MAMARONECK, NY – The eyes of amateur golf turn again to Winged Foot Golf Club this week for one of the game’s great traditions – the 79th Anderson Memorial. Long renowned as the de facto national amateur four-ball championship before the U.S.G.A. added their own event this year at Olympic Club, the Anderson is regarded as one of the Mid-Amateur major championships, along with the Coleman at Seminole, the Travis at Garden City, the Crump at Pine Valley, and the USGA Mid-Am.
Part reunion, part revival, and all the romance the Wagnerian tumult and cloak and dagger claustrophobia of Winged Foot, one of golf’s most proud and ancient strongholds can muster, the après golf of the Anderson is unparalleled. It’s the game’s greatest amateurs vs. a venue that is both the Yankee Stadium of Golf, but also the Graveyard of Champions. Cruel and mighty Winged Foot is likely golf’s most devastating synergy of history and misery, known as much for bitter heartbreak as it is for incomparable grandeur. Standing sentinel in stony silence, the stately clubhouse has seen nearly a century of the tragic poetry of defeat and the ecstasy of sudden victory played out beneath its Gothic gables, and no one knows exactly how merciless the Golf Gods will be on any given day.
Just ask Phil Mickelson about that…
The tournament of two-man teams representing over 80 different clubs and nearly a dozen different countries opens Thursday with 18 holes of medal play over the East Course, followed by another 18 holes of medal play over the West Course on Friday. (Teams will come from as far as Peru, Cabo San Lucas, England, and Ireland for the competition this year.) The top 16 teams advance to the weekend’s match play bracket, contested this year on the newly restored and renovated East Course.
No club in America has two courses as equally good as Winged Foot, and the East course is every bit the equal of the West course in difficulty, while sporting a more diverse, prettier natural setting. Did you know that for the U.S. Amateur, in 2004 the East Course played harder in score-to-par than the West Course? If Winged Foot and the U.S.G.A. wanted, they could simply re-arrange the footprint of the event and host the Open on the East course just as easily with little to no difference in aggregate winning score.
“The East course is a shotmaker’s course. It’s a little tighter than the West, and requires precise placement in the fairways and on the greens. Accuracy is at a premium,” added Congressional Country Club’s Trevor Randolph, who along with partner Paul DeRosa finished tied for third in 2013. “You must take advantage of the reachable par-5s.”
Indeed short par-5s like the fourth and 12th should see some wild swings, as will gorgeous but deadly par-3s like three, 13, and 17.
“It’s tough enough putting one ball on the green on 13 or 17, let alone two,” observed golf design expert Bruce Moulton, a former four-ball club champion at National Golf Links of America. “A birdie on either of those holes is a big plus; they will see particularly few all weekend.”
“13 is my favorite hole on the golf course,” added Met Golf Association star and Winged Foot member Rob Christie, who along with partner Scott Mackesy is a perennial threat to win this tournament. “It’s only 145-150 yards, but if you miss that green, you’re looking at bogey or double in an instant. If you’re short, you’re in the finger bunkers, (so you’re screwed), and if you go over, you have an impossible downhill chip, (so again you’re screwed).”
A recent restoration-renovation by pre-eminent architect Gil Hanse of Rio Olympics course fame has been universally praised. The greens were all rebuilt on sand bases to USGA specifications and were extended back to the full extent of their green pads as they had shrunk slightly over the years. Fairway bunkers were repositioned to be more relevant off the tee, 100 trees that were not architecturally significant were removed, and about 250 yards was added to the course to bring the championship length to 7,000 yards.
The long par-4 fifth and the par-5 12th are the two holes most affected by the changes.
“Five’s gotten a lot tougher,” admitted Christie. “From the back tee box it’s now 285 to the corner. It used to be Driver-8 or 9-iron. Now it’s Driver-5-iron.”
At the 12th, a new bunker extends back into the fairway 30-40 yards, making the second shot much more difficult.
