of someone’s passing could be called “fitting,” how appropriate that Brock died while the Cardinals and Cubs were playing another series in their legendary rivalry. It was the Cubs who traded Brock to the Cardinals back in 1964, just one of the many threads that knit these two teams together.

I really don’t feel I have a “favorite” Cardinal. I liked Ted Simmons a lot, and actually my favorite player of all-time is Brooks Robinson, who played for my second favorite team the Orioles. But Lou Brock would be in my top three Cardinals. I always wanted, but never got, one of the clever Brock-abella umbrella hats that he endorsed. Brock, in fact, was the focus of an early journalistic journey to St. Louis while I was in college at Illinois State University. I was going to school to get an English major and mass communication minor, with the dream of being a sports writer. I was working for the student paper, The Daily Vidette (now just The Vidette), and in the summer of 1979, Brock’s final season, I had arranged for a press pass to go to a Cardinal doubleheader, likely on Sunday, July 1, against Philadelphia. The plan was to see Brock before the first game, talk about all aspects of his career, then write a piece for the paper. I had taken a similar tack the previous year when I interviewed my all-time favorite athlete in any sport, John Havlicek, in his final season with the Boston Celtics.

That visit with Havlicek went marvelously well. The Vidette ran the story and I wrote about that experience earlier this year on my website on the one-year anniversary of Havlicek’s death. Going to see Lou Brock didn’t go so well, no fault of his. I was dependent on getting a ride to St. Louis and remember insisting that my ride leave at a certain time to make sure I got to Busch Stadium in plenty of time. Like most sports stadiums, if you didn’t hit the area at the right time, you were in a traffic logjam. At St. Louis, coming from the Illinois side of the river, you could be backed up across the bridge.

Sure enough, we didn’t leave when we needed to, and ran into a wall of traffic. By the time we got to the parking area, I knew I was doomed to do Plan A and talk with Brock pregame. All I remember is running to get entry through the press gate and down to the dugout. As I ran I thought of Plan B: I’ll just introduce myself and tell Brock my intent and ask to speak with him between games.

Engulfed in my own naivete, I got into the dugout entrance with no problem, with roughly 15 minutes before the 1:15 game time and there he was. Brock happened to be close by, and my throat clenched up. He just seemed to be in a bit of a zone by himself, just standing without doing much, staring out at the field. I, on the other hand, was pacing a little bit, wondering how I was going to make him aware of my plan. In what seemed like an hour but was likely just a few seconds of me lingering to get his attention, I finally started coming toward him, saying, “Mr. Brock.” But Lou, who’d certainly had young inexperienced “cub” reporters approach him before, must have known my intent. Before I could say anything further he said, “You’re a little too late, my friend.”

But, of course, a legendary speedster would recognize someone slow, and that was me. I had been slow to get there, but after his remark, I was fast to leave. Down the dugout ramp I went, out past the locker room and out into the main concourse where I belonged with the regular folks. It was only then that I sulked for awhile, mad at my ride, mad at myself, mad that I looked like an amateur. I felt like I’d had a setback in my young sports journalism career. Seeing Hondo had gone so well, but this was just the opposite. I tried to ease my mind by thinking that at least Brock wouldn’t know my name, because I didn’t get a chance to pitch it. I joined the others in my party in our seats.

I have no recollection of how the rest of the day in St. Louis went, although I recall it was a beautiful weather day. The Cardinals won both games, but I remember telling the others that I wasn’t feeling up to going back down between games or after Game 2. The wind had been taken out from my sails and my enthusiasm for the task was nil.

I wasn’t upset with Brock or changed my team loyalty. I just remember thinking over and over that I didn’t want to speak with him then, I just wanted to tell him I would like to meet him later in the day. Why wouldn’t he let me speak to him? I was just trying to do the courteous thing. But after I “grew up” as a sports reporter, I realized that wasn’t necessary. He didn’t need to know I was there and I could have approached him cold later. I could have met him with the rest of the reporters afterward. And as I look back on it today, I just think of it as a learning experience that happens to everyone.

As a Cardinal fan, my Lou Brock experience is pretty solid. It mainly consists of watching him play his career with the Cardinals and hearing Jack Buck beautifully call his games. A friend, Bump Williams, who has been to many Cardinal Legends camps, brought back a Lou Brock autographed hat, which will never be worn or spoiled.

Then there’s the one brief encounter in which Lou Brock told me I’d been late to the game, an observation of tardiness no one ever associated with him, one of the speediest and well liked players in baseball history.

We’re now just two weeks past the one-year anniversary of the death of hall of fame Celtics great John Havlicek. If Hondo lovers and the general Celtic faithful out there are like me, the date of April 25th didn’t pass by without thinking about not only one of the most celebrated Celtics but one of the greatest basketball players of all time. In my life—and I’m sure I wouldn’t be alone in this—he was also my all-time favorite athlete. I thought writing an account of meeting him would be a nice diversionary read during this health-crisis-enforced absence from the NBA.

I grew up in central Illinois in the 1960s and ’70s. That may sound like an odd place to be a Celtics fan, around 1,100 miles from Boston, but in those days radio stations had no regulations limiting the strength of their signal and I could get WBZ Boston 1030 consistently clear. I gravitated to the Celtics for being so successful, and because I played basketball and I liked Hondo’s style of play, he became my favorite. He just went out and did his job, running opponents into the ground, and I mimicked that the best I could, which was just intramural level from high school on.

The central time zone was ideal for listening to games from the East Coast to West. I mainly recall from middle school on, around 1970-1971, becoming very engaged in the Celts. I’d listen to every game on the radio, go to the local library every weekend to catch up on box-scores through The Sporting News, and, naturally, hoped to catch a game on TV, which didn’t come with much regularity back then. Yes, Johnny Most was a “homer” radio announcer, but he told it like it was most of the time and his Celtic bias was justified when it came to bad officiating calls. I turned my room into a Bedroom Boston Garden, with homemade banners on the wall for my own rafter décor, and bought any sport magazine with Havlicek on the cover.

As I got through my high school years, Hondo was winding down his career. By that time, my love for sports and writing had transformed into the desire to be a sportswriter. When I started college in the fall of 1977 at Illinois State University, I walked into the office of the student newspaper—then called The Daily Vidette, now The Vidette—just prior to the start of classes and asked to join the sports staff. When I got toward the end of my freshman year and Havlicek had decided he was going to retire in spring 1978, I felt empowered even though I was “the rookie” on staff to ask about being able to do a story on the end of his career. I asked my editor, Cal Cheney, “What would you think if I went to Chicago Stadium for Havlicek’s last game against the Bulls and talked with him for a story?” “Sure, Rookie, go for it,” I was told.

Here’s where the story of meeting a sports hero could disintegrate, that the athlete turned out to be a jerk and the pedestal he sat on fractures and falls apart. But it doesn’t here. It’s one of the highlights of my life that my sports hero confirmed and lived up to what I imagined him to be.

More than 40 years later from that April 4, 1978, game, my memories of the interview are still vibrant. I had arranged for a press pass through Jim Durham, the Bulls’ radio announcer who had attended ISU and covered Doug Collins at the school while with WJBC radio. I made sure I did the three-hour drive with plenty of time to spare to arrive before the game to meet Havlicek. (A sad sidenote: Time would be a factor in a botched attempt to meet up with Lou Brock before a Cardinal doubleheader in St. Louis in his final season 1979; my ride left late, we got caught in traffic going over the Mississippi River, and I only got down to the dugout/clubhouse area 15 minutes before the first game. I tried to get Brock’s attention as he paced in the dugout just to tell him I was wanting to speak with him between games, but he evaded me before finally saying, “You’re a little too late, my friend.” I sulked out of there, never did go back to see him after the games, and felt like I’d had a setback in my young sports journalism career.)

At the now demolished Chicago Stadium, you gained entrance to the basement locker rooms through a trapdoor on the playing floor. The teams hadn’t started warmups when I went down to the Boston room, where I was able to approach Havlicek and explain the need for an interview. He said to get started and we stood near the locker-room doorway with him certainly being kind to a fresh college kid, six weeks shy of 19, operating out of his comfort zone. The affirmation of who Havlicek was as a person and the discipline and standards he lived by came halfway through the interview. A Boston PR man approached us and said to him that he was needed to take care of another media matter. Havlicek paused with me, looked at the man and said, perhaps sensing the PR guy considered me nonessential, “I’m doing an interview with this reporter. When I am finished with him, I’ll take care of what you need.”

As we continued and wrapped up the interview, I was speaking with him while also feeling a sense of pride that Havlicek thought enough of me to treat me as if I’d been Celtics beat writer Bob Ryan. I lingered and shadowed Hondo as he continued pregame activities, and took photos of him being interviewed for TV so there would be at least one photo to run with the story (the quality was amateur pathetic). Havlicek did not star in the game (14 points in 32 minutes), which was a Celtics 12-point loss in his final road game, but the 11,732 fans treated him well and he was presented with a Bulls jersey with his No. 17 on it.

Writing the story is a blur. I must have driven home that night, and then worked on it the next day at school because The Vidette ran it on the morning of Thursday, April 6. By then I was finding it more enjoyable to work on the Vidette and get experience than attend classes, so who knows what classes I missed on Wednesday.

After the big moment, I continued to pull for the Celtics, but the fervor can’t match that of my young adult life. No athlete has dethroned John Havlicek as top sports idol. I continued to look for news about him in retirement. After I moved to Connecticut and made road trips back to Illinois, I would see the billboard on I-70 west of the Bridgeport/Martins Ferry, Ohio, area on the Wheeling, West Virginia border that highlighted Havlicek, Phil and Joe Niekro and Bill Jobko, star athletes and native sons of the region. I have the LP and DVD recordings of the old Celtics audio from the 1950s and ’60s. I always enjoyed seeing the playback of the iconic “Havlicek stole the ball” drama. I watch the 1953 John Wayne movie “Hondo” when it comes on TV just to look for the Wayne profile, which inspired Havlicek’s pals to give him the nickname because he bore a resemblance. At Golf Digest, I got the assignment to do a swing-sequence shoot with Larry Bird, my second favorite Celtic, and he measured up to expectations, but I had previously reported on him in college when his Indiana State team would play Illinois State in basketball. And I was thankful that Jeff Twiss of the Celtics PR department was able to get an old Sporting News cover of Havlicek that I provided signed by him many years after our Chicago Stadium interview. Combined with a Bird signature on a photo of the two of us doing an interview during the photo shoot, I’ve got mementos covering my Celtic favorites.

The measure of a person’s impact on society often includes a reinforcing memory of “where you were when you heard the news” that the person had died. When I first saw the news about John Havlicek, I felt a somber urge come over me to make sure I made a memory of the moment. I needed the focus, because it was past 11 at night on April 25 that I saw the short line on espn.com’s home-page news ticker about his death. I had been scrambling that evening to prepare for an early morning flight with my family to the Quad Cities for a weekend family event and was online to do a few things on my website so my daily golf item would continue on while away. With ESPN as my home page, the news was right there to see.

