The Greatest Course That Never Was

by J. Michael Veron

  “What makes you say that?”

  “More than anythin’, golf’s a game of integrity, lad. Players call penalties on themselves even when no one’s lookin’. It’s at the heart a’ the game.” He paused, and I saw a look of contempt on his face. “Ya’ think people who start a war with a sneak attack on a Sunday mornin’ can really understand a game where playin’ by the rules is the most important thing?”

  He wasn’t done. “The way I see it, lyin’ is a form a’ weakness. A liar ain’t strong ’nough to own up to the truth. An’ I got no patience with liars. So ya’ won’t see me ridin’ in a Toyota or playin’ one a’ them Sony radios, no, sir. If ya’ ask me, Truman gave ’em what they deserved.”

  I was a little surprised at the harshness of his attitude. But then I remembered how one of my grandfather’s friends had survived the Bataan Death March. The stories he brought back were horrifying, and he never forgave his Japanese captors for their brutality. Moonlight was old enough to have served in that war—and to have lost loved ones in it. My generation hadn’t been through anything like that, and I decided that I shouldn’t be so quick to judge Moonlight for things I really didn’t understand.

  Chapter 20

  AS WE PREPARED to play the tenth hole, I asked Moonlight what to expect on the back nine.

  He thought for a moment and then said, “Six a’ the nine holes are by the sea, terrific holes, every one a’ them. Maxwell must’ve been inspired by God when he did these. The greens’re a challenge. Hard to read, an’ they require the touch of a mother bathin’ her baby.”

  Shouldering my bag at the tenth tee, he handed me my 3-iron. “This is where you’re gonna shine, Charley.” He then explained that the tenth hole was a two-shot hole that started slightly up the slope toward the right and then turned back left where it ran down to a deep but narrow green. The idea from the tee was to make certain that the first shot landed far enough right to have a good angle for the approach.

  “Why not driver?”

  “Ya’ don’t need a big stick here, lad. The ball will run enough when it lands, an’ the second shot is downhill all the way. The hole’s 379 on the card, but plays no more’n 350 or so. With a driver, you’re takin’ a chance on goin’ through the fairway or into the bushes.”

  I hit the 3-iron clean. I saw what Moonlight meant when the ball bounced high on landing and finished in the middle of the fairway. A driver would have landed near the trees across the fairway where it turned back to the left.

  When we reached the bend in the dogleg, I saw more clearly how Moonlight wanted me to use my drive to set up my second shot into the green. The hole had turned partially toward the ocean in a pronounced curve that would continue through the next two holes. We were still cutting across the slope at an angle, which meant that the shot would run right to left when it landed.

  Moonlight’s instructions were simple. “Aim on a line with the inside edge a’ the bunker frontin’ the right side a’ the green.” Pacing to a nearby tree, he said, “You’ve got ’bout 180 to the front a’ the green. It’ll play a bit shorter ’cause the green’s below us. Let’s hit a five.”

  I certainly wasn’t going to quibble; Moonlight hadn’t mis-clubbed me yet. The ball started right down the line, hung in the air at its apex for what seemed like an extra few seconds, and then fell onto the front edge of the green.

  The tilt of the slope caused the ball to bounce forward and to the left. Moonlight quickly determined its eventual destination. “That’s gonna be close,” he said in a reverent but excited stage whisper.

  The ball continued to curve slightly to the left, and I realized it was headed straight for the flag. We both stood there transfixed as it seemed to disappear into the hole, only to spin back out and stop no more than a foot away.

  Moonlight gave me a broad grin. “I don’t suppose you’ll be needin’ me to read that one, now will ya’?”

  It was the kind of shot I used to dream about. But somehow, at that moment, I felt as if the spirit of the course had more to do with it than my muscles, talent, or dreams.

  As we walked off the green, I asked Moonlight if he had always been that good at clubbing players. He just grunted and said, “It’s just somethin’ ya’ learn. But I was never as good as Henry Bradford.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Another one a’ the guys who came out from Augusta.” He finished cleaning my ball with his towel and handed it back to me. “Most of us could size up a player after they hit a shot or two. Henry had ’em pegged just by lookin’ in their bag.”

