The Greatest Course That Never Was

by J. Michael Veron

  We were now at my ball. Moonlight had already calculated the yardage by the time he put my bag down.

  “I got it at 135. Ya’ can see it’s downhill. I expect it’ll play a club less. I like the 9. Okay with you?”

  It was the first time he had asked me to approve his club selection. “I’m not about to argue with you now.”

  As I stood behind the ball, he counseled me to ignore the pin tucked behind the yawning bunker in front. “Another sucker pin. An’ it’s not just the bunker. Ya’ can’t see it, but the green falls away behind the hole there. It’s jail over there. Stay to the left.”

  I picked a spot toward the left half of the green and tried to imprint it in my mind. As soon as I felt the frame freeze on it, I pulled the trigger.

  The ball flew straight at the spot I had selected, landed there, and stopped. “Well done,” Moonlight said quietly as I handed the club back to him.

  As we approached the green, I noticed that the large bunker in front had the classic MacKenzie crab-shaped design. My concentration had been such that I didn’t recall seeing it as I played my second shot.

  I had about 30 feet to the hole. For the first time, I saw what Moonlight meant when he told me how special the greens were on the back side. There was a sizeable ridge cutting across my line, rising up about ten feet in front of me and then falling away toward the hole. Beyond the hole, the green continued to fall away from us for ten feet or so. At that point, it ended abruptly. Beneath it was a large collecting area, or grass bunker, that appeared to be deep.

  The bottom line was that this was one of the most difficult putts I could ever have imagined. Moonlight apparently could sense my apprehension; he was standing behind me and put his hand on my shoulder, as if to reassure me. He said softly in my ear, “Ignore the hump. The downhill side’ll give back what the uphill side takes. Just look at the hole for your distance. I’ve got it two balls ’bove the hole for the line.” He paused before adding, “Ya’ can make this one, Charley.”

  Feeling Moonlight close by upped my confidence. I made two good practice strokes, addressed the ball, and hit the putt.

  The ball slowed a bit as it climbed the ridge and then regained its speed as it fell across the other side. It seemed to accelerate a little as it approached the hole, and for a second I was afraid it would run way past. Then it started to drift left ever so slightly, just as Moonlight had read. I still thought it would miss the hole, though, but it turned left again just as it reached the hole and fell in at the right edge of the cup.

  Chapter 22

  ONE THING HAD become obvious to me about the links at Bragg’s Point: Jones and Maxwell wanted to keep players off balance. On the back nine, the course seemed to change direction every other hole. A player was required to adjust to changes in elevation and wind direction at almost every turn.

  There didn’t seem to be any pattern in the layout of the holes, either. Some bent to the left, and others turned back to the right. As a result, the course forced the player to adjust his ball flight continually to the layout. I was beginning to understand why Jones, Hogan, and anyone else lucky enough to experience the magic of Bragg’s Point believed it to be such a great test of golf.

  The 14th hole was the longest hole on the course and ran to the far south end of the property. The card in my pocket said it was 571 yards long. Most of it ran slightly uphill. It was a subtle double dogleg, bending once each way. The first bend in the fairway appeared to be about 200 yards or so from the tee.

  I saw Moonlight pull my 3-iron from my bag. Although I had resolved not to question him again, I couldn’t help myself.

  “Are you sure that’s enough?” Then, before he could answer, I attempted to justify my question. “It’s uphill, you know. Won’t it play longer?”

  He chuckled. “Lad, Helen Keller could tell that’s uphill. Ya’ don’t think I can see it, too?”

  I felt my face turn a little red, and it wasn’t from the afternoon sun. He let me dangle a bit before adding, “A three’s enough to get ya’ to the corner. Anythin’ more risks the sand dunes beyond. It’s the right club; just trust it, now.”

  I teed the ball just above the grass to make certain I would make clean contact. I then lined up for the right side of the fairway, as Moonlight suggested, to make the most of the angle of the dogleg. “Always aim where ya’ can most afford to miss,” he told me.