I was surprised how calm I took the report, that I didn’t know whether to cry or not over a passage of my youth. I had an inclination to go around the house and tell my family members what I just saw to have them share in the moment when the sports figure who was my primary idol growing up had died. But everyone was settled in to grab some sleep and I sat there in silence, not really reacting strongly one way or another. It wasn’t something I expected to see, but not totally unexpected due to his Parkinson’s illness. I think anyone who was a Havlicek fan found it hard to believe he could ever be stopped. His entire career was built on running his opponent in the ground. The Green Running Machine was not as well known a nickname as Hondo, but it was more on the mark as a moniker for him. He was always on the move. In fact, when he retired, many media outlets used the “Hondo at the end of a long run” phrase in headlines. I recall when he retired feeling like he had one more good year in him and wishing he’d add to his legacy. But he wasn’t playing at the level he prided himself on and the Celtics were not in the hunt for a title, which if they had been might have been enough to keep him around.

What made me most melancholy after Havlicek’s passing was that it seemed like it got zero attention. I spent the next few days while in the Midwest looking for follow-up reports and could not find anything deep or beyond the news ticker basics. It hurt me that it seemed like everyone else in the media thought it was such small news; I had assumed the sports world would find this a bigger story and perspectives would have been produced.

Perhaps it’s best that it was left up to my own thoughts to reflect on and interpret Havlicek’s death in a way that was most meaningful to me. I didn’t need interpretations of what he meant to the sports world. I had my own feelings about the man, obtained through first-hand knowledge.

How an 18-year-old college freshman wrote about his sports idol Havlicek.

The sad result of Kathy Kelly Stachura’s heart evidently giving out, causing her to pass away one week ago on October 2, rings true in one aspect: her heart gave out and gave out and gave out for all of her 56 years. There are givers and takers in this world, and Kathy was a giver.

I had been a coworker of Kathy’s at Golf Digest, where I had been an editor and she performed a variety of roles, most prominently as Chief of Research and factchecker. Even after she began doing her duties out of her home in Trumbull, I as the magazine’s ad hoc librarian would get emails on occasion asking for confirmation of something she couldn’t find, or her husband, Mike, the mag’s equipment editor, would come to the Resource Center and say “the fact checker needs this or that” and grab a reference book.

She may have needed help to solve questions needing answers, but most of the time she was the one who answered the needs of others, mainly her family, but certainly anyone she saw needing help in any way, from pets to strangers.

Kathy Stachura

The obvious topic to discuss with someone dying so soon is how unfair, senseless and cruel it is that Kathy was taken away at what is supposed to be such a rewarding time in someone’s life, when they should reap the benefits of the labor put into a marriage and motherhood. Her children, Annie and Jack, are young adults who exhibit the guidance that both parents provided. But the senselessness is for our own individual reflection and comprehension. As a Christian, I, myself, would rather revel in the perspective I strongly recall hearing from my longtime pastor, Rev. Ron Froehlich, who at a funeral for another person who died too young spoke uplifting words that I write for Kathy here: “Would you believe it if I told you that Kathy is more alive now than when she was with us.” She believed in the promise of what God said about His Son Jesus and that’s the excitement to feel about Kathy now.

But there are other uplifting areas to discuss, such as the memories of Kathy that will be the focus for years to come when those of us who knew her remember the life she led.

There are people we meet in life who are so memorable that you don’t forget them, and they put impressions on your mind. Kathy was one of those persons. From the perspective of either family or friend, Kathy was energized, engaged in life, vibrant, dedicated, devoted, loyal and determined.

I also thought she was funny. Not “I love Lucy” funny, trying to save all the chocolates on the conveyer belt, but kind of a goof, even a little klutzy. Any conversation I had with Kathy usually included some silly repartee. I bet she developed that being around her brothers Hugh and Brian. She probably needed to be funny as a defense mechanism to hold her own against her brothers. A sense of humor probably kept her sane.

Impressions and memories of her for me revolve around the story of seeing her in the lobby at the Trumbull Golf Digest building when she came for her job interview. The story goes that I helped guide her to where she needed to go for the interview for a job she eventually was offered. Kathy would tell of that encounter over the years, and like a tall tale, the story grew until by the last time I’d heard it I was a Paul Bunyan type character who not only helped direct her upon her arrival but basically interviewed her and offered her the job on the spot as well. I didn’t mind that because, as the saying goes, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

When she got on the editorial staff, when Kathy would pass my office, she would invariably stop and look at her reflection to fix or arrange her bangs, using the glass like a mirror. I won’t forget that image in my head. That was her, just being kind of goofy about her looks.

She also had a kind of sing-song way of talking in the office. When she answered the phone, her voice would adjust from her normal tone to a light and airy, “Good morning, Kathy Kelly, Editorial.”

Oddly, I didn’t understand why she always called me Mr. Schrock, as in, “Hello Mr. Schrock,” “thank you Mr. Schrock,” or “You’re a good egg, Mr. Schrock.” I don’t have any recall of her calling me Cliff.

“A good egg” must have been one of her favorite phrases. As for calling me Mr. Schrock, I was four years older, so I guess, being the courteous person she was and raised well by her parents, that was just her way of showing respect to her elders.

Kathy and Mike went down in Golf Digest lore for their secret courtship. They flirted on the sly through the primitive office electronics of the day. One can only imagine how they would have done courting by email and texting. It was so “secret” that my wife, Mary, who had worked over in production, said to me on the way home from Monday’s calling hours, “wasn’t it funny they had that secret dating thing going on?” That courtship took place 25-plus years ago but the “behind the scenes” dating was still a topic of conversation.

Mary, whose memory is better than mine, also said she had remembered Kathy and another coworker, Lisa Sweet, coming to our house after our daughter Joelle was born and having a playtime with her. Mary pulled the photos of that visit (one is on the home page), and they are now more treasured images than we could have imagined.

Family was everything to Kathy. After her children were born, if you needed to find Kathy, you just had to go find where the kids were and you’d find her, supporting them.

She supported all people and causes close to her heart the best that she could. An email she sent to me after I started a new job and was experiencing anxiety was encouraging to me. She said my employer had hit the hiring lottery jackpot when they got me, so just go do what I do best and I’d be all right. She turned out to be correct.

So, thank you for that Kathy, good and faithful servant, who was honored at her funeral service Tuesday with Annie singing Amazing Grace and Mike delivering a powerful eulogy. Thank you for what you did in people’s lives to be memorable and helpful.

You were a good egg, too.

All right. So I waited a few weeks to see if my initial feelings about the big news following the conclusion of the Masters remained as strong and as fervent as they did then.

To be clear, I’m not referring to the news that Tiger Woods won a 15th major. My preference for several years for the fallen star has been that in tournament play I’m fine with him lurking and lingering among the leaders to create interest, especially at the big events—such as he did in the 2018 majors—but not be crowned the winner. No, the news I had a strong reaction to was the premature and haphazard decision by Donald Trump that Woods should receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

As most if not all of Trump’s comments are, this one was a knee-jerk, ill-conceived, shoot-from-the-mouth-I-didn’t-think-this-through remark that plain just doesn’t make sense—at least not at this moment in time. If that’s not strong enough, how about this: Trump’s announcement was also an insult to Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Charles Sifford. That, however, is not likely something Trump gives a hoot about since he is, after all, Donald Trump. He’s not going to worry about taking anything away from the shine of three golf icons who are universally liked and admired much more than he will ever be as White House resident. If Trump has shown anything consistently since he got his way into the White House, it’s that he doesn’t know history. It was probably his worst subject in school. He doesn’t believe anything ever came before he was born, or for sure since he became president. The braggart and ego in him go hand in hand with promoting himself and his family.

What has me peeved is not that Tiger Woods should ever receive the honor. I’m sure, given time, that if he doesn’t harm his reputation anymore and maintains the path he is on now, especially with his philanthropic work, that he would warrant such an honor. And that’s the key element: time.

Everything Donald Trump does in his role as president is tinged with suspicion. For instance, his love for the Russians and his defense of all the nefarious deeds they have done, not just with U.S. democracy but all the meddling in foreign affairs, should be a concern for every American. He doesn’t want to harm his business interests with Russia. And by not being tough with Vladimir Putin, he comes across as Putin’s Puppet. Americans should be furious that their president is viewed as weak with Russia.

In terms of awarding Woods a medal, it’s an ideal scenario for Trump because it will serve as a h-u-g-e photo op for himself and fits in with most everything he does as a way to promote himself. When he tried but failed to make peace with North Korea, he said he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump as president is about himself and gaining notoriety. Hence, he’s always mislabeling everything he does as the “greatest this” or “greatest that” of any U.S. president even when he is clearly shown to be in error and re-imagining the facts.

Since this honor falls into the sports category, I looked at the history of the Presidential Medal of Freedom as given to sports figures. Every time it was given, the honoree was at the end of their career or peak of life or twilight of their career and now resting on their laurels. Some had already passed away. Palmer was 75 when given the honor by George W. Bush in 2004. Bush put the medal around Nicklaus’ neck in 2005 when Jack was 65. Charles Sifford was 92 when Barack Obama named him to get the medal in 2014.

Woods is 43. He is a good 20 to 30 years away from being in the stage of life when this should be awarded him. Leave it to Trump to throw ritual and tradition out the door and give an honor so he can be in a photo that will be shown around the world. By foregoing the normal process, Trump is dissing previous medal recipients—including golfers Arnie, Jack and Charlie—who worked a full lifetime to be worthy of an honor given to people for their “especially meritorious contribution to [either] the security or national interests of the United States, or world peace, or cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

Nicklaus, as the lone living medal honoree from golf, is in a difficult position to share the same feeling I have on this, but I hope he would feel the same. He sometimes comes off not caring about things like this, but it must bother him some since he knows his golf history and his place in it and who came before him. I would be surprised if he truly didn’t care that Woods is getting an honor that’s meant for recipients late in life when they can look back and comment on the life they led. Nicklaus has been remarkable in his comments about Woods chasing his record of major victories. He has been reserved and logical in his remarks. One of his main points is that he himself never had a specific number of major victories to chase and hence had he had the foresight to know a Tiger Woods would come along, he wishes now he had pushed himself harder to set a higher bar. Nicklaus also honestly responds when asked if it would bother him to have his record broken. He, of course, doesn’t want to see it happen, just as no one would want to have their accomplishments eclipsed if they are the all-time leader. For anyone to quibble with how Jack has handled Woods questions over the years, they are just being purposely antagonistic.

If Nicklaus also feels it is a couple decades too early to give Woods an honor that he, Palmer and Sifford took much longer to get into their Social Security years, he’s likely not going to utter it for fear of getting blasted. But I would hope his honest assessment is that the honor is very premature and that Woods is on the right course for it when the right time arrives.

