Golf Book Review – Jeff Shelley and Mike Riste’s Championships and Friendships

Championships and Friendships:

The First 100 Years of the Pacific Northwest Golf Association

 

 

            Although I only have time to name a few, I love Jeff Shelley for a million reasons.  First, he’s honest, hard working and loves golf to the marrow of his bones.  Second, he’s the best kind of editor; he hardly touches anything I write.  Finally, and just as important, when he writes a piece, it’s accurate, informative and interesting.  Over his long career, Jeff has discovered some of the most fascinating pieces of golf history.

 

            That being said, welcome to the biggest, heaviest and most comprehensive golf book you’ll ever see in your life.  C&F is bigger than a breadbox, more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap all seven Harry Potter novels in a single bound volume.  It’s not just a golf book but an encyclopaedia: the only place to go when you need any information on golf in the Pacific Northwest.

 

            Indeed, the name is appropriate – both for Jeff and the work.  It’s called Championships and Friendships for two reasons.  First, it pays homage to the camaraderie the game inspires, focusing on the warm personalities that brought the game to the masses in the Pacific Northwest.  Second, it highlights the rich history of competitive golf in the region.  Despite being larger than many a dictionary, it reads easily, indeed cheerfully, bringing to life its subjects with a sincere vibrancy.

 

            The book is not meant to be read cover to cover, but as a reference work.  Organized into short vignettes, C&F covers the rise of the game’s popularity in the region from 1895, describes the formation of the Pacific Northwest Golf Association, and tells the stories of important tournaments and players.  At 437 pages, five pounds, 8 x 11 inches and three back spasms waiting to happen, I can’t give more than a thumbnail sketch of everything Jeff and Mike cover, but here are just a few nuggets.

 

            Get ready to fall out of your chair, but Jeff has discovered that Royal Montreal, founded circa 1874, may not be the first golf course in North America.  Pouring through the records of the Hudson Bay Company – one of the original settlers of the Northwest – and surveys of both Methodist missionaries and scientist Charles Wilkes, primary source records indicate that a clerk of the Hudson Bay Company fashioned a rough-hewn six-hole golf course near Puget Sound sometime in the 1830’s.  That course, now sadly lost in the shadows and dust of antiquity, would predate Royal Montreal, Chicago Golf Club, Shinnecock and even the Philadelphia Cricket Club, which opened its doors for cricket in 1854.

 

            “Apparently when a Canadian brought his golf clubs across the border into America, he was stopped at customs and questioned about his clubs” Jeff recalls with a chuckle.  When the owner explained what they were, the perplexed customs agent just “listed them as ‘agricultural tools’ because they would tear up the ground!”

 

            Happily, the astounding revelations were only beginning.  Golf history buffs eagerly recall that the U.S.G.A. was founded on December 22, 1894 in New York City and that the first U.S. Open was held at Newport Country Club the following year, but accounts discovered by Jeff clearly show that golf was first played in the Pacific Northwest in the 1880s by some of the numerous Scottish immigrants in Victoria and Vancouver, British Columbia, Tacoma, Washington and along the northern Oregon coast.  This news is almost as staggering as the Dutch mercantile records that indicate that perhaps golf was actually imported to Scotland by the Dutch.  Records also indicate that Vancouver Golf Club was founded in 1892 and Victoria Golf Club was formed in 1893.  Therefore both predate the U.S.G.A. and the first U.S. Open.

 

            As the tome progresses, myriad photographs lovingly depict the founding of early courses and the organization of sanctioned tournaments – both medal play events and team matches between clubs.  “Some of the courses now have thousands of trees, including Fircrest, which when it first opened had wide-open views of Mt. Ranier that are now completely obscured.  The same thing happened at my club, Sand Point, which only had thirty trees on it, but now has over 1,800.  These courses were designed by Scotsmen for crying out loud” Jeff laments in an almost scandalized voice.  You can almost hear him slap his hand to his forehead in frustration.

 

            Over time, all the greats of the game added to the golfing lore of the region either by winning tournaments contested in the northwest or dueling fiercely with local favorites.  Oregon’s most prolific U.S. Amateur entrant Dick Yost famously upset Jack Nicklaus in the 1957 Amateur at Brookline’s The Country Club.  “I was a little unlucky” Nicklaus lamented.  I was out in 32, but Dick was so hot I was still 1-down.”

