Dan Jenkins’ Last Hurrah – “The Reunion at Herb’s Café” ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (out of five)

I’ll admit that it is difficult for me to be totally objective when I write about Dan Jenkins. Reading Dan’s work, specifically, his first golf novel, Dead Solid Perfect, sparked my nascent interest in golf and inspired me to try my hand at writing about the game myself. Since that first encounter with his words I have done my best to keep up with everything he wrote subsequently, and have backtracked to read his old columns in Sports Illustrated and Playboy, and his earlier books.

Jenkins’ death, on March 7, 2019, was a great loss to the world of sports writing, but fans of Jenkin’s work got a welcome bit of news when it was announced that the manuscript of a final book was on his desk when he passed, which would be published after a quick polish by his daughter, Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins. This book, The Reunion at Herb’s Café, is the result.

Reunion is a walk down Memory Lane for Dan Jenkins fans. Built around the core story of Herb’s Café being purchased from Herb’s widow by Fort Worth hometown boy Tommy Earl Bruner, the story is mostly an excuse for bringing back some beloved characters from Jenkins’ earlier novels and providing a “where-are-they-now”–style wrap-up on what they’ve been doing with their lives since the novels they featured in were closed out.

It’s a fun read, especially for fans of Semi-Tough and its followups, Life Its Ownself and Rude Behavior, and Baja Oklahoma, whose characters are featured. New character and narrator Tommy Earl Bruner, a long-time buddy of Billy Clyde Puckett, Shake Tiller, and Barbara Jane Bookman, is introduced and given the usual Jenkins protagonist treatment, mirroring the author’s own life. Twice-divorced but newly hooked-up with a fabulous new gal, former Paschal High/TCU/pro footballer Tommy Earl becomes a business partner of Barbara Jane’s daddy, “Big Ed” Bookman, when he strikes oil on a large plot of snake-infested prairie that he inherits from his parents.

It’s difficult to have to say this, but this book is further evidence, after 2017’s weakly conceived and executed Stick A Fork In Me, of Jenkins’ final-years decline. It is, overall, a nice stroll down Memory Lane for Jenkins’ fans, unfortunately marred by the increasingly strident diatribes against “libs and socialist college professors”, and an ending—which I will not discuss specifically, to avoid spoilers—which is ridiculous, and frankly, disappointing. It is these aspects of the narrative, which come late in the book, which let the reader (or at least this reader) down. I rank Reunion a notch above  Stick A Fork In Me, which is faint praise, but it falls well short of  Dead Solid Perfect, Semi-Tough and his other classic romps through the worlds of sports, and Texas.

The Case for Stiff Club Shafts

When golf clubs are being discussed, especially drivers and fairway clubs, a lot is written about club shafts: length, weight, materials, flex—all the physical attributes that affect a shaft’s performance. But how, and how much, does the shaft’s behavior really affect the club’s performance, and ultimately, ball flight? And how important is the single most-discussed aspect of a club shaft—stiffness?

[Before I get much further, let me get something off of my chest: Most articles about club shafts misuse the term “torque”. Torque is a force input—the moment of a force acting perpendicular to an axis—but it seems as if every article I read uses the term to denote a shaft’s reaction to that force, e.g., referring to a “low-torque” shaft; instead of the force itself. In this usage a “low torque” shaft is one with high torsional stiffness; that is, a high resistance to twisting.]

One very important thing to understand about the club shaft—and something that many golfers are probably not aware of—is that the majority of its influence on ball flight happens before impact. Doesn’t sound right to you? Let me explain:

The ball and club face are in contact for such a short period—contact time is measured in milliseconds—that there simply is not enough time for the shaft to react to impact forces and significantly affect the interaction between club and the ball[i]. However, the forces acting on the club head during the swing have plenty of time to affect the shaft, which in turn affects the orientation of the club face—and that’s where the physical properties of the shaft come into play.

The downswing is initiated when the golfer accelerates the grip end of the club. The higher the acceleration—that is, the more quickly the golfer gets the club up to speed—the greater the force acting on the club head, at least in the initial portion of the swing. [If you remember anything from Freshman Physics, it should be F=MA (Force = Mass × Acceleration).]

