Merion The Librarian

ARDMORE, PENNSYLVANIA | It began life as a small golf club attached to a cricket club and has now become arguably the most historic, most atmospheric clubhouse in the US. If you doubt that then step onto its famed veranda, beneath the green and white canvas awning, and watch a three-ball driving off, so close you can read the make of the ball they are using. Then turn around and step inside the clubhouse. It’s a shrine to golf. “I’ve felt for a long time that it’s my favourite course in the world not on water,” David Normoyle, the American-born historian who studied at Cambridge University, said. “Nothing else has the combination of championship history and architecture. The intimacy and charm, mixed with brawn. Unique and wonderful.” Where is the heartbeat of this remarkable place? On the famous turf that has staged 18 USGA Championships including five U.S. Opens, a World Amateur Team Championship, a Walker Cup? In the Quarry where you half expect an ethereal, bearded figure to rise out of the long grass and frighten you as you wait to play your approach to the 16th green or tee off on the 17th? By the Hogan plaque on the 18th fairway or just beneath the surface of the Baffling Brook as it chuckles and gurgles past the 11th green? The answer is in all these places and more and perhaps most of all in the white-painted, part wood, part stone clubhouse. It is not as old as the R&A’s, a fraction the size of Medinah’s, warmer than Shinnecock’s, darker than Oak Hill’s, more homey than Oakmont’s. It is filled with more character than all these combined. Paintings, books, drawings are everywhere – and that is not including the library, which houses between 500 and 600 volumes. Vanity Fair’s 10 golfing prints are on the walls as are some water colours by Harry Rountree and oil paintings by Roy Spreeter. A painting of Hugh Wilson, the club’s founder, hangs in the lobby. The rooms have evocative names: Ballroom, Farm, Grill, Library. You could live in it and feel entirely at home, banging your head on a low ceiling here, adjusting your walk as you pass over a sloping floor there. Look down and you’ll see almost all the floors are marked with spike marks. Others have been here before you and they didn’t change their spikes. If you are interested in the history and social history of golf, in the 19th and 20th century, then this is the place for you. Waiting on the veranda was a burly man with a crewcut, an open neck shirt, a friendly face and a pair of glasses he took on and off. Dr Andrew Mutch runs a company called Golf Curator Inc. He used to work for the USGA in its museum. Then he took a degree at St Andrews and wrote a 100,000-word thesis called History of Golf in Pottery on an International Sporting Theme pre 1930. He knows his pottery. He also knows his onions. If the clubhouse is the cathedral, then the archive is the altar, a surprisingly small room, air-conditioned to 70 degrees Fahrenheit and a humidity of 30-50 per cent. There’s stuff all around the club but here’s the good stuff – Lee Trevino’s pith helmet from the 1971 US Open, player’s badges from 1930, David Graham’s Bull’s Eye Putter with lead on the sole from the 1981 Open, signed flags. The room is painted in fire suppressant paint. There is no ultraviolet light and the floor covering is industrial, sturdy, built to last. Contemporaneous newspaper cuttings from the 1916 US Amateur, 1930 Amateur, the 1950, 1971 and 1981 Opens and a great many more are scanned on an 11 x 7 flatbed scanner sitting on a shelf, then printed on fine art paper that doesn’t fade. “This” says Mutch, “is history as it happens. The key to this archive is to keep it active.” He moved across the room, to stand in front of some book-filled shelves. “There’s some goodies in here” he said, drawing attention to a book called The Little Pioneer by Lena Evans, who was Chick Evans’ mother.

