GARDEN CITY, NY – A few years ago, an editor from a travel magazine called with an irresistible offer: Go anywhere in the world you like and write about the golf scene there. I offered Suffolk County, the eastern half of Long Island. I was born and raised in Suffolk County, on its brackish south coast, about 30 miles from Shinnecock Hillsand the golf there is my golf. My wife Christine was less than thrilled, with her proposed venue in this gig offered and Australia and Japan on her to-do list. i understand I realize now that I should have said all of them of Long Island.
On Tuesday, I walked around the old, almost invisible Walter Travis course here at Garden City Golf Club in Nassau County, the westernmost county of Long Island, near New York City. I had never been there before, never even passed it. The day and the weather, the round and the course, the competition and the camaraderie – you could say this little golf event was centuries in the making, but you could also say it came together on short notice and out of nowhere. Both statements are true. We were a 50-something golfer and a 70-something golfer (our host) playing a 60-something golfer and an 80-something golfer. The match was even on the par 17 with a short par-5 and a long par-3 remaining. Everything about the day – afternoon to dinner – was outstanding. It was real golf. You can probably tell already.
i know you You’re here because you’re on this club green of ours, just like Jack Nicklaus is, talking honestly about this game; as is Madelen Sagstrom, pregnant and playing in the US Open; as is Bob Charles, newly 90 years old and still walking the greens and hitting his golf ball. Three inspirations.
“I think most of these golfers here, they play their round of golf, they finish the round, take their hat off, shake each other’s hand and say, ‘Well done’. Or they say, ‘Oh, you played like a fool today.’ I don’t know what they’re going to say. But it’s always a nice greeting.”
He doesn’t know because you can’t know. You’re not the 18th green boy and you don’t know how the day went. From one day to the next, this game is never exactly the same, just as we are never exactly the same. That’s why Bob Charles is still at it. What lovely comments – Big Jack, still looking great.
A few days ago, I was hitting balls on the range next to a tall, haggard teenager, still in high school, hitting long, skinny iron shots.
“What can you shoot on a good day?” I asked. I know of no better way to ask this question. I stole the phrase, years ago, from a field tour pro.
“Four or five,” said the child.
“Wow,” I said. “Mid 70’s.”
“Four or five down,” said the child.
I like his future. But I like mine too. I shot 103 last week and it was a paper 103. But I can play better. At 66, there are few things about your game that you really know, except that it’s different from one day to the next. For most of us, our mood and golf are inextricably linked. This is true for professionals, but less so. They are better at burying their mood and getting on with it.
For most of us, our mood and golf are inextricably linked. This is true for professionals, but less so.
This is from a letter I recently received from a course owner:
I appreciate LIV Golf and the PGA Tour doing more for the recreational game than even COVID because the golfing public is tired of seeing a bunch of pros grab money and complain. People would rather play than watch a sport with declining star power.
Thirty years ago, we knew that David Duval had graduated from “Tier 2” to “Tier 1” (not that those terms existed) by winning twice on the Nike Tour. Suddenly, he had a PGA Tour card. It wasn’t a complicated progression.
Duval was already a star golfer, but not yet an Open winner, when it was made available to him Sports Illustrated writer Gary Smith. Smith went deep with Duval, and forever after Duval was known not only for being a star golfer, but also an interesting and complex person. The American golf tour was built on such circumstances, on big things like Ben Hogan winning the US Open at Merion after a Greyhound bus practically flattened him, and more intimate things, like Nick Faldo and Greg Norman, not friends at all, hugging at the end of the 1996 Masters after Norman’s painful collapse. We’ve all fallen on tour at some point.
Maybe it doesn’t really matter, that’s what the course owner is saying. We will always have our game, what my friend and correspondent calls the “recreational game.” That’s what the four of us were doing in Garden City on Tuesday afternoon. We were recreating on purpose. We were playing recreational golf and playing for keepers.