  The shot felt as solid as anything I had hit all day. Moonlight grunted his approval as he picked up my bag and began walking off the tee before the ball even landed. He didn’t look back or otherwise wait for me. For whatever reason, he was still giving me lots of space.

  We walked toward my ball without talking. Without the distraction of conversation, I was able to observe him more closely. He still seemed to move without any sign of fatigue, which I found remarkable for someone his age. I knew that the Scots were a tough lot, particularly those who were hardened by a lifetime of walking the links. But Moonlight was exceeding my expectations. Ever so briefly, I wondered if that was another sign of the magic of the place. It certainly appeared that coming here had rejuvenated him.

  The silence between us had allowed Moonlight to do some thinking as well. Even though we were standing at my ball, he appeared to be in no hurry to play the next shot.

  “I’m no Biblical scholar, lad, an’ the Lord knows I’m not as devout a man as I should be. But ya’ know there are a few places on this earth especially blessed by God Himself. It’s always been that way with this place. The Good Lord brought Mr. Jones here if for no other reason than to give him the peace he deserved when he began to get sick.”

  He tossed some grass in the air but paid no attention to where it drifted. “Ya’ know, I believe God blesses those who play this game. There ain’t another game as spiritual as this one. No other game makes a man look inside himself like golf. You’re forced to confront a lot of things ’bout yourself ya’ may not like, ya’ know?”

  “Wasn’t it Mr. Jones who said that golf didn’t build character so much as reveal it?”

  Moonlight smiled, this time genuinely. “That he did.” He stepped back from my ball. I waited for him to hand me a club before realizing that I still held the 3-iron I had used on the tee.

  Moonlight nodded his head at the club and said, “Ya’ need it again, Charley. Just bump it down the left side, same swing ya’ put on it back there. It’ll leave us a wedge to get home.”

  Without thinking, I walked up to the ball and hit it. The shot flew exactly where I had aimed.

  My friend Cheatwood was fond of saying that there was no other game in the world that could be so easy and so hard at the same time as golf. I had certainly experienced my share of the hard part, but never before had I been in that place where the game became so easy.

  As we advanced toward my ball, Moonlight began to reminisce again. “Mr. Jones loved this hole ’cause it made ya’ play right to left for the first time on the back nine. He said it exercised different golf muscles, an’ that made it hard to adjust to. He really liked the green on this hole, too. He told us that Mr. Maxwell was tryin’ to imitate some big architect up East on this hole, some guy named Tuckerhose, or somethin’.”

  “Tillinghast?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  I knew about A.W. Tillinghast. He designed a number of classic courses in the Northeast, including Winged Foot in Mamaroneck outside of New York City. I had played there once; it was a memorable experience. Winged Foot has hosted a number of U.S. Opens, as well as a recent PGA Championship, and with good reason. I made four birdies the day I played it and still shot 86.

  When we turned the corner, the green came into view, and I immediately understood why Jones felt the way he did about the hole. If imitation is truly the sincerest form of flattery, then Maxwell flattered the hell out of Tillinghast’s memory.

  The green itself was a virtual copy of the tenth hole at Winged Foot, which is unusual for a starting hole on a back nine in that it’s a p
ar 3. Like its Tillinghast original, the 14th green at Bragg’s Point was raised well above grade, sloped steeply from back to front, and was protected by deep bunkers that wrapped around its front and sides. This was apparently the one time Maxwell disregarded Jones’s instruction to keep bunkers on the course to a minimum.

  If so, it was an act of disobedience that was justified. The 14th green was small, but otherwise defenseless. Without the Tillinghast-like design of the green, the hole would not have posed nearly as much of a challenge for Jones and his friends.

  As we arrived at my ball, Moonlight walked a few steps forward, looked left at a nearby tree, and pronounced that we had a 150 yards left to the green. That was almost perfect distance for my 7-iron.

  The swing just felt right from start to finish. I barely felt the ball come off the club, and it headed for the middle of the green, right where I had aimed, like it was on sonar. For a moment I thought it might hit the flagstick, but it didn’t. Instead, it landed just beyond the hole and spun back, stopping four feet below the cup.