  “How?”

  “He’d look at their irons first—mostly the wedges. He always said that the wedges told him what kinda player he had. If the wedges were worn in the right spot from practice, he knew he was on a good player’s bag.”

  The 11th tee was off to the left of the 10th green. As we walked over to it, Moonlight said, “You’re gonna like this hole.”

  He was right. The 11th tee was set back about a hundred yards away, right on the cliffs. Although it was the second shortest hole on the course at 147 yards, the teeing grounds on this one-shot hole (there were two to choose from) directed the player across an abrupt break in the shoreline to a green perched on an opposite cliff. The hole fell away perhaps 20 feet or so below from tee to green and offered a small target that made club selection critical.

  Any shot played right or too long became fish food, and anything struck offline to the left was collected by a greenside bunker that was deeper than any I had seen on the course. From where we stood, it was a scary, but magnificent, view.

  I felt Moonlight at my shoulder. He had remained quiet as I took it all in. After looking around at the white caps and gulls, it seemed as though he wasn’t sufficiently confident of the wind’s direction, so he threw up some grass.

  “I haven’t seen you do that very often.”

  “Usually don’t need to,” he grunted. He appeared thoughtful for a moment, then said, “Let’s hit the eight.”

  As I wrapped my fingers around the grip, Moonlight offered a final thought. “Ya’ know, this is the only hole that Mr. Jones made a one on—an’ the only one that Mr. Nelson didn’t.”

  I pulled up short. “Did they hit the eight here?”

  He avoided the question and said simply, “You’ve got the right club in your hands. Just hit it.”

  Although the swing felt good, I caught a bit of turf behind the ball. I knew immediately that I wouldn’t be adding my name to the list of those who had aced the hole. At the moment, I would’ve been quite satisfied if my ball just stayed dry.

  Moonlight could tell from the sound at contact that I had caught it fat. “C’mon,” he murmured at the ball in a kind of prayerful tone. “Get legs.”

  Moonlight and I both exhaled audibly when the ball landed in the fringe fronting the green. It had taken a gust of wind to clear the cove, but we were safely across.

  Moonlight seemed unconcerned by my poor effort. Wiping off the club, he started walking toward the green. After reinserting my 8-iron in my bag, he commented dryly, “I didn’t expect ya’ to lay up.”

  When we reached the green, I realized how lucky I had been. There wasn’t more than seven or eight feet from the scrubby brush that marked the beginning of the cliff and the front of the green. If the shot hadn’t been wind-aided, I would’ve had to re-tee and play three—that is, if I had another ball.

  But that was in the past, I told myself. It was time to think about the next shot. Moonlight handed me my putter. I had about 25 feet to the hole. I figured the putt broke toward the ocean. I hit it solid, and for a short time I thought it might go in. Unfortunately, I hadn’t given it quite enough steam, and it fell hard to the right as it approached the hole.

  I had about two-and-a-half feet for my three, just enough distance to make me cautious. Moonlight still had the flag-stick in his hands. As he walked by, he said simply, “Dead center to the back a’ the cup.”

  Like most golfers, I have trouble k
eeping my head down on short putts. I was too anxious about making my par on this one-shot hole not to sneak a look. When I did, I pushed the ball slightly offline. Instead of heading for the center of the cup, it was drifting toward the right edge.

  Impulsively, I stepped toward the hole as if to rake the ball in as it missed on the right side. It caught the edge, but not enough to bring it into the hole. The ball spun around the lip and finished just on the other side of the hole, mocking me.

  Chapter 21

  THE 12TH HOLE was kind of quirky. It was listed as a 421-yard par 4, but didn’t appear to be anywhere near that long. It headed straightaway down for about 260 yards or so and then turned right at almost a 90-degree angle. At that point, the fairway was interrupted by a cove that separated the player from the green on the other side. It reminded me somewhat of the sixth hole.

  Moonlight pulled the 5-wood from my bag. I wondered briefly if I should offer to carry my bag, but he showed no signs of fatigue. The last thing I wanted was to insult him by suggesting that he wasn’t up to finishing.