Merion Scatters The Doubters

ARDMORE, PENNSYLVANIA | Oh yes, Merion, that 6,996-yard Rubik’s Cube of a golf course. A beauty who wooed with a beckoning finger and holes out of the last century but when you tried to get too close smacked you with a wicker basket full of unfulfilled promises. Poor Merion, we kept saying. They were going to embarrass her, going to tramp all over her legends. She was a lady out of step with the times and Pro V1 Titleists. Doll her up with rouge and a new dress. It wasn’t going to matter. What we conveniently forgot was the tournament they held last week at Merion was the most important one of any year in America, the national championship, the U.S. Open. The one where the rough is high and so are the scores. The one that makes the pros curse with anger when they’re not begging for mercy. “This,” said Zach Johnson, departing after 36 holes, “just enhances my disdain for how the USGA manipulates the golf course.” Now, now, Zach, it is just a game, and you are a former major champion, albeit at The Masters. The day before the first round of the Open, Mike Davis, the executive director of the USGA, told the country, “It’s not about the score.” Hey, if politicians can tell falsehoods, so can golf officials. Of course, it’s about the score. Low one wins. Awful ones don’t allow you to play four days. What Davis wanted to say was, “We don’t care if they shoot 20-under par or 20 over,” although indeed they do care. Otherwise they wouldn’t have put the back tees some place near downtown Philadelphia or watched gleefully as players whacked tee balls into the yard of a neighboring estate (sorry about that, Sergio). Go back and read the comments. Merion was too small, a course in miniature. They’d break every scoring record on the books. “They hadn’t held an Open at Merion in 32 years,” someone wrote, “and they won’t hold another for another 32 years – if ever.” Ho, ho. They’ll be back at Merion. I promise you. Did it matter if the players’ courtesy lounge was someone’s kitchen? Did it matter a motorcycle escort was required to accompany golfers from the practice range to their first hole – which might have been the 11th? Did it matter that the first round ran into the second and the second into the third? (Well, yes, that’s because of rain delays, de rigeur, when the Open is held anywhere east of California). Harken to the words of Graeme McDowell, who won the 2010 Open at Pebble Beach (where it rains in January, not June) and as Zach Johnson had a 77 in the second round. “It’s not the way I wanted to play the last couple of days,” McDowell advised before his departure, “but this place is very hard.” Phil Mickelson, for one, was appreciative. “I love that,” said Phil, “because if you’re playing well, you’re going to be able to make pars and separate yourself from the field. But they didn’t trick up the easy holes.” A bit of an overstatement. Nobody separated himself from the field, which is the norm for Opens. You hang in there, saving pars (you hope) and the next thing you know either you’re the champion or you’re not. Jimmy Demaret, it might have been, who said, “You don’t win an Open, it wins you.” Mickelson went about trying to win his first Open in an unusual manner, attending daughter Amanda’s middle school graduation speech near San Diego on Wednesday night then boarding a jet – an executive jet; you think he has to wait in line? – and following a few hours shut-eye going out Thursday early morning and after a rain delay shooting 67. Nobody ever implied Phil was so good he could break par in his sleep, but that’s about closest he or anyone has come. Rory McIlroy didn’t come close to winning, but he was the runaway champion two years ago at Congressional and young Rory did himself proud before striking a single shot. Slamming a Phillies hat on head, bill backwards, McIlroy dashed up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, then pumped his arms skyward, exactly as Sylvester Stallone back in the original Rocky film. That was made in 1976 – 13 years before McIlroy was born.

Merion Awards A Rose

ARDMORE, PENNSYLVANIA | Some people wait a lifetime for one of these and this game can make you old at a very young age. Justin Rose looked toward the heavens after tapping in for par at the last and the heavens must have indeed smiled back, reminding him what it’s like to once again experience the unbridled joy of youth. With just the right amount of patience and precision, along with a life tempered with deep disappointment coupled with promise fulfilled, Rose won the U.S. Open on Sunday. It’s certain he will have to say it to himself over and over until it finally sinks in. Rose did battle with grand old Merion Golf Club and the remainder of the Open field and his even-par 70 in the final round was more than good enough to set his career on a new path as a newly crowned major champion. He finished 72 holes at 281, 1-over par, two shots better than the star-crossed Phil Mickelson and the Australian star-in-waiting, Jason Day. “I’ve been striving my whole life to win a major championship,” said Rose, who made three giant putts on the last holes to beat Mickelson in singles at last year’s Ryder Cup. “The way I prepared and the way it played out, it was a dream week.” Rose, born in South Africa and raised in London, was 17 when he holed a wedge shot at Royal Birkdale in 1998 on the final hole that caused the ground to shake. As it turns out, it shook both the golf world and his world. He turned pro shortly thereafter and went on to miss 21 straight cuts and 28 of 31. The undue weight of expectation placed a heavy burden on a young man simply trying to find his way. “At times, it feels like it’s been 25 years since Birkdale and at times, it seems like it was yesterday,” Rose said. “My learning curve has been steep. I probably announced myself as a professional too soon. But now, coming down the last where Ben Hogan won and where he hit his shot, even in the moment, that was not lost on me.” Rose finally won on the European Tour, the 2002 Dunhill Championship. But it took eight more years to win on the PGA Tour, taking the 2010 Memorial Tournament. He has four PGA Tour victories, the latest the WGC-Cadillac Championship last year. At age 32, he came into the U.S. Open with a runner-up finish at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and three other top-10s. “He is so close it’s burning,” Rose’s caddie, Mark Fulcher, told The Post on Tuesday. “His finest quality is that he takes the best-known people and does what they tell him. He listens, he takes it on board, he’s clever at building a loyal team. He hoped he was a good player, he thought he was a good player and now he knows he is a good player.” Merion left a trail of broken hearts and broken spirits, not the least of which belonged to Mickelson. For the longest time, it seemed as if fate was finally smiling on him in this championship. But he finished second for the sixth time and left many wondering if this was his last good chance. Mickelson’s putter failed him miserably on the most critical of days. He lipped out for birdie at the first and badly missed a four-footer for birdie at the second. From there, he three-putted for double-bogey at the third and another three-putt double-bogey at the fifth. He simply couldn’t get the ball to go in the hole, save for his 75-yard hole-out for eagle at he par-4 10th. “I had some putts that just wouldn’t go in,” Mickelson said. “A lot of them looked good two or three feet from the hole and they just wouldn’t go in.” Mickelson made bogey at the 123-yard 13th when he hit a wedge way over the green into an impossible lie and at the 15th when he – of all things – bladed a chip from the front of the green to the back. “This was my best chance,” Mickelson said. “This one is probably toughest for me. It would have changed the way I look at this tournament and how I see my career. Instead, it was just heartbreak.” In the end, Merion wasn’t too short or too soft or too vulnerable. The USGA kept the setup on the razor’s edge and as a result, it demanded the right decision and the right execution from the first tee to the 18th green. It had been 32 years since the Open was held at Merion and while it might be 20 years more before it comes back, the betting line says someday it will return. While it was here, the course exacted its toll, especially on the Sunday leaders. For about an hour after the leaders teed off, some of the worst carnage transpired in a U.S. Open since maybe the Massacre at Winged Foot in 1974. Steve Stricker hit his tee shot out of bounds on the par-5 second and shanked his next shot from the fairway out of bounds, as well. He made a good 10-footer for a triple-bogey 8.

