Golf Guides USA has just updated its annual list of the Top 30 Public Courses in our coverage area, and to no surprise, Bethpage Black sits atop again. Yet how does the rest shake out? Find out, here.
LOCAL FEATURE: NY-Metro's Best Links-Style
TO THE LINKS-(STYLE)!
With a lack of “true links” courses, the NY-Metro market has made itself home to the best of its hypenated, American counterpart.
By BRETT CYRGALIS
Managing Editor
As I walked off the first tee of Lido Golf Club with my bag securely on my shoulder, I smiled. There was a cold, gray November sky, and the wind was swirling like a sleeping beast. I was wearing a winter hat over my ears, two long-sleeved shirts under a thick sweater, and a wind jacket. A pair of long johns under my old corduroys. Let it blow, I thought. Let’s have some fun.
My drive off the first tee went right, over near the bunkers and broken seashells. By the time I got to it, the wind starting pushing. It shoved me back towards the clubhouse, back towards the warmth of a steaming coffee and a cheese danish, to the hum of the Golf Channel and the scraping of wooden chairs on the tile floor. The woman behind the counter would welcome me, tell me to wait it out, or just tell me I’m crazy and, with a chuckle, encourage me to come back another day.
The third green at Lido Golf Club on the south shore of Long Island.
But no. I was off. I was looking at about 250 yards into what seemed like a brick wall of air. I set my bag down, perpendicular to the gusts. Pulled a two-iron. Within seconds, the bag hit the ground with a thud and a jangle, the white tattered towel flying in a mad dash back to shelter. I ran after it, clamped it to the ground with the head of my flat iron, and, again, smiled. One of these days, huh?
I was still cold and not used to my cumbersome outfit yet, so my attempt at a stinger approach came out fat and low, flailing in the wind like a dead duck. It settled about 175 yards from the green, and from there I plowed on, checking my ego with the set of new cleats still sitting in my trunk.
In the sight of no one, I played the first 13 holes of Lido in a wind that at times – I swear – got over 50 miles-per-hour. I hit some shots low and flush, only to see them balloon up in the sky and travel 30 yards. I hit a 4-wood on the toe that bounded onto the front of the green at the 375-yard third hole. Throughout it all, I laughed like a child – or like a madman, depending on your point of view.
But when it gets down to it, I don’t think I’m the first one to ever enjoy a day like this. And it was most enjoyable because of the golf course.
Lido Golf Club is on the south shore of Long Island, near Jones Beach. It is the descendant of “The Lido,” the famous C.B. MacDonald track that, during its height in the 1920s, was considered by many to be the best (and most difficult) golf course on Earth. But the current course is on adjacent land and was built by the mind of Robert Trent Jones, Sr. – a very different mind than that of MacDonald’s. But the spirit, the essence, the overwhelming ethos of the property (because, of course, the property is alive) is that of wonderment. As it was with The Lido, so it is with the current Lido Golf Club: a place for man to commune with nature and engage the elements. It’s a place made for toiling, for playing a game that forces you to navigate through the myriad conditions sent to you from on high.
What we speak of is the spirit of links golf.
But no, Lido is not a “links” proper. It doesn’t abut the Ocean, but instead Reynolds Channel, which opens up into Middle Bay on the inland side of the barrier island, protecting it from the Atlantic. Its soil, although consistently firm in most areas, isn’t necessarily sandy. The terrain of the golf course is very flat, with almost no trees, no blind shots and very few rolling hills or nooks and crannies. Most bunkers are shallow and wide, and you can see them as you play. The greens are rather small and pushed upwards by fronting bunkers, fitting right in with the green complexes of Trent Jones’ Florida courses.
So, in a culture that is consistently in search of labels and categories, how do we describe the current Lido Golf Club?
We hyphenate it. Rather than creating a new word – which would be rather silly – we crunch two together to create a phrase that in its very nature ambiguous.
We call courses like this “links-style.” You can almost never say the word is misused, because in reality, it means very little. When pressed, its best use is to describe a golf course that has few trees and is flat. Of course, you can argue that courses with partial forests are still “links-style,” and that courses with some severe elevation changes are “links-style” as well. The word is a cover up for many ill-conceived layouts and many uninspiring landscapes.
But there is a lot of good that comes from this worrisome adjective. When used properly, “links-style” evokes a feeling that is instinctual, guttural, deep inside the subconscious of many a golfer. It brings about the idea of the original links, the Old Course at St. Andrew’s. It rarely replicates the majestic picture of the Home of Golf, but it can, at its best, conjure up similar emotions. Emotions of man in harmony with nature, of man trying not to tame nature, but learn from her and use her power to his advantage, of man reveling in the power and glory of the natural Earth and the joys a simple game of ball-in-hole can bring to ones soul.