Which leads to Tiger Woods himself. If he feels anything about being much too young to receive this, he should politely decline. What a marvelous gesture that would be, as well as a welcome action by someone to finally not just go along with a bad Trump comment and decision. Our country would be less divided right now if people in Trump’s political party would stand up to him (such as Senate majority “leader” Mitch McConnell) and tell him he needs to be honest and be a leader for every American.

Sadly, as we head toward the appointed hour that’s been set for the medal to be given to Woods, there is nothing coming forth about Tiger declining the honor. But this, too, goes with his own custom of not making a statement or taking a stand at a moment when to do so would cause controversy or in some way hurt his name or brand even if it’s the right thing to do. Tiger has not taken a stand on social or political issues as his father said he would back when he turned pro, only on education. But it’s not like a recipient can’t refuse an honor. Another golf great with TW initials who went to Stanford—Tom Watson—declined entering the PGA of America Hall of Fame because he thought former PGA president Ted Bishop was dishonorably taken out of office in 2014 and Watson passed on the honor in protest.

So when Trump revels in standing with Tiger Woods in the next couple days and says his reasons Woods should get the medal, he will do so ignorant of the history, tradition, protocol and respect of the honor, the very elements that make golf the greatest game on the planet.

As it turns out, the elements of golf that at times make it look silly, outdated, archaic and nonsensical ultimately come through to show how golf develops character, courtesy, sportsmanship and, perhaps best of all, respect for your opponents to a greater degree than any other sport.

As our society grows ever more sophisticated and presumably astute as well, sports such as golf look out of touch because of the complexity of the rules and the formal, structured customs and traditions of the order of play. Most sports have an air of fairness about them, so that each side competes on equal terms, but golf goes further and develops an inner honor system that produces respect for the course, opponent and/or fellow playing partner. Golfers compete to beat par, and in competition, defeat an opponent or an entire field of players. But the overriding factor is the game itself. Whether the battle with par is won or lost, and the match taken or lost, it’s the experience that supersedes everything. You respect all parts of the experience to the extent that when suffering a loss you celebrate the event.

I have been reminded of golf’s great gift to its players recently on two fronts.

Nicklaus, in yellow, heartily congratulates Watson at the 1977 Open Championship.

First, in researching a golf book I am writing, I have gone back to read a great deal about the modern Big Three of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, who, sadly, are year by year becoming less known to younger golfers. We will never know the full extent of how many hours those three spent as a group playing golf, but it is likely no three professional golfers played as much together as those three. The competitiveness they each had is seen in their astounding records, but despite wanting to crush each other, they had a bond that allowed them to be civil, mannerly and able to continue on as comrades off the course. Player, especially, was known for describing a tough competitiveness that gave way to camaraderie when the last putt was holed. In the early 1960s, Palmer and Player teamed up to compete against other twosomes in a TV series, oftentimes on the heels of having played an intense battle in a tournament, or having faced each other in an exhibition match. No matter the outcome, it was over and done and they moved onto the next battle. Both Player and Nicklaus were in the position of having had to trust Arnie as aircraft pilot to get them to the next golf date perhaps after they had just beaten Palmer. That’s putting faith into someone who might hold a grudge, but these three legends didn’t believe in such things. That’s golf, it brings an air of civility because it’s not the outcome that dictates what you feel it’s the experience.

A second reminder came while watching the semifinal game between the University of Connecticut and Notre Dame on Friday April 5 in the Final Four of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship. After an undermanned, game UConn team gave up the ghost at the end, and ND looked to be in the clear with 6.6 seconds left, ND coach Muffet McGraw could be seen jumping up and down in glee with her staff, like a pom-pom cheerleader at the end of a routine. The universal, sportsmanlike conduct for all sports is that you don’t show up the opposition or celebrate or appear to be reveling about a victory out of respect for your opponent and the game until the buzzer sounds, especially the coach. It’s all part of why teams aren’t supposed to run up the score, or keep shooting 3s in a blowout or are to hold onto the ball and not take a shot at the end of the game when the shot-clock is off when you have the game in hand and the ball.

It has been chronicled that McGraw shows open disdain for UConn coach Gene Auriemma, so perhaps she was extra excited that she wouldn’t have to discuss a loss to him with the media. But she had also shown an uncivil demeanor in a pre-fourth-quarter TV interview when she basically said UConn was getting away with questionable (meaning illegal) screens for Huskie star Katie Lou Samuelson and she eventually abruptly walked away from the interview. ND was trailing by two at the time.

Players take their cue from their leader, the coach. That’s why some teams with coaches who react to every foul against their team by shaking their head in disbelief that their players do no wrong have players who react the same when called for a foul. They walk around shaking their head in shocked amazement translated to mean, “There’s no way I could commit a foul, you got it wrong.”

I appreciate losing coaches who pause after a loss during the post-game hand shake and look at their opposing colleague in the eye and say “your team played great, congrats.” Auriemma, who outside of UConn land is likely disliked, will conduct himself that way. In both the 2017 and 2018 Final Four semifinals, for instance, that was especially tough to do since UConn lost on shots at the buzzer both years. But you know what, Geno is also a golfer, and what he has learned on the golf course likely combines with a balanced “win some, lose some” aspect he knows happens in basketball.

I also like winning coaches who act with level-headed comportment. Kim Mulkey, whose Baylor team won the semifinal game prior to UConn-Notre Dame over Oregon, worked her way through the Oregon line after winning and made some short comments to the defeated Oregon Duck players who battled as hard as her Baylor team.

Which brings us all back to Palmer and Co., who gave us countless memorable battles but equally memorable reactions after the competition ended: Palmer with a firm handshake after losing the 1962 U.S. Open playoff to Nicklaus; Player and young Seve Ballesteros walking off the 18th green arm and arm after Gary’s incredible 1978 Masters comeback, and Jack, well, Jack was the example of how to do pretty much everything in golf great.

Nicklaus was humble and gracious in victory, especially in his 18 pro majors, but in 19 pro runner-up finishes in the majors, he was probably more impressive. When he was in position to react to the winner, he gave the champion a proper reception. You could assemble a video of Nicklaus’ reaction to runner-up finishes to Tom Watson at the 1977 Open Championship and 1982 U.S. Open and you’d be hard pressed to figure out that Jack was the second-place guy. Especially at the ’77 Open, Nicklaus notably told Watson that he gave Tom his best shot and it just wasn’t good enough that day.

Golfers celebrate on the golf course: for an ace, for a great shot, a birdie, a long holed putt. But that lasts a moment and goes away, but everyone celebrates with you. But to get excited about an opponent’s bad shot or that you are about to benefit from something someone else did or is about to do is seen as poor sportsmanship and not proper etiquette.

Call me overly sensitive on this issue, but don’t call me off track. Our top political officials don’t know how to lead with the truth, dignity, compromise, openness, modesty, fairness, and for the welfare of all. We are losing our way forward in society and going back to a time when leaders want to govern in a “do as I say, don’t ask any questions” manner that only serves to benefit a small privileged elite.

Golf refreshingly rejects such behavior and brings us to a common ground, where we can all feel as equals and when the game is done regale each other about how the experience made us feel excited that we had gone through it together and look forward to doing it again.

A gentleman, generous, kind, courteous, easy-going, good company, unpretentious, witty, story-teller, bold, memorable—the Dave Anderson I knew was all of those traits. I believe great strategy in life to improve your own social skill is to associate with people you feel have qualities you find admirable, and who act how you’d want to act.

Dave Anderson was a man worth imitating. The longtime sportswriter and columnist, mainly and notably with The New York Times, passed away on Thursday at age 89. Ever since 1981, when he won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, whenever Dave was introduced, it was as “Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Dave Anderson.” After such a pronouncement, you might expect Dave to come sauntering in with his nose held high. But he entered straightforward, and he came in with more of a shuffle than a regal bearing.

I’m sure I would have met Dave for the first time within a short period of joining Golf Digest in 1984. The New York Times owned the magazine then, and collaboration between the editorial staffs was common. As the Assistant Managing Editor, I would have had reason to work with Dave on his writings for GD. Starting in 1973, he wrote more than 50 articles, including subjects such as Chi Chi Rodriguez, Jim Dent, Winged Foot, Shinnecock Hills, Seve Ballesteros, Tom Watson, Nancy Lopez, Gene Sarazen, the Masters, U.S. Open, Ben Hogan, Lee Trevino, Tony Lema, Curtis Strange, Harry Cooper, Ted Rhodes; he even did a travel story on Arizona. He could write with whimsy, as he did for “An 18-handicapper shares golf's romance with Arnie, Jack and Tom.” What amazed me about Dave on first introduction was that he didn’t hang his stature in the game over anyone, and he amazingly remembered your name. The latter was a major influence on me as a young golf writer in an old writer’s arena. The younger you were, the more you had to fight and struggle to be accepted. Dave greeted you with a smile and handshake no matter how green you were, remembering we are all newcomers learning the trade at some point.

Over the years, it was always a pleasure to meet up with Dave somewhere, whether it was the Metropolitan Golf Writers Gold Tee dinner or at a golf major or at a Golf Digest function. Being with Dave made you feel important because, while he had great status in the brethren of writers, just by him treating you equally you felt you’d gone up in the writing world. When you viewed Dave, he certainly didn’t project any kind of malice or ill will toward anyone. He had a soft voice that could hardly be thought of as tough or menacing. But his friendly exterior was not to be confused with a pushover journalist. Dave was not afraid to report and/or write about something even if it might upset someone or get someone riled up. The infamous Tom Watson-Gary Player rules squabble in the inaugural Skins Game in 1983 is Exhibit A; Dave was in the right moment to catch that controversy, and instead of sitting on it, went public.

I’ll always feel grateful that my friendship with him nearly lasted to the very end of his life, and I got to keep the relationship going up until a few years ago. As he slowed down and wasn’t writing that often for Golf Digest or Golf World anymore, I hadn’t seen him for several years until around spring 2015, when he decided it was time to downsize his home in Tenafly, New Jersey, of all his sports books and clippings. He wanted to donate his golf files to the magazine.

As Golf Digest’s resident archivist, I was assigned to check it out and see if they were worth taking. I arranged to come to his home. We first went downtown to a favorite eatery, and had breakfast. Conversation with Dave never had any gaps. He freely kept things running, but it was a give-and-take dialogue, never a case where he held court and all you did was listen. You absorbed what each other was providing. With me, I always like speaking with someone whose experience is way beyond my own because I like to learn about the old days as well as understand more about famous personalities who I’d never met. (As an aside, he thought Jack Nicklaus was the greatest golfer, because he was great as a whole package: winning, losing, family man, even how to bow out of and retire from a major.) After breakfast, we returned to his two-story home and went upstairs to his office. He’d converted what would normally be a bedroom into his writing and business office, and it was exactly what you’d expect of a sportswriter. He had books all around the room on wall-shelves, a desk with just enough open space to work on, and in his closet was filing cabinets full of clippings. His collection ran the gamut of all the major sports. Because he was in a downsizing mode, he’d already found a home for his baseball books (the Yogi Berra museum), and the MGA was likely taking his golf books. He was hunting who would take his football, hockey, boxing and other sport books. His biographical golf clippings and golf tournament programs filled nearly three medium-sized boxes. He wanted to keep his files on Jack and Arnie, but I packed up the rest. He didn’t want money for any of it, but that wasn’t the Golf Digest way, so he was given a gift card.