‘I Think This Was My Best Chance’

ARDMORE, PENNSYLVANIA | This one was going to be different. This time, on his 43rd birthday, on Father’s Day, on a course made for legends, Phil Mickelson finally was going to win the U.S. Open. When he holed that 75-yard wedge shot on Merion’s short 10th hole for an eagle and raised his arms like Ali after a knockout, Mickelson and the moment had finally arrived together on a U.S. Open Sunday. He had flipped the leaderboard, gone from behind to ahead with one beautiful swing, and there in the midst of all the misery Merion had delivered, Mickelson had found its sweet spot. The noise thundered. The ground seemed to shudder. The chills were epidemic. But it didn’t last. It never does for Mickelson, not when it’s the U.S. Open. “I think this was my best chance,” Mickelson said, the emotion practically draining from his face as he talked half an hour after he finished. Because it was Mickelson, there was a heightened sense of anticipation Sunday at Merion. His U.S. Open history was as familiar to the world watching as his smile. It felt like his time. When he walked onto the practice range more than an hour before his 3:20 p.m. tee time, Mickelson was serenaded with Happy Birthday from the fans in the bleachers. At seemingly every hole, fans offered a variation of the same theme. “I heard Happy Birthday probably 18 times today,” Hunter Mahan, Mickelson’s playing partner, said. “Hopefully, I won’t wake up screaming Happy Birthday. But it was fun.” Until the end. The Open isn’t won on emotion. It’s won with execution and persistence, the way Justin Rose did it Sunday when he shot even-par 70 on a course set up to destroy. Across four days, Rose made 15 birdies, 16 bogeys and no great errors. Mickelson made too many mistakes. He missed too many putts. He let too many chances get away. He wasn’t the only one. Jason Day bogeyed two of the last five holes to finish tied with Mickelson, two behind Rose. Mahan played the last four 4-over par when four pars would have him in a playoff today. Luke Donald shot 42 on the front side. So did Charl Schwartzel. Steve Stricker triple-bogeyed the par-5 second with two balls out of bounds including a shank as ugly as Billy Horschel’s octopus pants. For a time, the national championship tournament looked like a member-guest. Had it ended differently, Mickelson’s eagle at the 10th would echo through generations as one of the spectacular shots in major championship history. Instead, it’s not even the shot Mickelson will think of when he remembers Merion. He’ll think of the two early doubles he made at the third and fifth holes and he’ll think about the poor wedge shots he hit at the 13th and 15th holes that led to the two bogeys from which he couldn’t recover. At the third (an unnecessarily long 266-yard, par-3 into the wind to a hilltop green) and the sloping fifth, Mickelson threeputted for double bogey, compounding his mistakes, a cardinal sin in U.S. Opens. Still, he was right there. At Nos. 6, 8 and 9 he watched birdie putts miss when he thought he’d made them. The eagle at 10 vaulted him to a one-stroke lead but Rose answered with birdies at 12 and 13 to regain the advantage. The killer came at the 115-yard par-3 13th, statistically the easiest hole in the past 32 U.S. Opens – since the championship was last at Merion in 1981. Mickelson bogeyed it twice, including Sunday when he tried to draw a pitching wedge and blew it over the green, guilty of hitting too much club.

