Jay Don Blake on his first hole in Black Desert on Thursday.
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Jay Don Blake understands head tilt. Confusion.
No, he’s not giving away a Millennium Falcon-looking sledgehammer, or a broomstick that stretches up to his navel.
Yes, he is spinning with a gold-colored blade, maybe an inch thick and a few inches long, the only frills of which are only a small curve near the heel and a few words at the end, these three are the most important :
Title Bulls Eye.
“I know a lot of guys have looked at me like, ‘What do you have there?’ Blake said.
“Some people have never even seen a shooter like that.”
This week, as the PGA Tour plays for the first time Black Desert ChampionshipBlake would have a better chance of breaking 50 than avoiding all possible feelings. Black Desert is being held at the Black Desert Resort in Ivins, Utah, where Blake said he could look back and see where he grew up, in a trailer in St. Louis. George nearby. Thursday’s first round also marked Blake’s 500th career tournament start, a milestone he surpassed after tournament organizers offered him an exemption from sponsors for what was the 65-year-old’s first tour event since 2018.
So how would he commemorate it all? Perhaps the best question is how can youbut Blake had a thought, and with it, a story, which he shared on Wednesday. It started with a trip to Vegas – apparently some of the best yarns – where Blake, his nephew and some of his nephew’s friends went to a Sin City golf course, and the longtime pro played like he was going down, would to slap him. With a round of 62 (which included a final bogey), he broke his age for the first time. But most telling of this story, a playing partner also had an eye on the Bulls. Blake had one of those. He sat in a corner of his house. He is over 50 years old.
Dad had given it to him once too, and wouldn’t it be so sweet to throw it in the bag this week – no, it couldn’t. OK, OK, but him can with friends. One round. Why not?
“And they, to this day, still say, he made every single shot with that thing,” Blake said.
“Then I go back to a Scotty Cameron shooter that I’ve used for years and I’d be fine with that and I’d get that Bulls Eye out again and every time I put that thing on it felt like I said pretty awesome . I debated whether to play him or not.”
You know how things were set up there. Of course, he did. What a story, right?
A 65-year-old making his 500th PGA Tour career, seeing where it all started for him then continued.
“I mean, it’s good that I’m comfortable with the nail, but it’s a memory of my dad,” he said as he began to cry. “And so, I’ll walk the streets again with that shooter. I am proud to do so. I’m comfortable with it and feel like I won’t have any problems.
“So it’s going to be fun and I’m going to enjoy it, and all these things are going to be a lot of good memories.”
Before we go though, another story from Blake.
Didn’t he mention above he uses a Scotty Cameron? He had. Would he like to share how this relationship began? He will.
It starts with a shot – apparently some of the best yarns.
“I went out and played this golf course, putting in horror, still putting badly, I was frustrated,” Blake began. “I’m not a guy who gets bored; I have never broken a club in my life. Well, I did it just for the fun of saying I did it.
“But I played these holes and I missed these shots, and around the 14th, 15th hole, I got frustrated and I went to kind of take my putter and kind of fly it, boomerang it to the side of the green. And I accidentally held it too long, and the carts were about 10 feet from exactly where I was going to slide it on, and all of a sudden, as I let it go, I see where it’s going. And the shooter sounded like a pinball machine, the shaft shook the railing.
“And I still have that machine today, and there are strips in it where I had to re-adjust it and get it all back into shape where I could use it for the rest of the round. I didn’t make it to the rest of the round. I threw it in the pond on the golf course there.”
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Only, around that time in February 1991, he soon had to play that week’s tournament stop, the Shearson Lehman Brothers Open, played at Torrey Pines in San Diego. (The tournament is now called the Farmers Insurance Open.)
“We move on to San Diego,” Blake continued. “I went there and they came home, and it’s still afternoon. And I go to the garage, and there’s a gentleman there, Scotty Cameron, who had just gotten his credentials to secure the machines that he built with his dad in the garage. He grew up there in San Diego, so he was there promoting his gear.
“So I’m out there looking for a new pitcher and I end up finding one and putting up with two or three of them. And he says, can I help you with anything?
“I was like, I’m just checking your players. Turns out he let me use one of the putters I felt comfortable with, and using that putter I ended up winning the San Diego golf tournament that same week. So Scotty and I have been friends for a while.
“After the interviews and stuff, you’re leading the tour, they come and ask you some questions, what’s changed in your game. I couldn’t seem to think of anything. I said, I’ve never done anything different to the game and the game is still the same, I haven’t changed much – oh, wait a minute, I’ve got a new shooter, I’ve got another shooter. So they asked me what happened to the other one and I had to tell that story.
“Then, as the story goes, they send a scuba diver to Palm Springs and they fished out the sponge that I threw in the lake, and I still have it. It sits in the corner with the one my father gave me. It still looks as good as ever, but it has a few minor nicks. This is kind of the Bulls Eye player story of how I went from that to Scotty Cameron. And then it will be fun to use again a Bulls Eye that was given to me by my father. It meant a lot when I got it, and it still does.
“It’s a good thing to remember my dad about.”