The terrain is certainly dramatic at Long Island National.
For everyone lucky enough to play golf in the New York-Metropolitan market, we have an array of great, links-style golf courses to choose from. (For now, let us leave the quotation marks behind.) And although there are a handful of historically significant links-style private clubs in this area, when searching for the real heart of the idea you must head to the public courses.
The notion of golf being an exclusive sport for the rich elite is something that is uniquely American. The reasons for this go deep into sociological theory, and use golf only as a metaphor for American class structure. But at the home of the game, in Scotland, golf is a sport for the masses. The townspeople of St. Andrew’s own the old links, a municipal Mesopotamia for a modern global game. Show up there tomorrow, no matter where you’re from, and with two hundred pounds you have as much right to hit out of Hell Bunker as any descendant of Old Tom Morris.
“I hope to live to see the day when there are the crowds of municipal courses, as in Scotland, cropping up all over the world,” wrote Alister MacKenzie, a native Scotsman who built the likes of Cypress Point and Augusta National, which have now become two of the most famously private clubs in the world, as well as the long-forgotten Bayside Links in Queens, a municipal course that was forced to close due to the construction of the Long Island Expressway in the 1950s.
“It would help enormously in increasing the health, the virility and the prosperity of nations. . . . There can be no possible reason against and there is every reason in favor of, municipal courses.”
Long Island
Let us start then with the aforementioned Lido Golf Club in Lido Beach, Long Island. With one side of the square-like property running up to the tame waters of Reynolds Channel, there is a feeling throughout the Lido property that evokes the real linksland. For about nine holes, you can spot the body of water in the distance, and Nos. 5 and 13 play directly alongside a bulkhead. The piece of property, as it is with most links-styles, is dead flat, and there is little nuance from tee to green. But because of this topography (or lack thereof) the wind whips off the channel in angry spurts. Across Lido Boulevard, a few blocks south, is a beautiful beach the runs up to the Atlantic Ocean. This proximity only makes for the weather to be more variable – and ultimately makes the already interesting layout even more so. Stretching to 6,913 yards, this is no pushover even without the wind.
There was a very famous hole at MacDonald’s original Lido that was the epitome of risk-reward. The fourth hole back then (now on a piece of vacant land adjacent to the current site) was a 510-yard par-5 with two options off the tee: either you could play on a direct line to the green onto a small island fairway that sat in the middle of what MacDonald dubbed “the lagoon,” or you could play safe and go left, to another island fairway, this one a lot larger and curving back to the right in the direction of the green. From either fairway, you had to carry water again on the second shot to reach to green.
Well, Trent Jones did his best to recreate a masterpiece – and did so by building No. 16 on the current course. Loved by some and despised by others, this 487-yard par-5 plays to an island fairway shaped like a “Y” with the green straight away up the narrow right arm. No matter your opinion on the hole, it makes for some interesting golf shots and some thought provoking discussions. It is clear that the hole – as well as the golf course as a whole – would not fit in with any conception of true links golf. But links-style? Throw the bag on the shoulder and enjoy.
The rolling terrain that makes up the roller coaster ride at Long Island National.
A little farther east on Long Island sits a tribute to American golf course ambiguity, Long Island National. Built by Robert Trent Jones, Jr., this delight opened in 1999 to rave reviews. Being in Riverhead, at the spot before Long Island splits into the north and south forks, puts the golf course in close range of some of the heavy hitters of American golf. But the extreme exclusiveness of the likes of Shinnecock, National Golf Links, Sebonack, Maidstone, Atlantic, etc., has made this public track a go-to for a multitude of reasons.
First being the quality of golf. Starting as a 150-acre potato field, the amount of earth moved to create this rollercoaster ride is just unimaginable. Trent Jones, Jr., obviously had in mind the rolling fairways of real linksland, but by playing God with a bulldozer, he created a landscape that is a lot like looking at linksland through a funhouse mirror. The dips and swales that envelope every inch of play make for some fun bounces and good strategy, especially off the tee. A lot of fairways seem to be built up with bumps on one side, while on the other side there is a deep depression – the result of moving earth from one side to the other. That also creates the need for precision that, if not found, can add up to some big numbers for a course that isn’t that long (6,838, back tees).
With native grasses growing on most of the areas not through the green, as the wind blows it creates that beautiful, wave-like illusion in the amber stalks that make a man happy to be alive. Although half the course is open and treeless, while the other half winds its way through some tall wooded areas, the positive emotions that a good links-style course creates come burning through on this piece of land. If it feels contrived, embrace it and play some of the most entertaining golf shots anywhere in the NY-Metro area.