Thanks to inertia, the club head wants to stay where it is while you are accelerating the grip, and this inertial lag induces a backward bend in the shaft at the beginning of the downswing while the club head catches up. Studies have shown, however, that this effect is short-lived, and is quickly overcome by the forces acting on the club head as it is comes up to speed[ii].

You may have heard the term kick point in reference to club shafts and envisioned something like the shaft flicking the club head forward and adding impetus to the impact—but you would be wrong. While the club head is rotated forward in response to the forces acting on the shaft during the downswing, it is not a “flick”.

CAUTION

Actual science/engineering content follows. Marketing/sales personnel may feel free to look away, or skip entirely.

This is how it works: The centrifugal force generated as the club is swung acts through the perpendicular distance between the center of mass of the club head and the line of the shaft—the moment arm—to produce a twisting force, or moment, which bends the shaft forward, increasing the loft of the club face. The point in the shaft at which it begins to flex under the influence of the swing-induced moment (frequently manipulated by changing material and/or thickness) is the kick point.

The kick point is one of four factors which affect the magnitude of this phenomenon: 1) swing speed, 2) club head center of mass location, 3) shaft stiffness, and 4) kick point location. The least intuitive of these factors is the location of the center of mass, but think of it this way: the further behind the club face the center of mass is located, the longer the moment arm is that is being acted upon by the force generated by the swing speed – in simpler terms, the force acting on the club head has more leverage. (I break this down a bit more a few paragraphs on.)

Centrifugal force acting on the center of mass of the club head produces a twisting moment that can increase the loft of the club face.

You hear a lot about Trackman data showing that pros and elite amateur players have a negative attack angle with driver—they swing down on the ball—while recreational golfers are told to swing up on the ball. Well, part of the reason that elite players get away with a negative attack angle is that, even with the stiffer shafts they play, their higher swing speeds generate an increase in loft, resulting in that high, soaring flight that we all wish/hope for off the tee.

What Does It Really Mean?

So how does this play into selecting the best shaft for your game? Delve deeply into that question and it starts to look like a real can of worms.

There are three club-related factors that affect ball flight—swing speed, swing path, and club face orientation—and since swing speed also affects the orientation of the club face by way of the deformation that it induces in the club shaft, it is doubly important when analyzing the swing.

Shaft weight and the overall balance of the club (“swing weight”) have some effect on swing speed, but the overall stiffness of the shaft and the location of the transition, or kick point (if there is one), are the most important characteristics of the shaft when it comes to affecting club head position at impact.

As mentioned above, the shaft’s response to swing speed—that is, the amount of “kick”—is dependent upon the overall stiffness of the shaft, the location of the kick point, and the magnitude of the force acting on the shaft. The magnitude of the centrifugal force is determined by swing speed and the length of the moment arm, M, which is determined by the location of the club head’s CG, or center of mass. Now do you get what I said about a can of worms?

A look back through that shopping list of factors which determine how the shaft affects club face orientation at impact can set your head spinning when you consider the variability of those factors— and perhaps the most variable of them all is the swing.

Reducing The Variables

Variability in swing speed can be a matter of inconsistency or design. We don’t always swing at the same speed, even if we are trying to. Sometimes we may take a real big whack at it, trying to out-drive a playing partner, or carry a hazard, and sometimes we throttle back—and as swing speed varies, so does the amount of change in loft that is caused by the forces acting on the club head.

A good club-fitter, with the right data-gathering technology and a wide variety of shaft/club head combinations at their disposal, will be able to sort through the variables and put any golfer into the optimum combination of shaft and club head for their swing. But which swing are you being fit for? Your usual 9/10ths driver swing? The little poke you take to keep the ball in play on a narrow fairway? Or your all-out, swing-for-the-fences lash for those long carries or ego-tempting drivable par-4s? Is one shaft going to be satisfactory for the full range?

Because swing speed is so variable, and because the ripple-down effect of swing speed on flex-induced loft increase varies with swing speed, I think that reducing one area of variability in the swing—shaft flex—can go a long way toward producing consistent ball flight, and the best way to do that is to go with a stiff shaft.

But Your Swing Speed Determines Your Shaft Flex, Doesn’t It?