  “Well, now, I think that one’ll do.” Moonlight was grinning as I handed him the 7, which he began to wipe clean with his towel as we strolled to the green.

  As we walked up the narrow path in the front of the green between two large bunkers, I saw how fortunate I was to have spun the ball back below the hole. Although the green wasn’t very deep, it was considerably higher in back than in front. If I had been above the hole, I would have had one of those Michael DeBakey putts, the kind that required the touch of a surgeon. I was no surgeon.

  Although my putt was long enough to be in my “throw-up zone,” it was uphill, which forced me to stroke it firmly. Moonlight assured me there was no break in it and reminded me to hit the back of the cup.

  I hit the putt solidly, and it went right in the middle of the hole.

  Chapter 23

  MOONLIGHT GAVE ME a look of feigned nonchalance as he replaced the flagstick. He kept to himself and didn’t say anything as we departed the green.

  The 15th tee was back down the hill about 20 yards from the 14th green. We had reached the south end of the course and now turned back toward the clubhouse and across the side of the sloping ground along that part of the property.

  Moonlight handed me the driver. “I’m turnin’ ya’ loose on this one. It’s all a’ 400 yards an’ change, an’ you’ll feel it before we’re done. As ya’ can tell, it turns to the right, but not ’til you’re a good 250 out. For once, let’s play the middle.”

  I picked a line based on an outcropping of rock in the distance that Moonlight pointed out. I teed my ball near the right marker to give myself the best angle toward the fairway. By playing from that side, I was trying to eliminate the extreme right side of the hole where I might be blocked from the green on my approach. The idea, as always, was to play away from trouble.

  Unfortunately, that was right where my drive appeared to be headed. I held my breath as I watched the ball start dangerously close to the trees in the right rough. However, it began to draw slowly back toward the fairway, and I released my sphincter muscle when it finally landed just inside the right edge of the short grass.

  Moonlight smiled at me. “Never a doubt,” he said as he pulled the strap of my bag over his right shoulder.

  As we headed down the fairway, Moonlight appeared to be in the midst of yet another memory. “Ya’ see where the fairway crests over on the right side there?” I nodded as he pointed to the spot. “Mr. Jones brought these two brothers from Louisiana out here to play. Hebert was their name. They spelled it one way an’ pronounced it another. Said they were Cajuns. Anyway, they both had won the PGA.”

  I knew who he meant. Their names were Lionel and Jay Hebert. The younger brother, Lionel, won the PGA in 1957, and his older brother Jay won the same championship three years later.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of them.”

  “One of ’em had just won the PGA. They’d both played the Masters an’ had cooked up some Cajun food for Mr. Jones while they were at Augusta. The pepper almost burned a hole in his stomach, but he really liked those two boys. They were kinda ‘down home,’ as Mr. Jones said.”

  He reflected a minute. “Ya’ know, Mr. Jones always seemed more comfortable with people from the South than he did with a lotta Mr. Roberts’s New York buddies.” He shrugged as if the reason were obvious. “Anyway, he wasn’t playin’ much at all by then, but he rode the course while the two brothers played. I carried for one of ’em, an’ Slats carried the other bag.”

  We had arrived at the spot he had pointed out. “They were bettin’ pretty heavy against each other, an’ Mr. Jones was get-tin’ a kick outa watchin’ the whole thing. They sure had a funny way a’ talkin’. My man knocks it in the hole from right here, for a two, with four carryovers ridin’ on the bet. His brother just looks at him an’ says, ‘Ya’ really give me the chou rouge.’”

  I squinched my face. “What does that mean?”

  “That’s what I asked. Mr. Lionel laughed an’ said it was French for red ass.”

  I immediately thought of Emile Guidry. He would be pleased to learn that I had expanded my Cajun vocabulary.

  We were now at my ball. I looked at Moonlight. “It looks like I hit it farther off the tee than the PGA champion did that day.”

  Moonlight laughed. “That ya’ did, lad.” He waited a moment before adding, “’Course, the equipment’s a bit different nowadays.”