Not too far from Long Island National sits another links-style gem, built around the same time in the same vein – but the result being quite different. Tallgrass Golf Clubopened in Shoreham on the north shore of Long Island in 2000, and the understated Gil Hanse design has been on the deserving end of many compliments over the past decade. Although only going back to 6,587 yards, the course offers ample difficulty by the way of rolling fairways and undulating greens. With the conditions kept fast and firm, native grasses growing on every bump and mound, and with almost no trees to block the swirling winds, Hanse has created a modern links-style gem accessible to all levels.
One of the great short par-4s at Tallgrass on Long Island.
Among the many, many more links-style courses throughout Long Island, we would be remiss not to mention Montauk Downs Golf Course, all the way out at the eastern most point of the south fork. This Trent Jones, Jr., track has recently been renovated and, with few trees, rolling hills and a hard wind coming off the Block Island Sound and the Atlantic, this is one of the best rounds in the area. The same can be said for Timber Point Golf Club in Great River, on the south shore. A course with a rich history dating back to C.H. Alison’s original 1925 design, the complex now offers 27 holes and features some of the most dramatic, links-style golf in area. If you have a chance, do not miss the opportunity to play the Blue nine, featuring the original “Gibraltar” hole, Alison’s take on the famous eighth hole at Alister MacKenzie’s Moortown Golf Club in England.
Also, Cherry Creek Golf Links in Riverhead offers two 18-hole courses, the Links and Woods. The aptly named Links – the original Charles Jurgens’ design that opened the facility in 1996 – has few trees and is fairly open in its playing areas, creating a consistently strong wind. It wraps up with the only par-6 on Long Island, which is grip-it-and-rip-it, links-style golf at its core.
New Jersey
Although Long Island seems to be the most conducive natural terrain for links-style courses, there are some very fine designs in – of all places – New Jersey. With some beautiful landscapes and engaging topography, our coverage area of The Garden State – as far northwest as Sussex County and as far southeast as Monmouth – contains some of the most dynamic links-style golf courses in the area.
The lush greatness of Royce Brook East in New Jersey.
Stretching the limits of our bedeviled adjective is Royce Brook Golf Club, in Hillsborough. Sitting in central Jersey’s Somerset County, about 50 miles southwest from Manhattan, Royce Brook has two distinctly different 18-hole golf courses, the East and West. Although the West Course is restricted to members only (it is a semi-private facility) and fits the links-style bill a little more comprehensively, the East Course in its own right creates a beautiful setting that unquestionably taps the links ethic.
Designed by noted architect Steve Smyers and opened in 1998, the holes of the East Course weave through the natural surroundings of wild native grasses and wetlands to compile a very unique experience. It’s unique mostly because these links-style attributes are set in and around a forest. With tall trees framing holes and coming directly into play often, it might be a stretch to call this course “links-style.” Some might go so far as to call it “parkland” – another overly used ambiguous golf course adjective.
But because of the serene setting, the East course can lull the golfer into feeling like he or she is on the Carolina shoreline. The rather large bunkers are mostly shallow and built in traditional finger-shaped designs, normally found on the periphery of the fairways and at corners of doglegs. The greens are generally well guarded by similar bunkers and chipping areas, making for some challenging approaches and some nifty short-game shots on a course that stretches out to 6,946 yards. The creativity needed by the golfer to produce different types of shots, tee to green, makes for a round that speaks to the sheepherder in all of us.
And speaking of sheepherders, didn’t they wear kilts? Like the kilt worn by the bagpipe player standing sentry at Ballyowen Golf Club in Hamburg, up in Sussex County?
The tough par-3 at Ballyowen that utilizes the natural ponds in Sussex County, Northwestern New Jersey.
Yes, it’s true that as the morning dew begins to evaporate and the ground in the foothills of the Kittatiny Mountains starts to warm, a grown man stands on the patio at this gorgeous club and blasts away the dawn mist with traditional Irish chants from a plaid-colored ancient instrument. The attendants all run around in yellow knickers, white socks and dark blue tams, cheery, ready to say “Top ‘o the morning to ‘ya,” although they all probably grew up pronouncing “you” as “youh-z.”
Dramatic, yes. But the point is that when you arrive at Ballyowen, it is obvious you are in for a special treat. This arm of the Crystal Springs Resort (which is home to five terrific golf courses) is as good as it gets concerning American links-style golf, as architect Roger Rulewich pinpointed all that is right with this genre of design.
Utilizing the dramatic elevation changes, the natural ponds and the ever-rolling hillside, Rulewich carved a golf course that seemed dormant in the land all along. There are holes that make their way around water hazards, like the 203-yard, par-3 sixth hole. There, with all carry from tee to green, the design could feel forced. But because of the way it’s situated, teeing from a small islet in the middle of a pond back to the “mainland,” the hole becomes just a joyous place to hit a golf shot.
