SOUTHAMPTON, NY – Welcome to the Open! that is, OUR Open, our American national championship, although this Shinnecock Hills the golf course, built by the Shinnecock men, appears to have been flown in from Scotland. The South Fork of Long Island is a giant sand pit, really. American linksland, if there was such a thing.
In the coming days you will hear a lot about changes to the course, its maintenance and more. Sorry: I’ve been to this Shinnecock course many times over the years, as a caddy, reporter and game guest, and I’d say the course hardly changes at all. To me, it’s a pale rolling field with wind-blown humps. Shinnecock Hills is beautiful, in a stark, timeless and challenging way. Like golf: beautiful, in a stark, timeless and challenging way. The quiet ball, a golfer on it, bravery and doubt swirling in the north. It’s true for them and it’s true for us. The second hand of the watch drags. When you’re doing well, a shake can seem like you’re takingev-is it? Right?
Golf passes the time in weird and wonderful ways. Michael Murphy invites you to “Golf in the Kingdom” with this: “The game was invented a billion years ago – don’t you remember?” Golf loves wind, too, and this holy week on deck looks to be as windy as you’d hope for an air-carried course. Here (again) is John Updike, courtesy of a wander long ago: “It was happiness, in this wilderness between the rails and the beach, and freedom, of a wild and windy kind.” A player will walk away from this 126 US Openand the sixth played here, especially happy. He will have his name on a trophy forever.
On Father’s Day in 1986, Raymond Floyd won the second Open played here at Shinnecock Hills. An hour or so after Floyd’s win, I found myself sitting in the press tent one row behind Joe Gergen, a sports columnist for Newsday. Gergen was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with small flowers and was typing on a typewriter. He paused now and then to laugh at something with the writer at his right elbow. I was 26 years old. I carry the image with joy to this day.
I just re-read the story that Gergen presented that night. (Thanks, Newspapers.com.) His first quote is from Floyd: “Often I express my joy in tears.” Gergen’s entire column, indeed, revolves around Floyd’s eyes. You take a little bit and push it out – I was starting to get the hang of it. Golf and writing were already staples of my life, but more cement was poured that night. A few weeks ago, Gergen had written a generous column for my first book, an account of my brief stint as a tour caddy. A 40th anniversary edition of that book has just been published. The march of time.
I almost can’t believe it, turning a blind eye to it all. I can see my childhood mornings almost in real time. Maybe the same is true for you. It’s the papers in the gravel driveway of our house in Patchogue, about 30 miles west of here. Our neighboring village, Bellport, there was a communal course where for $50 a year I played all weekday afternoon golf I wanted through high school and college. (We played fast to finish.)
My brother and I, as kids, read Dave Anderson and Red Smith in the sports section of the book New York TimesRussell Baker on his Op-Ed page, the “On Language” column by William Safire, many others, Cap’n Crunch surveying everyone with cereal box eyes. In 8th grade I had a gym teacher who taught an introductory golf class, plastic balls aimed at basketball hoops. That class changed my life. My first US Open (so to speak) was in ’74, at Foot with wingsmainly through newspaper coverage, along with broadcasting. Watson, Trevino, Palmer. Hale Irwin won. Watson won the British Open a year later. I was mesmerized.
Good luck has a lifespan forever, right?
A bookish young golfer in Western Pennsylvania read my little memoir, my first book, when I was 12—and at thirty became my editor. (My good luck.) This new edition is all that, plus Brad Faxon, who wrote an introduction to it.
At the ’86 Open at Shinnecock, Faxon, then a young touring pro and now (we all know) a veteran broadcaster, was the first option, ready to play if someone retired. I played for him in practice rounds on Tuesday and Wednesday. When no one backed out, he flew to Chattanooga to play in a much smaller event there. He won. I traded my caddy badge for a press pass and watched Joe Gergen in action on Sunday night. A few months later I was hired as a high school athlete The Philadelphia Inquirer. The editor said: “I like the way he was traveling around the country on the cheap, doing that weird thing.” (Cheap flights on People Express – my way to a big city everyday.) Suddenly I had colleagues who actually knew Joe Gergen and Dave Anderson, among other deadline heroes.
Hero worship is no longer a thing. Maybe we waited too long. Tiger Woods was always good at working on his golf weaknesses. Apply as desired. The other parts are the other parts. The unbridled joy that Paul McCartney takes from his music and that of others, how inspiring is that? When he was 24, 44 and 64, you could see that joy all over his despondent face, and you still can, 84 knocking on his door. (You don’t make music, says McCartney; you play it.)
Roger Angell, the late baseball writer and author, was at the height of his powers in the 90s. An inspiration. Gary Player used to say, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” Whole worlds in it. Yep, lots of XY here. Excuse me while I scream and shout, cell phone in hand, about this foursome: Susan Orlean, Kate McKinnon, Bonnie Raitt, Meryl Streep. (Writer, comedian, musician, Meryl Streep.) The names alone make you want to turn up the volume, do some dancing, raise your game. right?
The first US Open at Shinnecock Hills was held in 1896. I was on hand for the next four, in 1986, 1995, 2004 and 2018. And I have a press pass — a media credential — for that. luck –eh. Forty years later, Joe Gergen’s example continues to inspire me. This life of oppression.
As we finished a round of nine holes earlier this year (on the soft remains of a US Open course), one of my regular playing partners said he hadn’t read my first book.
“Please don’t,” I said.
“Why?” he asked.
“It’s terrible.”
“Then why are they bringing it out again?”
“Well, she has a certain charm.”
In 1985, when I was trying to become a professional caddy, the Pebble Beach pro-am was still named for Bing Crosby. By ’86, Bing was out and AT&T was in. I feel like I caught the PGA Tour in its last year as a mom-and-pop operation. I had a mentor on the court named Killer who won the 1979 Open with Hale Irwin at Inverness. When my pro missed the cut at the US Open at Oakland Hills in ’85, we spent the weekend parking cars on our hosts’ front lawn. At the BC Open in Endicott, NY, I stayed in a dorm for $5 a night. I was a recovering English major trying to make it as a vagabond caddy. The stakes may seem low, but they were high then. They were high for me.
I didn’t know what I was doing, not as a caddy, not as a writer. But I liked it, all of it. The golf, the scene, the sheer excitement, trying to capture it all in printed words. Forty years later, nothing has changed, except now I know what everyone of a certain age finally understands. George Bernard Shaw said that youth is wasted on the young. Unpleasant and true. This is not painful, but it is painfully, painfully true: It goes by too fast. This week will go by so fast. Everything goes very quickly. Dance as much as you can.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