I got to see the rest of the house, particularly the basement, where he also wanted me to grab a golf poster off his wall and take that as well. Even the basement looked like a sportswriter’s den. He had a pool table with the low-lying light over the center, couch and comfy seats, and on the wall framed photos of his life in sport, many of him on the scene in locker rooms and interviewing sports figures. It was a dream visit, but my time with Dave in person wasn’t done.

Dave felt strongly that he wanted to host a few of us he knew from Golf Digest and Golf World at Knickerbocker Golf Club, the venerable club in Tenafly, and he asked me to see who could come. It was arranged to have myself, Bob Carney, Tim Murphy and Steve Hennessey come on June 3, thinking Dave would be swinging away with us. But two things happened on that day that changed the plans. The most god-awful traffic snarl occurred across the Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson in the morning rush, right at an exit we’d be taking to get off 287, with a dump-truck accident or some such crash. Bob, Tim and I were tied up in it for hours coming from Connecticut, and our arrival at the club dragged on. That was a boon for Steve, who is from New Jersey and had always wanted to meet Dave. Steve got to the club right on time, since he still lived in the area, and had a great time visiting with Mr. A while waiting for us. The kicker is that Steve eventually became a member at Knickerbocker.

Once the rest of us got there, Dave said he was just going to ride around in a cart with our group while the four of us played. Generous, genial at all times, he was an incredible host. After nine, we took a break on a halfway house patio to have a mini session of kibitzing, with Dave always showing his expertise on a subject, as far flung as Montreal Canadien hockey. After golf we went to the grill to relax with a drink before heading for home, traffic now moving along better.

I am disappointed that during Dave’s last couple years, with his health failing and my life in its own changeover, that I didn’t speak with him by phone once he did fully leave his home and move into a retirement home. But that’s what memories are for, to keep thoughts of our encounters with people we enjoy alive and vibrant. When I was with Dave, it reminded me of the phrase of “sitting at the feet of a master” to learn and be entertained, except, with Dave, you were sitting at his side.

Dave Anderson’s service and donation details are: Visitation at the Barrett Funeral Home, 148 Dean Dr., Tenafly, N.J., on Tuesday, October 9, 2018 from 3-8 pm. Funeral Mass at Mt. Carmel Church, 10 County Rd., Tenafly, N.J., on Wednesday, October 10, 2018 at 10 am. Interment Mt. Carmel Cemetery, Tenafly, N.J. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Children's Cancer and Blood Foundation 466 Lexington Ave., NY, NY 10017 (www.childrenscbf.org). For more information visit www. barrettfuneralhome.net.

The genius P.G. Wodehouse would have turned my John Deere Classic marshaling experience into a memorable yarn titled “The Brotherhood of the Traveling Shorts.” But my forte is fact not fiction so this tell-it-like-it-is true account is called “How Uncle Bob’s Shorts Got Me In with Steve, Zach and Wes at the John Deere.”

The Uncle Bob in question is Robert VanDeVoorde, 81, 17th-hole captain for the 20 years the John Deere Classic has been at TPC Deere Run. The pivotal 550-yard, par 5 is one that today’s tour bombers go after in two shots with gusto—providing they hit the fairway off the tee—and it regularly ranks as one of the easiest holes on the course with its numerous birdies and eagles. VanDeVoorde is Uncle Bob based on my marriage to his niece, Mary, in 1983. Last week was his 35th year as a marshal, and he figured it to be his last as hole captain, but not as a marshal if all goes well. He asked if I could be on his hole team this year and the invite was well timed: I was going to be in the Quad Cities during John Deere Week to do my husbandly duty and escort my wife to her 40th Moline High School reunion July 13-14. The deal was he was going to be hole captain for Rounds 1 and 2 for the morning and afternoon tee times, basically two 12-hour shifts.

The author, Robert VanDeVoorde and Matt DeBlaey work No. 17 on Friday. At this point, the traveling shorts were on the original owner.

I had always wanted to volunteer at a pro tournament. Last year I signed up for this past June’s U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, one of my favorite courses, asking to do something outdoors near the players. But I was assigned to bagging duties at the merchandise tent and declined.

It was on Friday, Round 2, of the JDC where Uncle Bob’s apparel became more intimate to me than I could ever imagine. On Thursday he’d had me fill in at the tee, green and landing area; the only place I missed was crosswalk. I was expecting a repeat on Day 2, but when I arrived at 7 a.m., accompanied by his grandson, Matt DeBlaey, who was also on the team and had been my driver, Bob waved me over. He asked if, after my morning shift and lunch, would I want to go out with the 1:10 group of Zach Johnson, Steve Stricker and Wes Bryan. A walking marshal was needed for this fan-favorite group. Past champions Johnson and Stricker are local favorites, and organizers like to make sure they don’t have issues going from green to tee and around the course. I weigh 190 pounds and don’t consider myself “muscle” but I can use a stern voice when needed, and as a runner I figured I could handle the heat and hills, so I thought the gig would give me a full marshal experience.

The Marshal Plan was in place: At 11:30, Bill Anderson, a leader of the volunteer contingent for 43 years, which set a record with 2,000 last week, would come by to pick me up, take me to volunteer hospitality, then around 12:45 take me to the first tee. Sure enough, Bill was ready in his cart after my replacement arrived, with Bob standing next to him, but Bill said, “We have a problem.” He pointed at my olive-colored, sun-protection pants and said, “You need to be in khaki shorts.” I had the correct hat and shirt, but not the full uniform. We exchanged looks all around and I asked if I should go in the Deere Run golf shop and buy a pair of shorts, but I don’t think they wanted me to go to the expense. More glances around. Bob said, “What size do you wear?” “36,” I said. “Same size as me,” he said. Now we’re looking at each other with more meaning and as I’m waiting for someone to speak what we’re all thinking, Bob says, “Why don’t you wear my shorts and I’ll wear your pants.” The words kind of hung there, as a lot went through my head, not the least of which was, “How the hell do I get out of this?” I’m thinking this gives the phrase “he’d give you the shirt off his back” a horribly bizarre new meaning. But when you’ve gone through a bone-marrow transplant as I have, wearing an uncle-in-law’s khaki shorts for five hours doesn’t seem too difficult. Realizing this is quite an honor, I felt the Bill Murray/Peter Venkman line from Ghostbusters—“I like this plan, I’m excited to be a part of it!”—flow through me, and off Bob and I went to the nearby air-conditioned restroom trailer to swap. In true Monty Python fashion, we entered the empty men’s side and all of a sudden it got filled up with several gents needing relief at the same time, all of them likely wondering why these two guys were stripping down to their skivvies. As the garment exchange took place, I said to everyone, “Don’t worry, we’re not doing anything illegal in here.”

Volunteer marshals gather for lunch in a large hospitality tent before or after a shift.

Bob got the worst of the fashion fix but at least he got better sun protection on a miserably hot, humid day. Bill got me to lunch, and afterward I hung out with 12-year marshal coordinator Judy Hendren and her cohorts Dixie Anderson and Roger Wallace (the latter an exceptional man…he Backs the Pack!). Precision, community, team spirit, faith in one another…these guys develop that attitude with great precision. Bill got me to the first tee with plenty of time to spare, and there I was, properly decked out, just behind standard bearer Sarah and scorer Mike to the right rear of the tee, waiting for our players to arrive. Both Stricker and Johnson came over to us, the former first, saying, “Who is walking with us today?” Stricker shook hands with Sarah, then Mike and as I stuck my hand out he turned and walked away and I did one of those pretend groom-swipes of my head. I guess I blended into the background, as usual. I did better with Zach, making sure to step forward assertively, hand out, and say my name.

Each player was introduced and teed off, both Stricker and Bryan finding sand and rough on the left and Johnson the fairway. Our contingent was off: three players, three caddies, security officer from the Rock Island County Sheriff's office (who bonded with TV rover Jerry Foltz over their identical names), two honorary observers and Sarah, Mike and myself. It was a successful round, with no crowd issues, but at 5:51, with our group on 17 green, the horn blew to suspend play with nearby lightning on the move. The weather system moved away, but I got to see the evacuation plan put into motion and it's impressive how the plans work beautifully. But by the time play resumed, at 6:40, I was not needed since the spectators had headed home. Thus, I didn’t get the end-of-round player handshakes and potential autographed item, maybe even a selfie with a player. Allow me at this point to switch to my impressions and observations about life as a marshal, not just walking but also as a hole marshal:

Close to the pros—Fans desire to be close to their golf idols, to speak with them and even touch them. Witness the increase in attempts by fans to fist bump and hand slap from behind the ropes. Being a marshal gets you that access, which is what Bob VanDeVoorde said is what he likes most about the position. But being that close doesn’t mean you can forget yourself. One of the marshal rules is: Do not initiate conversation, only respond when you are spoken to. Also important, of course, is making sure you don’t get in a player's line of sight. That is particularly troublesome on the tee, where a marshal holding an orange-colored paddle stands several feet to the rear of the player. The idea is that after the player hits, you move the paddle high in the air to signal which direction the ball is going so the spotters in the landing area have a clue about where the ball will land. I learned Thursday morning from Gary Stultz where to stand but he warned me that some pros will direct you where to place yourself. Some guys are so fast there is no way they see anyone. Australian Matt Jones, who was an engaging chap, was the fastest player I saw; he pegged the ball and slammed it.

Gary Stultz, of Cedar Rapids, trained me on the art of the paddle.

