The hole was located toward the front of the green, which was below us. The ball would run away from where we stood, making the shot even more difficult.
Moonlight didn’t appear to be certain about what to do. He walked halfway to the hole, inspecting possible landing areas and apparently trying to picture how the ball would behave on the ground in each instance.
As he walked back to me, he said, “Ya’ don’t want to leave it short. You’ll still have a downhill putt or, worse, a downhill chip if ya’ leave it in the grass on these mounds. If ya’ run past, you’ll at least have it uphill back to the hole. Let’s open that sand wedge an’ try to drop it just on the other side a’ the mounds.”
The ball came off the club cleanly and landed just beyond the mounds. It bounced twice and then settled into a slow roll down the slope toward the hole.
I could tell the ball would miss the hole on the left. But the right-handed spin of the flop shot was pulling it back toward the hole, and my hopes rose as it drifted closer and closer.
In the end, it just didn’t get close enough to catch the left edge of the cup, and the ball rolled on by the hole by several feet. It was farther from the hole than I wanted, but I reminded myself that I never expected to have any putt for par when we were back in the trees searching for my ball.
Moonlight pulled the flagstick from the hole and walked over behind my ball. He bent down, holding the flagstick across his knees, and surveyed the three feet or so remaining in my maiden voyage around the lost course he had brought me to just a day before.
“I say it’s straight. A little uphill, too. Couldn’t ask for a better putt to finish the round.”
Glancing down the line to make sure I was square to the hole, I made my best shoulder stroke. The ball went straight in the center of the cup.
Chapter 25
MOONLIGHT REPLACED THE flagstick and handed me my ball. It had so many contusions that it looked like a driving range reject, but it was certainly precious to me. As he curled my fingers around it, he said, “I’d hang onto that if I were you. You’ll wanna remember this day, lad.”
I just stood there, not knowing what to say. Every golfer knows the intense pleasure that even the smallest triumph over the game’s challenges can bring. You can imagine how I felt when that last putt settled into the bottom of the cup and my magical round was complete.
Just as quickly, though, I was distracted by nagging questions about this surreal experience. We were not alone. At least, I didn’t think we were.
Moonlight seemed to think I was imagining things. But someone had obviously prepared the course for our arrival. Flagsticks had been placed on the greens. Tees and greens had been mowed. Beyond that, the place just didn’t look like it had been abandoned for over 30 years. Was it magic? Was I seeing things out of the corner of my eye that weren’t there? Was that really a voice I heard telling me where my ball was or just the wind whistling through the trees?
I knew enough about the power of suggestion to realize that I could have imagined things that weren’t really there. Hell, anyone who’s ever been scared of the dark knows that. The mind can make you hear and see things that disappear with the flick of a light switch.
But the condition of the course wasn’t the product of my imagination. Contrary to what Moonlight may have believed, he wasn’t the only person left who knew about this place. There had to be others.
Who were they? What was their interest? Was it the same as ours? There was so much more to be learned before the story of Bragg’s Point could be told.
As we sat on the front porch of the clubhouse taking in a spectacular sunset, Moonlight was still thinking about my golf rather than the possibility of gremlins hiding nearby among the trees.
“Ya’ know, Charley, Mr. Jones once shot a 66 at Sunningdale, in Berkshire, England, that was said to be the greatest round a’ golf ever played.”
I had never heard that. “Of all the great golf played by Jones, why that round?”
Moonlight wrinkled his nose. “Because just ’bout every shot was played as it should’ve been.” He looked off in the distance. “That’s really what ya’ did today, lad. Ya’ took what the course gave ya’. Ya’ played away from trouble. An’ ya’ made the shots ya’ needed to make.”
Of course, I hadn’t shot 66 as Jones had (in fact, I didn’t even know my score at the time), but I understood what Moonlight meant. All day long, he had shown me how to play the angles and the terrain to my advantage, keeping the ball in the best position to complete each hole in the fewest number of strokes.
