The Greatest Course That Never Was

by J. Michael Veron

  Moonlight hesitated at first, but quickly followed me. At the top of the landing, he pointed down a hallway. “It’s down there.”

  I took “it” to mean Jones’s quarters. “Show me.”

  Moonlight seemed nervous for some reason. His eyes darted around. He looked back at me and said, “Ya’ really wanna see it?”

  I was taken aback by his skittish manner. “Are you afraid of ghosts or something?”

  He didn’t take it as a joke. “Remember, Charley, I’ve tol’ ya’ several times. This place isn’t like any other.”

  Reluctantly, he started down the hallway. For the first time, I noticed that the floor creaked as we walked. It reminded me that the building was made almost entirely of wood. As far as I was concerned, a good clubhouse had to be made of wood to have the proper feel to it. If it was made of concrete and steel, it was too new to be of any use to me.

  As we made our way down the hallway, clouds of dust accented the shafts of sunlight streaming in through the windows on a diagonal in front of us. At the end of the hall was a door. Moonlight started to turn the knob. It wouldn’t move. He uttered a single word, “Locked,” and reached inside his pocket. Producing still another key—again I suppressed my surprise—he inserted it into the lock and turned it. I heard the bolt slide, and Moonlight swung the door open.

  We stepped into the sitting room of a small apartment. Through a door on the left was a bedroom with a single bed, small dresser, and night table. To the right of the sitting room was a small bath.

  It all seemed neatly preserved. Too neat, I thought. Although there was no bedding or other linen, much less toiletries and such, the place seemed perfectly habitable.

  “Moonlight, someone could be living here.”

  He gave out a funny laugh. “Now, lad, ya’ gotta cut that out. You’re startin’ to spook me, ya’ know?”

  What I was really thinking was that, if someone was living in Jones’s old apartment, they would have good reason to regard us as intruders. If anything happened to us out here, it might be months before we (or our bodies) were discovered.

  I thought I heard something move down the hall. I spun around, but saw nothing.

  Moonlight seemed irritated. “Would ya’ stop that, for Chrissake?”

  I didn’t tell him that I was becoming afraid too. Still, as much as I wanted to leave, I couldn’t forget that I was standing where the great Bobby Jones had been. “How often did Jones stay here?”

  Moonlight shrugged. “He’d come for a week or two at a time. Every once in a while Mrs. Jones came with him, but that was rare.” He paused before adding, “I guess there wasn’t much for her to do here. It was really a man’s place, ya’ know what I mean?”

  He pointed to the bedroom. “Didya’ notice the view through the window in there? Mr. Jones liked to say it was the best seat in the house.”

  I walked back into the bedroom and looked out the window. It did, indeed, offer a splendid view of the entire property and the ocean. I stood for a minute and took it all in. Just as I was about to turn away, I thought I saw something move in the shadows of a tree outside the window. I didn’t say anything to Moonlight.

  I suggested to Moonlight that it was time to take a look at the course. He seemed a little surprised that I didn’t have more questions about Jones’s quarters, but led me back outside.

  As we stood in front of the clubhouse, I peppered Moonlight with questions about the golf course.

  “How much land did they have?”

  Moonlight thought for a minute. “I dunno. Not a lot. They had to squeeze it in. There’s no range. ’Course, they didn’t need one; if anyone wanted to practice, they hit balls to a caddie in one a’ the fairways.”

  I looked around. “Looks like a pretty tight fit for 18 holes.”

  Moonlight nodded. “It’s plenty enough, though, you’ll see. Remember, they didn’t need any space for anythin’ else. There wasn’t any pool, no tennis courts, or parkin’ lot. Only a few people ever came here, an’ when they did it was for one reason: to play golf.”

  Looking out over the property again, I said, “God, this is a gorgeous place.”

  “That’s why Mr. Jones was determined to fit a course in here. That fat man was right when he told him he knew of a place that was as pretty as Cypress Point.”