Small Step Led To Big Time

The story of Webb Simpson’s U.S. Open victory a year ago at the Olympic Club began with one very small step. Simpson’s game was in a flat spot and his mood was lower. He had missed the cut at the Memorial Tournament by seven strokes and spent his pre-U.S. Open weekend doing work on the range at home in Charlotte, N.C., with caddie Paul Tesori, ironing out wrinkles in a game that felt as if it had been stuck at the bottom of a laundry hamper. In San Francisco on Monday of Open week, Simpson was in a funk, far from his typically chatty, upbeat and energized self. Tesori sensed an edge as they worked their way through a practice round on the big, sloping course built on the backside of a Pacific Ocean sand dune. The following day, Tesori confronted Simpson. “I said, ‘I don’t know what I did but tell me and I’ll fix it,’” Tesori said. Simpson, Tesori recalls, dropped his head. “He said, ‘It’s not you. My son [James] walked for the first time yesterday and I wasn’t there to see it. I wanted to be at home.’” Simpson and Tesori decided to make Tuesday a short practice day, calling it quits by lunchtime. Simpson called his wife, Dowd, to fly from Charlotte to San Francisco. She was eight months pregnant but she came anyway and spent her days walking 72 ruggedly hilly holes and her evenings having dinner with her husband at some of the city’s finest restaurants. “Dowd was a rock star,” Tesori said. The Simpsons also watched video of their son taking more steps. It’s what they were watching Sunday when Graeme Mc- Dowell’s putt to force an 18-hole playoff with Simpson missed and American golf had a new national champion. “As time passes I realize how special it is all the more,” Simpson said. “To always be remembered as U.S. Open champion, realizing how big a deal it is, it’s just become more special.” The most memorable shot of Simpson’s career-changing victory is the chip shot he played from heavy rough just off the 18th green, saving a par that gave him his one-stroke victory. But it was a shot one hole earlier – at the par-5 17th – when Tesori understood Simpson’s mindset even as he fought his nerves on the gray, damp San Francisco Sunday. Debating whether to hit a hybrid or a 4-iron second shot at No. 17, Simpson hit the 4-iron lay-up. It wasn’t where the ball went but where Simpson went with the shot. “He said, ‘Boudreau – that’s what we call each other – whether we win 15 U.S. Opens or 15 money lists, it’s all going to go away,” Tesori said. “He found his faith and he had an amazing inner peace.” The U.S. Open victory changed Simpson’s career and his resume but he has been intent that it not change him. The week after his victory, he honored a commitment to play the Travelers Championship because it had given him his first Tour start, though he wanted to have the week off.

Andrea Creates Major Slog

ROCHESTER, NEW YORK | Andrea had the biggest impact on the Wegman’s LPGA Championship even though there was no player in the field by that name. The leading edge of Tropical Storm Andrea, which caused flooding and forced evacuations on Long Island and wreaked havoc on Merion Golf Club before the U.S. Open, also dumped more than five inches of water on Locust Hill Country Club, canceling Thursday’s first round for the first time in tournament history. A steady drizzle continued on Friday and Saturday interrupted by the occasional five-minute deluge. The first unimpeded rays of sun did not materialize until 5:30 a.m. on Sunday. Players like Stacy Lewis played cards and saw a movie on Thursday while Brittany Lincicome took a nap. Then they played through rain on Friday and Saturday and finished with 36 holes on Sunday. “The wet [weather] definitely made the rough sticky,” said former world No. 1 Jiyai Shin. “If it [went] into the rough, hitting to the green was really tough.” Even lift-clean-and-place rules weren’t enough at times. “There were a couple of greens with casual water, which isn’t great,” said second-round leader Morgan Pressel on Saturday night. “Several times you were in casual water but there was nowhere to move where it was dry, so you just went where the water was the least.” None of the holes were completely under water, which was the situation two weeks ago at the Pure Silk LPGA Classic in the Bahamas. During that event, a foot of rain in five hours forced tournament officials to create a makeshift 12-hole layout using the holes above water. “The weather hasn’t been great, but we’re used to it,” Lincicome said. “You just put on the rain gear, keep playing and hope it gets better.” Merion also survived Andrea, although motorists on Ardmore Avenue outside the club entrance had to be evacuated on Friday when their vehicles flooded. As for the golf course, the 11th hole of the East Course, where Bubba Watson, Dustin Johnson and Nicolas Colsaerts will tee off in the first group at 7 a.m. on Thursday, was under water for a while, but according to Joe Goode of the USGA, “The work that Merion Golf Club had done on the banks of the nearby creek to minimize potential flooding worked well, and underscores how this area of the course could survive the worst of the storms.”

