Simple Twist of Fate Brings Ballyhack Golf Club to Life
The double green at 13 and 15
Blame it all on a simple twist of fate
– Bob Dylan –
ROANOKE, VA – I couldn’t possibly have been going in the right direction, could I? I had gotten off the exit ramp for downtown Roanoke, but after passing a modest skyline, I got diverted into duplexes, the crumbling back lots of an industrial factory and power plant, and finally into dusty, sleepy streets that time seemingly passed by. Pass the auto parts store and the hippie coffee shop, and hang a left at the old church – when I get those for directions, I know I’m in trouble, because I get lost in my own office.
Still after a few backtracks, a flash thunderstorm which made me hours late getting on the road, and a disarming D.C. blonde who made me even later, I finally arrived at the swinging iron gate of Ballyhack Golf Club under an impenetrable ink-black sky. No moon or stars illuminated my rustic ranch-style cabin that night. All I could see in the darkness was the rugged outline of a high mountain ridge silhouetted against the sky. I felt like I was alone on the range, with just the coyotes for company.
That is until I saw the advertisement for spa and salon treatments next to my bed…but we’ll get to that later…
Part cowboy ranch, part mountain course, and part moorland links, Ballyhack finished a strong second last year to Bandon Dunes’s Old Macdonald in the major best new course rankings. Ballyhack certainly deserves much of the accolades it receives from the general golf community as well as the close-knit fraternity of golf course architecture connoisseurs because it is a cunning design over a fearsome piece of property. It explores old school design concepts, (like many found at National Golf Links of America), while being visually stunning so as to also appeal to all the “looky-loo” raters who mistake beauty for design.
It was a good crop of courses that opened last year, the best since 2006 saw both Ballyneal and Bayonne open, and there are striking similarities between that year’s competition and last year’s race. In both cases, Tom Doak won with an indisputable timeless masterpiece: Ballyneal in ’06 and Old Macdonald in ’09. Both courses are instant classics, the height of the craft of golf course architecture as it exists today, and faithful reproductions of links elements and conditions.
But the runner-up both years was also a course of great architectural importance and regional significance. In ’06, rather than hiring a big-name architect as he had in the past, course owner-turned-architect Eric Bergstrol rocked the establishment by designing an Irish links course himself. He trucked in 7 million cubic yards of sand to do it, but his linksy, hilly, and well-routed Bayonne decimated the vapid Liberty National in a head-to-head battle of Jersey landfill courses. It was the welcome surprise of the rankings. In ’09 Lester George accomplished a similar feat at Ballyhack.
THE MAN WITH TWO FIRST NAMES
“George Lester?” my girlfriend Britt chirped puckishly. “He has two first names!” Mind you, this is the same girl that called a pro tour player “Brent Sneakers.”
“I thought he had two last names,” replied her friend Sherry, who is just as much of an irreverent wag. Nevertheless, the golf world is starting to know Lester George because he’s riding a hot streak of late.
Right now, Tom Doak is the reigning undefeated, all-belts-unified, heavyweight champion golf course architect of our generation. Doak took the crown and scepter with Pacific Dunes and hasn’t looked back. But since the mid-90s, as the pendulum of golf design swung back from the penal school of design to the strategic, three other men emerged to battle right behind Doak – Lester George, Jim Engh, and Mike Strantz. All three blend bold visuals with ancient U.K. architectural strategies: George and Strantz focusing a little more on elements found at National than their Colorado counterpart.
Sadly, we lost Strantz, another indisputable genius, to oral cancer in 2005, but it’s a great compliment to Lester George to say that major portions of Ballyhack are reminiscent of two Strantz classics: Ballyhack looks like Tobacco Road, but plays like Royal New Kent. The course is Strantzian in both scale and statement. With the exception of the narrow 11th, all the lines and contours of the course are enormous. Playing corridors are sometimes as much as 80 yards wide off the tee, (and 120 yards wide in the case of the gargantuan second fairway), yet split fairways and fiercely contoured greens place on emphasis on strategic planning and execution off the tee, accuracy on the approaches, a creative short game, and putting. Moreover, the topsy-turvy property gives the course a rustic and rugged character that sets Ballyhack apart from other courses.
George burst on to the national stage of top-flight golf architects with his widely-acclaimed Kinloch Golf Club near Richmond. He is also riding the crest of a tidal wave of praise for his restoration of the Old White Course at The Greenbrier Resort, which is now a PGA Tour stop. Now Ballyhack is his magnum opus to date. It is also a labor of love six long years in the making.
In 2003, George thought his search for a truly great piece of land for his dream course was over. The 370 acre parcel – which is bisected roughly in half by Pitzer Road – tumbles down the feet of the mountain ridge and around a ravine called Saul Run on the east side, and meanders around a wetlands and through a barranca on its west side, good terrain for golf, if a little severe. But the land wasn’t for sale.
“I had my eye on the property for quite a while, but when I found out I-73 was planned to run through there, I thought I had no chance, so it was off my radar for a while.”
However, fate smiled on George. Good things happen to good people, as they say, and in one of life’s quiet little coincidences that have deafening repercussions, he met the owner of the land completely by accident, through his other passion in life: classic cars.
“I thought I knew all the collectors in my area. Then one day a friend of mine invited me to go with him to see the collection of a fellow named Ed Nunnelly, who only lived ten miles from me,” explains George. “I thought I knew all the collectors in my area, so I went. When he asked me what I did for a living and I told him I was a golf course architect, he said, ‘I have the prettiest piece of land in the Roanoke area for a golf course…’”
It was the same site: Twist of fate number one.
The next day, it was announced that I-73 would be routed several miles away: Twist of fate number two.
Seizing the opportunity, George contacted Nunnelly immediately, telling him he’d have a contract in his hands that day. Nunnelly replied that George was too late. He had two other contracts in hand. Nunnelly told him to make him a better offer or convince him the property should be a golf course.
“That afternoon I put a contract in his hand and told him, ‘we both know that should be a golf course. Anything else would ruin it.’ Then I went fishing in New Orleans.”
A day later, Nunnelly accepted George’s offer over two more lucrative offers: Twist of fate number three. Game, set, match: Golf wins.
So with that chance meeting as his impetus, Lester George conquered the golf landscape in Virginia more convincingly than John Smith took the Commonwealth in the 1600s.