“They took out the pine tree on the left, and lengthened the greenside bunker so that you can’t just run your second shot up as close to the green without some risk,” said Hans Albertsson, another Winged Foot member who will play with club champion Brian Williams. “Now you have something to think about that second shot.”
“The East course has a greater variety of yardages on the par-4s and the greens are more undulating than the West,” Albertsson continued. So even if you’re driving the ball accurately, you might have a short club n your hand, so you can make some birdies. But if you miss the greens on the East it’s even more challenging to get up and down than on the West course.
“The changes are sensational. Everyone is happy with them,” explained the Met Golf Association’s Gene Westmoreland, for decades one of the wisest and most affable men in golf. “The course plays firmer and faster, and the greens are healthier.”
So come dawn on Thursday, nearly 200 golfers, all eager as gun dogs who just heard their owner pull the firing piece off the fireplace mantle will line up as the have for nearly eight decades of this august event, named for a Winged Foot member who passed away at the young age of 49. Though Winged Foot Golf Club holds a place of high prominence in Pantheon of ancient American golf splendors – 5 U.S. Opens, 2 PGA Championships, 2 U.S. Amateurs, and myriad other USGA and PGA of America events – Winged Foot makes an even more important and equally indelible contribution to golf with it’s tireless and dedication promotion of the amateur game.
“Everyone talks about all the major championships here, but perhaps their greatest contributions are to the amateur game,” explained golf expert Bruce Moulton. “Winged Foot is one of the great player’s clubs in the world, and they have a long tradition of growing the game by supporting the amateurs. Most clubs want to be Winged Foot because they host majors. They should want to be them because of the example they set through their altruism. That serves all of golf, and that’s the true greatness of Winged Foot.”
Moulton is right. Amateurs are the beating heart of golf, and Winged Foot stands at the forefront of promoting this spirit. Golf’s heart and soul are not the touring professionals, but families that play together every Saturday and Sunday, fearless kids with big dreams who play till they can’t see the ball in the twilight anymore, then come back at dawn the next morning for the first tee time of the day.
“What they do for this tournament and for amateur golf is just wonderful,” added three time Anderson champion Parker Smith in an earlier interview. “They treat us so well, and it’s such a privilege and honor to come here, just getting to play in it is a life event in any golfer’s career. I’m grateful just to get the chance to compete.”
Then when asked about the key to winning the Anderson it was his partner, Dan Crockett, who spoke up.
“Two balls in the fairway and two balls on the green,” observed Crockett. “It’s tough to lose a golf match if you do that all day.”
As an aside, Smith and Crockett are so good in this tournament, they could roll in 20 years from now wearing Depends undergarments, sporting walkers, and drinking Ensure, and I’d still pick them as a favorite. The laid-back, drawling pair from Tennessee won back-to-back titles aw-shucksing, Copenhagen dipping, and southern charming their way through a gauntlet of well decorated champions on their way to the titles. Smith also won a third time with a different partner. Make no mistake – the tournament may be in Mamaroneck, but the road to the title goes through Rockytop, Tennessee.
Other top amateur stars competing this year include defending champions Fernando Barca and Patricio Alzamora of Lima, Peru, 2012 and 2013 Travis Invitational champion Joe Saladino of Huntington Country Club, the Fox Club’s Eoghan O’Connell, (now a Fox Sports news broadcaster), steely nerved, iron-willed Kevin Hammer of Florida, the Country Club’s Mike Kelley, and Whisper Rock’s “Big Ben” Hayes, another former champion of the Travis.
Finally, perhaps the best international star England’s Mark Wharton, won of the most decorated amateurs in the UK. Twice a runner-up in the tournament, the dapper gent bring a little Saville Row to the proceedings, often winning the unofficial “best dressed” award in a tournament also known for its own impromptu “apparel scripts.” Indeed, the Max Christiana and Max Buckley won the title in 2013 wearing matching pink and white outfits.
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