So why are more flexible shafts usually recommended for slower-swinging players? The popular wisdom is that they are generally lighter in weight, and therefore easier for players with less strength or less-efficient mechanics to swing at their best speed. The problem with that hypothesis is that studies[iii] have shown that within the normal range of shaft weights, a reduction in weight has little effect on swing speed.

I think that the real effect here is actually a sort of back-formation; that is, since lower swing speeds produce less loft increase, these players can use a more flexible shaft without inducing a large increase in loft which would cause the ball to launch at a too-high angle. Also, shafts that are more flexible generally also have a softer “feel”, a purely subjective aspect of club performance that many players associate with improved touch and control.

Launch angle is the aspect of ball flight that is probably most affected, and most directly affected, by the kick point loft increase that we have been discussing—but launch angle can be controlled more consistently by ball placement relative to stance, and by teeing height. Set up with the ball more forward in the stance and/or teed up higher, and a higher launch angle results; moving the ball back in the stance and teeing it lower will do the reverse.

So why, when launch angle can be managed directly and more consistently by these two very controllable factors, would a player rely on the highly variable factor of kick-point loft increase to achieve the desired launch angle? Looking at the problem from that point of view, I have come to the conclusion that the best shaft for any given swing is the lightest shaft which is stiff enough to minimize shaft flex before impact.

I feel that, in general, the golf industry makes things a lot more complicated than they need to be when it comes to designing and selecting club shafts. Fine-tuning flex and kick point for swing speed in order to optimize the increase in loft that arises from the centrifugal force acting on the club head is a complex task. As a design engineer I always look for the simplest solution to a problem, and to my way of thinking the lightest, stiffest shaft possible is the best way to go. 

Depending upon shaft flex to provide loft-up to help get the ball into the air brings into play cumulative effects from two factors that change when the swing is dialed back or pushed up—reduced/increased kinetic energy and less/more loft increase—due to the change in swing speed. Going with a stiff shaft eliminates, or at least reduces, a highly variable factor that has a great effect on club/ball interaction at impact. 

The Bottom Line

Use a stiff shaft and let ball flight be affected by factors that are more directly controllable, like swing speed, and teeing height. The physical loft of the club face at impact will vary less with a stiff shaft, simplifying the job of consistently delivering the club face to the ball in the best orientation. 

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[i]    Dewhurst, P. The Science of thePerfect Swing Oxford University Press 2015: 41-42

[ii]   Milne, R.D. and Davis, J.P. “The Role of the Shaft in the Golf Swing.” Journal of Biomechanics 25, no. 9 (1992):

        975–983

[iii]  Cross, R. and Bower, R, “Effects of Swing Weight on Swing Speed and Racket Power” Journal of Sports Sciences 24   

       (2006): 7–15.

Golf in the Bay Area: the future’s so bright, we gotta wear shades

In golf as well in other matters, I am an unabashed, unashamed Bay Area/Monterey Peninsula chauvinist. The weather and the geography of the region create an environment for the game that is virtually unequaled anywhere else in the world—as a result, we enjoy the privilege of a disproportionate number of world-class events to enjoy when we are not playing golf ourselves, and that includes the game’s majors.

The highly successful 2019 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach refreshed the region’s reputation as a premium site for golf’s biggest events, and the lineup of big-time tournaments that is coming to Northern California in the next few years illustrates the confidence that the game’s governing bodies have in our area as a golf destination.

Big events return as early as next year, when the 2020 PGA Championship comes to TPC Harding Park in San Francisco. Arguably one of the finest municipal courses in the country, the across-the-lake neighbor to the famed Olympic Club is no stranger to big events, having hosted the Schwab Cup Championship in 2013 and the 2009 Presidents Cup.

And speaking of the Olympic Club, the 5-time U.S. Open venue will host its first U.S. Women’s Open in 2021; two years later the USGA’s ultimate distaff championship will makes its first appearance at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

The year 2025 will see two big-time amateur events in the region. The U.S. Amateur will return to the Olympic Club after an 18-year hiatus, and maybe even more exciting, the Walker Cup—probably the premier men’s amateur event in the world, pitting the best amateur men in the U.S against a team of amateur standouts from Great Britain and Ireland—will be played at Cypress Point, the legendary Monterey Peninsula venue that was once part of the Pebble Beach Pro-Am rota. The opportunity to walk those hallowed Alister-Mackenzie-designed fairways is not to be missed.