No less a personage than Ran Morrissett, one of the nation’s pre-eminent experts on golf architecture, wrote in his GolfClubAtlas.com review, “Now at the end of a second Golden Age of golf course architecture, Ballyhack emerges as the finest course to have been built in Virginia since The Cascades.”
It’s possible Ran underestimated. Ballyhack makes a good argument to be called number one outright, at least by golfers who prefer strategic golf over penal golf, links elements over parkland design. It’s also undoubtedly one of the top courses in the DelMarVa region. (Baltimore Country Club’s Five Farms is number one in my rankings.)
FACTS AND FIGURES
Doak Scale: Better than 7, just under an 8 – An 8 is described by Tom Doak as “One of the very best courses in its region and worth a special trip to see. Could have some drawbacks, but these will clearly be spelled out, and it will make up for it with something really special in addition to the generally excellent layout.” Ballyhack seems a perfect 8, except for being unwalkable. If you want to try, walk the front and take a cart for the back.
My Ratings: (All ratings out of 7)
Design: 5-1/2 – 6 stars (The course loses ½ star for being unwalkable).
Natural Setting: 5-1/2 stars
Conditioning: The day I played it, it was biscuit brown in high summer. Tries to play fast and firm, but since it’s built on clay, it gets soggy after torrential rains.
Overall: 5-1/2 – 6 stars
Tees Yards Rating Slope
Big Lick 7294 76.6 155
Ballyhack 6753 74.0 153
Ridge 6131 71.2 146
Star (Ladies) 5637 74.9 147
Valley (Ladies) 5108 72.3 134
Address:
Ballyhack Golf Club
3609 Pitzer Road
Roanoke, VA 24014-6212
(540) 427-1395
www.ballyhackgolfclub.com
The course occupies 190 of the 370 acre plot, with the front nine filling the east side parcel, and the back nine on the west side. The course looks eminently natural as George and Bill Kubly only moved about 250,000 cubic yards of earth, a nominal amount.
“Most of the earth moving was for the irrigation pond at the end of the driving range,” jokes PGA Head Professional Jonathan Ireland. “We moved a bit to make landing areas on two holes, and that was pretty much it.”
On the average, the course sees about 40-50 rounds per day
Surprisingly, the name “Ballyhack” is not a golf play on words like most Bally-named courses. (“Bally” is Irish for “Place of” – hence “Ballyneal” is “Place of Neal.”) But this portion of Roanoke was called Mt. Pleasant. They were going to cal the course “Fountainhead,” but a little old lady who knew nothing about golf told the owners the place was called Ballyhack. It also sounds golf – perhaps for “Place of throwing everything at them including the kitchen sink,” so it stuck.
ON THE COURSE
The Great par-5 second hole
The first four holes at Ballyhack are All-World. They are flat-out perfect tens. Like National Golf Links of America, Ballyhack eschews the tired doctrine of having a few easy holes to warm you up. Ballyhack comes out swinging with a hole that can hand out a seven or eight. Its green is not a false front, but a false half! Depending on which side you come up short, you’ll either have a forty yard pitch or seventy yard pitch back to a sliver if green wider than it is deep. It is eerily similar to the opener at Strantz’s Royal New Kent, which also opens with a 50-60 yard walk of shame for those who come up short. Some might say it’s over done, but is National overdone? Only if you are cursing George’s name after leaving one short, like I did. I love the hole, but if we were indoors, I would have peeled the paint with what I growled about Lester and his parentage.
The second hole is equally breathtaking, so my ire evaporated immediately. Three pot bunkers pepper the middle of the fairway diagonally: the furthest away on the left, the nearest on the right, but the further right you play, the further from the green you end up and the more uneven your lie. The green is a gorgeous Lion’s Mouth with the bunker in the center and the wings of the green curving around it. It is also perched on the ridge so as to be a skyline green. Finally, the back left slopes away from the player, adding further interest and peril to the hole.
The minute I saw the third hole I knew it was a Redan. I just didn’t see its false front or thumbprint in the back half until I – once again – watched my ball roll back down the green into the fairway. I was cursing Lester again, when I noticed the thumbprint feature in the back half of the Redan. At first I blurted out something angrily, wondering what kind of idiot would put a thumbprint in the back half of a Redan when I realized why he did it and why it’s both brilliant and sublime:
I don’t think there’s another green like that anywhere else in the world. It’s ingenious, daring, and one-of-a-kind. Moreover, it blends great old school strategies. That’s the definition of a truly great golf hole.
There are rumors that people think it’s too severe or quirky, and that it might be changed. They are just mad it’s both difficult and doesn’t look like anything they have seen before. While two is my favorite hole at Ballyhack, three is the best hole. It’s so perfect, it belongs in a museum. Lester and Vinny: Don’t you dare change it. It’s one of the greatest holes in golf the way it is.
The par-4 fourth features a staple of the George design repertoire: a split fairway. A huge Hog’s back in the fairway kicks balls left or right. While the right side might need more room on right – that side drops sharply into creek called “Saul Run” – it still works well as the hazard cuts diagonally in front of the green.
The par-4 fifth, called “Fortress,” can’t be called a links hole as it climbs sharply up a hill, but it’s still fun to lay siege to the gates. Once again the tee shot needs to be carefully placed because deep pot bunkers pepper the middle of the fairway. Then it’s straight uphill for the approach. If you come up short, you have a long pitch.
The next three holes explore a different style of terrain, a moor with a wetlands meandering through. The short par-4 sixth is the first hole you’ve seen before. The wetlands cuts towards you diagonally from the left hand side, however the jagged nature of its edge – coupled with an aiming bunker just right of the green – make it much easier to pick a line off the tee than if it were a smooth curve and a clean backdrop. 18 at Sawgrass is perhaps the best example of this use of the “doctrine of deception” or use of optical illusions to make the golfer think more carefully. There is a smooth curve and no trees or bunkers to give the golfer a point of reference, so he must carefully judge his line to his abilities. 17 at Red Tail – consistently voted the best public golf hole in Massachusetts – is another good example. At 6 at Ballyhack either bash a driver with a hint of a draw at the bunker, or lay back to the right side of the 90-degree turn in the hazard.