U.S. Team Lacks Depth In Solheim Chase

ROCHESTER, NEW YORK | Colorado in August is on all of their minds, even during a June major championship in New York. “I’ve been thinking about the Solheim Cup since the beginning of the season,” Michelle Wie said just minutes after shooting a second-round 68 at the Wegmans LPGA Championship. Wie had just played herself back into contention in a major for the first time in years, but her face lit up when the conversation turned to the matches, which will be held Aug. 16-18 at Colorado Golf Club. Entering the week, Wie sat in the precarious 13th spot on the U.S. Solheim points list. “I don’t look at the points,” she said. “If I play well I earn points and if I don’t, I won’t. But definitely one of the most important things for me is to make the team. Every opportunity where there are double points, it means a lot.” Players earn double points in major championships, of which there are three on the LPGA schedule in a nine-week span beginning with the LPGA and extending through the Women’s British Open. So, more than a few players have a chance to earn a spot on the roster. “It’s hard those last few events when all you’re thinking about is making the Solheim Cup team,” U.S. captain Meg Mallon said. “I’m not going to have much sympathy for those who are not inside (the top 10).” If that wake-up call wasn’t loud enough, Mallon fired another shot across the bow by taking the top eight players on the points list out to dinner in Rochester with her three assistants: Beth Daniel, Dottie Pepper and Laura Diaz. “It was really a good bonding experience,” Mallon said. “You can tell that (the players) are excited, uptight, all those emotions that they should have going into this last stretch.” Mallon gave each player – Stacy Lewis, Cristie Kerr, Paula Creamer, Angela Stanford, Brittany Lincicome, Lexi Thompson, Jessica Korda and Lizette Salas – a white bracelet with “I ♥ USA” in red and blue, a less-than-subtle reminder of what the Solheim Cup is all about. “What’s a comfort for me is that I have a solid five players that I’m looking at to be leaders for these young players,” Mallon said. “I saw it at the dinner; they want to bring these players in and have them be successful.” That is all well and good and exactly what a captain should say. But then Mallon went a step too far by adding: “American golf looks fantastic with these young players.” Whoa, wait a minute. Really? Perhaps Mallon sees something the rest of us don’t, but with the noteworthy exceptions of Lewis and Kerr, there seems to be a dearth of great American women golfers at the moment, young or otherwise. Just look at the numbers: this year only two of the eight players at Mallon’s dinner – Lewis and Kerr – have victories. The third-ranked player, Creamer, hasn’t won a tournament since the 2010 U.S. Women’s Open, which came while Korda was still in high school. Stanford and Korda both won in 2012, but Lincicome and Thompson haven’t hoisted a trophy since 2011. Salas, the eighth-ranked player on the Solheim list, has never won an LPGA event. Those facts are not an indictment of the LPGA, but quite the opposite: Women’s golf is better and deeper than ever before. That depth simply doesn’t include an abundance of Americans. Only Lewis, who has two wins in 2013 and four from 2012, cracked the top 10 in the Rolex Rankings entering the LPGA Championship.

Webb Notches No. 39

GALLOWAY , NEW JERSEY | On a weekend where survival was the biggest test, it was experience that made its way to the top on Sunday. Karrie Webb played her way through treacherous winds and unpredictable bounces to win the ShopRite LPGA Classic. It was Webb’s 39th LPGA Tour victory and her first since 2011, when she won twice on tour. Webb, a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, is a veteran of the LPGA Tour, having started in 1996, with seven major championship titles. “It never gets old and it never gets easier,” Webb said. “It was a tough day and I was glad to pull it out. I’ve played here 15 times and I’ve never had a decent shot (at winning). My grandmother has been ill and she said I had to win this for her.” Webb shot a 3-under 68 in the final round to win the tournament by two shots ahead of Shanshan Feng of China. Webb posted a 54-hole total of 209, 4-under par at the windblown Bay Course of the Stockton Seaview Hotel and Golf Club. Webb started the day five shots back of Feng, the 36-hole leader, who had a three-shot lead on 18-year-old Moriya Jutanugarn of Thailand.

Pure Silk Survives Pure Silt

ATLANTIS, BAHAMAS | It was more than fitting that the top two players on the leader-board at the Pure Silk Bahamas LPGA Classic were unlikely and mostly without warning. That’s because the tournament itself was equally unlikely to even happen given the circumstances of early last week. Il Hee Lee of South Korea won the inaugural LPGA event by playing some steady golf down the stretch in howling winds on Sunday afternoon. She beat Irene Cho by two shots for her first LPGA victory. The fact that the tournament was held at all is due to some creative thinking by LPGA officials and tournament organizers. Last Tuesday, the Ocean Club Course on Paradise Island was drowned by 12-15 inches of rain and many of the holes were overwhelmingly flooded. Thursday play was called off entirely and officials decided they could cobble together 12 playable holes – some par-4 holes were converted to par-3s – and that the entire field of 144 players would compete on 12 holes a day for three days. That would give the tournament 36 holes of competition, thereby making the event official – which included official prize money. Such a plan was important to those players who needed a chance to improve their positions on the LPGA Tour money list.

