The Greatest Course That Never Was

by J. Michael Veron

  I didn’t even bother to read it myself.

  I liked the putt the minute I hit it. It started right on the intended line and then slowly began to turn to the left. I had hit it a little too hard, however, and the ball slid just by the cup on the high side, finishing a little over two feet past the hole.

  Moonlight showed his first sign of disappointment all day. “Damn! That was a good roll, Charley. We deserved better.”

  After I tapped in for par, Moonlight replaced the flag, took my putter, and clapped me on the back. Under the circumstances, it was hard to feel much regret.

  Chapter 24

  THE 17TH TEE was a hike of over 50 yards back up the slope from the 16th green. The hole itself normally called for three shots, measuring 497 yards, and ran north and away from the ocean. It featured an ever-so-slight shift to the right about halfway to the green.

  As Moonlight gave me the driver, he offered his appraisal of the way to play the hole. “The green here can be reached in two, so it’s a good chance for a four. Ya’ want to be down the right center with your drive. Ya’ can afford to miss to the right, but if ya’ go left, you’re likely to catch the bunker over there an’ be cut off from the green on your second shot.”

  As he talked, I looked down the fairway. Scattered cypress trees and brush lined both sides from the tee, but the fairway was generous. Since the hole ran downhill, I could tell that a good drive would place me within reach of the green in two.

  Pointing out toward a tall cypress, Moonlight said, “Ya’ see the tree? Take that line. It’ll keep ya’ on where ya’ need to be.”

  I could see the tree moving ever so slightly in the ocean breeze. It was situated on a line that extended from the 17th tee down the right edge of the fairway on the hole. Moonlight had given me a good target.

  The ball appeared to bounce high when it landed, and I could see the effects of the land sloping away from us as it ran much farther than expected. Moonlight was pleased. “That’s just ’bout perfect.”

  It was now getting close to five o’clock, and the air was becoming cooler. Walking the course was keeping us warm, however, and the drop in temperature was not uncomfortable. If anything, it felt crisp and clean and refreshing. As we walked along, I couldn’t imagine ever being uninspired by the setting. The whole scene brought to mind the tag line of an old beer commercial. I turned to Moonlight and said, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

  He either didn’t recognize the line or didn’t think it was funny. Instead, he pointed to the green and said, “A lot a’ great things happened on this hole. For some reason, more matches seemed to be decided here than on any other hole.”

  From the look on his face, I knew I was going to hear about one of them. He didn’t disappoint.

  “I haven’t told ya’ that Jack Nicklaus played here, have I?” Without waiting for an answer, he said, “He had just won the Amateur for the second time. Must’ve been ’round ’61… yeah, he’d just won at Pebble Beach, when he beat the tar out a’ some poor fella in the final. Anyway, everyone heard these incredible stories ’bout him, an’ Mr. Jones had him out here.”

  I certainly didn’t want him to stop there. “So what happened?”

  He pointed up the fairway again. “Mr. Jones brought Arnold Palmer out here, too. They’d never played head-to-head, an’ he wanted to see it. Ya’ know, Mr. Nicklaus had already played in a couple of Masters’. That’s when Mr. Jones supposedly said Mr. Nicklaus had a game with which he wasn’t familiar. Anyway, I got Mr. Nicklaus’s bag.”

  I marveled again at what extraordinary events the little man next to me had witnessed and experienced. “You carried for Nicklaus?”

  He just nodded. “Yeah, an’ let me tell you, he was somethin’ else. Had a game like nobody I’d ever seen—just like that young man they call Tiger does now.”

  “So what happened here?”

  He pointed to a spot about 50 yards ahead. “They were all even comin’ to this hole. We had our drive out past Mr. Palmer by a good 30 yards—like we had all day. God, that man was long. Anyway, Mr. Palmer ain’t exactly rollin’ over for us, if ya’ know what I mean. He smokes this 2-iron that runs forever—clear to the green. Finishes no more’n 20 feet away. Then he just looks over at us an’ smiles. You know, kinda like, ‘Take that, fat boy.’ So Mr. Nicklaus asks me for his 4-iron. Hell, I’d given up tryin’ to club him. He hits this high cut. I’d never seen anybody hit the ball so high. It just hung in the air, like it wasn’t ever comin’ down. Finally, it does—three feet from the hole.”