After an interesting uphill par-3 7th a strong par-4 8th hole with a meandering creek bisecting the fairway, and a ridiculously long and uphill climb from the eighth green to the ninth tee box, the front side closes with a showstopper of a par-5. An immense and fiercely undulating fairway rumbles “straight back home to the silos” along Pitzer Road. A long bunker and hog’s back ridge split the fairway into parallel upper and lower sections, one well below the level of the other.
In an inspired twist of routing, George placed one set of tee markers for the par-5 10th hole at the far end of the practice range, then curved the hole like a scimitar around bunkers and a stand of trees. A true three-shotter for most players, it’s a tranquil and idyllic start to the back nine.
11 is the only hole I don’t like. Short, but sharply uphill, the hole is a bit of a crapshoot as the narrowest fairway on the course severely cants away from the player and towards a cliff edge. From the middle tees, which are placed at the worst angle, you can’t fade the ball because you start the ball at a hazard from which there is no recovery. However drawing the ball risks the shot running out into the same hazard. Intermittent rocks peppering the edge of the cliff make the hole even wackier. You have to either try to drive the green and risk a double bogey, or lay back with a middle club off the tee and pitch up.
The rest of the course is one fascinating hole after another. After an excellent par-4 12th, which rumbles through the rugged swale that traverses the back nine, we come to the centerpiece of the back nine routing, the immense double green at the par-3 13th and par-5 15th.
Originally George thought to design a large lake near the 13th green that would also wind around 14 and part of 15, serving as both a hazard and as water for irrigation, but he couldn’t work around environmental restrictions with a wetlands area on what is now 15.
“I realized that the wetlands area actually worked well as a hazard on its own, and when we found other wells that gave us more water than we expected, I knew I could move the irrigation pond, and so I got the idea for the double green,” explains George. He then looped holes 12-17 in a figure-8 with the double green as the crossroads. “By criss-crossing those holes in a figure-8, the player to faces many different wind directions in that span of holes. It makes the back nine really interesting, especially coming down the stretch in match play,” George concluded.
A thumbprint in the middle of the double green divides it into two smaller sections, so the long par-3 13th is even harder as the target is narrower than the sheer size of the green indicates from the tee. 14 is a great curving, uphill par-4 with a barranca cross-hazard cutting across the fairway. The green is set in its own little dell.
I’m of two minds about the 15th hole. Again, George gives us a split fairway. You see the green straight in front of you from the tee box, but the traditional way to play the hole is to slug a driver to the fairway curving far to the left, then lay-up short of the wetlands, then pitch to a green fronted by a deep bunker. However, George also built a slim pod of fairway straight towards the green called the “Short Porch.” You hid a hybrid or mid-iron to this landing area, then hit a longer club such as a fairway wood or hybrid around a tree and over the wetlands and bunker to the green.
It’s similar to one of Jim Engh’s “trap doors and hidden staircases,” a different way to get to the green, and one the locals especially like. It is a lot of fun to play the Short Porch, but most people also think that the risk might outweigh the reward, and that playing a short club, then a longer club into the green is a little gimmicky. First, it’s like playing a par-3, then another, longer par three: first you hit one small target, then your reward is a longer tougher target golf shot then the previous shot. Worse still, if you miss the short porch, you’re screwed, because then you have no other shot than to play back to the other fairway from a ghastly lie.
This highlights one of the indisputable truths about Ballyhack: if you get out of position on this golf course, the penalties are severe. Still, the hole underlines one of the other great indisputable truths about Ballyhack as well: it combines fun golf shots with things you’ll see at no other golf course in the country.
17 is a textbook example of a great “Short” hole. The enormous oval-shaped green is fronted and flanked by deep bunkers, however a Y shaped spine divides the green into three smaller greens in one. While the 18th doesn’t really summarize much of what you saw during the the rest of the round, the player gets the satisfaction of crushing one closing drive into a wide fairway where the right side is blocked b y one of only three specimen trees on the course. The approach is to an enormous and well-contoured triple plateau green to close out the round with a bang.
GENERALLY SPEAKING
Ballyhack has excellent sweeping horizontal movement to the fairways, great vertical movement in the land with its wild undulations, and outstandingly contoured greens. Those are the cornerstones of a truly great design. George boldly and wisely routed the course to play right into the teeth of the most severe natural features, ensuring that Ballyhack would have a rugged, wild character all its own, unlike any other course you’ve played, although some well-travelled golfers might see some similarities to other excellent rugged courses like Tobacco Road or Royal New Kent.
The terrain is so severe it plays much longer than the yardage on the card. It’s a murderous walk, in some places sending the walker well out of his way just to get somewhere a well-placed bridge might make more easily accessible. In places, it is certainly a mountain golf course.
“I was not going to sacrifice extraordinary vistas and golf holes for the walking aspect. I know walking is an important aspect of the game but sometimes the land is screaming for certain tee and green locations, explained George. “Having played other great national private clubs such as Sutton Bay and Sand Hills, and seeing carts at both of those locations, I felt like the only way to do that site justice was to pick the best 18 holes and it happened that it had to be a riding course.”
In Ballyhack’s defense, there is talk about adding bridges at a later date. It was more important to get the course open, not tie it up with a long permitting process for a few bridges that could be added later.
Ballyhack is extremely difficult for bogey golfers, with a 146 slope from the middle tees, 153 from the long tees, and 155 from the tips. Moreover, there are plenty of optical illusions and greenside contours that require approach shots to be properly planned and executed. You can’t just take dead aim at a flag because if you miss by even a few feet the wrong way, you could end up 70 yards away. And if you’re not in Position A at Ballyhack, you might find yourself in Position X, fighting for a bogey. But like National, that’s part of the beauty of playing a course designed in the links tradition.
Architecture fans and well-traveled golfers will love Ballyhack. “Looky loos” will love how cool it looks and the great vistas across vast expanses of the property. Pros and casual golfers may hate it as “too tough, too weird.”
Most importantly, Ballyhack shows exactly how versatile Lester George is as a designer: one minute he wins awards with a parkland gem like Kinloch, the next he polishes an ancient masterpiece like Old White Course at the Greenbriar to a high shine, and the next he gives us some thing as wild, haunting, and enchanting as Baskerville Hall at Ballyhack. He has both breadth and depth of knowledge and talent, a terrific combination for a golf course architect. He has arrived, and he’s making noise.