“Ya’ see, lad, it’s not ’bout how ya’ swing, but where ya’ put the ball. That’s what made Mr. Jones so great. Ya’ never heard anyone say that a particular course favored Mr. Jones or was well-suited for his game. He studied every course he played to figure out the best way to play each hole. Mr. Hogan was the same way.”
Moonlight shifted as he pulled his left foot up on the steps. “Ya’ see, golf’s ’bout you an’ the course. That’s the game. It’s a competition between the two of ya’ an’ nobody else. The great ones never forget that.”
He then gestured toward the course below us, which looked golden as it lay in repose under the setting sun. “Ya’ see how it’s restin’ now, Charley? It knows that we won this round. We outsmarted it—today, at least. But it’s gatherin’ its strength now, an’ it’s waitin’ for ya’ the next time.”
Moonlight was still looking out over the layout that had tested us for the past several hours. “That’s what Mr. Jones loved so much ’bout this place. It challenged him every time out. Play the ball left, it said. Then play the ball right, it said. Keep the ball on this side a’ the hole, or keep the ball below the hole. Never the same test, either. It made ya’ bring your whole game, or ya’ left with your tail ’tween your legs.”
As I looked out at the beast that now lay so tranquil before us, I found it difficult to believe that it had been shut off from the world for these many years.
“Moonlight, why didn’t they keep the course open after Jones died?”
“A good question, lad. All I can tell ya’ is that Mr. Roberts shut it down right after Mr. Jones’s death.”
That raised another question. “Well, it doesn’t look abandoned to me. Someone has been taking care of this place.”
Moonlight shook his head. “I’m tellin’ ya’, Charley, I’m the last one connected with the place from Mr. Jones’s days.”
“What about the players? Byron Nelson is still alive. So are a few of the others. Not many, but a few.”
He shook his head. “But they don’t know the whole story. An’ they haven’t been back. Do ya’ think some a’ them been mowin’ the grass?”
“But suppose they’ve been paying to keep the place up? You know, it’s not entirely out of the question. After all that Bobby Jones did for the game and for the pros who played it back then, it would be a fitting way to repay the debt.”
I could tell Moonlight thought my theory was a bit farfetched. “I don’t think so, Charley. As far as they’re concerned, this place has gone to seed. They probably think the government took it back. It’s nothin’ but a distant memory that they’ve kept secret out a’ respect for Mr. Jones.”
Anyone not familiar with the virtual obsession for secrecy that to this day attaches to the private affairs of Jones and Roberts and the club they founded at Augusta might find it difficult to believe that the existence of Bragg’s Point could be so effectively concealed. But I knew otherwise.
Part of the unique culture of Augusta National is the primacy it has always placed on tight lips. More than anything else, insiders are judged by their ability to maintain confidences. Although its redactors are long gone, this code of silence remains every bit as strong today as it was in Cliff Roberts’s time.
Such things tend to have their own inertia and are remarkably resistant to change. Thus, to a certain extent, trying to understand why anyone would maintain the secret of Bragg’s Point for nea
rly 30 years after the reason for doing so had died was pointless. Like many cultural values, it really came down to a matter of faith.
For these reasons, the idea of a band of survivors maintaining the property as a monument to Jones seemed very plausible to me, despite Moonlight’s pessimism.
Chapter 26
I FELT LIKE I could have sat on that porch forever, but the light of the gloaming was rapidly fading. Too, Moonlight was clearly tired, so we gathered our things and headed for the car.
To my surprise, the car was only a short distance from the clubhouse. I was almost certain that we had parked it more than a hundred yards away, closer to the entrance to the property, when we had first arrived. I had left the keys in the car, thinking no one else could have gotten through the maze it took to find the place, much less have breached the locked gate. If our gremlins were indeed lurking around somewhere, they would have had no reason to move our car except to remind us that we were not alone.