  Moonlight stopped to catch his breath. “Mr. Palmer misses, we make. We end up winnin’ one-up.”

  Moonlight smiled at the memory. “An’ ya’ know what the best part was? Mr. Jones watched the whole thing. Had to use a golf cart, but he got to see it all. Never stopped grinnin’ the whole time.”

  I could only imagine how that first match between the two must have jump-started one of the greatest rivalries in the history of sport. Palmer, the unquestioned king of the game, had been beaten by the pudgy amateur from Ohio for the first time. And yet as far as I knew, neither of them had ever publicly acknowledged the match or otherwise betrayed Jones’s secret.

  We were now close to my ball. It was sitting up nicely, and the view of the 17th green from where we were on the right side of the fairway was unobstructed.

  As I stood there taking it in, Moonlight pulled up alongside me. “This won’t play as long as it looks, ’cause the green’s below us. Ya’ might be able to get there with the 3-wood. Just land it down in front an’ let it run on.”

  He pointed toward the left of the green. “Ya’ see how the slope a’ the land runs down to the left? Everythin’ goes to the water, ya’ know. So aim to the right.”

  I picked out a line about ten yards on the high side of the green. If the ball landed anywhere near where I hoped it would, it would bound down and to the left and should finish on or near the putting surface.

  Some wag once said that a well-struck golf shot was the “second best feeling in the world.” This one certainly felt good to me. I had read once that Ben Hogan had such a refined sense of feel that he would complain if he struck the ball “a groove high” in the clubface. My standards were never quite so exacting; I’ve always been satisfied if the shot didn’t sting my hands.

  At any rate, the ball flew straight toward the target area on the high side of the green. When it landed in front of the green, it bounced toward the left and started hunting the hole.

  The 17th green didn’t look very large from where we stood, more or less typical of the par-5 greens on the course. They were designed to receive a short third shot, at most a pitching wedge. The player who wanted to cheat par by reaching the green in two for an easy birdie had a very small target.

  As I watched the ball scoot along the slope, I just hoped it would reach—and then stay on—the green. Anywhere on such a small green would leave me with an easy two-putt. But the ball headed directly for the hole, and I watched in amazement as it struck the flagstick and bounced away. When it stopped rolling, it appeared to be no more than eight to ten feet to the right of the hole.

  From behind me I heard Moonlight. “Second time today we were robbed.”

  I was probably feeling a lot of different emotions at the moment, but cheated certainly wasn’t among them.

  As we began the long walk toward the green, I thought about how enjoyable it was to walk the course with a caddie. Golf is unique among games in that it can be equally pleasurable played alone, with friends, or even in the company of strangers. But playing the game with a caddie is a special pleasure.

  I was no expert on caddies, but I could tell that Moonlight was a damned good one. He had obviously mastered the critical skills of his trade, from reading the line of a putt to figuring how the wind affected the shot to be played.

  I figured he had probably saved me five or six strokes already in the round, and I saw no reason why he couldn’t do the same for the best
of players. I wondered whether he had ever worked on the tour.

  He shook his head. “Nah. Except for the few really great ones, most a’ the tourin’ pros were a pain in the ass. When it came to caddies, all they knew was that we carried the bag.”

  When I laughed, he said, “Nah, lad, I’m serious. Most of ’em didn’t know how to use a caddie. Why work for someone like that when ya’ can carry Mr. Jones’s bag? An’ why go live out

  of a suitcase? I’ve seen enough a’ the world, thank ya’.”

  It occurred to me that Moonlight’s affection for this place and for Augusta National had as much to do with his need to belong and his sense of place as it did with his love of golf. Moonlight seemed to be the kind of person who put down roots. He took great delight in walking the same course day after day and discovering something new each time. For him, every game was different, and every day was an opportunity to discover something new. He didn’t need a change of scenery to find fresh meaning in the game or the people who played it. It came down to this: the tour may have needed Moonlight, but he had never needed the tour.