HOLD THE GRAPEFRUIT
I can’t close this article without a self-indulgent laugh at this howler of an advertisement that was by my bedside table in the rustic lodge:
“Salon del sol” with locations in Richmond and Midlothian!
SPA PEDICURE – 60 minutes
Revitalization starts from the ground up. Soak your feet in an exotic mixture of Caribbean plant ingredients and fresh grapefruit bits to improve the condition of nails, cuticles and feet. A warm hydrating seaweed masque [sic] is applied to smooth and moisturize. Continue to escape while your feet and legs are revived with a hot stone massage.
Okay, so let me say this out loud, so I have it straight in my head. Hey you! Rugged cowboy of a golfer! Why don’t you and all your friends come and test your game on our Tonka-tough course! Climb all over hurly-burly mounds and huge dunes. Play out of sinkhole bunkers. Survive unconquerable Ballyhack. Toast your round with a frosty cold beer, and have a brontosaurus burger or a stegosaurus steak cooked over an open flame, while staying in lodging decorated like a dude ranch complete with skeletonized longhorn skulls…
…and then soak your tired feet in grapefruit juice and rose petals!
I eat grapefruit…reluctantly…like when I’m on a diet. It’s bad enough then, so soaking my feet in it will be right out. How about a Jacuzzi instead? Or maybe horseback riding? Something more in tune with the setting?
Cybergolf Runs my Ballyhack Course Review
You can see the severe slope of the false front at the first hole from the tee.
Great job by Jeff Shelley getting this up so quick. It’s my long form review of Ballyhack Golf Club in Roanoke, VA. We’ll have more pictures here over the next few days, after I get up to Boston to cover the Deutsche Bank.
From the article:
“In 2003 George thought his search for a truly great piece of land for his dream course was over. The 370 acre parcel – which is bisected roughly in half by Pitzer Road – tumbles down the feet of the mountain ridge and around a ravine called Saul Run on the east side, and meanders around a wetlands and through a barranca on its west side, good terrain for golf, if a little severe. But the land wasn’t for sale.
“I had my eye on the property for quite a while, but when I found out I-73 was planned to run through there, I thought I had no chance, so it was off my radar for a while.”
However, fate smiled on George. Good things happen to good people, as they say, and in one of life’s quiet little coincidences that have deafening repercussions he met the owner of the land completely by accident, through his other passion in life: classic cars.
“I thought I knew all the collectors in my area. Then one day a friend of mine invited me to go with him to see the collection of a fellow named Ed Nunnelly, who only lived 10 miles from me,” explains George. “I thought I knew all the collectors in my area, so I went. When he asked me what I did for a living and I told him I was a golf course architect, he said, ‘I have the prettiest piece of land in the Roanoke area for a golf course…’ ”
It was the same site: Twist of fate number one. The next day, it was announced that I-73 would be routed several miles away: Twist of fate number two.
Seizing the opportunity, George contacted Nunnelly immediately, telling him he’d have a contract in his hands that day. Nunnelly replied that George was too late. He had two other contracts in hand. Nunnelly told him to make him a better offer or convince him the property should be a golf course.
“That afternoon I put a contract in his hand and told him, ‘We both know that should be a golf course. Anything else would ruin it.’ Then I went fishing in New Orleans.”
A day later, Nunnelly accepted George’s offer over two more lucrative offers: Twist of fate number three. Game, set, match: Golf wins.
So with that chance meeting as his impetus, Lester George conquered the golf landscape in Virginia more convincingly than John Smith took the Commonwealth in the 1600s.”
The mighty 18th at Ballyhack.
European Ryder Cup Team and Peter Uihlein win U.S. Amateur
Three quick recaps while I finish a set of course reviews:
First Monty picked Padraig Harrington, Edoardo Molinari, and Luke Donald. Some people are criticizing these picks sharply (Bleacher Report), but if there is one mistake Bleacher Report repeats over and over, it’s that they base their picks too much at what they see on paper. The favorites are always projected to win.
Harrington is rounding into form and is an excellent match play golfer. Justin Rose is not as strong in match play and is fading a little. Sure, he’s had a better year than Harrington, but in such a tough pick – ;eavin off a gifted player – Harrington has both the intangibles and the mental toughness in match play.
Karl MacGinty has this good write-up of why Monty’s picks are strong. As soon as Brian Keogh finishes his piece, I’ll post that link as well.
I’m calling right now: The U.S. wins.
Second, Peter Uihlein – Son of Titleist – won the U.S. Amateur at Chambers Bay yesterday. Pete Kowalski of the USGA has this report:
Peter Uihlein of Orlando, Fla., celebrated his 21st birthday by defeating David Chung of Fayetteville, N.C., 4 and 2, Sunday in the final match of the 2010 U.S. Amateur Championship at 7,742-yard, par-71 Chambers Bay.
“It’s definitely the best birthday present I’ve ever had in my life,” Uihlein said. “It’s pretty sweet. To add my name to that list on the trophy is pretty special.”
Dammit Jim, I’m a Doctor not an Alarm Clark – Furyk DQ’d From Barclays
Jim Furyk scared the hack out of Fluff Cowan and Slugger White when he – normally Mr. Reliable – overslept and missed his pro-am tee time and was disqualified from the Barclays. His #3 ranking in the FedEx Flop will drop to somewhere between 7-10. Hank Gola of the New York Daily News reports:
From the article:
Tour rules official Slugger White gave this account:
“We were looking for him this morning for a good half an hour prior to his tee time. I was with his caddie … with Mike Cowan, Fluff, and he asked me if I had seen him and I said ‘No, we are looking for him’. I asked him if he had seen him and if he had tried to call him and he said, ‘I have tried to call him but the phone won’t ring.’ I tried and it wouldn’t ring through.
“When things like that happen sometimes you think the worst … worried some stuff happened on the road,” White said. “Thank goodness that wasn’t what it was. We kept looking and kept trying to call. I didn’t know where he was staying, but it would have been too late. He rushed down and saw me on the deck down there by the clubhouse. He said, “Disqualified?” and I said, ‘Yes, I’m sorry.” He said he woke up at 7:23 and he got here in 12 minutes. His starting tee was No. 11 and that was about 7:36 a.m. or so when I talked to him … We had already sent the alternate out. It was Marc Leishman.”
