Before I addressed the ball, Moonlight favored me with one last bit of advice. “See that creek that runs ’cross the fairway? It’s ’bout 230 yards to carry it.”
The magic of Bragg’s Point made its first appearance when my tee shot rocketed off my driver straight down the right side of the fairway, exactly as Moonlight instructed. It cleared the shallow creek and bounced just once before disappearing in the tall grass of the fairway.
As he took the club from me and we began to walk off the first tee, Moonlight gave me a wink and said, “Mr. Jones himself couldn’t have done it any better. Well done.”
I couldn’t help but notice that the air seemed to have a special fragrance, perhaps from a combination of the lush green grass and the spray from the ocean. Not only did it smell sweet and fresh, but the atmosphere seemed ionized with positive energy. Every breath taken at this place was invigorating.
As we walked along, I asked Moonlight about the first round ever played on the course.
“Ah,” he said. “That would’ve been sometime in ’38. ’Course Mr. Jones struck the first shot. Hit it ’bout where yours went, only longer. He played the round with Mr. Roberts. It was just the two of ’em that very first time. An’ I was on Mr. Roberts’s bag.”
“No kidding? Who carried for Jones?”
“Slats Reinauer.”
“Interesting name,” I commented.
Moonlight sniffed. “One a’ the best I ever saw.”
“How’d he get the honor of carrying Jones’s bag?”
I noticed that Moonlight was staring straight ahead, like a bird dog pointing at quail. He wouldn’t take his eyes off where he apparently had spotted my ball, but he continued to talk.
“Oh, Mr. Jones loved Slats. Brought him out from the National. Slats knew Mr. Jones’s game, an’ Mr. Jones trusted his club selections entirely. But the main thing was, Slats could read greens like nobody I ever knew.”
“He was good, huh?”
Moonlight chuckled. “He had his own way a’ doin’ it, too. Everybody else always measured the break by usin’ the cup or a ball. Ya’ know, they’d say ‘Play it half a cup to the right’ or ‘It’s two balls on the high side.’”
He paused, as if to catch his breath. I reminded myself that Moonlight was 80 some-odd years old.
“Slats wouldn’t talk like that. He used money to measure how high he wanted ya’ to putt it. He’d say, ‘Gimme a dime out,’ or he’d hol’ his hands this far ’part an’ say, ‘I need a dollar bill above the hole.’ If Slats tol’ ya’ a putt was expensive, he wasn’t talkin’ ’bout the bets that were on the line; he meant it had a lotta break. Mr. Jones loved that. If he thought Slats was readin’ too much break, he’d ask him, ‘Ya’ sure it costs that much?’”
Moonlight laughed as he recalled those happy times. “Slats also loved to read the financial papers. Even carried ’round a copy a’ the Wall Street Journal. Word was that he’d invested his savin’s an’ gotten rich. Some a’ the members even got to askin’ him ’bout different stocks.”
I found it hard to believe that a caddie moonlighted as a financial guru. If Slats had done so well, I wondered, why was he still caddying? I didn’t say anything, however, for fear of offending Moonlight.
My friend must have read my mind. Grinning at me, he said, “Turns out Slats didn’t have a dime in the stock market; he was just havin’ fun all those years makin’ those guys think he did.”
“What was Mr. Roberts like?”
Moonlight’s face suddenly took on a sad expression. “That was an unhappy man. He wasn’t much of a golfer, either. But he loved the game, I’ll give him that.”
He walked a few more steps and then stopped and put my bag down. I couldn’t tell why.
“Are you alright?”
He pointed to the ground. I saw my ball right in front of where Moonlight was standing.
I don’t know how, but the ball was sitting up nicely. From where we stood, the fairway climbed back uphill to a flag waving in the distance. The green appeared to be within reach.
“How far to the green?”
Moonlight looked around to get his bearings and said, “It’s ’bout 185 or so to the front. Looks like the flag’s back right. With the wind an’ all, it’ll play closer to 200, maybe 210.”
Handing me my 5-wood, he said, “Land it in front a’ the green an’ let it feed down to the pin.”