The major-event calendar comes full-circle in 2027, when the U.S. Open returns to Pebble Beach, marking the Del Monte Forest venue’s seventh time hosting the national championship. Pebble will then be tied with Baltusrol Golf Club, in New Jersey, for second place in host-club status, behind Pennsylvania’s Oakmont Country Club, which will host its record-breaking tenth U.S. Open in 2025.

And finally, as far into the future as the crystal ball can see, in 2028—when I will need a hovercraft-style floating chair to get me around the course—the PGA Championship will return to the Bay Area, alighting across Lake Merced at the Olympic Club for the first time.

Rickie Fowler one back at Pebble Beach

Rickie Fowler, the current “best player without a major”, has started a buzz going with an opening round 66 in the 119th U.S. Open at Pebble Beach.

The former OSU Cowboy shared the first-round lead with SoCal’s Xander Schauffele, 2010 Open Championship winner Louis Oosthuizen and Aaron Wise, a PGA Tour rookie this year, at least until Englishman Justin Rose did them all one better, pouring in a 10-foot birdie putt on 18 to finish with a 6-under 65.

Fowler, a popular player with the fans and his fellow PGA Tour players alike, is perceived as something of an underperformer. Coming out on tour in 2009 after a strong amateur and college golf career, he didn’t win a PGA Tour event until 2012, when he defeated Rory McIlroy and D.A. Points in a playoff. Fowler has won four more times on tour since the win at the Wells Fargo, for a total of five professional victories.

In 2018 he carded Top 5 finishes in all four majors, adding fuel to the fire for his “Best Player Without A Major” title.

Pebble is special—in more ways than one

Pebble Beach Golf Links occupies a special place in the world of golf, a position that is based on the physical beauty of its location, the design of the course, and its historical significance in the game.

History
Nothing accords a golf course a special position in the annals of the game like the USGA choosing it as the site for their premier championships—the United States Open and the U.S. Amateur. Pebble Beach Golf Links has hosted the Open six times now, which puts it behind only two other golf courses, both venerable East Coast layouts: Oakmont Country Club, in Pennsylvania (9); and Baltusrol, in New Jersey (7).

This plaque, in the rough on the left side of the 17th green at Pebble Beach Golf Links, commemorates Tom Watson’s historic chip shot in the final round of the 82nd U.S. Open.

Pebble holds the distinction of being the first public golf course (that is, open to play by the public) to host the U. S. Open, in 1972, when the course rewarded the USGA’s decision by producing a truly worthy winner—Jack Nicklaus—and an historic moment—Jack’s laser-beam 1-iron at the par-three 17th hole, a shot that rattled the stick for a kick-in birdie.

Ten years later Pebble’s second U.S. Open put up another worthy winner, Tom Watson, who finally racked up a win in the national championship after two Masters wins (1977, 1981) and three British Opens (1975, 1977, 1980); and another historic moment at the 17th hole—a chip-in birdie from lush Open rough next to the green, the shot that set up his victory over Jack Nicklaus—a shot so revered that it has been commemorated with a plaque.

In addition to the U.S. Open, the course has played host to the U.S. Amateur five times (1929, 1947, 1961, 1999, 2018), second only to six-time hosts Merion Golf Club and The Country Club (well known as the site of amateur Francis Ouimet’s thrilling 1913 U.S. Open victory over Harold Vardon and Ted Ray.) 

The event that really put Pebble on the map was Bing Crosby’s “Clambake” pro-am. Originally played at San Diego’s Rancho Santa Fe Golf Course beginning in 1937, the event was halted in 1942 by the onset of American involvement in World War II. When the event resumed in 1947 it was relocated to the Monterey Peninsula, playing on a trio of golf courses centered on Pebble Beach.

Showcasing the beauty of the Monterey Peninsula, with a star-studded list of Hollywood A-listers (Phil Harris, James Garner, and Jack Lemmon, to name a few) on the amateur roster, the Clambake was a PR bonanza for the region which continues to this day, in its current incarnation as the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

Design
Challenging despite its relative lack of length—7,075 yards as set up for the Open; 6,958 for the AT&T Pro-Am—Pebble Beach makes up for its lack of yardage in other ways. While it has its detractors (mostly those course architecture buffs who revere the provision of options off the tee), Pebble presents its challenge to golfers largely in its second and third shots, and putting.