Apologies to nerve-rattling, greasy-haired, geeky virgin Star Trek fans for today’s headline…
Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren Officially Divorced
The divorce between Tiger and Elin is final. Doug Ferguson has the best write up of the divorce papers. From the article:
“The divorce was granted in Bay County Circuit Court in Panama City, Fla., about 375 miles away from their Isleworth home outside Orlando. The couple had married in October 2004 in Barbados and have a 3-year-old daughter, Sam, and a 19-month-old son, Charlie.
The marriage was described in court documents as “irretrievably broken” with no point in trying to reconcile. Terms of the divorce were not disclosed, except that they will “share parenting” of their two children.”
You can bet there is a side agreement with all the details they want kelt secrets like alimony, child support, and visitation. Can you say “forum shopping?” They sure found a jurisdiction with loose filing rules.
Update! Got the Brett Cyrgalis Missing Links Link
Here is the link to Brett’s article about the great lost links of Queens, including Mackenzie, Dev Emmet, Raynor, and Tillie!
Juli Inkster DQd by Fan Phone Call
Jay Busbee has the scoop on a fan calling in and busting Juli inkster for the hideous crime of using a swing donut on a club while waiting for a backup to clear.
My favorite similar story is the time Virginia team golfer Buddy Patch took the Medicus into play by accident during his first round at a team event. Then he slurred an apology drunkenly to the team for “bringing the Meniscus into play…”
MENISCUS??!!
From the article:
“Inkster was disqualified from the Safeway Classic on Saturday afternoon for a rules violation, but that’s not the real story. The more interesting element is how she was caught.
First, the story. Inkster was playing well — just three strokes behind leader Ai Miyazato — when she hit a traffic jam on the 10th hole of the Pumpkin Ridge course. With a 30-minute wait stretching out before her, she attached a small “doughnut” weight to her nine-iron and swung to stay loose, much like a batter in the on-deck circle.
However, unlike a batter in the on-deck circle, a golfer can’t use a weight like that during competition; it’s illegal to use a training aid during play. And so Inkster was disqualified once she finished her round.”
Great Sunday New York Post Article on Dead NYC Golf Courses
…too bad we can’t read it ’cause it’s not on-line! (or I’d have linked to it:)
Brett Cyrgalis wrote a solid, well-researched intelligent article on dead courses in NYC by Alister Mackenzie and A.W. Tillinghast to name a few, but the article is only in print today. Rush out and get it, while I go get another copy to give you a few details later.
Meanwhile, this week we’ll have course reviews up here and at Cybergolf on Pasatiempo, Ballyhack, and Forsgate. Then – Surprise! – bonus coverage of the PGA Tour’s Barclays (New York) and Deutsche Bank (Boston) tour stops at Ridgewood and TPC Boston respectively.
Clemens Indicted for Perjury in Steroids Investigation
As I said here, Roger Clemens engaged in an act of self-immolation every bit as spectacular as Tiger Woods. Today, he was indicted by a Federal grand jury for lying to Congress in their steroids investigation of MLB.
From the article:
“A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens for allegedly lying to Congress about using steroids.
Clemens faces charges of obstruction of Congress, making false statements and perjury.”
From my review of the Senate Hearings, which I attended:
The difference between truth and lies, courage and cowardice is not just the difference between HGH and B 12, Clemens and McNamee, but the difference between testing that is ineffective and ineffective, between expelling cheats and concealing them, and between avoiding scandals in the sport by excoriating and excommunicating the cheater for making the wrong choice.
Public embarrassment and the according legal expenses could be an enormous deterrent. If a player knows that he’s on an island if he gets caught – instead of protected – he’ll think twice. He’ll think twice about what he’ll put his wife and kids through. If he knows he’ll be treated like you would – scorned and ridiculed instead of insulated and protected, that will add significantly to the risk. We have to increase the risk involved in doing these drugs as well as the consequences. When they see how far they have to fall – jail, serious health risks, public humiliation, the kids’ college fund going to some lawyer – maybe now they’ll think more about the long run and less about a fast buck.
What a Stupid he was – Dustin Johnson Channels Roberto DiVicenzo
Here by the sea and sand
Nothing ever goes as planned…
– The Who –
HAVEN, WI – Not to take anything away from Germany’s Martin Kaymer, a worthy champion and a great rising star, but we’ll forever remember the defining moment of the 2010 PGA Championship as Dustin Johnson’s careless mistake grounding his club in a bunker on the 72nd hole which cost him a spot in the 3-hole playoff, and broke hearts from Sheboygan to South Carolina.
It’s nobody’s fault but his.
Let’s get something nice and sparkling clear from the get-go: David Feherty and the CBS broadcast crew – who are the gold standard normally – were dead wrong during the broadcast when they tried to say it wasn’t a bunker, didn’t look like one, or as Feherty tried to say, “may have started as a bunker, but on Sunday was no longer.” Their own animatronics and aerials of the hole clearly show it as a bunker and as part of a larger bunker complex. It was sand, it had a lip, and, moreover, the rules sheet handed to the players before the tournament – reviewed with them by officials, and hanging all over the locker room – clearly warned, as its first ordered point:
“All areas of the course were designed and built as sand bunkers and will be played as bunkers (hazards) whether or not they gave been raked. That will mean that many bunkers positioned outside the ropes, as well as some areas of bunkers inside the ropes, close to the rope line, will likely include numerous footprints, heel prints and tracks during the play of the championship. Such irregularities of surface are part of the game and no free relief will be available.”
At Whistling Straits, they play golf by the old school rules. You play it where it lies. No exceptions. That’s golf.
Dustin admitted that he didn’t read the rule sheet, even though he received it and was supposed to review it and ask questions if he had any.
“Maybe I should have looked at the rule sheet a little harder,” he said.
How could he miss it? It was posted prominently all over the locker room. You couldn’t look at a mirror without seeing it. The PGA of America gave everyone dire warnings not to become the cautionary tale Dustin turned out to be. As Bubba Watson put it in his media center interview when asked if players read the rules or saw them posted, “I know of one who didn’t. I knew the rules.”