  He gestured out toward the ocean. “Come with me, lad, you’ve gotta see the view out there.” We walked down toward the rocky cliffs that lined the edge of the property overlooking the ocean. Although I had expected the brush to be heavy, even in what I had first mistook for “fire lanes,” the walk was surprisingly easy. Part of that was due to the fact that the property dropped a good 50 feet or so in elevation from the clubhouse to the cliffs several hundred yards away. As we walked, Moonlight commented, “This was the eighth fairway. Ya’ just walked past the green for the finishin’ hole.”

  I stopped and looked back. If I had been paying attention, I would have made out the contours of the green without Moonlight pointing it out to me. I also now saw quite clearly the remains of a large bunker that stretched almost all the way across in front. I imagined how often it must have collected wayward approaches.

  I also noticed that the green was barely overgrown—as if it had been unattended for only a few days, as opposed to three decades. I also thought it was curious that the fairway on which we were walking seemed much the same way. In fact, as I looked about, I realized that all of the fairways within sight remained fairly distinct and easily recognizable.

  I would have expected nature to reclaim the fairways and greens quickly after the course had been abandoned. Yet there weren’t any trees, much less heavy underbrush, to speak of where Jones and his friends pitched and putted years before. Apparently, even the forces of nature hesitated at the thought of taking back a golf course that had once belonged to Bobby Jones. Maybe that was part of the “magic” that Moonlight said inhabited the place.

  Before I could give it more thought, I heard Moonlight’s voice calling out to me. “C’mon, now.” I hurried after him.

  The trees ended abruptly 50 yards or so from the edge of the cliffs, where the soil began to turn to rock. At that point, you could see up and down the shoreline. It was breathtaking.

  As we broke away from the trees, the cool ocean breeze stiffened noticeably. Every once in awhile, a gust of wind sprayed us with the surf crashing into the rocks nearby. It felt cold.

  I looked out at the ocean and marveled again at its vastness and its deep blue color. There was nothing back home in Birmingham, Alabama that compared to this.

  The shoreline was jagged along the edge of the property. There were crevices running deep into the land and points jutting out as much as a hundred yards. In some places, the land descended more gently down toward brown, sandy beaches. In others, it had been sheared off by some ancient geological event, leaving a rocky cliff. As I looked north and south, I could see that the entire property extended out into the Pacific almost like a peninsula, exposing itself to the ocean’s winds on three sides.

  It occurred to me that the property could be seen from the air. “How did they keep this place a secret when a plane or balloon could fly by and get a bird’s eye view of the whole thing?”

  Moonlight shook his head. “Normal folks weren’t allowed to fly over the property because a’ the base. Ya’ know, military security. They had a name for it…”

  I suddenly remembered. “Protected airspace?”

  He smiled. “Yeah, right.”

  As we looked around, I also wondered what challenges Perry Maxwell designed along here as he “found” the course that the property presented to him. I could see several areas that looked like more green locations. Again, they appeared as if they had only recently been returned to nature. In fact, from where I stood, the greens seemed remarkably healthy and free of weeds. It was almost as if one pass with a greens mower would have them ready for play.

  I started to ask Moonlight about it, but he was standing a f
ew yards away, looking out at the ocean as if transfixed. I couldn’t tell what he was looking at.

  After several minutes, he turned slowly away from the sea and walked back toward me. As he reached me, he said, “There’s so much to tell ya’, lad.”

  With that, he turned and walked back toward the clubhouse. He still had the fast-paced walk of a caddie, and I was forced to hustle to keep up. As I scurried along behind him, I thanked God for allowing me to be in such a wondrous place.

  Chapter 14

  I CAUGHT UP with Moonlight at the top of the hill just before he reached the clubhouse. I figured he was headed over to the first tee so that we could finally begin my round on the course.

  “You want me to get my clubs out of the trunk?”

  He shook his head slowly. “Nah, you’re not ready yet. Ya’ can’t play the course without preparation, lad.”

  He lost me there. While I wasn’t a great player, I didn’t need a lesson just to tee it up, not with my own caddie with me.

  “What kind of preparation do I need?”

  “Prob’ly more’n I can give ya’, but I’ll do the best I can.” He looked around as if searching for something. “We need to leave here now.”