Because there are very few trees on the course – mostly on the perimeter of the grounds – the wind whips around this place and drastically changes the way it plays on a daily basis. Every mound that frames each fairway is covered in tall, native grasses, and the result is a 7,094-yard (back tees) course that is as aesthetically pleasing as it is physically enjoyable.
As there were on Long Island, there are many, many more courses in our coverage area of New Jersey that deserve recognition for being examples of good links-style design. One of them is Colts Neck Golf Club, in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Being in Monmouth County, the proximity to the Atlantic coastline encouraged many architects to build in the links-style vein. Here, Mark Mungeum didn’t force the issue, when in 1999 he built a natural, rolling golf course that is somewhat short (6,250 yards from the back) and open, allowing for some creative golf. Another good example is Neshanic Valley Golf Course in Neshanic Station, Somerset County. Dr. Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry came into this 420-acre piece of flat farmland and built a 27-hole complex at championship length and a small, 9-hole track for beginners. No matter which two nines you pair together on the big course, you will be in for a delightful, open round of golf with some environmental hazards (a Hurdzan/Fry staple) and some native grasses adorning the tops of mounds.
Back at the Lido, I set my bag down (no stand, I had learned) and walked around some six-foot tall reeds the get to the back tee of the thirteenth hole. To my right was the bulkhead that kept Reynolds Channel from flooding the golf course. It ran all along the right-hand side of the hole, and, as could be expected, the wind blew hard off the water.
I teed my ball low and aimed at a small island in the distance, the target line being about 30 yards out into the water. I hit it well and it started on line, but with a bit of hook spin, it started moving left – and kept hooking and hooking. It ended in the left rough, about 150 yards short of the green and 150 yards left of where I aimed it.
By this time, the sky was getting darker, and the air was getting moist. A rain was about to fall, and when it came down, it was going to be cold, and heavy. It didn’t seem like there was much time left in this ride, so I hustled up to my ball, and chunked an 8-iron short of the green. There, I took a pitching wedge and tried to play a low chip to the flag cut in the middle of the green. I looked up, bladed it and cringed. Then, with a loud clank! the ball hit the flagstick and dropped in. I tossed the club over my head, and as it flipped around, a gust of wind began to move it over my back and I quickly ducked as if avoiding a bomb. It landed 10 yards behind me in a little damp collection of rocks and shells, and I fell to me knees laughing.
When I got to the fourteenth tee, it was raining, and I never got a sight on my hooked 2-iron. I walked around looking for it, but then decided to just walk to the fifteenth tee. More rain, now penetrating my cheap windbreaker and dampening my sweater. My bones were achy and I struggled to stay vertical as the wind pushed hard against as I teed up on the par-3. I could hardly see out of my rain-soaked glasses, and the 5-iron I hit felt thin and right, headed towards the water and the reeds. I never saw it, never looked for it and walked to the sixteenth.
There, at the starting point for one the finest examples of links-style golf anywhere in the New York area, I paused. Was this a great hole or a contrived one? Does this design utilize the landscape it was given, or press upon it the ideas of golf courses that are so far away and so foreign in concept? Is this the modern, American incarnation of Ballybunion, or Carnoustie, or even Prestwick?
And, after wiping the rain from my face and stuffing my barren hands in my pockets, should I hit driver up the right side or 4-wood to the left?
I had to smile, because at this point, what else could you do? I took out an old ball, teed it up, smacked a driver somewhere up into the cold rain and then turned for the clubhouse. Where the ball went is really irrelevant to the situation that was at hand. It was the experience that mattered; the feeling of the rain on your shoulders as you try to get up-and-down, and that same rain that eventually tells you enough is enough, go home.
I’ll never forget that day because in all its chaos, it was peaceful. The bonding that golf and I did during those couple hours are irreplaceable, and, in this humble man’s opinion, best found on golf courses where the origin of game is never too far off.
Brett Cyrgalis is managing editor of Golf Guides USA and is also a sports writer at the New York Post.
The New York-Phil Love Affair
Phil Mickelson has a love affair with New York, and the feeling is mutual. The reigning Champion Golfer of the Year did not win at Liberty National in Jersey City, but smiled nonetheless. (Photo by NYPost)
By BRETT CYRGALIS Sporadically throughout the golf season, Brett Cyrgalis will write some semblance of opinion about the week in golf here. He is managing editor of golfguidesusa.com, as well as a sports writer for the New York Post and author of a forthcoming book from Simon & Schuster on golf's scientific revolution and its mystery.