Moreover, course architect Pete Dye was watching the whole thing unfold from the 18th green with Herb Kohler and one black-clad journalist.
“Of course it’s a bunker. It was specifically designed as a bunker, and it’s part of a big bunker complex. I know, because I built it,” explained the laconic and no-nonsense Dye. “It’s like Pine Valley. Everything sandy is a bunker, and you don’t ground your club. Besides, you’re not supposed to hit it up there on the 72nd hole anyway! It’s unfortunate.”
It’s unfortunate, but it’s the right call. Besides, what other options are there? The PGA tried making some areas waste areas back in 2004 and had a rules issue just like this one. On the 11th hole, during round Stuart Appelby thought he was in a waste bunker, and took a practice swing and moved a stone. He was assessed two two-stroke penalties, a total of four shots. It knocked him out of contention.
It’s not the PGA’s fault, they are caught between a rock and a hard place. “The dilemma is that it’s even harder to say some of these are not bunkers and some of them are because then how you do define those?” explained Mark Wilson, co-chairman of the PGA of America Rules Committee. “And then a player would be treading on this ice every time he entered a sandy area wondering where he was.”
Some people, however, are still trying to spread the blame far and wide simply because passions haven’t cooled, and because we have a ruling every bit as disappointing and untimely as the 1968 ruling at the Masters that cost Roberto DiVicenzo a spot in a playoff for the Green Jacket. In a rush to get to an interview, DiVicenzo, an Argentinean who spoke English brokenly, signed an incorrect scorecard, was assessed an extra stroke, and made his interview immortal when he turned to the camera and said, “What a stupid I am.”
Now we have an equally popular rising star suffering an equally ignominious defeat. But there is no one else to blame. Dustin is our generation’s DiVicenzo: What a stupid he is.
First, it’s not the fault of the rules officials. They are not there to interject themselves into the proceedings or offer advice. They are there to be consulted if needed.
It’s not the PGA of America’s fault. They are right that having two sets of bunkers is confusing and unmanageable. They did everything they could to simplify the rules and to make every player aware of them. Perhaps they could have the ropes further back, but that’s nitpicking. You can’t blame the crowd control when a player hits it in the crowd.
Perhaps they also could have more grandstands so people aren’t walking in bunkers, but the whole landscape is bunkers. Perhaps the ropes were too close, but someone is going to hit a ball so far off-line, they will get in a bunker way off line. It’s just bad luck this happened on the 72nd hole to the leader and not on the 5th or any other day during the championship to some chump playing out the string. In that regard, they are victims of circumstance.
It’s not Herb Kohler’s fault. He didn’t set the course up. He didn’t hit the ball into the next county. He didn’t ground his club in the clutch.
It’s not Pete Dye’s fault. So what that the course isn’t “natural” and that he moved a lot of earth to build it. The same rule applies whether a sheep scrapes out a sandy hollow to hide from the wind or whether Pete fires up a D-10 dozer and carves it out himself. Perhaps it is one of the shortcomings of Whistling Straits that there need to be more grandstands so kids don’t build sand castles in bunkers or fans don’t throw trash in them, but one of the rules of golf – professional tournaments or otherwise – is that you take the course as you find it.
Some people disagree. Golf architecture expert Ran Morrissett criticizes the design of the course. “Pete Dye created the 1,200 bunkers to give the course a wall to wall cohesive feel, but you need to focus on the 150 bunkers that truly dictate play. This so-called “eye candy” is just there for the sake of visuals but does come into play, and shouldn’t even be there. The course would look more natural and less contrived if upwards of 600-700 bunker were removed. Obviously the course photographs fantastically well from a blimp but I wonder what effect TV has on Pete in spurring him on to create so many extraneous bunkers. Perhaps his time would have been better served in creating more fiddly pitches and chips and interior contours of the greens that TV doesn’t capture that make a course like Oakmont so enduring decade after decade. Get rid of 600 bunkers and have more room for spectators to sit so this doesn’t happen again.”
It could be the caddie’s fault somewhat. Bobby Brown is a terrific caddie, a pro’s pro, but he’s not a mind-reader and he had a decision to make: trust his man or hover like a nervous mother. That’s one of the crucial decisions a caddie has to make. Maybe he could have said something, but hindsight is 20-20, and he knows Dustin better than all of us. Besides, He had a tough job on that shot. He had to get a difficult distance; no caddie can predict exactly when their man will go 70 yards right and into the gallery, he had to select the right club, and he had to move an army of fans and photographers out of the way. In any event, we know he’s as devastated as Dustin. After giving out great quotes all week and chatting amiably with journalists, when walking past CBS Sports’ Steve Elling, he tersely grumbled, “No comment.” Nevertheless, if they thought, as Bobby said much later, that there was trash in the area and that it might not be a bunker, they should have asked for a ruling.
At the end of the day, we saw another of golf’s incontrovertible truths: Bad things happen to you when you miss the 72nd fairway by 70 yards. Just ask Phil Mickelson or Jean van de Velde.
By grounding his club, Dustin ruined a stellar back nine, and a swashbuckling surge into the lead. He birdied 16 after hitting into ankle-high rough to tie for the lead. He birdied 17 with a 15-foot putt to take the lead. He looked like would wash away the disappointment of losing the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach with a final round 82. Heck, We could have been talking about Johnson being a double major winner and player of the year. Instead, he’ll have to deal with another shock to his famously laid-back demeanor, a blow that would devastate other golfers.
Thank the Heavens he didn’t make the putt on 18. The ruling would have taken away the “win.” Thank Heavens also that this didn’t happen to Tiger. Then the mess would have exploded exponentially.
Let’s not take anything away from Martin Kaymer. He made a great up-and-down from the spinach patch short of the 18th green and coolly rolled in a twisting 15-footer. He’s the second European player in three years and the third consecutive international player to win. The only other time that has happened was first three years of the tournament: 1916, 1919, 1920. There was no competition during World War I.
At the end of the day, the rule is tough, but there is no better one. Dustin’s laid back demeanor may have hurt him. This shouldn’t happen on the 72nd hole on the shot of his life. He’s a professional, he’s is supposed to know better. I guess it just underlines another of golf’s incontrovertible truths: Don’t be a stupid.