  With that, he turned and began walking toward the car.

  “But the day’s still young,” I protested.

  He didn’t even turn back to answer me. He just kept walking, shaking his head and saying something to himself that I couldn’t understand.

  He remained quiet during the ride back to the hotel. As we passed through the gate and stopped to relock it, I thought I heard the sound of an engine of some kind behind us in the distance. Although it was hard to tell, it seemed to be coming from the course, or at least from that general direction.

  I turned to Moonlight as he was getting back in the car. “Do you hear that?”

  He gave me a puzzled look. “Hear what?”

  “That sound,” I said. “Doesn’t it sound like some kind of motor?”

  He shrugged it off. “We’re next to a military base. They got all kinds a’ machinery here. That could be anythin’.’” He paused before adding, “But I don’t hear nothin’.”

  I didn’t say anything more for fear that he would accuse me again of an overactive imagination. We rode in silence for a while. It seemed as if the place had a spell on Moonlight that wouldn’t loosen its grip until we were almost back to the hotel. We were several miles down Highway 1 before he spoke.

  “The magic’s still there. I could feel it.”

  “Tell me about the magic, Moonlight.”

  “It’s a hard thing to describe. The place’s been touched with greatness. Ya’ can feel it in the ground as ya’ walk the course. Ya’ can taste it in the sea air as ya’ breathe. And I could smell ’em in that clubhouse—Mr. Jones, Mr. Roberts, Mr. Hogan, Mr. Nelson, Mr. Hagen, Mr. Sarazen. President Eisenhower, too, only he wasn’t the president when he first started comin’ there. Mr. Snead, Mr. Armour… they came, too…” His voice trailed away as he retreated into his memories.

  I didn’t want him to stop.

  “But those guys played at a lot of places. What made this place so different?”

  He was quick to respond. “The golf was pure, lad. No gallery, no television like they have now, just the players. An’ no one was bein’ paid to play there. Everyone who came had only one purpose: To play the game for the sheer love of it. Some of ’em even skipped tournaments to come play while Mr. Jones was in residence.”

  I couldn’t resist playing the devil’s advocate. “But you sent me that scorecard from a four-ball match Jones played for money. Remember that? Something about Hogan and his friend Little beating Jones and Demaret out of two hundred bucks?”

  He shook his head and smiled. “I didn’t say they never played for money. These boys couldn’t play golf unless some-thin’ was on the line. That ain’t the point. They weren’t paid to be here. They were here first an’ foremost for the love a’ the game an’ Mr. Jones.”

  We turned into the hotel parking lot. It was still early afternoon, and I realized that we had missed lunch. I was hungry.

  I pointed to the diner across the street. “Want to get a bite?”

  “Sure,” he said, and took off at the brisk pace that appeared to be his only walking gear.

  The place was nearly deserted. The greeter told us to pick any table we liked, so we found a booth near the back of the dining room.

  I was starving by the time the waitress arrived to take our order. “Must be something in that salty air,” I said to Moonlight as if to explain my choice of a steak and baked potato instead of a sandwich for lunch. He was too busy studying the menu to reply.

  He finally looked up at the waitress and said, “I’ll have the same thing.”

  While we waited for our food, Moonlight began my “preparation” for playing the course.

  “The trick to golf, lad, is to keep it simple. People poison their minds—an’ their games—with these crazy notions ’bout how they should swing the club instead a’ where they should hit the ball. There’s no one swing; we’re all different. Mr. Nelson didn’t hit it like Mr. Hogan. Mr. Snead didn’t hit it like either one of ’em. Yet they were all born the same year an’ came up at the same time. An’ they all won their share a’ championships.”

  He was looking directly at me.

  “It’s all ’bout gettin’ the ball in the hole. Ya’ don’t get points for form. Look at Mr. Jones’s swing. My God, he let loose a’ the club with his left hand at the top a’ his backswing. Claimed it gave him more power. If anyone else ever tried to let go an’ re-grip like that, they’d miss the damned ball altogether. But it worked for him, didn’t it?”