Sloping fairways and uneven lies put a premium on second-shot performance at Pebble. For example: holes 9 and 10 slope significantly to the right, in the direction of the “Cliffs of Doom” overlooking Carmel Beach; at the 6th hole you’re faced with a looming three-story-high cliff face that separates you from the putting green.

The greens at Pebble demand approach-shot accuracy of the highest order. At an average area of 3,500 square feet they are the smallest on the PGA Tour, with an average depth of 26 paces, so precision shooting from the fairway (hopefully) is paramount.

Precision second shots and fearless putting are the key to success at Pebble Beach; it’s a shotmaker’s course that asks a lot of a player.

Beauty
For the casual golf fan, or folks who aren’t golf fans, in particular, but who show up or tune in during the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am to see their favorite celebrities tee it up, Pebble Beach is special for its location.

Whether or not Robert Louis Stevenson ever called Carmel Bay “…the most felicitous meeting of land and sea in creation…” (hint: he didn’t), it is a famously beautiful setting—blue Pacific waters lapping up against the rugged, rocky California coastline, all backdropped by the green and gold oak-bedecked hills of the Santa Lucia Range rising up behind.


The rocky cliffs that edge much of the golf course give way, going south, to the broad sandy crescent of Carmel Beach, and further south yet, past the village of Carmel-by-the-Sea and Carmel River Beach, to the rocky fastness of Point Lobos State Preserve (which Australian painter Francis McComas did call the “greatest meeting of land and water in the world”), visible from the southern reaches of the golf course.


The television coverage during the AT&T is rife with beauty shots of the scenery and the local marine wildlife—seals and sea lions, whales, dolphins, orcas and the occasional squadron of pelicans flying above the blue waters in echelon-right formation—and the ubiquitous “dogs frolicking in the surf on Carmel Beach” shots.

These images are a large part of the reason that the television coverage of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am is so popular: while viewers in much of the country are shivering in sub-zero temperatures and/or digging out from the latest snowstorm, the Central California coast is, more often than not, enjoying sunshine and pleasant temperatures. (And when “Crosby weather” kicks in, with wind and rain and TV shots of umbrellas being flipped inside-out, the East Coast and Midwest audiences can gloat, just a little, at those Californians getting a taste of nasty weather.)

This combination of factors: the quality of the golf course, the almost overwhelming beauty of its location, and the history of the events associated with the venue give Pebble Beach Golf Links a unique position in the game of golf.

Before it gets real—Wednesday at the 119th U.S. Open

After record high temps, “June Gloom” returns to Pebble Beach

After several days of scorching temperatures in the Bay Area, including record high temperatures recorded at nearby Monterey, Wednesday at the 119th U.S Open, at Pebble Beach Golf Links, brought the cooling “June Gloom” fog.

An interesting difference between spectator routing at Pebble Beach for the U.S. Open vs the AT&T Pro-Am: access to both sides of the first and second holes. Wednesday practice rounds drew spectators despite the onset of “June gloom” weather.

As the golf media swarmed into town, and the more ardent golf fans braved distant parking and long bus rides to see their favorite players getting in some last practice holes before the flag drops on Thursday, the fog produced a diffuse, lambent glow to illuminate the Del Monte Forest. With the sun obscured by the marine-layer fog, the shadowless yet oddly glary light was accompanied by a chill breeze; both sunglasses and 1/4-zip sweatshirts were the order of the day.

Like the AT&T Pro-Am, but “more”

If you are familiar with getting around Pebble Beach during the AT&T Pro-Am, you will have to re-learn some things when you come to the Open here. There are more, and different, walking routes—for example, you get to see the left side of the first and second holes, which is no-man’s land during the AT&T; and the walk past #3 tee to #16 and the holes beyond is simplified by the lack of vehicular traffic on the entrance road.

In fact, everything about the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach is “more”. More fans, more merchandise, more things to do besides watching golf. There were more fans on the grounds—on a Wednesday—than I have seen on some tournament days during the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, and more media folks in the massive media center tent that occupies the site of the former driving range, just above the Peter Hay Par-Three Course .

There are more concession stands; more grandstands; more marshalls, security, and infrastructure.