I did as I was told and hit it flush. We watched as the ball bounced twice and began to roll toward the rear of the green.
Moonlight grinned at me. “You’re coachable, I see.”
“Do you think it’s close?”
“Yeah. I think we’ve gotta chance to start this one off with a bang.”
When we arrived at the green, I saw even more clearly why Moonlight had me hit the 5-wood. Although it was wide, the green was shallow in depth, leaving little room for error on club selection. Any approach had to land short and run to the hole. The 3-iron I probably would have selected would have come in too low and run through this green into a deep grass bunker behind the green.
My ball was no more than 20 feet from the hole. As Moonlight removed the flagstick, I marked the ball. He held up his hand, and I tossed it to him. He cleaned it and flipped it back. As I replaced the ball, he said, “It’ll move to your left, toward the ocean. Play it a cup out.”
I jerked the putt a good three feet or so past the hole, but managed to slide the comebacker just inside the right edge of the cup.
It wasn’t pretty, but I had made a four on the first hole at Bragg’s Point. I was enormously pleased with myself. As we headed to the second tee, it occurred to me that I didn’t know what par was on the first hole.
Moonlight just shrugged when I asked him. “Depends on the wind direction. I suppose you’d consider it a par-5. The only thing that really matters, though, is the number a’ strokes it takes to play 18 holes, not one.”
The second hole turned back to the left. According to the card, it was 381 yards in length, and I could see that it ran straight down toward the cliffs. Beyond that, the ocean was visible in the distance.
Although it was into the wind, Moonlight explained that the hole would play short because it was downhill. Pointing to the remains of a large fairway bunker, he directed me to avoid the trouble by hitting an iron off the tee. It was another play I would never have chosen on my own.
“Mr. Hogan always hit 3-iron here. Most a’ the others did, too, but he was the first. He said anyone who hit driver here was an idiot, what with the fairway so narrow down there an’ that big trap waitin’ to catch your ball.”
Although I pushed my tee shot, it stayed inside the tree line and fell short of the bunker. I immediately saw the wisdom of Hogan’s plan.
As we started toward my ball, I joked, “John Daly would hit driver here.”
He belched out a disapproving sound. “Not if I were on his bag, he wouldn’t. What would it give ya’ even if ya’ hit it straight? He’d still have a half-wedge to the green. No player a’ mine is gonna be hittin’ half-wedges for money, I’ll tell ya’ that. Toughest shot in golf. Ya’ gotta lay up for a full swing an’ leave those dicey little touch shots alone. Hell, even Mr. Snead hit an iron here, an’ he was the straightest driver I ever saw.”
I wanted to know more about the man most authorities consider to have had the greatest golf swing of all. “Did Snead play here much?”
Moonlight nodded. “Oh, yeah. He was here as much as anyone.” He chuckled at a sudden memory. “He was easy to caddie for, too, when he was workin’ his favorite bet.”
“Which was?” I asked.
The old man cackled again. “He loved to play what he called ‘one-club.’ He’d let ya’ pick any club ya’ wanted, an’ he’d play ya’ with his 5-iron.” He pulled the strap of my bag over his shoulder. “Made for a pretty light load, not to mention easy club selection.”
“I bet he was good at it, huh?”
Moonlight nodded. “Shot 71 once w
hen I was with him. He could do everythin’ with that club, includin’ remove your billfold.”
The grass was thick where we were walking, and I began to fear that we wouldn’t be able to find my ball. But Moonlight’s stride was confident, and he took me right to it.
He looked at the tops of the trees, threw up some grass, and said, “Ya’ can get there with a five—even if ya’ don’t hit it quite as good as Mr. Snead.”
I took the club from him. The green below us was deeper than the one on the first hole, and the flagstick was in the middle. It was an easy location to reach. Whoever set the pins wanted us to get a good start.
I had another good lie. I made decent contact—a little thin—and the ball landed in the very front of the green. I had maybe 30 feet to the hole.