Phil Mickelson loves New York. He spoke about it after his Sunday 66 at Liberty National in Jersey City -- where he is a member -- and even declared it his favorite place to play in the world.
Bethpage Black hosted the first leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs, The Barclays, won by Nick Watney. Although a resounding success, it showed the Black's future should be with major championships. (Photo by Golf Guides USA)
By BRETT CYRGALIS Every Monday during the golf season, Brett Cyrgalis, who is managing editor of golfguidesusa.com, as well as a sports writer for the New York Post, will write some semblance of opinion about the week in golf here.
The Black Course at Bethpage State Park is a lot more than just another great golf course. It’s more than the wonderful, sprawling Tillinghast bunkers. It’s more than the expansive land, the elevation changes, the tall, wispy fescue. And it’s more than the rowdy New York fans who make it one of the most exciting venues in professional golf.
It’s more than all of that because the people that grew up on and around the course care for it deeply. The take such pride in its location – the middle of a public park, paid for by public funds, maintained by state employees. They know the ins and outs of each hole, probably more comprehensively than a private club member might know his own course because, although the general public doesn’t log the same amount of hours on the course, each one of those hours means so much more.
I’m one of these people. Playing public golf in the mid-1990s, the Black was a fallen masterpiece, then restored by the little boy that still resides in former USGA director David Fay, who was and still is one of us, growing up in Westchester and making the pilgrimage across the Throgs Neck Bridge as often as possible.
Fay’s egalitarian thinking led to the 2002 U.S. Open, the first national championship going back to 1895 that was played on a truly public golf course. It was outstanding. The fans that week were arguably better than any fans in the history of professional golf in the sense of their enthusiasm. It was like watching your little league son get an at-bat at Yankee Stadium and hitting a home run. The cheers were with a passion that’s more than fandom, more than celebrating sporting success.
And those cheers came back again in 2009, even though the weather didn’t exactly cooperate. Through the rain and the mud, the people of Bethpage – which is not to say the town, but the people from all over who belong to that course and to whom that course belongs – again created buzz, again made it seem like this was the most important thing, like history was being spun and all those in the surrounding environs knew it, felt it, and amplified it.
Now the U.S. Open is booked until 2019, and Bethpage is not on the list. So the state gets approached about hosting a PGA Tour event, the first leg of their FedEx Cup “playoffs,” a $10 million gimmick to create some intrigue into golf after the PGA Championship. The state says yes.
So I start to get worried. I call Mike Davis, who took over for Fay at the helm of the USGA. I know courses on the PGA Tour don’t get U.S. Opens. No one remembers the winner of the Wells Fargo Championship. No one forgets the winner of a U.S. Open.
“I will say that if Bethpage were to host the tour every year, we just wouldn’t [go back with a U.S. Open],” Davis said. “But with what the PGA Tour is doing with the Barclays makes so much sense. The tour players absolutely love [Bethpage]. I think it’s a great thing for golf. I think it’s a wonderful thing not only for the state park, but also for Long Island golf fans. We view the whole thing as very positive.”
I take a deep breath. Bethpage has signed up to host the Barclays again in 2016, in a four-course rotation. Davis points out how smart that is in order to keep the state’s attention on the golf course so it doesn’t fall back into ruin as they wait 15-some odd years for another major.
I hear rumblings about the PGA of America being in talks with the state to bring either the PGA Championship or the Ryder Cup to the Black. I call Dave Catalano, the former head of the whole park who started there picking papers in 1967. I’ve known him for almost half my life. He’s more than one of us. He’s the No. 1 “one of us.”
“This is a great venue,” he says after confirming those talks, “probably the best venue in the country.”
I write the whole thing for the New York Post, just so people like me don’t start panicking, don’t start thinking that Bethpage is soon to become a PGA Tour place, a place where only some of the best players in the world come, and although it’s annually, it’s not important. It’s not the U.S. Open.
“On so many fronts, it’s not a question of if, just when,” says Davis, noting the Open will be on Long Island, at Shinnecock, in 2018, meaning at least some time after that before Bethpage is an option.
Once it is possible, we all know what should happen. Bethpage was not made for a run-of-the-mill tournament. It was not made to host the PGA Tour annually. It was not made to be a nice little track outside of a major metropolitan city.
This is New York, the world’s greatest city. This is it’s golf course, huge and difficult and full of personality. Bring us a major championship, or a Ryder Cup, because it isn’t doing the golf course justice with a small-timer. Yes, they hold the Met Open there, and other local events. But those are for us anyway, not for the world. Bethpage Black is like Bruce Springsteen; hang around Asbury Park, and you might catch him doing an acoustic set at a small bar, but when he goes on tour, it’s all stadiums, because that’s what he has earned.