The terrain here, on this Walter Travis course here in Nassau County, could have been shipped by boat from the East Coast of Scotland, when the Atlantic crossing could take half a month. Our divots were about the width and length of the bacon strips. Not even. The ground under our feet was hard and sandy. On our best pitches on the edge of the green, we were hearing a dull hum tah-poomp while landing the ball. The bunkers were walled and filled with coarse beach sand and the only thing missing was a few sleeping sheep. The walks from the green to the tee were (and are) short and the entire fairway was a kind of pale green, not the fluorescent green that makes you cringe, it’s so unnatural. The extension sticks for sale in the pro shop are made of wood. Refreshments on the course come from the back of a work cart. Metal bands on large, two-putting greens are so heavy they could be training tools in any new workout craze.
The club here is a bunch of books on shelves and trophies showing various national competitions. You wear a coat, no tie, to lunch and (to borrow a phrase) through the clubhere at Garden City Golf. That is, Garden City for men. (Yes, one of the last of them.) The course is over a century old, regardless of the start date, whatever incarnation of the course you choose to use. I could see where it falls in the various course rankings, but I really don’t care. I know what I like, like we all know what we like. It brings to mind Elie, on the East Coast of Scotland.
Garden City in 1895.
getty images
The course is flat and short with a nice shape and is loaded with visual tricks in modest elevation changes. The course is alive and the round moves. Without a hint of racing, you walk for less than four hours. Caddies caddies. They are not in the cart. Almost no one is. The course is a celebration of weakness as a traditional value of golf, walking, e beauty – there! friendship The clubhouse is a celebration of lived-in comfort that doesn’t have or want even the hint of a nod to show and display. The whole country is a golf holiday. We played in a warm afternoon breeze. Don’t try to impress the valet with anything, your clubs or your coat or your car or what have you. The servant boy is not impressed.
Mark, in his mid-80s and hitting a long streak of par shots in the warm Tuesday afternoon wind, was (uncharacteristically) in his pocket on the 17th, but I made 4 there the old-fashioned way (three shots straight to the face and a backhand shot). We went 1 up. I was in my pocket on 18, but Mulvoy – my partner has famously traveled the golf world for 60 years on just his last name and his stories – hit some kind of wonderful hybrid hole drawing high and to 10 or 15 feet and that was enough for the win. A Tuesday with Mulvoy.
We followed our host to the library bar and a plate of room temperature cheese you could cut with a butter knife. Someone in a member’s coat was telling stories about the scratches on his shoulder blades from the old Burton bags he used to carry in Merion in his sweet youth in the last days of the date, packing doubles for $7 a bag.
Nobody this Tuesday in Garden City was talking about Tier 2, relegation, Tier 1, signing events, blah blah blah. No one was talking about a hundred-dollar “Nass” with automatics (a game invented down the street, at the Nassau Country Club). In our best-ball game on Tuesday, we were playing for a lot more than that, and Nassau was a proud two-syllable name and game. Mulvoy holds a regular card.
As I write this a day later, I’m still basking in the joy of it all. Our host, a retired banker who publishes obscure golf books because he can, had us there because he likes the company of people who like golf and for no other reason. The kid in our quad, Don’s partner, was Mulvoy’s very tall son-in-law, with so much quickness (in his late 50s) and so much length in every way he can think of. Scottie Schefflernot that Scheffler’s name came up at all on Tuesday because it didn’t, not with us. These golf names did: Ben Crenshaw, Tom DoakBob Jones, Walter Travis, John Updike. Updike’s home course, Myopia Hunt outside Boston, also celebrates scandal. Myopia had four US Opens. Garden City had it once, in 1902. The courses and clubs share an atmosphere.
Soon after the editor of that travel magazine called me, inviting me to go anywhere, his gloss faded. Businesses are funny that way, although not funny ha-ha. It is easy to start a business but hard to start a business that makes money. I don’t know why the PGA Tour is suddenly in business making money for its owners. Who said it was even for sale? The best courses, in my accounting, do not have or want a profit incentive. Garden City Golf Club does not have a profit incentive. It is not a business, except to be in their business. However, in the years since he called the editor, Christine has made it to Australia and Japan. I’m still working on Long Island. The five courses at Bethpage are just down the road from here and anyone can play them.
;)