Gary and I stood about 12 yards to the rear and left of the player, and through 17 threesomes never had one golfer move us. Friday morning was more harried. In the 14 threesomes Dave Yordy and I worked together, we were told to move five times. I predicted there would be more persnickety pros on Friday, cut day, because if a guy isn’t playing well he might find the smallest thing worth grumbling about. Scott Stallings’ caddie had me move to the right, which as I saw it put me right in his view but I moved anyway. In the next group Ben Crane told me to move in the rough grass, level with the left tee marker. One group later, the caddie for Mackenzie Hughes told me to go right again. When Dave took his turn, he was told to move twice in the same group. Stuart Appleby had him stand level with the tee markers as I’d done for Crane. But then John Huh was even more precise, moving Dave forward a little and over a little to the left. After the threesome exited the tee, I said to Dave how amazing it was that he was taking that much time to be specific about someone who was facing his back. I enjoyed being a ball director of all the duties on a hole. The proximity to the players was special. I got to see Francesco Molinari up close on Friday to see the game's hottest player, and on Thursday I saw phenom Joaquin Niemann tee off. But the caveat is that even though most pros seem to tune out the guy with the orange paddle, because of the potential for feeling a pro’s wrath and pressure of following his shot, there’s some tension in the duties. You’re trying to be invisible, but there aren’t any of Harry Potter’s invisibility cloaks around. Which leads me to wondering…

What do pros realize—As I spent two days trying not to do anything that would get me in trouble, I wondered what percent of the tour pros appreciate the volunteers and realize that they’re often accomplished people in their own right, topped by JDC Chairman Tony Carpita, Tournament Director Clair Peterson and Media Director Barry Cronin. Bob VanDeVoorde was an Eagles Food Store executive who took early retirement in 1992 but then worked as a controller for five years elsewhere before retiring in 1999. He started volunteering in 1982 when the JDC was the Miller High Life Quad Cities Open and only missed two years in that time. Bill Anderson was a leader with the county highway department and TSA among other assignments, and at age 66 says about the JDC volunteers, “This is my family and my family keeps growing every year.” Gary Stultz spent 34 years as an avionics engineer at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and was involved in the infancy of GPS. He had been at Johnson’s charity pro-am on July 9 in Cedar Rapids. Mike Elliott, assistant hole captain on 17 for 10 years, was an engineer at The Arsenal in Rock Island. Dave Yordy, Chuck Gibbs and Dean Lackey are high-ranking officers of the Rock Island Knights of Columbus Council (Dave is Grand Knight, Uncle Bob is treasurer).  These are the type of people working to ensure the pros’ happiness and they deserve respect too. Do the professionals know how marshals can feel they’re on tenterhooks that they’ll do something wrong? I’m guessing that yes, most do, you could see that in Johnson and Stricker, but the tour probably has to continually work with the players to show appreciation because sometimes their reaction says different. A couple times when I lifted a gallery rope to allow the player and caddie to go under I didn’t hear a “thanks.” Everything is done to make a tour pro comfortable; a side effect of that is spoiling the recipient. Players must work to not become ungrateful. I suppose it’s like a lot of workplaces: some people are nice, some are jerks, and some don’t know how good they have it, like a player I was told about who smashed a Trackman unit at the JDC one year and had to pay for it.

Getting corporate box guests to quiet down for players on 17 green is a near impossibility.

The pros’ chit-chat—I was particularly curious how much chatter I’d be able to pick up on as a marshal. The fact is, not much, for to do so would require standing closer than you’re allowed. The fact is, the vast majority of the players were mum and focused on the job at hand, on the tees and greens for sure. Johnson was one of the relaxed ones. When he and Stricker came on the 17th tee on Thursday, they were talking football and I heard Stricker, a Wisconsinite, admit to being a Bears fan. On Friday, after our group had teed off on 17, I lingered to get a bottle of water out of the cooler and Johnson, who was at the front of the tee, said, “I’m going to be lazy and ask you to toss me a bottle of water.” As I did so—thank goodness I threw it well and he caught it—I said, “Lazy and Zach Johnson don’t go together.” That was about the most creative I got with a pro in two days. Even when I was being moved around as the directional marshal, I didn’t respond back, I just did what I was told. The only other comment said to me was on Friday from Stricker, whose upper arms were a burnt reddish orange color on the back. As we went from 9 green to 10 tee we were astride each other and he said, “That was a hot spot down there.” I said something profound like, “Sure was,” and let him walk ahead. The fact was, the entire course was a hot spot and golfers were looking for shade wherever they could find it. It’s incredible we don’t hear more skin cancer stories on tour. After the Johnson group played 11 on Friday, they saw the par-3 12th had a delay, so Zach and Wes Bryan sat on a golf cart in the shadow of the 11th-green TV tower. The cameraman saw the pair and called down, joking, “You want a key?” Johnson kidded, “Did you say, ‘want a keg?’ ” But my favorite eavesdrop was between Johnson and caddie Damon Green after Zach bogeyed 10 to fall to even par and the cutline was three under par. Heading to 11 tee Green said, “Four, five under from here.” Johnson nodded and shot three under from there to make the cut, finishing on Sunday at 14 under.  

Rules speed—I never knew how fast rules officials get to a player but when Bryan needed help on No. 6, an official came in a cart within a couple minutes. But the lengthy discussion that followed was probably the reason the group was warned about its position on No. 9, which was not a welcomed warning. It didn’t seem necessary for sure after their group had to wait on 10 fairway and 12 tee to play.

Cart traffic—During my time, more of a nuisance to the marshals than the gallery and the boisterous corporate box behind 17 green (they were just too damned loud) was the constant flow of golf carts. We enjoyed seeing the good-will carts, which were driven by JDC board members bringing water, snacks and lunch. The problem carts were those driven by the electronic media. A driver of a CBS cart was so infuriated over having to be stopped (he once nearly ran down a golfer when he ignored the marshal) that he threatened a marshal with, “You keep that up and you’ll be parking cars.” I heard that he got reprimanded for that bit of cheek. On Friday afternoon, as I was helping a hole marshal hold the rope that made a path for the players to go from 15 green to 16 tee, the driver of a PGA Tour Radio cart lifted the rope even higher to pass under and zoomed ahead, choosing to ignore the requests to let the players pass by. As a golf writer, but an impartial one, I believe the writing brethren know better how to get around a golf course. It’s been a part of our DNA for decades. In my mind, the ignoring of marshal rules by cart drivers is like the guy speeding in traffic: does it really save you that much time?

Taking relief—Last and certainly least, I saw firsthand the answer that has perplexed golf fans for years: Yes, pros do take relief in the woods when it’s convenient and secretive enough, even though there are air-conditioned restrooms around. But some pros aren’t discreet enough. One of the marshals manning the crosswalk near 17 tee told me he was on duty when a woman spectator said to him, “Is that guy peeing in the woods?!” Yes, he was, and like Forrest Gump, he just had to go.

Whatever you might have thought negatively about marshals at a tour event while spectating—that they’re annoying view blockers, tour player suck-ups, clothing-cloned clowns—forget it all. The only thing marshals are guilty of is the universal desire to see the pros up close. Otherwise, their sole focus is ensuring tour pros smooth travel around the course, unimpeded by the gallery. That lets the players have the best opportunity to do their awe-inspiring feats in a spectator atmosphere that keeps idiot fans at bay. Now, if only marshals could control a fan’s brain and tongue to stop them from shouting, “You the man!” and other idiotic sayings.

As a native and impartial Illinoisan, I can testify to the validity of Midwestern kindness, teamwork and hard work. When those elements are part of a PGA Tour volunteer group, it’s an invigorating army to join in with, and it doesn’t seem possible volunteerism can be any stronger or heartier than at the John Deere Classic.

If you can’t admire the John Deere Classic for the fortitude its shown to survive on the PGA Tour, then you’re not a fan of or able to recognize and admit to the fabled Midwestern value of hard work. That’s hard work done with a heavy dose of humble kindness, also legendary in the nation’s heartland.

The JDC, which begins Thursday, has a pedigree up there with the most resilient events in tour history and is a refreshing low-key neighborly stop played during a usually oppressive time of year in north-west Illinois for heat.

I admit to some bias as a native Illinoisan, but the tournament’s hearty survival would be obvious to any objective observer. I have seen the event from a golf writer’s view for 37 years and the determination of its organizers is remarkably unchanged from when I first saw the event in 1981 after graduating from Illinois State University and attending the event at Oakwood Country Club in Coal Valley.

The event started in 1971 as a “tour satellite” event, one of those outdated silly terms that basically was applied to tournaments begun in small-market areas that were thrown out there to see if they could last. The JDC is one of the tour’s greatest success stories in that regard.  

It was a good start to have Deane Beman, soon to become tour commissioner, win the first two playings. In Year 3 in ’73, it made news when Sam Adams became the first lefthanded winner on tour. Few tournaments have gone through its history without several incarnations, and the JDC is no exception. The John Deere is on its eighth title: Quad Cities Open, Ed McMahon-Jaycees Quad Cities Open, back to Quad Cities Open, Miller High Life QCO, Lite Quad Cities Open, Hardee’s Golf Classic, Quad City Classic and now in its 20th year as John Deere Classic.

John Deere, of course, is an iconic name in lawn and farm machinery and legendary worldwide. Its presence in the Moline area is a treasured part of its heritage. The backing of Ed McMahon, a beer company and a fast-food outlet in the early going made sense and was part of the survival saga. But John Deere has steadily grown this event, made it stable, and allowed the results to grow its tradition. Results such as Jordan Spieth’s holeout on 18 during his first tour victory in 2013 help people remember the name John Deere Classic and what it stands for: quality in everything from the sponsors and volunteers to the play on TPC Deere Run.

If anything shows how the JDC has been resilient to be an annual stop on tour, it’s how it has survived the frequent scheduling the week prior to, same week of or week after the Open Championship. This year is the 48th playing of a tournament that started with a September date. From 1974 to 1989 the JDC was played the week of The Open, essentially killing its chance of any top golfer playing in it. After seven years of September dates, 20 of the next 23 playings (including this week) were either the week before or week after The Open, just slightly improving its chance of nabbing marquee players. On Tuesday the tour said its 2018-2019 schedule will keep the same alignment with the JDC ending on July 14, one week before The Open. But instead of fighting such an obstacle to success, the John Deere has made it part of its attraction by chartering a plane to take players on Sunday evening, who are entered in The Open, over the Atlantic and getting them there in the middle of the day Monday. 

The JDC has always found a way to make its proximity on the schedule with The Open work. When I began my professional writing career with the Bloomington, Illinois, Pantagraph newspaper in 1981—a “week of” year for the JDC with The Open—I wrote a piece in late June that highlighted Gene Smith, the Quad Cities’ director of marketing, saying he believed he had the tournament’s strongest field ever, including Illinois native and 1979 champion D.A. Weibring, as well as Dave Eichelberger, defending champion Scott Hoch, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Fuzzy Zoeller, Steve Melnyk, Jim Dent, Miller Barber, Mike Sullivan and Bobby Clampett. Smith’s thinking then, of working with what they had to deal with, carries on today. Back then he confidently said, “We’re not hurt this year. Last year the British Open was played on a course all the pros wanted to play [Muirfield]. This year it’s not,” referring to Royal St. George’s.

That year, 1981, was also the first time in tournament history that all 18 holes and the putting green were “sold” to major corporate sponsors. That strong support is still keenly felt and the great community-sponsor presence from local ice-cream institution Whitey’s on up to John Deere itself creates a strong down-home atmosphere. Let’s hope there is never a movement by the tour or anyone else to squash that feeling in the future. It's a part of the tour's heritage that needs to remain vibrant.