The Barclays was a fun little thing, nice to see Nick Watney win and make a case for the Ryder Cup team. Because that was the story, not what happened at Bethpage but how it can affect something bigger coming up in the near future. That’s not the way it should be for our oversized friend, a course that teased this week with great conditions, showing if they take it up a notch for a major and get the same weather, it will be a phenomenal test.
Which is what we want: the best. This event was surely not bad, but it’s not the reason we love the Black. We love it because it’s made for a major, we’re made for a major. So here’s to telling the PGA of America and the USGA where to come ASAP, because we’re longing for it – as they should be too.
Love it or hate it, let Brett know at
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It was Englishman Justin Rose who took the 113th U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club outside of Philadelphia, and it was a tournament rife with emotion, as only our national championship can provide. (Photo by NYPost)
By BRETT CYRGALIS Sporadically throughout the golf season, Brett Cyrgalis will write some semblance of opinion about the week in golf here. He is managing editor of golfguidesusa.com, as well as a sports writer for the New York Post and author of a forthcoming book from Simon & Schuster on golf's scientific revolution and its mystery.
ARDMORE, Pa.—The driving range for this U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club is all the way on the West Course, a good mile and a half from where the tournament will take place. Players and hangers-on have to get in eight-person vans to travel back and forth, over bumpy makeshift roads. Media and gallery members are left to their own devices, or a real people-mover shuttle.
It’s early Sunday afternoon, about 2:30. Yet to show up is fan favorite, Phil Mickelson. He is inside the players dining tent, having a quick bite and a palaver with his coach, Butch Harmon. Just to the left of the range is the short-game practice area, where Hunter Mahan is rolling putts with the smallest of strokes, watching as the ball plummets down the slightest hills with immense speed, even the practice green as tight and fast as a linoleum floor. Mahan and Mickelson are in the final group together, while walking up the hill from the green to the range is Justin Rose, the lithe Englishman, two groups ahead and two shots behind Mickelson’s lead.
Standing next to me is Sean Foley, the coach of Mahan and Rose. He also coaches Tiger Woods, the No. 1 player in the world who was already halfway done with his final round and would finish his worst U.S. Open as a professional at 13-over. He hasn’t won a major since 2008, it’s been almost three years since he started working with Foley. The pressure is there, no question, but now Foley’s attention is on his two young charges.
He says his dream would be for the two of them to get into a Monday playoff, so he can be back at home in Florida to relax and watch it. This day, he’s leaving the Philadelphia airport bound for Orlando on a 6:15 p.m. flight, so he won’t know what happens until he lands. At this point in the process, it’s not like there’s anything he can do.
“Time to go to work,” he says, and follows Mahan over to the chipping area.
Back up the hill, Rose trots over to the right side of the range and begins stripping it. Thump, thump, thump go his irons. Ding, ding, ding go the woods.
Mickelson walks around the small grandstand with Harmon at his side, faithful caddie Jim “Bones" McKay carrying the mammoth red-white-and-blue Callaway staff bag. It’s his 43rd birthday, and the crowd – as small as it might be – adore him so much that a rendition of “Happy Birthday” comes raining down in full throat. Phil smiles, as he always does, and brushes his hair back before doing a short television interview with Golf Channel. He has won four major championships and 41 PGA Tour events. He is already in the Golf Hall of Fame. Yet the national championship has always been his most coveted tournament, and he has been runner-up a devastating five times. “If I never get an Open,” he would say seven hours later, “I’ll look back and every time I think about the U.S. Open I’ll think about heartbreak.”
He showed up to this tournament four hours before his Thursday morning tee time, traveling back to California for his daughter’s eighth-grade graduation. This Sunday is Father’s Day, and the emotion in the crisp Pennsylvania air can be seen right here, in the distance between Phil in the middle, Mahan now on the left, and Rose to the far right. The fans are buzzing, and the few people up here to see this are in full reception mode. Every detail could be a story to tell your grandkids. Just before Phil finally won the Open, he waved at me. The balls are popping off this grass plateau into the valley below, flying in the air like the tiny fragments of a buckshot scattering. There is some chit-chat, and Foley lifts his eyebrows from behind his wayfarer Ray Bans as he walks past, using a large folded umbrellas as a prop walking stick as he heads over to Rose.
With some alignment tools on the ground, Rose looks like he’s working on his game a lot more than he is. This is a tidying up phase, and getting comfortable phase, and reconstituting confidence phase. Foley has a camera bag strapped diagonally across his chest, but the device inside will stay holstered for now. No need for video or photos. No need for anything now except words of encouragement.