More over-tanned guys in the latest golf apparel opining to their buddies about the quality of the golf holes here at Pebble Beach.

More unwilling (and less-willing) girlfriends/wives being dragged around the course by their golfing boyfriends/husbands, wearing more inappropriate footwear (those chunky wedges are going to be a problem, ma’am…) and complaining that there are no celebrities to watch, just golfers.

More families of footsore-but-happy children and frazzled moms taking dad out for a Father’s Day treat.

More event merch being worn by fans on the course (especially when the weather turns from sunny and 85 to cloudy and 61 from Tuesday to Wednesday.)

Tomorrow it gets real

For all the pre-event chatter in the golf media about Brooks and Tiger and Dustin and Jordan and their chances of winning, or whether or not the USGA course setup folks will “lose” the course if the weather stays or turns hot, if the Wednesday practice-day crowds are any indication, this Open will be a huge success—at least from a fan’s point of view.

People were taking the day off of work, in the middle of the week, to come to what is arguably the most beautiful, and undoubtedly the best-known, golf course in the United States to watch the best players in the game play practice rounds. That’s some golf love.

Today was a tuneup—tomorrow it gets real.

Golf Hall of Fame Class of 2019 Inducted in Carmel

Changes in the schedule and timing of the induction ceremony for the World Golf Hall of Fame in recent years has seen the ceremony moved away from the Hall’s facility in St. Augustine, Florida to be held at other notable venues in the world of golf.

This year, as the U.S. Open returned to Pebble Beach Golf Links for the sixth time, the Hall of Fame welcomed an auditorium full of golf’s luminaries to the Sunset Center, in nearby Carmel. Thirty-four Hall of Famers were in the audience on the Monday evening before the 119th U.S. Open—more than have ever been gathered in one room at the same time.

The 2019 Class of the World Golf Hall of Fame
(clockwise from top right: Retief Goosen, Dennis Walters,
Jan Stephenson, Billy Payne, and Peggy Kirk Bell)

Five new members were inducted into the Hall on Monday evening: two for their playing records—Retief Goosen and Jan Stephenson, and three in the Lifetime Achievement category—club pro, trick-shot artist, and disabled golf advocate, Dennis Walters; talented amateur golfer and early LPGA member Peggy Kirk Bell; and former Augusta National Golf Club chairman Billy Payne.

Dennis Walters, who was a 24-year-old assistant club pro when he was paralyzed from the waist down as the result of a golf-cart accident in 1974, has been supporting the growth of the game of golf for over 40 years through trick-shot performances and playing clinics. Walters is one of 11 honorary lifetime members of the PGA of America, was awarded the Ben Hogan Award for courage in 1978, and the 2018 recipient of the USGA’s Bob Jones Award.

Walters has done over 3,000 performance and traveled three million miles since he started doing playing clinics and trick shot shows.

Jan Stephenson has won golf tournaments on five continents – over 20 in all, and has transitioned from a champion golfer into a champion supporter of golf-related charities.

Stephenson earned LPGA Rookie of the Year honors in 1974, and went on to win 16 tournaments on the LPGA Tour, including three major championships—the 1981 du Maurier, 1982 LPGA Championship, and the 1983 U.S. Women’s Open. She became the face of the LPGA Tour in the 1977 when she was featured in an ad campaign, the brainchild of then-LPGA Commissioner Ray Volpe. The use of a somewhat racy outtake photo on the cover of Sport magazine vaulted her into the spotlight, promulgating an image which has followed her throughout her career.

Stephenson was a founder of the Women’s Senior Golf Tour, now the Legends Tour.

Peggy Kirk Bell was an outstanding amateur star, a charter member of the LPGA, and a member of the winning 1950 United States Curtis Cup team. She was a lifetime teacher who lived to spread the word about the game of golf, which she did with relish at her resort, Pine Needles Lodge, in North Carolina. An enthusiastic aviator, Bell once organized a tournament at Pine Needles which required players to hold a valid pilot’s license.

Retief Goosen is a two-time U.S. Open champion, in 2001 and 2004; Euro Tour Order of Merit winner in 2001 and 2002; and played on six consecutive President’s Cup teams, from 2000 to 2011.