With golf fans once again being treated to views of magnificent Shinnecock Hills this week as the 156 players prepare for the start of play Thursday in the 118th U.S. Open, the popular discussion questions of “what course would you want to play for the rest of your life if you only had one to play,” or “if you could only play one more round somewhere, where would it be” come quickly to my mind.

Realizing that the influence of my golf opinions—written and spoken—at best have never risen above the moderate level in the forums I have used, I feel compelled by the warmth and affection I feel about Shinnecock Hills to proclaim that the Long Island legend would be my choice for the course to play for the rest of my life.

My first round of golf at Shinnecock was part of NY Daily News 1986 reporting.

I would have other contenders, naturally, ranging from other classics—The Old Course at St. Andrews, Winged Foot (West or East, I would take either!), Garden City GC, Pine Valley, Newport CC—to lesser known locales—courses of the Canadian Maritime Provinces (Highlands Links for one), Architects Golf Club—to places of my youth in central Illinois—Highland Park in Bloomington and Blue Grass Creek in Minier. I had fondness for the Ocean Links Course at Amelia Island Resort but sadly it appears to be destined for housing.

Why Shinnecock is the leader for me begins with the memorability quotient. I have only played it a couple times, and not in several years, but the layout and feel of being there remains vivid in my mind. The vista from the clubhouse and finishing holes 9 and 18 allows you to see nearly the entire course, except for the first holes on the back nine. Then there is the atmosphere, history and locale. The view of the famed windmill at nearby National Golf Links of America is unique. You can feel golf in the air, talk about it all you want, and oddly enough, be so engulfed about where you are that getting out to play might go to the back of your mind. You simply like being there.

My first time at Shinnecock was on Monday, May 12, 1986. I know the precise day because I have kept a log of my golf rounds since leaving Illinois to join Golf Digest in 1984. From that log, for instance, I know my second round of golf as an Easterner was on Sunday, April 29, 1984, on Winged Foot West. I believe my group was member Jerry Tarde, Ross Goodner and Andy Nusbaum, but I know for sure my first tee shot went sailing onto the range on No. 1. I likely was shown mercy and allowed a lunch ball. To further digress, what does it mean that I recall the negative things that happened to me at famous courses? Embarrassing moments are hard to forget, I suspect. The one time I played Pine Valley, November 4, 1989, I remember making a double bogey on the first hole, putting awful (37 putts) and only hitting three greens in a round of 91. There, at least, the ambience of the clubhouse, staying overnight, and the presence of English writing legend Peter Dobereiner helped me get over a forgettable golf performance.

But back to Shinnecock in 1986. The round was on U.S. Open Media Day, in cool, blustery weather similar to what the players faced in practice today. In fact, I wrote a special note in my log that we played “in damn cold, rainy and windy weather.” Besides the memorability of being at Shinnecock, I also recall all these years later the long slog it took to get out to Southampton—it felt like you were driving back across the Atlantic—and that I had to play with a busted left thumb.

Yea, how was that? I had to play Shinnecock Hills for the first time with my left thumb bandaged. A week before the round I had worked on a light fixture in my house and made a three-quarters inch cut on the right side of my left thumb. I should have gone for stitches, but tried to let it heal with butterfly Band-Aids, but there weren’t enough days to let the cut close up. I wasn’t about to miss this chance, however, so I had to play with a thick bandage in addition to the rain and cold. I only hit four fairways and two greens, took 35 putts and shot 95.

The round happens to be the only one of mine that was written about in a newspaper. I was in a group with Joe Juliano of the Philadelphia Inquirer, photographer Dan Farrell, and writer Hank Machirella, the latter two from the New York Daily News. Machirella, who passed away in 1998, wrote about the round a month later during the paper's preview coverage and in describing the course hole by hole included notes from our round. He quoted Andy North, the defending champion who was at the media day, telling us press hacks, “Par for you fellows out there today will be 93.” From that comment, I was only two over par, but I was still very unhappy about the thumb injury and my play. The beauty of Machirella’s report is that it chronicled my round's big moment, on the 453-yard, par-4 third hole, which was playing into the wind. I still had 102 yards for my third, which I punched with an 8-iron, the ball holing out for a birdie.

Overall, I didn’t give Shinnecock my best that day, but my next time there, in October 1991, I had 84 with 31 putts and a birdie on No. 1. My other trips to Shinnecock were to attend the U.S. Open, but whether I was playing or observing, the experience was equally special.

My grand plan was to come back to Shinnecock during the U.S. Open this week and do so as a volunteer, which I signed up for in 2017. I opted to be in several duties that would let me be out on the course or the range, anything that would allow me to be outside seeing the course and players. From that vantage point I planned on writing on my website about what I saw each day. Instead I was assigned to merchandise-tent duty.

It’s rare that I would pair Shinnecock with the word “disappointment,” but to be indoors all week was not acceptable and I backed out of volunteering. Instead, I will watch my golf mecca, just across Long Island Sound from where I live in Connecticut, on TV and be reminded of how special Shinnecock Hills is to me as a golf location.

Among the surprises in the passage of time is finding out the passing of an old acquaintance after the fact. So it was when I saw in the Chicago District Golf Association’s February 2018 issue of the Chicago District Golfer that Carol McCue had died on December 16 at age 94.

I first met Carol McCue in the early 1980s as a fresh graduate out of Illinois State University, covering sports—and the golf beat—for the Daily Pantagraph in my hometown of Bloomington, Illinois. That was the same paper that had golf writer Ron Coffman and noted sports columnist Dave Kindred pass through.

Whenever I’d go cover one of the Illinois state tournaments, Carol was there, with her large-lens sunglasses unable to cover the face of a welcoming and charming individual. I was thrilled to cover the state’s best golfers for the Pantagraph, but coming from a small, central-Illinois market, I wasn’t one of the state’s elite golf writers. But Carol was not into pretentious behavior. She didn’t treat me as underserving of her time and attention. To the contrary, I felt I got equal measure of her time, and that was her style, she had time for everyone.

She was the CDGA’s executive secretary but was retitled its executive director by the end of her career. Her CDGA career started at age 19 when she was hired two months before the June 1942 Hale America Open, the infamous replacement for the USGA’s U.S. Open. It was held at Chicago’s Ridgemoor Country Club as a benefit for the USO and Navy Relief Society, and won by Ben Hogan. But because it was run like the U.S. Open, it’s the tournament Dan Jenkins, most notably, and others feel is Hogan’s fifth U.S. Open. He won by three over Jimmy Demaret and received a gold medal and $1,200 in war bonds.

McCue adeptly handled the needs of dignitaries such as Bobby Jones, Bing Crosby and Joe Dey at that event, and she was off and running as a can-do communications and behind-the-scenes staffer.

She retired from the CDGA after 1982, and I was off to Connecticut in 1984 to work for Golf Digest. But she soon went to work for the public-golf legend Joe Jemsek at Cog Hill, and continued her advocacy for golf participation. She truly pushed for the betterment of the public golfer. Amazingly, she discovered my new location, and soon I was on her press-release/direct-mail list and getting a regular flow of her announcements. Her relentless pursuit of promoting the special camaraderie of the game helped make her one of eight people inducted into the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame inaugural Class of 1989, which included Jemsek and Chick Evans.

Seeing that she had died in her 90s caused me great reflection…on the number of years that have gone by in my life, and how we can feel the yearning to get back to our younger days in direct measure to the ticking of the clock pulling us hard the other way.

But most importantly, I was reminded of a fun and energetic time in my life when the long days of reporting golf were extremely fulfilling and the people I met were distinct and memorable and passionate, just like Carol McCue.

Read more about Carol McCue at illinoisgolfhof.com and search under "members" on the home page.

Reunions only work when the people you’re reuniting with are just as sentimental and just as energized as you are to go back in time to rehash old memories and share with each other what made you such everlasting friends in the first place.

Of course, reunions come at all times in life and any time of year. Right now we’re in the season of hope, during which a reunion with family and friends can be the cause for optimism and renewal.  

I am still in the afterglow, however, and will be until the final embers die out, following a golf reunion in mid-summer that, along with a nine-hole round with my daughter, was the highlight of my 2017 golf season. It came at a perfect time in my life when I needed a positive event to happen. It was a reunion that measured up to my stated conditions of all hearts aflutter and every emotion engaged. And it was a reunion that passed the Chat Test: we were able to jump into the chatter and conversation like we’d been conversing regularly in the decades since we'd last played.

40 years later: The young lads in 1978 on the left were still fab when they met up this summer in Bloomington, Ill., to reunite for golf and re-create an image: Clockwise from upper right, Pete Wofford, Kevin Schwulst, Rick Gilbert and Cliff Schrock.

The reunion connected my high-school years with my midlife self—which I’m working on restarting career-wise—so it came at the right time to reflect on my life to this point. If you were fortunate to start golf at a young age, during which you developed friendships with your junior golf buddies, imagine in your 50s getting to play another weekend of golf with your mates all grown up. And picking up with the banter about life events as if you had just played the previous weekend.

That’s what happened in what was actually a two-fold reunion. One was my 40th Bloomington (Ill.) High School (BHS) reunion, but that was just the undercard to the main event: having my high school and college golf buddies come to play a couple rounds, and if possible, re-create a photograph that ran in the local paper of us as junior golfers.

When Rick Gilbert, Pete Wofford and I began emailing at the start of 2017 about coming from Texas, South Carolina and Connecticut to meet in the Midwest for our 40th, the pre-reunion emails focused on concerns about hair loss, weight gain, and shaky golf games. But I had a problem that both Rick and Pete didn’t have. My game was as dead as a doornail, to quote my favorite Christmas Carol man Dickens, compared to them. They were first string, I was second, at BHS. They played college golf at Illinois State University, I worked at the ISU golf course and wrote about golf for the student paper. They had pro aspirations, I wanted to write about sports and, primarily, golf. Meeting up for golf after decades away had me a nervous wreck. How bad was my golf game going to be in comparison? What upped the anxiety level was hearing that another junior golf friend but not a BHS alum, Kevin Schwulst, was going to drive down from Chicago to join us for one round.

The three of us knew darn well that golf was going to be the main attraction in Illinois. We scheduled golf at two childhood courses in town, The Weibring Golf Club at Illinois State University and Highland Park Golf Course. For sure our fourth at ISU was PGA professional and former ISU golf coach Harland Kilborn, which officially made me the worst guy in the group either round.

As the first round on July 28 arrived, the butterflies kicked in as I pulled into the ISU parking lot on a gorgeous summer day, and more comfortable than I remember Illinois feeling in the summer time. What would the first sighting be like? Rick's wife Cindy (aka C.J.) was joining us. Would she and the guys recognize me? No worries, we had big smiles all around. We were so busy talking that we didn't actually get to the first tee in "ready" mode. Playing with my old mates felt comfortable, but other-worldly at the same time. I can report that golf that weekend was the first time I recall ever wanting a four-hour round to feel like six. The holes went by too fast, the rounds too quickly ended.