“I got to give a lot of credit to Sean,” Rose said later. “He did text me a very nice text this morning that was unrelated to golf. He said something along the lines of just go out there and be the man that your dad taught you to be and be the man that your kids can look up to, sort of be a role model.”
Rose’s father had died of Leukemia in 2002, just four years after he turned professional. At the Open Championship at Birkdale in 1998, a 17-year-old Rose holed out from the left rough on the 72nd hole and smiled a coyly and he walked to the green, low amateur and tied for fourth on golf’s biggest world stage. He immediately said goodbye to the amateur world, and missed his first 21 cuts as a professional.
“The scar tissue on the golf course, it's like anything, it just takes time to heal,” Rose said. “It was a pretty traumatic start to my pro career. I've never really talked about it because you don't want to admit to that being the case, but I think when you've got past something you can talk openly about it.”
Rose flushes a driver, the white head of his TaylorMade club flashing by his face and around his head to over his right shoulder. Hell, I’m not sure if that ball has landed yet. Foley stared straight into the eyes of his student, and stared and stared. Finally, Rose looked back and Foley broke up laughing. The ball was hit so flush, his work was done. He picked up his bag, picked up his umbrella, and gave Rose a huge hug. It’s wasn’t a modern man-hug, with arms in between. It was a chest-to-chest hug, both arms wrapped around, a full embrace. Foley said something quietly into his ear, the two smiled, and then the coach walked off.
“We hug it out, bro,” Foley said as he walked by. “Always hug it out.”
Rose then sauntered off to the first tee, where he would hit one in the fairway, hit one on the green, and two-putt for a par. He was off for what would be a career-defining round, culminating on the horribly difficult 18th hole. Stepping to the tee of the 511-yard par-4, Rose had a one-shot lead. He pulled that same driver that made Foley laugh, and belted one right down the middle of the fairway.
“You just close your eyes and you make a swing,” he said, “and you sort of hope to see it going down the fairway. Because you can't control it either way.”
It was more than just in the fairway, it was right next to a small piece of bronze buried in the earth. Just two feet to the right of where Rose’s ball was sat the Hogan plaque, the exact place where the immortal Ben Hogan hit a 1-iron on the 72nd hole of the 1950 U.S. Open, making par and forcing a playoff that he would win the next day, just 15 months after getting into a near-fatal car crash.
“When I walked over the hill and saw my drive sitting perfectly in the middle of the fairway, with the sun coming out, it was kind of almost fitting,” Rose said. “I saw [the plaque] and I thought, This is my moment.”
It was. A flushed 4-iron to the back fringe, and little popped 3-wood to two inches, and the par was his. About a half hour later, Mickelson came up needing to make a 30-yard pitch to tie. It sailed past the hole, and from inside the clubhouse, Rose rejoiced. The silver U.S. Open trophy was his, and the emotion came pouring out.
For Mickelson, it was more heartbreak. A sixth runner-up in what he called his best chance to win his favorite tournament. For Mahan, it was another high finish in a major, watching from the last group as his career moves along nicely in unspectacular fashion.
For Rose, it was a tribute to his father. It was a tribute to all his hard work put in first on his own, then with Foley. It really was a tribute to perseverance.
And that’s what the U.S. Open is supposed to be about, no? Who has the will and determination. Who is tough enough. Who will not get discouraged in the face of adversity. Who is going to do whatever it takes to win this thing.
Once a year there is a golf tournament that is a masochistic social experiment, and with it come some of the deepest emotions felt in sport. There’s nothing like it, and in the end, it’s a wonder to behold.
The original version of this story was posted on BrettCyrgalis.com, where the author posts personal tidbits from his life and from the reporting of his forthcoming book.
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In the face of speeding modernity, it's the creation of memories which slow down time. In golf, those memories are abundant, and have the ability to make life seem just a little bit longer. (Photo by Golf Guides USA)
By BRETT CYRGALIS Sporadically throughout the golf season, Brett Cyrgalis will write some semblance of opinion about the week in golf here. He is managing editor of golfguidesusa.com, as well as a sports writer for the New York Post and author of a forthcoming book from Simon & Schuster on golf's scientific revolution and its mystery.
The NHL season drags on, and so do I. From watching the Islanders in Philadelphia, then the next night seeing them wrap up their regular season in Buffalo . . . to five nights in Pittsburgh, where the playoffs start . . . to Long Island, where I go straight to the arena without stopping at home . . . to Pittsburgh again . . . to Washington, D.C., for the Rangers . . . to Boston for the Rangers . . .
It all becomes one big blur, with months of time crunched together into a conglomeration of small moments, memories. Hockey arenas are different, but the same. Some nights are better stories than others. Some nights are more memorable for what happened after I walked out of the arena. Some nights are utterly forgettable.