  I tried to imagine Jack Nicklaus letting go of the club with his left hand right before starting his downswing. It was too ridiculous for words.

  He continued his dissertation. “It’s a game a’ feel, not form. It’s ’bout sendin’ the ball where you want it to go, not posin’ for pictures on your follow-through.”

  What he said made sense.

  “You came up at a time when there were no videos to analyze a player’s swing. There weren’t any golf schools, either. Golf wasn’t so much theory as it must’ve been trial and error.”

  He laughed. “Ya’ think Mr. Hogan an’ Mr. Snead could afford ‘swing doctors’ when they were comin’ up? They were caddies, lad. They learned the game by watchin’ others an’ then sneakin’ on the course when they were done carryin’ bags. Get a few holes in here an’ there. Practice? Hell, they were thrilled just to play a little whenever they could. Same for Mr. Nelson. He was in the same caddie yard as Mr. Hogan.”

  “That must have been one helluva caddie shack.”

  “Those Texas boys came up in the wind. They learned to keep it low, like we did back in Scotland. It was a matter a’ survival. They tried hittin’ the ball every way imaginable ’til they found a way that worked for ’em. No fancy theories. They learned what worked through sweat an’ blisters. Mr. Hogan said it best: Ya’ gotta dig it outta the dirt.”

  I thought about Hogan winning the British Open in 1953 in his first and only try, at fabled Carnoustie, no less. There wasn’t a harder course on the entire British Open rota. And I remembered that Snead had won at St. Andrews at 1946, also on his first trip “over the pond,” as they used to say.

  “I guess when you’re standing over the ball in a major championship, you’d better be thinking about where it needs to go instead of some swing theory.”

  “Exactly, lad.” Moonlight seemed pleased at my comprehension.

  I was quick to disappoint him, though.

  “But what’s all this got to do with playing the course?”

  He frowned. “Everythin’, lad, everythin’. Ya’ can’t take it all in if you’re worryin’ ’bout pronatin’ your wrists, now, can ya’? You’ll miss the magic if your mind is busy frettin’ ’bout the mechanics a’ the golf swing. Ya’ can’t waste an opportunity like this. Ya’ won�
�t catch the magic if ya’ don’t open your mind to it.”

  “You’ve never seen me play. What makes you think I don’t play by feel?”

  “’Cause you’re not ol’ enough to be past all those ‘quick fixes’ an’ ‘snake oil’ cures they throw at ya’. They tell ya’ how to be a pro overnight. It’s a bunch a’ hogwash, I tell ya’, an’ they oughta put those people in jail. You Americans…you’ll say anythin’ to make a buck, won’t ya’?”

  Moonlight had again put me on the defensive. “We’ve done alright with our system.”

  “That ya’ have, lad. You’ve shown the world. But it don’t make ya’ perfect, now does it?”

  It seemed pointless to argue. “No, no one’s perfect.” Our food had arrived. The conversation ceased as we both tore into our rib eyes, which were surprisingly good.

  I waited until we were both halfway through our steaks before saying anything more.

  “So, have I learned enough to rate a round on the course tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon, lad, ’bout 2:00. The course should be ready for ya’ by then.” He cut another bite of steak before adding, “And let’s hope you’re ready for it.”

  I laughed and said, “I’ll have the best caddie in the yard. How can I miss?”

  Back at the hotel, as the emotions of the day died down, I thought again about what I had seen. Moonlight had been fully vindicated, that much was certain. He might be a lot of things, I thought, but crazy ain’t one of them. Bragg’s Point was right where he said it would be.

  Now that I knew that the place truly existed, I wanted to know everything about its connection to Bobby Jones and the golden age of golf. And I knew that I wasn’t going to be satisfied until I did. At that point, I could only imagine what had taken place on that marvelous piece of ground. It was up to Moonlight to pass the folklore of Bragg’s Point on to me before it was lost forever.

  Of course, he had promised to tell me as much while we played. As he put it, “Each hole has its share a’ stories, lad, but ya’ can’t really understand what I’m tellin’ ya’ unless we’re there at the time.”