As Moonlight replaced my clubs in the trunk, I pointed toward our original parking place and asked him, “Wasn’t the car over there when we left it?”
He just shrugged. “I dunno.” After he closed the trunk, he said, “Why? Ya’ think it moved?”
His tone was playfully sarcastic. All day long, Moonlight had put down my suspicions about others on the property. I was beginning to wonder whether he was hiding something from me or just thought I was paranoid. Before the night was over, I hoped to find out which was true.
The drive back to the hotel was quiet. I could tell that the day had taken its toll on my caddie. He leaned back against the headrest as soon as we cleared the security gate and was asleep before we reached the highway.
As I drove along in silence, I again replayed in my mind the wondrous round that we had just completed. As I did, I smugly congratulated myself on the numerous shots that I had successfully executed, but I knew full well that I couldn’t have done it without the man who was now asleep in the car next to me.
Moonlight had kept me on my game. Like many amateurs, I tended to be a golfing chameleon, taking on new swing thoughts at the first hint of unreliability in my game. Perhaps it was the result of an overactive imagination or, worse yet, a lawyer’s irresistible temptation to overcome difficulties by sheer willpower.
Whatever the reason, I was all too eager to abandon the only golf swing I really knew the moment the first shot came off poorly. Moonlight kept me trusting my swing by making me focus on tacking my way around the course rather than the mechanics of striking the ball.
He woke up just as I turned off the ignition in the parking lot of our hotel. He squinted his eyes a couple of times and shook his head. The nap must have refreshed him, because his only comment as we got out of the car was that he was hungry.
After we both showered, we headed out to a place we had passed on the highway going to and from the course. The sign advertised seafood and steaks, and the parking lot had been full. My father had always said that that was the surest sign of good food.
The place was called Fontana’s. It was covered with gray clapboard that had not recently been painted. There was a crowd standing around just inside the door as we entered. The blonde girl who greeted us at the door told us there was a half hour wait for a table.
I asked Moonlight if he minded. He looked over my shoulder and pointed. “If that’s a bar behind ya’, no.”
We walked over to the lounge just off the main dining room, which was also crowded. I found two unoccupied stools at the far end of the bar. Moonlight sat down heavily. I remembered how tired he had been earlier.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Just the excitement a’ the day, I guess. It’s been a long time since I was here. Brought back a lotta memories. Good ones, too. At my age, they’re the most precious things I got.”
I wondered if he had family.
“Nah. I was married once. Didn’t work out. Got a sister in Nashville. She’s my closest kin. She lost her husband a few years back. I spend holidays with her, an’ her kids an’ grandchildren. Had a brother, but he passed away more’n 20 years ago.”
He looked up at the expectant bartender. “Ya’ got Rolling Rock?”
I started to order a martini, but this didn’t look like the place for it, so I had a beer, too. As we each savored the cold brews placed in front of us, I looked into the mirror behind the bar and began to study Moonlight’s wizened features.
While he was certainly not a wealthy man by any of the standards typically used to measure such things, Moonlight had seen and experienced the kind of golf that money can’t buy. It amused me to think what the people milling around in the bar would say if they had any inkling about the people and events the little man sitting next to me knew firsthand. Moonlight had spent virtually his entire adult life either at Augusta National or at Bragg’s Point. On a routine basis, he had witnessed greatness on the golf course that most of us only get to read about. He had actually known Bobby Jones, not to mention Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, and Sam Snead.
As I drained the last of my beer, the fact that Moonlight had been a part of all that impressed me more than my improbable round. In fact, the reality of my golf still hadn’t sunk in. It probably sounds stupid, but I just didn’t believe it yet. It was as if someone else had made those birdies, not me. That kind of mastery of the game simply didn’t fit with the lifelong picture I had of myself.
Moonlight must have been reading my mind. I felt him nudge my elbow. He slid the scorecard from the day over to me. “I thought ya’ might want this.”
I looked down at it. He had filled in my scores for each hole. The total was 73.
