Authors: Don J. Snyder
He looked right at me and said, “I hear you, man.”
“One thing is for certain,” I said to Jack as we sped along 290 West. “If you can’t drive the ball into the fairway, you can’t play on a pro tour.”
“Agreed,” he said.
Then Dylan came on, singing that great song “Forever Young.”
“Maybe I’m wrong,” I said. “There’s Dylan, who distinctly could not sing, and yet he became a legend.”
“Dylan had a great short game,” Jack said.
I laughed and thought, good line.
Game Day. Houston National Golf Club. David McLay Kidd earned an international reputation as a golf course designer after he created his masterpiece at Bandon Dunes in Oregon. Soon he was building golf courses all over the world and looking forward to the day when he would finally be commissioned to build a course in Scotland, his home country. Finally, he got the call when the Links Trust hired him to build the first new championship course in St. Andrews in one hundred years. He held nothing back and created what has to be one of the most difficult courses in the world. From the moment I first laid eyes on the Castle Course, I called it a magnificent battlefield. All the summer I spent caddying there and at the Old Course, golfers who were about to play the Castle would ask me just how difficult a track it was. I always told them the same story about how on a Wednesday afternoon I caddied at the Old Course for a young man from New Jersey, a fine and fastidious golfer, and took him around at two over par. He was delighted and asked me if I would caddie for him the next morning at the Castle. He was one of those golfers who had a little temper tantrum after each shot that disappointed him, and frankly I didn’t feature watching him torn apart by the Castle Course, so I lied and told him that I already had another tee time. Playing in the same weather the next day, he shot 116. And to make matters worse, he blamed his caddie and paid him poorly.
After walking once around Houston National, I pictured it in my mind as a version of the Castle Course because of the greens that are
placed on top of hills with steeply sloping sides. Only a little worse because the grass on the sides and at the bottom of the hills died during the drought here, leaving only hard-packed dirt. In order to have any chance today, we are going to have to land these greens and hold them on our approach shots. And that is going to be very difficult if the wind is up as it was yesterday because we will be coming at six of the greens with five- and six-irons instead of wedges. And what worries me most is that there is out of bounds left and right off almost every tee. At the Castle Course there is only one out of bounds on the whole course. Nothing destroys a round faster than a penalty for out of bounds.
I had an e-mail just before five this morning from a fine golfer in Scotland who reminded me that when Tiger Woods won the Open at the Old Course in 2000, he never hit a single bunker in four rounds. He thought his way around the course, using only irons off the tees. This is the way I would like to play Houston National. Unfortunately, the holes are much longer than those at the Old Course, and if the wind is up today, we’re going to need all the club we’ve got to get to five of the greens in regulation. And I don’t think I can scale Jack back at this point. He’s got some confidence now, and he wants to really tear the roof off the place today. However, if we have a couple of drives out of bounds early, we will have to quickly change our game plan if we want to have any chance at all.
We await our turn on the 1st tee. The wind is blowing hard in our faces. And it’s a cold wind for some reason. All the players are in jackets and wind pants. And I should have worn my wool hat.
Hole 1. A 410-yard par-4.
From here there looks to be no safe place to land our first drive of the day. A road runs up the left side, and out of bounds is right. I take the three-wood from the bag. In this kind of wind, I want to keep the shot low so it won’t be blown off line. And whatever distance we might sacrifice by not using driver, we can make up
rolling along the hard-baked fairway. “What do you think, Jack?”
I say hopefully. “A nice little stinger under the wind. Get it rolling through those hills out there somewhere?” He nods and takes the three-wood. He drills it straight through the wind, right up the middle to hard-packed dirt, a terrible lie. I think we both know that we will never reach this green in two, into this wind from this lie. Jack stripes a four-iron 230 yards. The ball hits the left side of the green and goes bounding down the side of a steep hill. We have no idea what we will be facing when we get to the ball. Now we’re forty feet from the hole and hitting a wedge off ground like concrete. He gets it up there, twenty feet from the hole. A good putt shaves the right edge of the cup. A tap-in bogey. “I hate starting this way,” he says when he hands me his putter. “We’ll get that stroke back,” I assure him. I’m not worried. He looks very confident.