Sunset on Watney’s day may be Sunrise on his Career
Here’s the 24 hour delay on my favorite piece of the week. Man, the three-shot lead curse strikes again…
HAVEN, WI – It’s 7:50 p.m. The sun is setting is setting on Whistling Straits, but third round leader Nick Watney is still on the practice range hitting balls.
Most other players are at Stefano’s Italian restaurant in Sheboygan, digging into a dish of mussels marinara. Or maybe they’re in their rented mansion in Kohler having the chef prepare veal tenderloin. Or maybe they’re at the American Club somewhere between their second and third Dark and Stormy, Dirty Martini, or Bloody Mary.
Meanwhile, Lake Michigan is stunning in the gloaming. As the sun dips over the horizon waving its last goodbye to the day, the sky striates from bold cobalt blue to a rich, royal purple, to black. Far to the west, over the towering sand dunes that more resemble Royal Birkdale in Southport, England than eastern Wisconsin, the clouds burn with a rich cherry ember, and a last searchlight ray of the setting sun casts about, smoldering like a buried ember waiting to catch the World on fire.
Still, Watney continues to hit balls into the sunset, his caddie Chad Reynolds tossing one Titleist Pro-V1 after another. Alone on the range, each ball catapults off the clubhead with the report of a gunshot. Whack-isssssssssh! Watney stops to take a bite of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, then turns back to the drill, one after another, after another.
“I’m actually just winding down,” he says, as he stops to sign a few autographs. “I’m not working on anything in particular.” Then it’s back to the routine.
This is a man who just fired a blistering 66 over one of the most fearsome golf courses in America. He has a three shot lead over his nearest competitor. He ranks second in the field this week in putting. Sprinting along like Secretariat, he took control of the round yesterday and put the field and the Straits Course in a stranglehold. And yet, here he is, grinding away as day turns into night, and as the course is left to the crickets, the foxes, and the wind’s forlorn rustle.
He’s here because he knows one incontrovertible truth about sports and about life: It’s not about what you’re capable of – it’s about what you’re willing to do.
Tonight, Watney sleeps on a three shot lead, but that may be the most unsafe lead in golf. Retief Goosen had a three shot lead at the 2005 U.S. Open at Pinehurst. At that time, next to Tiger, he was the best cast-iron closer. Not only was he the defending champion, he had all the nerves jarred out of him by a lightning strike. He couldn’t fold. He was the Dockers wearing zombie, the Iron Goose! He was a mortal lock, sittin’ plush with a Royal Flush, as the song goes.
The next thing we knew, there were Goose feathers all over the front nine and Michael Campbell drove off with the trophy, one step ahead of the Carolina State Police who still have a warrant for his arrest in the state for highway robbery.
Dustin Johnson, presently in second place blew a three shot lead at Pebble Beach this year just as quickly as Goosen did back at Pinehurst. He seemingly owned Pebble Beach, cruising to two consecutive wins there in the AT&T.
He spent that Championship Sunday driving the ball all over Seventeen Mile Drive, and watched as Graeme McDowell drank scotch from the trophy.
Heck, Jean Van de Velde – “Jean of Argh” as venerable Dan Jenkins cals him – had a three shot lead on the last hole at the 1999 British Open at Car-nasty. He then hit the wrong fairway, a grandstand, a rock wall, a bunker and Barry Burn on the way to the greatest 72d hole flame-out in a century. Golf makes people do crazy things and so does pressure.
Sure, the 29 year-old Watney looks to be in the catbird seat. He had five birdies in the first seven holes yesterday and eight birdies over all. He’s taken a paltry 51 putts in the last two rounds. But his driving accuracy has not only been suspect, it has gotten worse every round, from 9/14 to 7/14, to 6/14 yesterday. If the wind kicks up and with a tough Sunday set-up, one ill-timed mistake could open the door for a host of competitors. Dustin Johnson hasn’t had a bogey in the last 29 holes. Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy (71-68-67) has gotten stronger as the tournament has progressed. In soft windless conditions, the Straits Course surrendered birdies like pints of ale to somebody named Wenchong, who shot 64 and then opened for Devo at ‘80s hair band reunion. In fact, if we finally get some wind today, anyone within seven shots is still in the tournament, and that includes two phlegmatic and gifted former major winners, Zach Johnson (the 2007 Masters) and Jim Furyk (the 2003 U.S. Open).
Moreover, we saw what an angry Whistling Straits course can do the final day of a major. They have bunkers everywhere here, even in locker room and men’s grill. At 18 alone, they have water, towering bunkers, hip-high rough, and rocks. The only things Pete Dye forgot to put on 18 were barbed wire, land mines, and snipers with Uzis. (Those are at Kiawah Island.)
In 2004, Vijay Singh shot a closing 76 and needed help from an unlucky gust of wind which knocked down Justin Leonard’s approach to the 72nd hole. After he struck the 5-iron shot, Leonard told his caddie, “I just won,” but the adjacent ninth fairway creates an insidious wind tunnel, and the resulting bogey dropped Justin into a three-way playoff, which Singh won going away, to hoist the Wanamaker Trophy.
Ah, the Wanamaker, one of the largest heaviest trophies in sports. 28 inches high, 27 inches across, and 30 pounds, it’s been hoisted in Bulgarian weightlifter “clean and jerk” fashion by seemingly every great golf champion except Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson. Walter Hagen liked it so much, he refused to give it back. He won four PGA Championships in a row, but in 1928 at Baltimore Country Club when Leo Diegel snapped his 22 consecutive win streak in matches (back when the tournament was match play), he sheepishly moaned that he lost the trophy in a taxicab.
Two years later, a porter cleaning the cellar of a building slated for demolition found a large trunk in the basement. Inside was the Wanamaker. The building housed the Walter Hagen Golf Club Company.
Today is championship Sunday, the day every kid dreams about, when they pretend with their friends that “this putt is to win the tournament!” Nothing short of your best will do, and sometimes that isn’t even enough for that little white ball that has a mind of its own.
There are two things a golf ball does not do: it does not listen, and it does not care. You can put a great swing on it and the next thing you know, it’s in Seven Mile Creek and grinning at you like a Cheshire Cat. The Golf Gods are as indiscriminate as Zeus with women. Winning requires exactly what you did when you were a kid: play until you can’t see the ball, which is exactly what Nick Watney is doing right now.