From a golf standpoint, I wanted everything to be perfect, but sadly I have to confess that the swing I thought was working well in practice didn't make it to Illinois. First of all, that queasy, awful feeling I get in the pit of my stomach when I play with golfers much better than me was there in full force, on top of the anxiety of the situation, and it never completely left me. Sadly, too, my old swing habits of coming over the top and releasing the club early were in full vigor both rounds and I was an even-bogey shooter for the most part. Rick, on the other hand, was killing it, Pete consistently inconsistent because of lack of play, Harland solid, and Kevin was striping it after a slow start. But as golf will do, I closed out the final hole on July 29 with my best stuff. The par-4 18th at Highland has a scary tee shot with a highway OB right. I put my drive down with the big boys, hit one close, and had the stage all to myself to knock in a 10-footer for birdie, but had to settle for par.

All their swings are now on my phone and I am going to study them to see what good habits of theirs I can borrow for my own swing. That, curiously, was a bonus to our reunion. When we played in high school and college, we never “talked swing.” But after reading 30 years of instruction galleys with Golf Digest, and seeing the guys’ motion again, with what I know now, I would have liked to have picked their brains about our swings.

But after all that time apart, lack of time became our enemy that weekend. Kevin had to get back to Chicago, I needed to get to the Quad Cities, and it was time to break up the party. But when Kevin was in for a round, our goal was to accomplish one of the neatest things we could have done. In July 1978, in the Bloomington Junior City golf tournament, Rick beat Kevin in a playoff to win the 17-18 division. Pete was third and yours truly, well, true to form I was in the supporting cast, caddieing for Rick.

The local paper, The Pantagraph, which I would later write sports for after graduating from ISU, ran a photo of the four of us after the match on July 12, 1978, four teenagers who’d just concluded a memorable day on the golf course, the place where are bonds of friendship were tightened over and over again.

For weeks leading up to the reunion, we said we had to re-create the photo, we just needed to get a break in the golf action and the wherewithal for each of us to pose as he had in '78. C.J., who was as endearingly into the reunion as the rest of us, and later sent all of us a photo book of the trip, set up the pose during a play stoppage on the fourth tee at Highland Park, our main childhood course and where Rick had witnessed my double eagle on No. 2 in the 1980s. The mid-morning sun was perfect light; had to be the best summer weather day of the year. We got into our poses like we’d modeled our entire lives, and now when I stare at the two photos side by side, the emotion of wishing to be young again washes over me like water from a Winged Foot showerhead. Gone are the fresh-faced kids, but to our credit, you can see how the joy in the reunion is making us feel young even if we don’t look it.

I can’t wait for us to do it again.

College pals in the '80s: Pete Wofford, Rick Gilbert, the author (I always liked that shirt!).

Thanksgiving and golf are rarely part of the same conversation these days, unless you find yourself in cahoots with family members to sneak out for a few holes while the turkey is in the oven. That was not, however, always the case. Those familiar with hitting persimmon drivers can recall when Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson debuted a new event on November 26 and 27, 1983, one that had an impressive 25-year run.

Interestingly enough, however, the Skins Game was actually not the PGA Tour’s first Thanksgiving-related event. Going through the record books from 1934 to present, the tour made a pair of stops at Pinehurst in mid-November 1935, then played the Augusta Open (1936) and Columbia Open (1938) on Thanksgiving weekend each year. From 1944 to 1972, the tour had several events start on Thanksgiving Day and finish on the weekend. Sam Snead won in 1944 in Portland. The first Heritage Classic was held Nov. 27-30, 1969, with Palmer winning by three. The Heritage was held on Thanksgiving weekend through 1972, which ended the tour’s Turkey Day weekend scheduling.

Tom, Jack, Gary and Arnie began the Skins Game...and Silly Season.

But getting back to the Skins Game, an unofficial event in which its first foursome made it a must view (as did having legendary baseball play-by-play announcer Vin Scully as an announcer). Each hole had a monetary value, and if a player had the lowest score on a hole, he won that total. If the hole was tied by two or more, the hole’s money rolled over to the next hole. Though the drama would have been even greater if they had been playing for their own money, the excitement players felt when they made a huge skin was palpable.

Through the years, several indelible images were burned into viewers’ memory: a rules controversy in Year 1 between Player and Watson; Arnie, wearing green velvet pants, hitting his ball with his backside against a cactus only protected by a bag cover; Lee Trevino acing in 1987; and Fred Couples winning five times, earning the unofficial title Mr. Skins and so much money (more than $3.5 million) that the end of the year became known as the Silly Season as more big-money, limited-field events popped up.

World tour schedules have changed, and there isn’t really much of a Silly Season anymore. We’re down to roughly three events in December between the regular and senior PGA tours: the Hero World Challenge, QBE Shootout and PNC Father-Son Challenge. Still, wouldn’t an occasional Skins Game, perhaps just held every two, three or four years with the top four players from the World Rankings, be a nice revival of a classic golf event?

By John Fischer III, president of the Golf Collectors Society:

The Walker Cup, a match pitting teams of the best American amateur golfers against their counterparts from Great Britain & Ireland, was played this past weekend at Los Angeles Country Club. The event originated with an idea from George Herbert Walker for an international golf event to better relationships between countries. It was first held on an informal basis at Hoylake in 1921. The biennial match soon became a premier event for amateur golf and is played on some of the greatest courses. Future venues include Hoylake, Cypress Point and Seminole. It's worth taking a look at how this great event got started.

The record books show the Walker Cup was first played at the National Golf Links of America in Southampton, New York, in 1922, but that’s not the beginning of the story. Another informal competition between the United States and Great Britain took place a year earlier in Hoylake, England. This September the Walker Cup was played on the West Coast at the Los Angeles Country Club, marking the 96th anniversary of that contest – and, in truth, the Walker Cup tradition. (The U.S. won, 19-7, in one of the most dominating results ever.)

The 1921 American team; Bobby Jones, 19, is seated second from the right.

The Walker Cup was born of two events: World War I, which dragged the U.S. into the world community, and a 1920 meeting on the Rules of Golf between the United States Golf Association and the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. The rules meeting was not successful in bringing a united set of Rules, but George Herbert Walker, then the USGA President, came away with the idea of creating an international golf match, modeled on the tennis Davis Cup, to promote goodwill among countries.

In 1920, Walker convinced the USGA Executive Committee to approve a plan for the matches. He agreed to provide a trophy, called the “United States Golf Association International Challenge Trophy.” The press immediately dubbed it the “Walker Cup.” The USGA invited all countries to compete and had high hopes of Australia, Canada, France and others sending teams. But World War I had taken a great toll and no country responded.

W.C. Fownes, Jr., the winner of the 1910 U.S. Amateur, decided to put together an informal team to play the British Amateur at Hoylake over the course of the Royal Liverpool Golf Club, in May, 1921, and to challenge the British golfers to a match the day before the tournament.

The press jumped on the idea. The American Golfer and Golf Illustrated ran monthly articles on possible team members. Two-time U.S. Amateur champion Bob Gardner had taken England’s Cyril Tolley to the 37th hole in the British Amateur final in 1929; could he go? Charles (Chick) Evans, with U.S. Open and Amateur titles, and 1913 U.S. Open winner Francis Ouimet had jobs that might keep them at home. It took nine or 10 days to cross the Atlantic by ship. Then there would be two weeks of practice, the match, the British Amateur, perhaps the British Open in June and another 10 days of travel. A golfer needed an understanding boss.

Money was a concern, too. Should the USGA, which authorized the squad, pay travel expenses for the American team? Would payment cast doubt on amateur status? In the end, the players paid their way. Evans and Ouimet joined Fownes, along with 19-year-old rising sensation Bobby Jones, Jesse Guilford, Paul Hunter, J. Wood Platt and Frederick Wright. They arrived in Liverpool on May 9. The match was set for May 21, a Saturday.

Hoylake is a few miles south of Liverpool on the Wirral Peninsula. Royal Liverpool, which had already hosted four British Opens and eight British Amateurs, is relatively flat and treeless, and known for rain and high winds as the tides change on the bordering Irish Sea. British writer Bernard Darwin defined the course thus: “Hoylake, blown by mighty winds, breeder of mighty champions.”

There had been no rain for months when the American team arrived. The ball ran down the fairway, and a pitch to the putting surface would take a big hop over the green. The course was unwatered, including the greens, which was new to the visitors.

The U.S. players tried to figure a way to play the rock-hard course. One day in practice, Jones shot 71 in the morning and 80 in the afternoon. He later described Hoylake as “dried out with the turf hard and the greens like glass; they don’t water the greens over there; they believe in letting nature take its course.” Guilford suggested in jest that “topping” the ball might be the best way to get the ball to the green.

The format for the informal match was foursomes in the morning and singles in the afternoon. The U.S. players had little experience with foursomes in which two-man teams alternate shots playing a single ball. A favorite format with the British, it takes extra thought when playing a shot to consider how your partner will play the next.

Many assumed that the upstarts from America, playing under unfamiliar conditions and an unfamiliar format, were in for a rough day. The British were led by Ernest Holderness, Roger Wethered and Cyril Tolley, the defending British Amateur champion. They were joined by Gordon Simpson, J.L.C. Jenkins, C.C. Aylmer, R.H. deMontmorancy, and a young Scot named Tommy Armour, who was soon to make his mark.

Instead, the Americans dominated from the start. “It was marvelous golf,” British writer George Greenwood said of the foursomes. “At the same time it was one of the sorriest debacles from a British standpoint I ever saw. There is little use in going into detail...except to say that Great Britain was hopelessly outplayed in each--every match had been lost.”

The U.S. took five of the eight singles matches in the afternoon for a 9-3 victory. “It was obvious that certain members of the British team were suffering from an acute attack of nerves,” said Hoylake historian Guy Farrar. “America did not play unbeatable stuff...we obligingly dug our own graves.”

It turned out to be a deep grave: the two teams officially competed for the Walker Cup beginning the next year but it wasn’t until 1938 that Great Britain & Ireland (part of Great Britain until 1921) could wrest the prize from the Americans.

Guest Contributor Chris Saksa is a young business professional in the Chicago area employed as a Field Recruiting Coordinator for CNO Financial Group in their Bankers Life division. A 2016 graduate of Illinois State University, where he earned a B.S. Degree in Communication Studies: Organizational and Leadership Communication, this is his fourth blog for CliffSchrock.com:

The PGA of America retired its famous “glory’s last shot” marketing line a few years ago for the PGA Championship, but “the season’s final major” remains.

When I think of the PGA, my mind goes back to when I went to my first-ever golf tournament. It was the first round of the 2006 PGA Championship at Medinah Country Club, in the Chicago area where I have lived for many years. I remember thinking to myself as my eyes gazed out on that first fairway: I had never seen grass that green. It’s a comment I know people say after they’ve seen Augusta National for the first time.