  When I took the club from him, he could tell from my expression that I didn’t fully understand the club selection. This was a long hole, and it seemed to call for all the firepower I could get off the tee.

  Looking down the fairway, he said, “I dunno who measured this hole, but he must’ve been a drinkin’ man. Ya’ gotta ignore what the card says; if ya’ hit much more’n this, we’ll have to climb down on the rocks to play our second.” He then pointed to the right side of the fairway. “If ya’ play short to that side, ya’ cut off most a’ the cove, an’ you’ll be no more’n a 150 from the green.”

  I had done quite well by trusting Moonlight. Even though it didn’t seem like much club to hit on a par 4,I took the 5-wood, lined up for the right side of the fairway, and let it fly.

  I didn’t catch it as well as I would have liked. Still, when the shot landed, I saw what Moonlight was saying. The ball continued to roll after I expected it to stop. It finally came to rest no more than 25 yards from the edge of the cove.

  “That’ll play just fine,” Moonlight said encouragingly.

  As we walked down the fairway, what Moonlight had told me on the tee about the deceptive distance on the hole became even more apparent. The ground dropped much more sharply here than elsewhere on the course as it ran to the sea, and the thin turf offered little resistance to the rolling ball. The combined effect shortened the hole considerably.

  Approaching my ball, I couldn’t help but wonder how far it was from tee to green as the crow flies. It seemed possible for a long driver to reach the green by cutting across the dogleg. For a brief moment, I tried to recall the formula to determine the length of the hypotenuse of a triangle, but I had long forgotten most everything I had learned in Coach Postell’s tenth-grade geometry class (probably because he spent most of our classtime drawing football plays). I asked Moonlight whether anyone had ever driven the green.

  He looked at me with disdain. “Ya’ got any idea how much carry that requires?”

  His tone made me feel slightly stupid. “Not really,” I said rather lamely. “That’s part a’ the mystery here. The place is full of optical illusions. Distances ain’t necessarily what they appear to be.”

  He cocked his head back toward the tee. “First time Olin Dutra played here, he asked his caddie if he could clear the cove at the narrow side to the right a’ the green. If I remember, Gra’m McNulty was on Dutra’s bag at the time.” He pointed toward the green to indicate the line. “Anyway, Dutra’d won the Open in ’34, an’ poor ol’ Gra’m wasn’t ’bout to tell a U.S. Open champ he couldn’t clear the cove, so he let him try.”

  Moonlight paused to let me ask the obvious question. “So what happened?”

  He grinned. “After the fourth try, he hit a 3-iron not far from where we are an’ ended up makin’ 12 on the hole.”

  “I guess no one was tempted to go for it after that.”

  “Not hardly,” he said, chuckling at the memory.

  As had been the case all day, my ball had found an excellent lie. Moonlight paced off the distance to the water’s edge. Walking back toward me, he said, “Gotta be right on this one, Charley. We don’t want to be ’bove the hole on this green. Mr. Jones made this one like he did the ninth at Augusta. It’s a bugger to putt from past the hole.”

  He looked up, as if gauging the wind. “Not much air movin’. It’s just shy of a 150 yards to the middle.”

  Moonlight pulled my 8-iron from my bag. “Let’s try the eight. Favor the left. It’s a good spot there.”

  I made solid contact, and the ball jumped off the club. It seemed to fly higher than usual, and I worried for a moment that it would barely clear the cove. But it maintained its elevation, landed in front of the green, and stopped a few feet short of the edge.

  I was disappointed at missing the green, but Moonlight seemed pleased as he took my club from me. “Easy chip from there. We may even be able to putt it.”

  We had a long walk to the green, because we had to veer left to get around the cove. It was getting to be around four o’clock by then, and for the first time I noticed that it had gotten cooler.

  “Did you pull the sweater out of my bag when you emptied all that stuff?”

  He shook his head. “Nah, lad, I left it in, knowin’ ya’ might need it.” He reached around and unzipped the back zipper without removing my bag from his shoulder. He then pulled out the sweater and handed it to me.

  When I got a closer look at my ball, I could tell that, once again, Moonlight had put me in a good position. The area in front of the green was relatively flat. Moonlight gave me a pitching wedge and told me to land the ball just inside the front edge of the green. It would trickle toward the hole from there, he said.