Goosen survived being struck by lightning on the golf course as a 15-year-old, yet continued in the game. Transitioning from an amateur career in South Africa, he moved on to the Sunshine Tour, the Asian Tour, and the European Tour, where he eventually racked up 14 wins, before moving on to the PGA Tour. His seven wins on the PGA Tour include two U.S. Opens; the 2001 U.S. Open was his first PGA Tour victory.

Billy Payne was the chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club for 11 years, from 2006 to 2017. He was the driving force behind the effort to bring the 1996 Summer Olympic Games to Atlanta, Georgia. During his tenure, many changes were implemented at ANGC, including the induction of the club’s first two female members—former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Atlanta-based financier and business executive, Darla Moore—and the nationwide Drive, Chip, and Putt competition for children aged seven to 15.

A 24-handicap’s day at Pebble Beach – in U.S. Open nick

One of the great things about being a golf writer is the perks that come your way, and among those perks is the occasional round of golf at a great golf course. Such was the case 2-1/2 weeks before the 2019 U.S. Open, when I attended the USGA’s May 22nd preview day for that event, at Pebble Beach.

Pinch me, I’m in heaven…

I have played Pebble Beach once before, in support of an article I was hired to write for the 2015 edition of the Monterey County Guidebook. I played with three complete strangers, and had a great day—highlighted by a par on #9, the toughest par-4 on the course.

For the preview day we lucky, lucky media folks played a shotgun start; my group teed off on the 10th hole. It was interesting to tee off on 10 – it gave me some perspective into what players experience when they go off of split tees in tournaments at Pebble. It’s a long trip out there, but if you can’t start on #1, starting on #10 is the next best thing.

The Back Nine

Of course, the tenth hole at Pebble is a tough starting place for other reasons. It isn’t the most difficult par-4 on the course, but as the 7-handicap hole it’s close, after holes 9, 11, and 8; however, with its right-sloping fairway–a characteristic it shares with its predecessor on the course, #9, it is a difficult tee shot for someone who fights the occasional “let’s-call-it-a-fade” with the driver.

True to form, my first tee shot of the day caught a little too much of that fairway slope, and rambled off the Cliffs of Doom to a new home on Carmel Beach. Careful to drop according to the dictates of the latest updates to the Rules of Golf, I promptly put the next bright yellow Titleist into sand of a different sort—the left-hand bunker of the tenth green. (This was to become a recurring theme.) I got out of the bunker okay (thank you, Cleveland RTX-4 sand wedge), and two-putted for a net bogey.

After wasting the two shots my handicap gives me on the 11th hole on a pushed-drive/lost ball off the tee, turning what might have been a net eagle into a net par, I found sand again on #12, planting my tee shot in the yawning front bunker. On the 13th hole I took a circuitous route through the lush, Open-level rough on the right side of the fairway to the bunker in front of the new back-right lobe of the green. Four holes into the round and I had already been in so much sand that I expected to see Omar Sharif and Peter O’Toole galloping down the cart path.

My early sacrifice of a brand-new Titleist on the 10th hole must have bought me some credit with the golf gods, however, because I managed to avoid the bunkers on the 14th hole. This loooong par-5, the #1 handicap hole on the course, must have the most lopsided ratio of length to green size of any hole in golf, even after the recent rebuild, which added 800-odd square feet to the putting surface. I discovered just how tricky a hole location on the right-side addition to the green can be, though, when an otherwise good-looking approach shot that flirted with the ski-slope front of the green rolled back to me like an obedient puppy coming to heel, sinking my chances for a one-putt net par.

On #15 I avoided Arnold Palmer’s nasty left-side bunker complex by driving into the rough on the right. On #16, I nailed a line drive off the tee that left me center-cut with 130 yards to the middle of the green, but pulled my second shot into no-man’s land to the left of the green from the resulting downhill lie.

Then came #17 – the well-known par-three with the hour-glass green that would make a corseted fin de seicle beauty envious – where I pushed a hybrid into the grandstands-to-be, found the ball, took relief, made my bogey/net par and moved on to the world-famous 18th hole.

I managed to avoid the newly grown-in rough that now crowds in from the right with a straight, but abbreviated drive (thanks to the stiff breeze that had come up) in the fairway, then went right rough, manhole cover (w/tree trouble – see photo), bunker, out, two putts – double-bogey (net par).