Jennifer Johnson Says Hello

MOBILE, ALABAMA | When Sunday began, Jennifer Johnson wasn’t even in the conversation. Not only had the third-year player never been in contention to win an LPGA Tour event, she had only finished in the top 10 once. So, remarkably, Johnson came figuratively out of nowhere to win the Mobile Bay LPGA Classic, her first victory. She shot matching 65s on the weekend to finish four rounds at the Magnolia Grove Crossings Course at 21-underpar 267, good for a one-stroke margin on Jessica Korda and Pornanong Phatlum. There was nothing in Johnson’s play that might have predicted this victory. This was her ninth start on Tour this year and her best finish was a tie for 13th at the Kraft Nabisco. She missed the cut in the Kingsmill Championship, her last start prior to her victory. After returning home from Virginia, Johnson went to see her teacher and put an old putter back in the bag, a Scotty Cameron model that her father calls “the spaceship.” “The putter has been the missing link,” said Johnson, 21. “When they go in, it really helps the score.” Johnson had only one top-10 finish in her career, with her best a tie for eighth at the 2011 Navistar LPGA Championship, also in Alabama.

Sappington’s Road To Senior Hall Of Fame

They say that behind every man there is a good woman. What they don’t necessarily say is what the relationship of the man to the woman is. In the case of Spencer Sappington, it was his Aunt Dorothy who first taught him how to play the game. Dorothy Holsinger, who lived to 102 before going to the great golf course in the sky, is looking down approvingly this week, as her pupil all those years ago is being inducted into the National Senior Golf Hall of Fame in High Point, N.C. Sappington still gets emotional at just the mention of her name, and he most certainly will do so in his acceptance speech Wednesday night. Sappington, born in 1943, says he “dumb-lucked into golf” at the age of 14 and fell in love with the game in Jefferson City, Mo. He wasn’t particularly good, and at the suggestion of his father, he spent some time with Aunt Dorothy, a past Florida women’s champion who was the women’s golf coach at the University of Missouri. At age 18, Aunt Dorothy took Sappington on as a student and taught the 14 handicapper how to really play the game. Within just six months, he became a good enough player to earn a golf scholarship to Lincoln University in his hometown. While there, he earned Division II All-American honors and was captain of the golf team. He would compete at a high level for the rest of his life. For the following 20 years he played locally in Missouri and Arizona while building what would become a 33-year career with American Express. He was a regular contestant in the Missouri State Amateur, losing in the final one year to current Walker Cup captain Jim Holtgrieve. The same goes for Arizona, where he lost in the final of the state amateur to the legendary Dr. Ed Updegraff in 1969. During his time in Arizona and Missouri, he always was ranked among the top 10 amateurs in the state. Holtgrieve remembers him as “a tenacious competitor. He was the only guy I was scared of.” It was when he moved to Atlanta in 1984 that he began to fill up his trophy case. And all of a sudden, there were a lot fewer trophies to be had in the Georgia amateur game. Sappington won 16 Georgia State Amateur Championships and was named Player of the Year in 2004; he was also named Senior Player of the Year five times. He won the state senior title five times, including a record three in a row (2003-2005). He won state super seniors title three times and was the 1993 state senior open champion. For all his accomplishments in the Peach State, he was inducted into the Georgia Golf Hall of Fame in 2008. He had some success at the national level as well, winning the tournament that will honor him this week in 2001, and then again in 2011 as a Super Senior. He has Dale Morey and U.S. Senior Challenge titles to go along with those as well. Over the course of his career, he made 19 USGA appearances, where his best finish came in 2000 when he advanced to the quarterfinals of the Senior Amateur championship. “This is really humbling” he told me of his Senior Hall of Fame induction. “These are my peers. I watched them, admired them, played with and against them.” Since the World Golf Hall of Fame is comprised mostly of professionals, the National Senior Hall of Fame “is really important” said Sappington. Just 14 of the 146 inductees in the WGHOF are amateurs; all of them deserving, but so are many more. That is essentially the void the National Senior HOF fills.