When we got to the green, I could tell that it brought us within teasing distance of the water’s edge. The view was staggering. I now understood even better Moonlight’s admonition to lay up and avoid any touch shots into the green. This was a heavily guarded green, with bunkers on three sides waiting to capture a poorly executed wedge. Maxwell may have kept the bunkers to a minimum elsewhere on the course, but he made up for it here.
As we lined up the putt, Moonlight said from behind me, “Remember now, it’ll roll toward the water.”
I took him to mean that the putt would be faster than it appeared, since an extension of my line through the hole ran directly toward the sea. However, I still ran it well past the hole.
He reminded me that the putt coming back to the hole would be much slower. “Hit it to the back a’ the cup.”
I did exactly as he said, rapping the ball so hard that it nearly popped out when it struck the back edge. Without saying a word, Moonlight picked up my bag and began walking away. I hustled along behind him.
The third hole was a one-shot hole. Moonlight estimated the yardage at 175 from where we stood, but the wind made that measurement almost meaningless. In fact, Moonlight told me the hole called for everything from a 2-iron to an 8-iron depending on the air currents.
Once again, Bragg’s Point allowed little room for error in club selection. The tee wasn’t far from the second green, no more than 30 yards from the cliff’s edge. Whatever shot you hit from the tee had to traverse a cove to a green that was tucked onto a small point jutting out from the property. Any play that was short or left fell into the surf. It was a beautiful but terrifying hole.
Moonlight pointed to the right front of the green. “There’s a bail-out area over there. Mr. Hogan always said that was the way to play it when the wind was up. He’d hit it over in that direction, short a’ the green, an’ chip on. Usually made three, never risked worse’n four.”
“You want me to hit it there?”
He looked up in the sky, as if surveying the heavens for a sign. “Nah. The gulls look comfortable up there. Can’t be much of a wind.” Handing me the 5-iron again, he said, “Remember what I tol’ ya’ ’bout knockin’ the ball down? This is where ya’ wanna hit that shot.”
I had my doubts about whether this was the time to try a new shot and said so. “Ya’ gotta believe in your game, lad. Ya’ got what it takes. It’s the shot for this hole. It’s the shot Mr. Nelson played. Ya’ might get lucky an’ do what he did here.”
“What do you mean?”
“He made a one here.”
“No kidding?”
“Knocked it in on the fly. Mr. Jones was with him at the time. He laughed an’ said, ‘Well, Byron, that eliminates the bad bounce, don’t it?’”
“Were you there?”
“Nah. I was in the group behind. We were on the second green. Didn’t know a thing ’bout it ’til Clarence Henderson yelled at us.”
I set up for the shot just as Moonlight had shown me. I knew he was right; knocking the ball down would keep it below any wind that tried to trick us, and the ball would tear into the green and stop dead in its tracks when it landed.
But I was much too intimidated by the roar of the surf crashing below to release the club down the line that Moonlight had given me. Almost involuntarily, I steered the ball away from the water, pushing it right into Hogan’s bail-out zone.
“Sorry,” I apologized as I handed my club back to him.
“No need for regrets, lad. You’re safe. We can get up an’ down from there.”
When we got to my ball, I was surprised that it had come to rest in short grass. Was this more of the magic that Moonlight had promised? If my ball had been buried in the tall grass surrounding the fourth tee just beyond, I couldn’t have made clean contact and put enough spin on the ball to keep it from running too far. That was critical because, as Moonlight pointed out, the green ran away from us down to the sea. We had to stop the ball quickly after it landed on the green.
Fortunately, the excellent lie gave me the confidence I needed to play the shot. Using my sand wedge, I pinched the ball off the turf. It popped up, landed softly just inside the collar of the green, and rolled quietly toward the hole before stopping just a few inches from the cup.
Moonlight smiled appreciatively. He handed me my putter and went to pull the flag. I looked at him in mock offense and said, “What—that’s not good?”
He shook his head. “We’re playin’ golf today, lad. We’re gonna putt ’em all out.”
I tapped it in for my three.
Chapter 17
MOONLIGHT HAD LEFT my bag on the fourth tee after I had played my chip to the third green. As we turned to walk back to play the fourth hole, I glanced uphill over brush and heather. At that moment, I thought I saw something white flash out of the corner of my eye near the top of the hill just beyond the double green. Although I turned quickly to look, I couldn’t see anything.