He’s doing exactly what any coach or fan wants to see. In sports, I’ll take the hard working, unselfish team player over the gifted prima donna any day. To switch to a basketball metaphor for a moment, give me the kid who’s the first one in the gym and the last one to leave. Give me the kid who dives into the stands for every loose ball. Give me the kid who runs the floor with the same passion whether he’s winning by twenty or losing by twenty. It takes no less then that to be a champion. As T.S. Eliot wrote, only those who risk going to far find out how far they can go.
And so the sun sets, and darkness falls, and the course is left in lonely eminence, just the lapping waters of Lake Michigan, the tranquil murmur of Seven Mile Creek, and the lonely trill of a bagpipe in the distance. Tomorrow may be, for Nick Watney, a golden sunrise, with such a light as Da Vinci would have painted, a grand moment to be savored, and a life changed forever. All it takes is nothing short of everything you have – which is exactly what Nick Watney has given us today.
Last Cybergolf Piece of the Week: What a Stupid he was
I just got off the phone with a former rules official who tells me he would have been aggressive about reminding Dustin about that being a bunker, but that’s 20-20 hindsight. In today’s piece, I call out the broadcast for misleading viewers, but also Dustin, a guy I covered from his college days at Coastal Carolina.
From the article:
Let’s get something nice and sparkling clear from the get-go: David Feherty and the CBS broadcast crew – who are the gold standard normally – were dead wrong during the broadcast when they tried to say it wasn’t a bunker, didn’t look like one, or as Feherty tried to say, “may have started as a bunker, but on Sunday was no longer.” Their own animatronics and aerials of the hole clearly show it as a bunker and as part of a larger bunker complex. It was sand, it had a lip, and, moreover, the rules sheet handed to the players before the tournament – reviewed with them by officials, and hanging all over the locker room – clearly warned, as its first ordered point:
“All areas of the course were designed and built as sand bunkers and will be played as bunkers (hazards) whether or not they gave been raked. That will mean that many bunkers positioned outside the ropes, as well as some areas of bunkers inside the ropes, close to the rope line, will likely include numerous footprints, heel prints and tracks during the play of the championship. Such irregularities of surface are part of the game and no free relief will be available.”
At Whistling Straits, they play golf by the old school rules. You play it where it lies. No exceptions. That’s golf.
Also, here’s a great story from caddie Todd Sunderland from my Thursday article about another zany rules violation that once cost D.J. Trahan.
What did I say about a 3 shot lead is the worst you can have??!!
I wrote it here at Cybergolf. Watney channels his inner Retief, Dustin at Pebble, blows 3 shot lead. We are tied at the PGA.
Meanwhile, that’s my fave piece of the week so far. From the article:
“Tonight, Watney sleeps on a three-shot lead, but that may be the most unsafe margin in golf. Retief Goosen was in a similar situation in the 2005 U.S. Open at Pinehurst. At that time, next to Tiger, he was the best cast-iron closer. Not only was Goosen the defending champion, he had all the nerves jarred out of him by a lightning strike. He couldn’t fold. He was the Dockers-wearing zombie, the Iron Goose! He was a mortal lock, sittin’ plush with a Royal Flush, as the song goes.
The next thing we knew, there were “Goose” feathers all over the front nine and Michael Campbell drove off with the trophy, one step ahead of the Carolina State police who still have a warrant for his arrest in the state for highway robbery.
Dustin Johnson, presently in second place, blew a three-shot lead at Pebble Beach this year just as quickly as Goosen did back at Pinehurst. Johnson seemingly owned Pebble Beach, cruising to two consecutive wins there in the AT&T.
He spent that Championship Sunday driving the ball all over Seventeen Mile Drive, and watched as Graeme McDowell drank scotch from the trophy.
Heck, Jean Van de Velde – “Jean of Argh” as venerable Dan Jenkins calls him – had a three-shot lead on the last hole at the 1999 British Open at Car-nasty. He then hit the wrong fairway, a grandstand, rock wall, bunker and Barry Burn on the way to the greatest 72nd-hole flame-out in a century. Golf makes people do crazy things and so does pressure.”
See you in a few hours with a wrap up. Meanwhile, here’s Woods and Foley on the range.
As of 2010, Here are the Future PGA Championship Sites
As of the 2010 PGA Championship at Whistling Straits, here are the future sites for the PGA Championship:
2011 – Atlanta Athletic Club (Highlands Course), Johns Creek, GA
2012 – Kiawah Island (Ocean Course), Kiawah Island, SC
2013 – Oak Hill Country Club, Rochester, NY
2014 – Valhalla Golf Club, Louisville, KY
2015 – Whistling Straits, (Straits Course), Haven, WI
2016 – Baltusrol, G.C. (Lower Course), Springfield, NJ
New Article on Cybergolf – Potpourri on Leaderboard after Friday Night
Man, it is brutal covering a tournament that goes start, stop, start, stop. They started the third round with the lowest scores teeing off last on tee 1, and the highest scores teeing off last on tee 10. Those in the middle tee off in between. Got it. Phil and Tiger are on the course as we speak. Meanwhile Jim Furyk and Vijay Singh made moves to finish at 6-under and 5-under respectively. In any event, here’s my latest Cybergolf piece.
From the article:
What a Croc!
Phil Mickelson hit golf balls all over Wisconsin, but with his stellar short game got up and down from Blackwolf Run, Erin Hills and Blue Mound Country Club as he cobbled together a 69 that put him at 2-under for the tournament.
Nevertheless, his funky-fresh new golf shoes were just as wild as his golf. “Calloway makes them for me. They are alligator. I have two sets of skins, and also a matching belt,” he said mischievously as he preened his outfit for a few scribes.
For the record, the difference between a croc and an alligator is that the croc has a rounded nose. There are, of course, two ways to disable a crocodile, you know. First, you can take a pencil and jam it in the socket behind his eyes. The second is twice is simple. You stick your hand in its mouth, and pull its teeth out.
The Daly Bugle
John Daly told a rules official tonight that he would not be back in the morning to resume round two due to a shoulder injury. “We will record him as a No Card,” wrote Una Jones of the PGA of America. Daly was certainly going to miss the cut when he withdrew, which is understandable when his pants double-bogeyed the first hole both days.