One over after one.
Hole 2. A 575-yard par-5.
Right into the wind. “It’s a three-shot hole, Jackie,” I say, handing him his three-wood again. “Just hit another one the way you did at the first.” He nails it up the middle. We are now on dirt again. He takes the three-wood and tops the ball. The first really bad swing he’s made in days. It rolls maybe 150 yards. Now we are 247 to the green, into the wind, uphill, over water. I want to hit an iron to the only safe landing area, short of the green. “We can save a par from there, Jack,” I tell him. “I want to get there,” he says. “I’m not holding back.” I’ve got a bad feeling about this. He tops another three-wood, and this one goes into the water. We drop four. That wasn’t good, he says to himself. Then he settles in and hits a decent five-iron onto the green in five on this par-5. A bad three-putt, and we have an 8 here.
Four strokes over after two holes.
———
But Jack isn’t looking discouraged at all. I know this is the moment where we are going to either record another 90 and miss the damned cut or learn to fight on after a miserable beginning. I think this is the test that we both need. On our way to the 3rd tee I start talking with him about the movie
Gettysburg
, which we used to watch over and over when he was little. There is a moment in the movie when Joshua Chamberlain is about to move his men onto Little Round Top. A colonel comes up to him and says, “Now we’ll see how professors fight.” Jack always loved that line because I was a professor for a while when he was little. I get a smile out of him, and then I say, “Four over par looks like a good score out here today, Jackie boy. Let’s just make a ton of pars the rest of the way.” He nods.
Hole 3. A 200-yard par-3.
Across the wind today to another green perched on top of a mound. He hits a brilliant seven-iron to twenty feet. Almost drains the birdie putt. Makes par.
Four over par after three.
Hole 4. A 453-yard par-4.
This is a tough tee shot with a severe dogleg right, into the wind again. The landing area is heavily bunkered. Jack nails his driver over all the bunkers right up the center. It is a drive of 367 yards. Amazing. Our player partners are 80 yards behind us. “I hammered that drive,” he says happily. We are fighting well now. No complaining. No whining. Just plain digging in for the long fight ahead. He hits a perfect wedge to six feet and drains the putt for birdie. We get back one stroke. And I am feeling very good. So is Jack.
Three over after four holes.
———
Hole 5. A 440-yard par-4.
The wind is behind us, and Jack stripes his driver right up the left side. He nails his wedge to five feet and misses the birdie putt by one inch. Tap-in par.
Three over after five holes.
Hole 6. A 575-yard par-5.
Wind in our favor now. Our playing partners have already hit three drives out of bounds and lost one ball in the weeds. We have hit every fairway from the tee so far. Another great drive here, 300 yards. He wants the three-wood to try to cover the remaining 275 yards in one shot. He nails it, but the ball rolls down off the steep front of the green. We are thirty feet from the pin in two on this par-5. He tries to putt it up the steep slope because the ground is just dirt. We go sailing past the pin, then miss two putts. A lousy bogey. What a shame. “We deserved better,” I tell him. “But we’ll get it back.” I break into more talk about Joshua Chamberlain. Jack is relaxed, not at all defeated. I think he knows that this is a brutal course and in this wind a tough test. He seems focused on each shot.
Four over after six holes.
Hole 7. A 210-yard par-3.
Downwind. A lovely seven-iron to twelve feet. And a good two putts for a tap-in par.
Four over after seven holes.
Hole 8. A 414-yard par-4.
He nails his three-wood up the middle again. I don’t think I ever caddied for anyone in Scotland who hit so many fairways up the center. And in this wind, with out of bounds on both sides, it’s impressive. A hundred and thirty-seven yards left. A wedge leaves us with
a difficult downhill putt of twelve feet, breaking hard left to right. I want him to just cozy it up there close, but he goes for the birdie putt, and the ball rolls ten feet past the hole. We need to drain this putt somehow and make par here. This could be a turning point in the match. He makes it. Great par save.
Four over after eight holes.
Hole 9. A 400-yard par-4.