  As we reached the green, a large wave crashed in the cove at the nearby 11th hole, producing a fine mist into the air that refreshed us. The 17th hole terminated about midway between the 10th and 11th greens but was elevated slightly higher because it was back from the water’s edge on a small bluff. Once again, I found it difficult not to be distracted by the majestic scenery.

  Moonlight allowed me a minute or two to take it all in. He obviously wanted me to commit as much of the place to memory as I could. When I turned back to look at my eagle putt, he told me it was a ball out on the left.

  In a perfect world, I would’ve made it to match Nicklaus’s eagle so many years before. But I wasn’t Nicklaus, and so I pulled the putt. I consoled myself, however, with a tap-in for birdie.

  It was apparent that the 18th was a great finishing hole. It was a mere 354 yards, short for a two-shot hole, but its measured length was deceptive because the hole climbed uphill all the way to a green that sat just below the clubhouse. It featured a slight dogleg left that hugged the shoreline and kept the ocean in play along the length of the entire hole. I was a little sad that our round of golf in this paradise was coming to an end, but I made up my mind to enjoy every last second until it was over.

  “Ya’ need to favor the right side so ya’ can take advantage a’ the angle. The green’ll look a whole lot better from over there.” As Moonlight spoke, he pointed with my 3-wood down the line he wanted me to take. “That chimney on the right side a’ the clubhouse is your target.”

  I saw the clubhouse above us on the slight rise above the beach. I hadn’t noticed the chimney before, but I recalled the fireplace in the locker room just off to the side of the small bar.

  As Moonlight handed me the club, he said, “Just try to hit the top a’ that chimney.”

  I teed the ball on the left side and stood behind it so that I could pick out the line. This swing was much like the others on this remarkable day. The ball started down the line toward the chimney just as planned. Then a strange thing happened. As it lost power, the ball appeared to change direction. It made a sudden turn to the right, as if something above had caught the ball in midair and tossed it aside. I watched in disbelief as my tee shot disappeared into one of the trees that guarded the right side of the fairway.

  I looked at Moonlight. “What do you make of that?”

  He had his eyes trained on the spot where we had last seen my tee shot. “The wind can ricochet off the trees out here. It’s one a’ the things that makes this course so hard. It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

  He sheathed my 3-wood and began walking in earnest toward where he had last seen my ball. He was moving fast, and I had to hustle to keep up. For the first time, the diminutive Scotsman appeared uncertain about locating my ball.

  As we rambled along, I also remembered that this was the only ball we had. The stroke-and-distance penalty for a lost ball wouldn’t matter if we couldn’t finish the round.

  It struck me that perhaps there was a reason for the strange detour my ball had taken. Perhaps the spirit of Bragg’s Point had asserted itself to warn us against finishing the round. Maybe we weren’t supposed to break the spell or otherwise disturb the long state of repose that the place had enjoyed.

  I didn’t broach any of this with Moonlight, as he was bearing down on the point where he last saw the ball enter the trees. The last thing I wanted to do was distract him. I remembered how he got his nickname. This was going to test his reputation.

  He dropped my bag in the fairway next to the tree that he had marked as closest to our most likely landing spot and began looking for the ball. Although he didn’t invite my assistance, I started walking through the tall grass.

  When he heard me rooting around, he never looked up as he warned me. “Be careful, now, lad. If ya’ move your ball, ya’ take a penalty stroke.”

  After a minute or so, I began to fear that the ball really was lost. Moonlight had been on the money all day long, but he appeared unsure of himself now.

  I found myself retracing my steps to see if perhaps I had simply missed seeing the ball the first time I looked. Moonlight was some 30 yards away, expanding his search in a widening circle. I had my eyes fixed on the ground, but I could hear him off in the distance as he shuffled through the tall grass.

  “Over here.”