“Thirty-three on the back nine, Charley.” He pointed to a spot on the bottom of the card. “Ya’ gotta attest the score or it don’t count.”
I saw that Moonlight had signed the card as my marker. I reached over and grabbed a small pencil laying in the bartender’s trough and signed my name.
“There,” I said, “it’s official.”
He said something about drinking a toast to the events of the day, so we ordered another round. Moonlight appeared to be relaxing a bit, and I decided it was an opportune time to take advantage of his softened edges and ask some questions.
“Do you know who owns the property?”
“Nah. Like I tol’ ya’, Mr. Roberts put the place in a trust a’ some kind. I don’t know who’s got it now.”
I figured we could determine the ownership at the local courthouse. If the people in the local clerk’s office were helpful, we would have an answer in a matter of minutes. I had learned how to run conveyance records while I was clerking at Butler & Yates, so I could use the vendor-vendee indices to trace the entire chain of title if need be. That would tell me who Roberts bought the property from as well as who had owned it since Jones and Roberts died.
Like a lot of older people, Moonlight felt free to say whatever was on his mind without introducing his subject matter. I wasn’t surprised, then, when he abruptly changed the subject to share another anecdote with me.
“Remember I tol’ ya’ that Mr. Jones had the only cart allowed at the club?”
“You mean here at Bragg’s Point?”
“Yeah. I didn’t tell ya’ the story a’ how that came ’bout, though, did I?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Well, that cart was given to Mr. Jones at Augusta National. It was specially built to make him as comfortable as possible. As he got sicker, he got weaker an’ weaker. It wasn’t just that he had trouble walkin’. He couldn’t use his hands real well, either.”
He paused to pull down more of his beer.
“One a’ the companies that made golf carts put one together with special equipment for him to use. He really liked it. Mr. Roberts had it shipped out here so Mr. Jones could use it while he stayed here. Anyway, Mr. Jones invited the man who owned the company to come out to Augusta for a round a’ golf. While he played, Mr. Jones rode along to watch. At some point, he asked Mr. Jones
if the club would buy its next fleet a’ carts from him. Mr. Jones said nothin’, but when he got in that day he had Mr. Roberts ship the cart back from California an’ return it to the man.”
I felt like I had missed something. “Why?”
“It was like the man was puttin’ strings on the gift. Mr. Jones didn’t wanna feel obligated. He hated to give that cart back, but the man shouldn’t have said anythin’.”
It was an interesting glimpse of Jones’s rigid Southern code of etiquette, and it also explained the unyielding attitude held at Augusta National about even the slightest breach of manners by anyone associated with the club. Gentlemen just don’t do certain things. It’s one thing to hope that someone will reciprocate a good deed; it’s quite another to ask for it.
I didn’t know if Moonlight was deliberately trying to sidetrack me, but I wanted to talk more about some of the strange goings-on I had seen during the day.
“Those flagsticks weren’t there when we first went to the course yesterday, right?”
He nodded in agreement.
“But they were there when we arrived today. Do you still believe that they just appeared there by magic?”
He drained his second Rolling Rock, put it down on the bar, and leaned back. I could tell he was carefully choosing his words before he spoke.
“Charley, when ya’ get to be my age, ya’ don’t feel the urge to have an explanation for everythin’ that goes on in the world. An’ ya’ begin to allow for the unexplainable.”
I shook my head. “Moonlight, those flags didn’t just appear from nowhere.”
“Lad, ya’ just shot 73 on the best course you’ll ever set foot on. What do ya’ care how the flags got there?”
“Do you really think it’s magic?”
“Ya’ mean, do I think there’s some kind a’ ghost out there?” He laughed. “Nah. But I do believe there’s somethin’ ’bout the place that’s magical. Ya’ can decide what to make a’ that, okay? Whoever—or whatever—put those flags out wanted us to play the course. So it ain’t evil spirits, is the way I look at it.”
The Greatest Course That Never Was Page 17