With the wind behind we can hit only a four-iron here because the ball can roll through the narrow fairway to water on the right. He mis-hits the four-iron. We have 180 yards left. He pushes a seven-iron left. Now we are thirty feet left of the green, and we must save a par. He leaves the first putt ten feet short. Damn. But now he drains the putt. Par save. So we lost four strokes on the first two holes but somehow manage to shoot even par the next seven holes. We hit every fairway. Our partners are discouraged, but we’re holding our heads up.
Four over after nine holes.
On the back nine we lost four more strokes and finished with a round of 80, but we played so much better than the score. We battled back from a disastrous start—four over par after the first two holes—and finished the front nine with no more damage. We hit every fairway from the tee box, something I doubt many players did here today with these narrow landing areas and out of bounds on both sides.
“You fought back hard today, Jackie,” I say as we are walking to the truck.
“I threw away five strokes,” he says.
“Maybe six,” I say. “But you putted and drove the ball like a pro. And now we know that we can fight back from any kind of start. We’ll get another shot tomorrow. Right?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“I’m proud of you, man. You played a tough course in a tough wind, and you held on.”
“Thanks,” he says.
“If you shoot three over par out here tomorrow, I’m buying you a steak dinner tomorrow night.”
Early tee time tomorrow for round two.
A lot of fine players elected not to finish today rather than post a poor score. One of the guys who beat us in the last event was shooting 90 after the 17th hole, so he quit. We will never
not finish
. And for now we live to fight another day.
There is a reason why football games are not played at eight in the morning. It takes a while for big guys to wake up and get moving. We had our first early tee time, an 8:10 start, and this meant heading out on the interstate in the half-light while Jack drank a Diet Pepsi for his caffeine and played Springsteen at high volume to keep from falling asleep at the wheel.
“Let’s say your granddad is looking down on all of this. Let’s give him something to smile about this morning.”
“I’ll try,” he said.
We arrived an hour before our 8:10 tee time only to find that the course was covered in frost. A one-hour delay. I went off in search of some bananas.
Two hours later at the 1st tee, I hand Jack his three-wood and say, “For your grandfather. He went to war at age eighteen. He had his
older brother die. His twin brother die. His bride of nine months die. And he kept on fighting. And you know something, Jack, I never told him I was proud of him for not giving up. Never once.”
Jack just looks at me.
Whenever I caddied with my pal Duncan at the Old Course, he used to say to me on our way to the 1st tee, “Set your sights low.” Today I turned my back on that good counsel and began hoping for an easy round, or at least a smooth start. Instead, we were in trouble on the 1st hole. After nailing a three-wood right up the middle of the fairway, we had a simple 120-yard wedge left to the hole. But with the green still frozen as hard as concrete, Jack’s second shot bounced high into the air, and we watched in a kind of stunned disbelief as the ball then ricocheted off a mound beyond the green, sailed across the cart path, and bounded over a sidewalk before it came to rest in a mud hole. We took a double bogey from there, and because I knew that it could have been much worse, I lost my patience with Jack when I heard him curse himself. For the next four holes while Jack was making pars, I was looking for a way out. I’d never left a golfer before, but on the 6th tee box I told Jack that I had to find a bathroom. Then I walked by myself for almost an hour composing out loud the lecture I was going to give my son at the end of the round. It was all about being grateful just for the chance to compete, no matter what happened.
I didn’t catch up with him until the 12th hole, a 616-yard par-5, and when I climbed up onto the tee box, I heard him laughing and chatting up his playing partners. From there on in, I watched Jack make pars and birdies to finish strong for a score of four over par.
This was good. But he and I still had a private score to settle after this round. On the ride home I blasted him for his behavior after that 1st hole. He shrugged it off and said, “It’s all good.”
“Not to me,” I said. “Here’s what we’re going to do, Jack. And I’m talking as your caddie now, not your old man. We have some time off now for practice rounds. Tomorrow or the next day, you pick the day, but you and I are going to play a match for five bucks a hole. You’ll give me ten strokes anywhere I want them, and I’m going to beat your ass.”