So I get a day off, a Wednesday, in mid-May. The sun is out. It’s warm enough. I meet my Dad for a casual round of golf at 11 a.m. It is not a release, because there is more season, more cold seats high in the rafters, more bad press-box food, more bad decisions about the candy buffet in Boston.
But it’s a respite, a short breath before a long run.
So we play, I hit it OK, and we enjoy ourselves. By 2:30, we’re inside the grillroom, me enjoying a Guiness, Dad enjoying a martini, and some friends at a table enjoying some peanuts and pretzels in a small glass bowl. Laughs are had, the Mets are made fun of even after Rick Ankiel hits a triple off the left-field wall – maybe because it was Rick Ankiel hitting a triple off the left-field wall – and come 4, everyone is set to go home.
My fiancé is away on business, so my desire to go home isn’t elemental. What I want, actually, is more of this. Not the laughs or the beer, but more time. I don’t want a precious free day to disappear. I want it to last.
So the question now is time. How can I slow it down? How can I pump the brakes on something that seems to rush by, ad infinitum?
And I think about Einstein, and the malleable nature of time. The general theory of relativity, of how gravity warps time-space, about how the faster you move, the slower time gets, about how at its very core, time isn’t a constant.
And I think about the terrific little narrative book by Josh Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein, the one that details the author’s trip through the World Memory Championship, and digs deep at the concept of how the brain registers time.
In describing his interaction with an amnesia patient known as “EP,” and referencing a scene about one of his memory coaches, Ed Cooke, Foer writes:
Without time, there would be no need for a memory. But without a memory, would there be such a thing as time? I don’t mean time in the sense that, say, physicists speak of it: the fourth dimension, the independent variable, the quantity that dilates when you approach the speed of light. I mean psychological time, the tempo at which we experience life’s passage. Time as a mental construct. Watching EP struggle to recount his own age, I recalled one of the stories Ed Cooke had told me about his research at the University of Paris when we met at the USA Memory Championship
“I’m working on expanding subjective time so that I feels like I live longer,” Ed had mumbled to me on the sidewalk outside the Con Ed headquarters, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. “The idea is to avoid that feeling you have when you get to the end of the year and feel like, where the hell did that go?”
So there is the idea – time quantified through the creation of memories. If you jam more memories into the hours and minutes and seconds, it allows for the lengthening of time. At the very least, it’s the internalized feeling that time has slowed. I don’t think this is something scientifically provable – not yet, anyway – as it is more a question of psychological interpretation. How long does a day feel? How long does a minute feel?
For full disclosure, this all came to me afterward, after I put my shoes back on and headed back out to the golf course. I jumped in a cart and shot to the first open tee, No. 7. There I found a nice little niche in between all the afternoon foursomes, and I played and played and played.
I hit a high fade 3-wood into the ninth fairway, put a wedge right up over the flagstick, and missed the downhill birdie putt inexplicably short for the second time in three hours. I hit a block driver off of 12 into the gully right, chipped out with an 8-iron, hooded a wedge just left of the green, chipped to seven feet and missed the bogey putt on the low-side left.
There was no keeping score, no tally marks of fairways hit or greens in regulation. It was all just sunshine and bogies, and I remember the vast majority of it. By the time the shadows had stopped being long and started being all encompassing, I had played 39 holes in eight hours. I went home, sautéed some shrimp in a light, white-wine, garlic and jalapeno sauce, put it over some rice and sat down on the couch.
It was late, and I was tired. I had to wake up in a couple hours to drive through the gridlocked midtown tunnel for a Rangers morning practice before a playoff game, a day when I would walk out my front door at 9 a.m. and walk back in at 2 a.m., and think it all went by in a flash, like the last month has gone by in a flash, like the last six months have gone by in a flash, like most of the first 29 years, now the past.
But golf, that ancient game of mystery, it just lingers there to be had, hanging over each bit of life – mine, at least – like a reminder about your control of time. What is there to like about hitting a ball, chasing it, and hitting it again until it’s buried in the earth?
Memories.
Modernity is so fast, yet right there you have the chance to slow it down by creating more memories. Old people like golf, and maybe most of them believe it’s because it’s easy to do, it keeps them active, it’s social, and they like the outdoors. That’s all well and good – and true.
But maybe, somewhere deep, it’s about prolonging the inevitable, about fighting off death with more and more life. About pushing back against the relentless pressure of time. About knowing, at least for a brief moment, that you have some say in the speed of your life.
The original version of this story was posted on BrettCyrgalis.com, where the author posts personal tidbits from his life and from the reporting of his forthcoming book.
Love it or hate it, let Brett know at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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