The Anderson Has A Rich Heritage

MAMARONECK, NEW YORK | Winged Foot is widely recognized for having hosted several major tournaments over the years, including five U.S. Opens, a pair of U.S. Amateurs and the 1997 PGA Championship. What is not so well known, however, is that the exclusive Westchester County club is also the site of one of the biggest amateur invitationals in the land, the annual John G. Anderson Memorial. And this year marks the 77th time the two-man competition has been staged on the A. W. Tillinghast-designed West and East courses here. Held in early June, the Anderson usually features 36 holes of qualifying for regular and senior divisions, and then two days of match play. It regularly attracts the game’s top amateurs, from the U.S. and abroad, and the competition is as fierce as the play is strong. That is one of the attractions for those who enter, and so is the fact that the Anderson is one of those rare invitationals played on a course (the West) that is still in consideration for hosting majors. Then, there is the overall ambience of the affair, thanks to the longstanding mandate that invitees be very good guys as well as very good golfers. And what player wouldn’t want to spend a few days around such a convivial, historic club, where Bobby Jones won an Open, Claude Harmon gave lessons and Davis Love III found a golfing pot of gold at the end of a rainbow the day his won his PGA in 1997. But what also makes the Anderson great is the story of the man after which it is named and the way it pays homage to a superlative amateur who won 53 championships in his career and a celebrated writer who told the world about Francis Ouimet’s stunning U.S. Open win in 1913. Like Ouimet, Anderson helped grow the game in the U.S., only he did it through his work as a journalist and his efforts to promote golf, helping to found the PGA of America in 1916, for example, and Winged Foot seven years later. So, it was not at all surprising when a fellow scribe described him after his untimely death in 1933 at age 49 as “a friend of all golfing souls.” Johnny Anderson, as he was often and affectionately called, was born in Clinton, Mass., in 1884. His Scottish parents gave him his love for the royal and ancient game, and he won his first tournament when he was 11. He developed into a very strong player over the years, making it to the final of the U.S. Amateur in 1913 and 1915 and winning the French Amateur twice, in 1924 and 1926. A graduate of Amherst College who later earned a master’s degree in English from Columbia University in New York, Anderson also held course records at 11 tracks and won club championships at three, including five at Winged Foot in the first nine years of its existence. Anderson also had a business connection to the game, the result of his working as a golf equipment representative for Wanamaker’s, which was a leading national retailer. He developed a relationship with company head Rodman Wanamaker and was there when his boss hosted a luncheon in New York City in the summer of 1916 for the purpose of founding the PGA of America. The winner of the PGA Championship is awarded the Wanamaker Trophy. But where Anderson really made his name was as a writer. And no story he produced had a bigger impact than the one that reported Ouimet’s most unlikely victory in the 1913 U.S. Open over Harry Vardon and Ted Ray.

NCAA Cure Worse Than The Crime

MILTON, GEORGIA | Well, at least they tried. That seemed to be the sentiment after a controversial slow-play ruling at the Men’s NCAA Championship cost Texas A&M a shot at a national title. Yes, there was sympathy for the Aggies, but slow play is a pox on our game. Beards grow thicker and children taller during most college rounds. Something had to be done. Unfortunately, it shouldn’t have been this. Here is what happened: With A&M on the cusp qualifying for match play, Ty Dunlap, the Aggies’ anchor and one of the longest hitters in a field full of bombers, needed to play his last five holes even par for the team to advance. The fifth hole, (his 14th) was a drivable par-4, so Dunlap and his fellow competitors, Greg Eason of Central Florida and Jon Rahm from Arizona State, waited for the green to clear as they had on every shot since the third tee. Then, Rahm and Eason hit their drives long and into precarious spots while Dunlap drove it short and made a quick birdie. That is where the trouble started. The group ahead made two birdies and a par on No. 6 (a par 3) and the threesome was gone in minutes while Eason and Rahm struggled with their pitch shots. That put Dunlap’s group out of position through no fault of his own. Down the stretch, with the pressure mounting and everything on the line, Dunlap hit two errant tee shots, one of which resulted in a drop and the other a pitch out. But he made a 50-footer for birdie and two-putted from 40 feet at the last to seemingly advance his team into match play by one shot. But then the group was summoned before the rules committee. Dunlap and Eason were assessed retroactive one-shot penalties for slow play. Rahm was not given a penalty. Rahm’s team, Arizona State, got into a playoff for the final match play spot while the Aggies went from celebrating their finish to putting their shoes back on and refocusing for a four-team playoff as well. Texas A&M lost on the first extra hole. “I really feel like they earned a spot in match play and it got taken away from them,” Aggies coach J.T. Higgins said afterward. “The rules guys dug their heels in. [The players] had some bad times, but they also had a lot riding on it. Eason was playing for an individual championship and he knew it and Ty was playing to get us into match play and he knew it. They were both grinding.” The problem wasn’t the bad times: it was the fact that no one informed the players of their times or their penalties while they were on the golf course and could do something about it. Dunlap played his final hole assuming a five was good enough. The official clocking each player must have known that a penalty would be coming. “It isn’t that penalties shouldn’t be given; we all agree that we have to speed up play,” said Georgia coach Chris Haack, an independent observer of the incident. “The problem is the inconsistency.” During the first round, for example, Georgia’s T.J. Mitchell was called before the committee and told that he had five bad times. The USC player in Mitchell’s group had 10 bad times. Neither was given a penalty. “How did those guys not get a penalty and then at the most crucial point in the championship a kid trying to get his team into match play gets one when they were only out of position for the last four holes?” Haack said. “It doesn’t make sense to me.” It didn’t make sense to Higgins, either. The coach asked the committeemen where Dunlap’s bad times occurred, but they would not divulge which shots were deemed to have taken too long.

