MAMARONECK, NY –
—Of cruel and mighty Winged Foot now to you I sadly sing
And all the lost and broken men who felt her deadly sting
Who wander now as shadows in her darkness evermore
To roam her haunted passageways forsaken and forlorn
And to the Champion’s Graveyard the Unconquerable King
Our greatest heroes in defeat inexorably brings—
—Old Klingon proverb
The ghosts of Winged Foot, terrible and fell, were out in legion numbers today at the 79th Anderson Memorial four-ball as player after player, team after team was led to their place in the Graveyard of Champions by the merciless and malevolent phantoms that roam her haunted fairways. Of the myriad former winners, former semi-finalists and well-decorated amateur stars, only 3rd-seeded, multiple Anderson champions Parker Smith and Dan Crockett escaped the carnage, and only then after surviving what golf experts and soccer fans call a “Group of Death” bracket of the 16-team match play draw.
Smith and Crockett, the aw-shucksing, Copenhagen chewing, southern drawling Tennesseans affectionately dubbed the “Smoky Mountain Boys” dismembered Engineers Club’s Ed Gibstein and Michael Blum 5&4 in the morning match, then surged late to power past last year’s runners-up Tim Kane and Matt Sughrue of Bethesda Country Club 2&1.
“That was one of the two or three toughest matches I’ve ever played in this event,” admitted Crockett candidly, visibly exhausted from the day’s two grueling matches, especially the roller-coaster ride that was the quarter-final. “Those guys [Sughrue and Kane] are such good players, and we didn’t make anything early. They had us down two after the first four holes.”
But that’s the nature of a match play event like the Anderson. You’re not going to play well all weekend; you just have to play well in the clutch, and the combined five-time champions drew on their experience to respond each time Sughrue and Kane pushed them towards the edge of elimination.
When the Bethesda boys took their 2-up lead after four, Smith responded with a laser beam 7-iron to three feet at the fifth for a winning birdie. That triggered a stretch of three wins in four holes to turn the 2-down deficit into a 1-up lead.
But no lead is safe at Winged Foot until you saddle up to Nib’s Bar post-round for a Transfusion or a Dark and Stormy, and the see-saw match saw Kane and Sughrue again take the lead with a par at the 10th – Crockett and Smith both hit it in the fairway bunker off the tee – and birdie at the par-5 12th.
On the ropes again and facing a fiercely hungry team that made such a gallant run at last year’s title, Smith made another clutch birdie, this time at the short, but treacherous 336-yard par-4 15th. He outwitted the hole, rather than overpowering it, pinpointing a 3-iron to position A in the fairway, then parachuting a towering pitching wedge from 140 to six feet before draining the putt.
“That was the turning point,” observed Crockett. P.J.’s birdie flipped the match.”
It triggered a three hole outburst that seized the match and propelled them into the semi-finals. First, Smith duplicated his masterful wedge shot of the previous hole at the brutishly long, uphill 448-yard 16th, dropping the ball dead to the hole from 135 yards out. Then Crockett made a hair-raising up and down from the front edge of the par-3 17th green to seal the victory.
“That green is so tough,” gasped Smith. “Dan’s save was just incredible,” he said of the 70-foot twisting that rose sharply uphill and dove hard right before cresting the hill and breaking back sharply left.
The match was a far cry from the breezy morning tilt, where they wallpapered the clubhouse with Ed Gibstein and Michael Blum, lining them up perfectly vertically floor to ceiling, and smoothing out all the lumps. Nobody does that any more, not even the really classy decorators.
Smith and Crockett will have their hands full now, though, as they’ll tangle with 2nd-seeded Roger Newsom and Adam Horton of the stately Elizabeth Manor Golf and Country Club, home of the venerable Eastern Amateur, an august tournament won by the likes of Ben Crenshaw, Lanny Wadkins, and Andy Bean. Newsome and Horton cruised past Mark Gauley and Bill Smith in the morning match, then outlasted brothers Ray Floyd, Jr. and Robert Floyd, (sons of Hall of Famer and four-time major winner Raymond Floyd), 1-up in the afternoon match.
“We started with a birdie, and we ended with a birdie,” observed Newsome, but it was the back and forth nature of the rest of the match that made for one of the day’s most fascinating tilts. After launching a 160-yard 9-iron to three feet for the opening birdie, Newsom topped his drive, (topped his drive!) a mere 50 yards on the next hole.
“It’s a long hole, and I tried to hit it out of my shoes,” he recalled, laughing. The gaffe led to a bogey that tied the match.
Then Horton joined in the zany up-and-down flow. He birdied six with a serpentine, downhill, 20-foot putt to retake the lead, but surrendered it right back at eight with an indifferent 3-putt bogey.
They righted the ship, however, with birdies at nine and 11. Horton nearly holed out a 58-degree wedge shot as they took the lead at the turn, then Newsom threw a dart at the flag at 11 for a kick-in birdie to put them 2-up.
Things stayed that way until the Floyds birdied 16 to draw within one. They had a golden opportunity to tie the match on 17 but squandered it by both 3-putting that fiendishly difficult green.
“They gave us one there,” Newsom admitted.
That set the stage for the best fireworks of the day, a finish on 18 as dramatic as any that’s unfolded at Winged Foot since it opened in 1923. Deep in the rough with trees looming over him, and a missile-crisis hush descending over the gallery, Robert Floyd hit the shot of the day – a towering long iron that caught the back board of the green and spun back, tantalizingly dancing with the cup before finishing a foot away for a conceded birdie.