  His strategy worked like a charm. The ball popped up and fell softly onto the front of the green before rolling to within two feet of the hole. An easy putt.

  After replacing the flagstick, Moonlight simply picked up my bag and said, “You’re gonna like the 13th.”

  He was right.

  The 13th tee was just south of the 12th green and momentarily put us with our backs to the water. Like 12, it turned right for the second shot and again forced the golfer to carry another cove in the shoreline in order to reach the putting surface.

  Moonlight began to explain what lay ahead. “This is the shortest two-shot hole on the course, only ’bout 350 yards or so. I watched Mr. Snead drive the green here, but it was dry, an’ he had a tailwind. We’ll hit 3-iron.” As I stood on the tee, I saw another reason Moonlight took the driver out of my hands. Because the fairway took a sharp bend to the right, any tee shot hit more than 200 yards straightaway would probably cross through the fairway to the rough on the other side. Snead must have cut the corner and flown his ball across the cove that the fairway wrapped around. Even with a tailwind, that took a bigger blow than I was capable of delivering.

  I lined up for a distant tree, just as Moonlight told me, and hit it solidly, albeit a little left of my line. The ball bounded down the fairway, running along the left edge. It stayed out of trouble, and it appeared to me that I would have no more than 150 yards to the green.

  As he tucked my 3-iron back into my bag, Moonlight said with a trace of concern, “We’ve brought the bunker in front a bit more into play from there, but we’re not shootin’ for the pin anyway. It’ll do fine.”

  As we walked along, Moonlight seemed inspired by another memory of things past. “One glorious afternoon here in the early spring, we had Mr. Sarazen an’ Mr. Jones playin’ with a fellow named Walter Ogilvie. They called him ‘Chug.’ He’d been an All-American at Stanford, an’ the talk was that he was gonna be the next great amateur in the country. Mr. Jones knew his father somehow an’ had taken a shine to the boy. Anyway, he invited him out to play, supposedly to help him prepare for the U.S. Amateur.”

  After adjusting my bag on his shoulder, Moonlight continued with his story. “He really put on a dis
play for us. I never saw anyone hit it so close to the hole time after time, although they tell me that Johnny Miller in his heyday was like that, too. He didn’t miss a green the entire time, an’ I don’t remember him ever being more’n twelve to 15 feet away from the hole. Shot 63. Course record. No one else ever came close.”

  “Good Lord,” I said appreciatively. “How come I’ve never heard of him?”

  Moonlight shook his head as if discussing someone who had died. “Ya’ know, lad, the gods a’ golf can bless ya’ with it all, but they rarely let ya’ keep it. Mr. Jones had enough, an’ he was only 28 years old when he quit. He tried to come back to play in the Masters, but the magic was gone for him. Look at that fella Bill Rogers. Won the Open at St. Georges, named Player a’ the Year, had it all. Someone decided that his time was over. Maybe the fire went out. Who knows? Johnny Miller. Same thing. Shot 63 to win the U.S. Open at Oakmont. Won the Open at Birkdale, too. For several years in the ’70s, no one could touch him. Then his putter went bad.”

  He pointed up to the sky. “Someone up there decided to take it away from Ogilvie. Practicin’ for the Amateur, he developed a twitch with the putter. The harder he worked to overcome it, the worse it got. He tried everythin’, but nothin’ worked. People would look away when he was puttin’, an’ he often took four to get the ball in the hole.”

  It was every golfer’s nightmare. Most called it “the yips.” For years, there was a raging debate on whether it was a physical or mental condition. Neurologists offered a variety of medical explanations for its cause. Players appeared unwilling to acknowledge that it could be physical in nature, because that might mean it was out of their control. Instead, they preferred to insist that the yips were all in the head, as if a strong mind could make them go away.

  “So what happened to him?”

  “Gave it up. Walked away from the game for almost 40 years. When the long putter came out, he tried it. Found he could putt reasonably well with it, so he started playin’ ag’in.” Moonlight allowed himself a smile. “Ended up winnin’ the California State Seniors at Lake Merced.”