I tried to get Moonlight’s attention. “Did you see that?”
He was bending over my bag, pulling out my driver. “See what?”
Pointing up the hill, I said, “Over there. There was something over there. Something white. I couldn’t tell what it was.”
He waved me off with the back of his hand. “Don’t be gettin’ distracted now. The game is on. Keep your mind on why we’re here.”
He put the driver in my hands. It felt good just to hold it, and I knew I should heed Moonlight’s advice. “Tell me about this hole.”
Moonlight pointed down the fairway. “This is a two-shot hole that’ll challenge your game. It’s ’bout 400 yards or so, but it don’t play quite that long. As ya’ can see, it runs ’long the shoreline here off the tee an’ turns back slightly toward the water for the second shot. We’ll have to carry that cove ya’ see there to reach the fairway, but there’s a little more room for error than the last hole.”
He didn’t have to tell me about the large fairway bunker just to the right of the fairway because it was plainly visible from the tee. Maxwell wanted to make sure that players thought twice about cutting across the slight dogleg to cheat the hole out of its full length.
Backing away to give me room to hit my tee shot, his parting advice—unnecessary in view of the open sea on the left—was to favor the right side of the fairway. I did a little better this time, pulling the ball slightly but making solid contact.
Moonlight seemed satisfied. “We can git home from there, alright.”
We had an unobstructed—and astonishingly beautiful —view of the surf on our left as we walked down the fairway. I couldn’t help but think of how Jones’s two courses—Augusta National and Bragg’s Point—were every bit as extraordinary as the man himself.
As we made our way to my ball, it also occurred to me that this wasn’t Jones’s last creation. In the late 1940s, he organized and built Peachtree Golf Club in Atlanta. Supposedly, Jones’s public association with a club other than Augusta National infuriated Cliff Roberts, but Jones wanted a place to play in town, and his boyhood course, East Lake, had fallen into disrepair as the neighborhood around it deteriorated. Peachtree turned out to be a pretty fair track, too; it hosted the 1989 Walker Cup, a biennial c
ompetition between the leading amateurs of the United States and Great Britain/Ireland.
Roberts may have been miffed about Peachtree, but I couldn’t imagine him objecting to Bragg’s Point. For one thing, it was a secret. It didn’t compete with Augusta National in any way. And, most importantly, Roberts was an integral part of the enterprise.
The fairway grass here was native bent and fescue, the same as the links in Scotland. It was not as thick on these seaside holes above the cliffs because the soil was too rocky to support much in the way of vegetation, and we could see my ball before we got to it. Once again, I had a good lie, thanks to Moonlight’s magic.
I didn’t like what I saw in front of me, however. The route to the green was fraught with problems in the form of two large bunkers that had to be negotiated. At least this green was bigger than the last one, and there appeared to be more land surrounding it. As I studied what I saw, I concluded that the challenge was more visual than anything else.
I made my best swing of the day with the 6-iron that Moonlight assured me was the right club. The ball finished safely on the green.
“This was Mr. Jones’s favorite hole,” Moonlight told me as we walked toward the green. “He liked it ’cause it required two good shots an’ had great scenery. He said it reminded him a’ the eighth hole at Pebble Beach, only it played north ’stead a’ south.”
I thought about Jones playing the hole.
“Was he as good a putter as people say?”
Moonlight nodded in agreement. “He could work wonders with Calamity Jane. He had a wristy stroke, like a lotta the players did back then. He liked to hook his putts, kinda the way Bobby Locke did. It made ’em roll better on those grainy greens.”
I understood what he was saying. “I remember seeing old newsreels of Arnold Palmer winning the Masters in 1960. He would bend way over the ball, knock-kneed, and putt with his wrists. You don’t see that any more.”
Moonlight handed me my putter. “Yeah. Almost all of ’em putted that way back then. Billy Casper won a whole bunch a’ tournaments, includin’ two U.S. Opens, puttin’ like that.”
The Greatest Course That Never Was Page 11