  To my surprise, my tee shot had finished in the “A” position, and I was pleased to see the green present itself squarely to me for my approach. I looked over at Moonlight for a sign of approval, but he was busy calculating the yardage. He walked ahead to a line even with a nearby tree and began pacing back to my ball.

  When he was done, he looked at me. “It’s a good 6-iron. Play it down the right side ag’in; the slope’ll run it back to the left. That bunker on the left’ll catch anythin’ in the area, so keep it away from there.”

  Unfortunately, I came over the top and pulled the shot left—straight toward the deep bunker that Moonlight had just told me to avoid at all costs. Like most golfers, I always found watching my ball headed for trouble to be a special kind of agony. Unfortunately, as everyone who’s ever played the game knows, golf balls have an inexplicable attraction for hazards. Mine fell directly into the bunker.

  Moonlight didn’t appear to be particularly upset. He wiped off my 6-iron, stuck it in the bag as we walked along, and pulled out the sand wedge. As I entered the bunker, I noticed that, like the one I had played from earlier, the sand was packed. No surprise there, of course. There was a lot of grass growing in the bunker as well, but my ball was sitting in a clear spot, and there was nothing to interfere with my swing.

  The hole was barely more than a flagstick from the edge of the green nearest the bunker. All I wanted to do was to clear the bunker’s edge; with any amount of roll, the ball would get to the hole.

  The ball came up quickly and softly, carried on top of a thin slice of sand that my open wedge had carved from the bunker. It dropped about six feet short of the hole and began a lazy, almost uninterested roll before finally coming to a stop three feet or so from the cup.

  It was better than I expected, but I was left with another putt in the throw-up zone, the kind that caught up to you sooner or later. And from the way Moonlight was circling it, I judged that it had a nasty little break to it.

  As I exchanged my wedge for my putter, I asked him what he thought the putt would do.

  “I got it a ball out to the right. It wants to run toward the front a’ the green.”

  I made my two practice strokes down the line, took a quick final look at the hole, and made a firm stroke. The ball took the break just as Moonlight had read it and snuck in the left side of the cup.

  There wasn’t much time to enjoy the sand save. The 16th tee was right next to the green, and I could see that it was a bitch of a hole.

  The 16th was the last of the par 3s on the course and easil
y the most challenging. It was 200 yards long and ran alongside the shoreline all the way on the left. If that weren’t enough to shorten my backswing, the hole also featured deep bunkers on both sides of the green from which escape appeared to be difficult at best.

  I had learned a few things from Moonlight, however. I looked to the area in front of the green. Maxwell had again left the approach open in front, inviting the player to land the ball short and let it run on.

  “What about bouncing one on with a five?”

  Moonlight grinned his approval. With a deliberately thickened accent, he said, “Ya’r startin’ ta sound like you’re from Dornoch, what with ya’r talk ’bout runnin’ the ball onto the green. Are ya’ sure ya’ don’ have a bit a’ Scot in ya’, lad?”

  He held my 5-iron out to me. If I hit it where I wanted, it would either bounce right on or leave me with a chip that was straight and flat all the way to the hole.

  I caught the ball slightly in the heel of the club, so it started left of my line before drifting back toward the middle as it began to fall. It landed about five yards short of the green, bounced twice, and rolled to within 15 feet of the hole.

  Because of the gentle downslope, we almost trotted down to the green. Once again, I took full advantage of an opportunity to take in the magnificent ocean view.

  I turned toward Moonlight. “Did you ever get used to this?”

  He shook his head. “Now that’d be a sin, wouldn’t it?”

  I understood. And agreed.

  The flagstick was on the right side of the green. Moonlight frowned ever so slightly as he read the putt from the other side of the hole.

  “I had to look at it from over here to be sure. This’ll be a little tricky. The green falls away to the water, so we’ll have to play it to go to your left. It’ll be a little quick, too.”

  Walking back behind my ball, he took one last look and then said reassuringly, “That’s it. Half a cup on the right, an’ it’ll go. Just start it on line.”