  I looked up in the direction of an unfamiliar voice and saw only a ball sitting up in grass about 20 yards beyond the tree line. I knew the voice hadn’t been Moonlight’s. I looked all around but saw nothing more. Moonlight was still looking down. I called over to him excitedly. “There it is!”

  He saw where I was pointing, and the look of relief on his face was evident. He literally ran over to grab my bag as I moved toward the ball. As we met, I grabbed his sleeve. “Did you hear that?”

  “I heard ya’, lad.”

  “No, not me. Did you hear the voice that told us where the ball was?”

  He gave me a queer look. “What are ya’ talkin’ about?”

  “A voice,” I said, pointing to a spot behind the trees. “There. It said, ‘Over here.’ That’s how I found the ball.”

  He shook his head. “Nah. I didn’t hear nothin’.”

  For a second, I didn’t believe him. “Are you sure?”

  His face took on a grave expression. “I told ya’ I didn’t hear anythin’.” The tone of his voice made it clear that he would entertain no further discussion of the subject. He then turned his attention to figuring our next play.

  Finding the ball was a mixed blessing. We didn’t appear to have a shot. The trees blocked our line of flight to the green.

  Moonlight was apparently making an inventory of our options. I noticed that he was looking down the other side of the trees. He called to me, and I walked over to where he was standing. He pointed up the hill. “Can ya’ hook the ball?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Good. Ya’ see the eighth tee over there in front a’ the clubhouse?” Moonlight was pointing to the small mowed area that was no more than 30 yards from the front porch of the clubhouse.

  “Yeah.”

  “Alright. Do ya’ think ya’ can start it there an’ hook it ’round to the green?”

  I looked at where he was pointing and then beneath the tree limbs to the 18th green. It looked to be about 50 yards apart.

  “That’ll take one helluva hook.”

  Moonlight nodded. “It’s the best play, though. We can avoid the big bunker that crosses the front a’ the green. Even if ya’ don’t make it, we’ve got a decent chance to get up an’ down from those mounds on the right side a’ the green.”

  The more I looked, the more I understood what he was saying.

  “How did you ever figure that out?”

  He laughed. “Bootsie had Mr. Snead play it that way once. He was playin’ Mr. Demaret. They were two down but had presses on that were worth more’n they
’d bet on the 18. Mr. Snead hooked it all the way ’round an’ made birdie. He gave Bootsie half a’ what he won.”

  Given Snead’s reputation for parsimony, I knew that was extraordinarily generous.

  Moonlight pulled out a club and offered it to me. “This oughta be perfect.”

  I saw that it was a 5-iron. As I held it, he offered, “It’s okay to miss right. Stay away from the trees. Make sure ya’ swing toward eight an’ trust the closed face to bring it back.”

  Despite my best efforts, the ball still started left of my target, although not by much. Even as it started its curve to the left, I was fairly certain it would get past the trees without interference.

  It did, and landed just below the top of the rise where the eighth tee was situated in front of the clubhouse. The overspin guaranteed that the ball would run pretty hot to the left. Since it landed about 30 yards right of the 18th green, I would need a lot of help to make the putting surface.

  My now well-beaten ball was working hard to reach that destination, but I didn’t know if it had enough energy to get there. As the ball neared the right side of the green, it became obvious that it was running out of steam. The mounds there killed the last of its roll.

  Nonetheless, Moonlight appeared to be happy with the result. “We have a play from there, lad. It’s a chance for four. That’s all we could’ve hoped for.” Gesturing at the trees as we walked along, he added, “The main thing is to get outta jail. We could’ve gotten hung up in there an’ had real problems.”

  For the third time that day, something flashed in the corner of my eye. But once again, I reacted too slowly to see anything. I thought it was white in color, but couldn’t tell anything more about it. I wasn’t about to say anything to Moonlight. He already thought I was seeing and hearing things that weren’t there.

  When we reached my ball, I saw that it was sitting down in the grass. Not a bad lie, but certainly not a good one, either. It didn’t make the next shot impossible, but it definitely raised its degree of difficulty.