 

Tiger Woods won his third consecutive U.S. amateur at Portland’s Pumpkin Ridge in 1996, returning to the city where he also won his third U.S. Junior Amateur.  Tiger shot a morning round score of 78.  Steve Scott fired a stellar 68 and had a 5-up lead over Woods.  Scott shot a bogey free 70 in the afternoon, but incredibly, Woods authored a 65, making up the entire five hole deficit and forcing extra holes, finally winning on the 38th hole.  “I wouldn’t have been happy until I had him 10-down or something” Scott lamented.  Years later I met Scott while playing in Florida.  While he tries to put it in the past, some wounds run deep and hurt even years later.

 

Covering all the bases, Riste and Shelley highlight the great golf course architecture of the area by introducing us to an obscure, but important designer, Arthur Vernon Macan.  Vernon, as he was called, was inspired by the design concepts of John Low and Max Behr.  As you can image, he eschewed the vapid spoon-feeding we now call the doctrine of framing and is particularly noted for his sneering dismissal of flat lies and flat putts.  Accordingly, Macan’s greens are fiendishly contoured and his fairways were wide and rich in strategic options, although many courses have diluted his holes with tree-planting campaigns.  “Many of his courses have lost options because trees encroach” wrote one modern architect and design critic.  Even so, his legacy is astounding, roughly sixty courses from British Columbia, Canada to Honolulu, Hawaii.

 

Macan is also notable as both a player and a scientist.  Macan is credited with inventing a style of course drainage called “Herringbone” (the fish skeleton, not the clothing style), where a long central drain runs the length of the fairway and side drains run perpendicularly off the length of the hole.  It also eliminated the accumulation of water around putting surfaces.  Finally, Macan is also reknowned as having been a scratch golfer, but who lost his left foot during World War I’s Battle for Vimy Ridge.  Incredibly, he rebounded form the amputation to once again become a scratch golfer!

 

The authors highlight other famous local players and personalities.  Pat Lesser Harbottle not only was the first woman to play on a men’s collegiate team (the 1952 Seattle University golf team), but won the 1950 U.S.G.A. Girls’ Junior, the 1953 Women’s National Collegiate Champion, the 1953 Canadian Women’s Amateur and the 1955 U.S. Women’s Amateur.  Amazingly, when you look at her pictures you notice two things:  first, the bobby-soxed phenom was as tall as the rest of her college golf team and, second, dressed elegantly in her evening gown and posing with her trophies, it’s easy to see she earned her nickname, “Princess Pat.”

 

JoAnne Carner followed Harbottle, surpassing her feat by not only claiming a record five Women’s Amateur titles, (1957, 1960, 1962, 1966 and 1968) and winning the 1960 National Women’s Championship as an Arizona State Sun Devil, she also had a hall-of-fame LPGA career.

 

Other local greats won national acclaim as players, architects, even instructors.  Yakima’s Kermit Zarley – surely a starter on the “all-name team” – had some modest success as a PGA professional.  Ben Crane became the slowest player ever to win a PGA event and was a sympathetic victim of the mercurial Rory Sabbatini during one of the South African’s frequent meltdowns.  Not only did John Fought (pronounced “Fote”) win the 1977 U.S. Amateur at Aronimink, but he has become a well respected golf architect.  One of his greatest contributions is his outstanding restoration of Pine Needles Golf Club which will soon hst it’s third U.S. Women’s Open.

 

With it’s broad and deep coverage of the early years of golf history in the region, the players and personalities from the Northwest, the tournaments contested and the golf course that grace the region, Championships and Friendships is the most comprehensive and accurate book on its topic; a one-stop shop for answers to any question concerning golf in the Pacific Northwest.  Shelley and Riste have a casual, but informative tone tempered with a deft touch.  They bring stories to life with a vibrancy and sincerity that makes the book a terrific volume for the coffee table.  Leaf through it a little at a time in between losses by the Seahawks (or whoever you team may be).and keep it handy on an accessible shelf of your golf library to research any questions that pop up.  With an interesting anecdote on every page, C&F is a must for a complete golf library.