“I get a drop from this, right?”

The Front Nine

In the interest of brevity, here are some highlights of the front nine:

#1: Right rough, tree trouble, more rough – net par.
#2: Left rough, layup short of the tank-trap bunker, right bunker, nice out, two putts – net birdie.
#3: High draw off the tee – which is the shot you want to hit here, it’s just better if it makes it all the way to the fairway. Mine didn’t.
#4: I honestly don’t remember what I did on this hole, but my score card shows a bogey/net par.
#5: Stubbed my tee shot, resulting in an unintentional layup – on the second-shortest par-three on the course… bogey/net par.

That brings us to Number Six, the monster par-five on Arrowhead Point. Not as long as the fourteenth, nor as famously scenic as the eighteenth, the sixth hole at Pebble Beach is, nevertheless, a beast, an absolute beast. The wide(ish) fairway is bordered by bunkers on the left and a miniature version of the Cliffs of Doom on the right. Keep your tee shot in the green stuff and you’re standing over a slight downhill lie, looking up at a six-story-high green cliff which you have to fly to get to the second fairway, or if you’ve got the oomph, the green. This with no aiming point on the blank horizon that cuts the California sky above you.

The first time I played the sixth hole, four years ago, I pushed my tee ball to the right, over the cliff, took a drop– and lost my next shot left, somewhere in the vicinity of the upper tee box on the eighth hole, leading me to put an “X” on my scorecard and tend the flag for my playing companions.

This time around on #6 I laid a pretty decent drive into the left fringe, short of the bunker complex. Taking 3-wood based on the yardage to the flag, I pushed a low stinger – not the shot I was trying for, by the way – into the cliff face to the right of the green stuff, reloaded, foolishly tried again with 3-wood and stuffed that shot into the looming green wall that separates the lower fairway from the green complex, thus cementing my place in the textbooks under “How Not to Play the Sixth Hole at Pebble Beach”.

I subsequently popped my ball out of the rough and up the cliff face with an iron of some kind—and into one of the left-hand bunkers. On the green lying six, I missed my putt for a snowman, picked up and took my ESC-mandated eight.

All-time score: Pebble’s 6th hole – 2, Me – 0.

Four years ago when I played #7, the picturesque par-3 contender for “World’s Most Photographed Golf Hole” that inhabits the schwerpunkt  of Arrowhead Point, I overcooked a GW and flew the green. This time the following breeze knuckled my tee shot short and into the front-right bunker, from which I got up and down for a bogey/net par. I am hoping that, having bracketed the green here in two outings, a third will find me on the dance floor in regulation. (One can dream, can’t one?)

My foursome’s penultimate hole of the day was #8, the par-4 with the greatest second shot in golf. The fairway skew for the U.S. Open was very apparent on this hole, with a good 20 yards of fairway removed from the left side. Overcompensating, I pushed my drive right, into the rough and just yards away from (another) watery grave. With 185 yards to the flag, and ≈ 150 to the “second fairway” layup area in front of the green, I played smart, laid up, and made bogey/net birdie.

Starting on #10 means, of course, finishing on #9 – the most difficult par-4 on the course, thanks mostly to the uneven lies that await you even if you keep your ball away from the “Cliffs of Doom”. I hit one of my better drives of the day here, center of the fairway, maybe 150 yards out.

Center of the fairway on the ninth hole at Pebble Beach—what could go wrong?

The beautiful drive left me with a hanging lie on a fairway that sloped away from me and to the right, resulting in a pulled approach and my first experience in the infamous front bunker on nine. This time, however, my trusty Cleveland wedge let me down (or I blew the shot – you choose), and I bladed the bunker shot over the green.

It was late, I was tired, and my playing partners were putting out – so I put another “X” on my scorecard and called it a day.

The Wrap-up

Any day at Pebble Beach is a good day, especially with a golf club in your hand, no matter how many brand-new Pro V1x’s you leave out on the course. I didn’t break 100, as I had hoped (though how I had expected to do so when I hadn’t swung a club in anger, except for putting, since December I have no idea.) Actually, my putting was pretty darned good – four one-putt greens and eleven two-putts. Pretty good on Pebble’s infamous dance floors—if only it didn’t take me so many strokes to get there.