As my Dad and my two uncles traveled to Medinah’s 12th hole to wait for Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, who were paired together, I tried my best to soak it all in—the smells, sounds and all the colors.

Much like any kid at their first PGA Championship, I was star-struck the entire time! I mean, I was within high-five distance of the players I had been watching on TV and who I was pretending to be in my make-believe backyard games.

Now another Round 1 of the PGA has begun and it’s been 11 years since that weekend when Tiger won a second PGA at Medinah to go with his 1999 victory. But I still think of it from time to time, especially when I look at the 18th-hole flag I have in my apartment, it's a special reminder of that great Thursday.

The PGA Championship may be the season’s final major, but the PGA will always be my first tournament—and major. Enjoy the golf everyone!

Guest Contributor Chris Saksa is a young business professional in the Chicago area employed as a Field Recruiting Coordinator for CNO Financial Group in their Bankers Life division. A 2016 graduate of Illinois State University, where he earned a B.S. Degree in Communication Studies: Organizational and Leadership Communication, he is devoted to, among other things, golf, the White Sox, Blackhawks, and, most of all, family. This is his third blog for CliffSchrock.com:

Golf is full of traditions that every year combine special Sundays with the big golf events: the second Sunday afternoon in April with the Masters finish at Augusta; the Players Championship on Mother's Day weekend, and The U.S. Open on Father’s Day weekend (see my post on June 15). And then there's The Open Championship. Oh wait, it doesn’t fall on any big holiday weekend, so my dad and I created our own tradition: Golf and Ribs.

When I was 12 or 13, and pretty much every year since, on the Sunday of The Open Championship, my dad and I would drive to downtown Chicago and play a course called the Sydney R. Marovitz Golf Course, which is one of eight Chicago Park District Golf facilities. It’s a nine-hole course that overlooks Lake Michigan. It’s a tough course, and you need to keep the ball in the fairway to be successful, much like you would if playing at Royal Birkdale Golf Club.

Chris Saksa: Ribs, dad and The Open are a tradition.

So when my dad and I tee the ball up we may be thousands of miles from the St. Andrews, Carnousties and Royal Birkdales of this world, but the competition is real and sometimes so is the wind. However, no matter what happens on the course, we shake hands and then head over to Twin Anchors Restaurant, which is one of the best places to grab a slab of ribs in the city of Chicago. It has been visited by many famous actors, actresses, singers, comedians and athletes, who are passing through town. As my dad and I enjoy our ribs we watch the last few holes of The Open Championship, and now that I am 21 we toast a pint to the winner!

Enjoy the golf everyone!

By John Fischer III, president of the Golf Collectors Society:

The Open Championship returns to Royal Birkdale GC this week for the 10th time, making it one of the most visited sites on The Open rota, even though The Open wasn't played there until 1954. Birkdale is located in northwest England overlooking the Irish Sea, and is near two other courses on The Open rota, Royal Liverpool (Hoylake) just to the south across the River Mersey (for you Beatles fans) and Royal Lytham-St. Annes to the north.

Birkdale has produced a remarkable cast of Open champions, Peter Thomson (twice, his first in 1954 and his last of five Open titles in 1965), Arnold Palmer (the first of his back-to-back Open titles in 1961), Lee Trevino (1971), Johnny Miller (1976) who will lead the US TV broadcast of the Open this year, Tom Watson (1983), Ian Baker-Finch (1991), Mark O’Meara (1998), and Padraig Harrington (2008, the second of his back-to-back Open titles).

Palmer next to the plaque that was placed in honor of his 1961 miracle shot.

Birkdale GC dates to 1889 and started with a nine-hole course, which was soon deemed inadequate. In 1897 Birkdale moved to its current site, a massive set of rolling sandhills reaching down to the sea. It was a location much admired by Bernard Darwin, golf correspondent of The Times, who wrote, “I never quite realized before how engaging sandhills can be....’Hills’ is an inadequate word at Birkdale: there are mountains and whole ranges of them. They would, of course, be useless, if Nature had not been kind and Man brave. Nature planted, between the mountains, valleys and gorges and hollows, and Man was brave enough to see that they could and must be used.”

From its early days, Birkdale GC was a leader in golf. Women were admitted as members of the club from the beginning, and in 1909 the club hosted the Ladies’ Championship, and would go on to host a Curtis Cup and five Ladies’ Open Championships. The membership was also concerned about the welfare of the boys who served as caddies, establishing The Birkdale Golf Club Caddie Boys’ Association, which provided a room with books and games and also food, clothing or money for caddies who were in need. The Association also tried to find employment for boys old enough to commence work. Unfortunately, the Association dissolved in 1916 with World War I when a reduced membership made it impractical to continue the Association.

In the 1930s, the club decided to revise the course in order to make it a championship venue. The club engaged the services of Frederick George Hawtree, a prominent British golf course architect, and J.H. Taylor, the five time Open Champion, for the redesign. Hawtree and Taylor elected to lay out the holes in valleys between the towering sandhills rather than over them. Each hole would be self contained, avoiding blind shots for the most part. The fairways would be flatter and less undulating than one might associate with a links course. But the design produced a tough course that favored a straight shot to avoid bunkers or having the ball be swallowed up in the surrounding buckthorn, star grass and dwarf willow scrub. It is said Birkdale was not designed by Hawtree and Taylor, but fashioned by the best course architect in the world – the wind.

The routing selected by Hawtree and Taylor also produced a canyon-like effect where players are in a corridor surrounded by the sandhills and unable to easily gauge the wind above. The design also produced, perhaps inadvertently, an excellent viewing area for spectators from the tops of the sandhills, an early stadium-style setting.

The revamped course opened to critical acclaim in 1935 and was selected to host The Open Championship in 1940, which had to be cancelled due to the start of World War II. Birkdale did host the British Amateur in 1946, the Curtis Cup in 1948 and the 1951 Walker Cup and finally its first Open Championship in 1954.

At the time of its first Open in 1954, the course played to a par of 73 at 6,867 yards. After several improvements to the course over the years, this year the course will measure 7,173 yards with a par of 70. Length and par are almost meaningless on a links course with accompanying winds measuring from a wee zephyr to gale strength.

Just as the course was redesigned, the club also decided to replace the old clubhouse, which stood behind the 18th green, which is now the fourth green in the new course routing. The old clubhouse was a in pavilion style with broad porches overlooking the links. The new design could only be described as radical, nothing like the Victorian or Edwardian style one brings to mind when thinking of the clubhouse at a British golf club. The new clubhouse was two-story, painted entirely in white, with elegant lounges and dining room perched above the new 18th green in a rectilinear Art Deco style, aggressively modern for the time. The views from the large bay windows extended over the course and the dunes to the Irish Sea, and required little imagination to feel that one was on a cruise, and, indeed, the clubhouse did have the look of an ocean liner.

The contractor for the clubhouse, paid homage to the architect, George Tonge, stating, “this building is a tribute to the skill of an artist as well as an architect. Some of the older schoolboys are rather opposed to these new ideas, but this is the first clubhouse in Great Britain which has been built on these lines, and, I think it will be a credit to the architect and the Club in the years to come.” The opening of the new clubhouse in 1935 was met with enthusiasm by the membership.

In later years, problems with leaks in the flat roof occurred ,raising maintenance questions, and some of the members became disenchanted with a building not in concert with the weather. It was said that members had many names for the clubhouse but not the money to replace it. Regardless, the Birkdale clubhouse remains unique and immediately recognizable.

Of all the Open Championships at Birkdale, one has a special place, Arnold Palmer’s first of two consecutive Open titles in 1961. Arnold’s victory brought the Open into a special place, just at the time that air travel was making it easier for international golfers to make the journey to Great Britain. Walter Hagen and Bob Jones had seven Open titles between them from 1922 to 1930, but two weeks of ocean travel cut most American players out. Ben Hogan made the crossing by ship in his 1953 trip to Carnoustie and the Claret Jug, but few followed until Arnold came along. After Arnold won he set a pattern by which other world-class Americans, who wished to stand in comparison, had to follow. After Palmer, they all went.

The 1961 Open was also the site of one of Palmer’s greatest shots. At the 15th (now 16th) hole on the final day of play, Palmer hit a wayward drive into the rough. His ball was under a bush in heavy grass. It was one of those situations where golfers are taught to just knock the ball back in the fairway to avoid a possible disaster, and that was the advice “Tip” Anderson, the astute Scottish caddie who had carried Palmer’s bag the year before at St. Andrews, gave his man. But Palmer pulled out a seven iron and looked to be going for the green. Then Palmer put the club back in the bag, but instead of pulling out his wedge for a “safety” shot, he grabbed his six iron. Palmer was going for the green.

In his book, Great Moments in Sports: Golf, Michael McDonnell, the Daily Mail golf correspondent, beautifully described the shot, and also captured the essence of Palmer, the man and the golfer: “Palmer returned to the bush and his enormous hands, the fingers bunched like bananas, wrapped around the club. The stare was frozen into concentration and the mouth turned down at the edge as he prepared himself for the most audacious stroke of his life.

“This was the essential Palmer – a hopeless situation in which only the near-impossible would suffice. The stroke itself was awesome enough but its implications were crippling. Palmer had to defy the laws of good sense, probability and physics, and endure the pressure and strain upon him to produce an unrepeatable stroke – because no other would do.

“Even as he stood there, knees flexed, feet splayed, there was a compelling sense of power about the man; an inexplicable sense of force, even though he was motionless. His manner and presence gave clear warning of the savage swipe that would descend upon the ball within a few seconds.

"Then suddenly he was in action. There is no hint when Palmer begins to swing. [Kel] Nagle waggles, Nicklaus begins to turn his head away from the ball, Player rocks into action. But not Palmer. Suddenly he is at maximum speed. The club flashed away and the shoulder came round viciously hard and obscured his chin. And then he was powering back at the ball with irresistible force..

“The steel blurred into the bushes and there were noises. The swish of scythed grass, snapping twigs, the crack, a solid crack. Even as the spectators heard it, the pleasing shudder in Palmer’s arms told him he had made contact. Then it was not the sound – but the sight. A bush airborne. Grass scattering around him. And somewhere the ball. But where?

“Suddenly the air cleared and there it was, a black speck far away in the sky on its course to the green. Its height told Palmer that it would reach its target. But some of the people did not see the ball, because they were still staring in wonder at the hole in the ground where once a bush had stood. Not even a tornado could have wrenched it free so cleanly. Some would swear afterwards that the ground shook beneath them as Palmer’s club cleaved that bush from his path. Or maybe it was just the gods groaning their surrender, because Palmer was free of them at last and could proceed to his first British Open title.”

The offending bush was replaced, not by another bush, but by a brass plaque commemorating Palmer’s shot for all golfers to see as they go down the 16th fairway.

Interested in golf history? Go to golfcollectors.com, print out a membership application and join the Golf Collectors Society, an international group of golfers interested in golf history and the memorabilia of the game. You will be made welcome.