“Go in! Go in! Awwwww! The spectators moaned,” before applauding long and loudly at the sterling shot. It was one of the loudest ovations of the weekend thus far.
Newsom, however, had other thoughts about it.
“We lost a heartbreaker of a match last year when a guy did the same thing to us,” he recalled, an angry grimace spreading across his face. “I bristled at it. Here he is in the trees and rough, and he hits it that close. I said to myself, ‘I am not gonna lose this match’.”
You gotta love a guy who wants the ball in the clutch. Even normally stoic hockey coach Travis Green would have cracked a smile at that grit and determination.
“It was right at it,” Horton recalled of Newsom’s long iron to the home hole. “It covered the flag all the way.” Though the ball trickled to about nine feet away, the winning putt was right-center firm, just what you want with the match in the balance. Newsom poured it in, never a doubt.
Strictly as an aside, the Floyd brothers were remarkable this weekend not only for their sublime golf, but also their singular appearance. We meet some interesting characters in these amateur golf tournaments, but the Floyds could pique the attention of Central Casting. They showed up for the day’s play in matching Miami Dolphins-esque golf outfits – baby blue shirts and festive pastel peach shorts.
“Pastel,” however, is the last word you would use to describe the Floyds themselves. A pair of broad, burly brick walls, they’re so chiseled and muscular, they look like the kind of guys that if you gave them a sock and a cue ball they could take on ISIS between the two of them, and have plenty left over for a run at North Korea. One in particular is a dead ringer for “The Thing” from the Fantastic Four, and every time he launched another 350-yard monster drive I had to suppress the urge to mutter, “It’s clobberin’ time!” under my breath.
“Robert and Raymond are tough men,” agreed Newsom. “If you had to go to Iraq, you take both of them with you. There was no quit in them, it was a battle all day long.” Your author hopes we see more of them in the future, as they were a valuable addition to the festivities not only for their talent as players, but how much fun they were to hang around with.
The other semi-final will feature 5th-seeded Sam and Will Bernstein of Century Country Club against 9th-seeded Kris Devlin and Craig Smith of Foxland Harbour, who are the giant-killers of the field so far. First they smoothly powered past last year’s semi-finalist Pascal Grizot and partner J.J. Wolff 3&2. (Grizot, you’ll recall, is the man who is bringing the 2018 Ryder Cup to France for the first time in the country’s history.) Then they authored a 3&1 upset over heavily favored and top-seeded Joe Saladino and Dave Boccia, who between them have won the last three consecutive Travis Invitational tournaments at fabled Garden City Golf Club.
Birdies flew fast and furious in that match, including a brilliant birdie by Boccia, (pronounced “BAH-shuh” like “Pasha”), where he used Driver off the deck to hit the second green before draining a 40-footer for birdie. The two teams were a combined 9-under after 12 holes.
“The 13th was the turning point,” surmised Devlin. After losing the 12th hole to fall back to even, “Craig made an incredible up-and-down from an impossible spot short of that green to halve the hole and keep the match tied.”
Like little stones that start an avalanche it was a mere bump and run, seeing-eye 7-iron that catapulted them to a run where they took three of the next four holes to close out the match.
“You can win some holes with par in this tournament, and we did that a few times today,” Smith said of the match that was equal parts pillow fight as swashbuckling golf. But pretty or no, a win is a win. “Survive and advance” as hey say in college basketball, and now they have a shot to hoist the enormous silver cup that rivals the Stanley Cup and Indy 500 trophy for size and grandeur.
“If you win the Anderson, your name is up on that clubhouse wall for the next 100 years, among all the greats of the game,” explained Roger Newsome. “To win here means you were victorious at one of the greatest and hardest golf courses in the World.”
“Think of all the majors here,” added Horton. Those guys would come in for lunch and see our names on the wall.”
Darkness has fallen over Winged Foot. Dark shadows extend their icy fingers, and the tree branches take on an almost phantasmagorical halo against the lights that glimmer in each clubhouse window. Referring to Yankee Stadium, Derek Jeter once said, “If you wait long enough, the ghosts come out,” referring to the late inning magic the old Yankees mustered for so many come-from behind wins. But when the ghosts come out at Winged Foot, they are to be feared and dreaded. All those they beckon to are doomed to helplessly follow and take their place among those Winged Foot has already interred in the Graveyard of Champions.
“Both courses have hurt my feelings – they are hard!” admitted Newsom. “I thought I could play golf, but they just whip my butt. Guys that play out of this club are real men, they can really play golf here.”
“It’s beauty and the beast,” added Horton, himself referring to the West as the beast, the East as the Beauty, but with narrow entrances to greens and even more severe swales to traverse should you miss them, the East breaks hearts as well. No course in the world boasts a greater synergy of history, glory, and misery as Winged Foot. Look at al the great names that didn’t win here: Palmer, Nicklaus, Watson, Hogan, Sarazen, Mickelson, Woods – the list will never end.
Still, someone will tiptoe past the tombstones and lift the silver trophy tomorrow night. Their name will be engraved on the cup, and they’ll be listed on the wall of champions, to be celebrated throughout the ages. Theirs will be a triumph over America’s greatest golf test. The rest of the field will have to wait one more year for glory, until next June…when the ghosts shall rise once more and haunt us yet again.