Parker Smith Chases Four-Ball History At ‘The Foot’

Is it a three-peat, a four-peat, or both? It’s hard to clearly describe what Parker Smith will try to achieve this week at the Anderson Memorial four-ball at the venerable Winged Foot Golf Club in suburban New York City. Smith, along with partner Dan Crockett, will be trying to win one of the most prestigious amateur four-ball events in America for the third consecutive year. But for Smith, it could be four in a row. And therein lies the confusion. Smith was set to play with his close friend Crockett in 2010, except that Crockett hurt his knee and had to have surgery. Needing a partner, Smith turned to his brother-in-law, Phillip Breeding, and they won, defeating Winged Foot members Matthew and Peter Meyer, 2 up. After a tense match in which neither team could build a sizable lead, Smith and Breeding won the final two holes to prevail. But Breeding must not have made enough birdies, as Smith threw him over the following year to team up with Crockett. They beat Englishmen John Kemp and Mark Wharton, 3 and 2. In 2012, they successfully defended their title when Smith holed a five-foot birdie putt as darkness set in to once again beat Kemp and Wharton. And so they come to the 2013 event looking for a three-peat, and a four-peat for Smith, who has won twelve consecutive matches on the two really good Winged Foot courses. There have been several teams over the years that have won back to back. William Turnesa and Udo Reinach did it in 1939-40, and former PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman did it in 1958-59 with partner William Buppert. James Reid and Tripp Davis won in 2000-01, and four-time U.S. Mid- Amateur champion Nathan Smith teamed with Frank Fairman to win in 2007-08. Pretty heady company for Smith and Crockett. The Hyndmans, William and Thomas, won twice but not consecutively in the early ’60s. And the father-and-son team of Jerry Courville Sr. and Jerry Courville Jr. went back to back in 1978-79, and then won again in 1983. But the team of noted amateur Ralph Bogart and Robert Brownell posted the most victories, five in a 10-year stretch beginning in 1954. It is that team that Smith and Crockett are chasing. A Tennessee wealth manager, Smith played college golf at Louisiana State University, where he was a four-year letterman. He was an All-American in 1997, and he posted the second most top-20 finishes of any LSU golfer during his career. A guy named David Toms is first on that list. Smith beat it around the mini-tours for 16 months before giving up the pro game. Reinstated as an amateur in 2004, he won the 2006 Tennessee Mid-Amateur, the 2010 Lupton Invitational title and the 2012 Butler Cup. Crockett actually plays more frequently than Smith, who has a creaky back and two small boys to tend to. A mortgage banker by day, he won the Tennessee Mid-Am the year after Smith did. In April, he and Smith won the Champions Cup Invitational, another really special American four-ball tournament, signaling that they are primed for their Anderson defense.

Tour Pros Not Only Ones Concerned About Anchor Ban

WATERVILLE, IRELAND | As you might expect, the conversation over drinks and dinner during the Society of Seniors’ first International Senior Amateur centered on golf. But what was unusual was how much of the talk involved the recent decision by the game’s governing bodies that anchored putting strokes will no longer be allowed as of 2016. To be sure, there were strong opinions on both sides of the debate as to whether that was a good move or not. But most of the discussion had to do with what the ban was going to mean to this group of elite senior amateur golfers and the organization known informally as the SOS, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. The first problem stems from one simple reality: some 40 percent of the players in a typical Society of Seniors tournament use long or belly putters. And most of those folks anchor their putting strokes when they employ those clubs. “What concerns us is what will happen to those guys once the ban takes effect,” says SOS president and former Sports Illustrated managing editor and publisher Mark Mulvoy. “A lot of them play a couple of hundred rounds of golf a year, and play in most of the nine events the Society stages annually. Will this ruling marginalize that 40 percent? Will it cause them to quit competing? And will it diminish the size and the quality of our fields?” It’s an especially pertinent matter for the Society as it watches the number of its Super Senior players (those age 65 and older) explode as the younger set, from ages 55 to 64, seems to be working longer and harder than the previous generation had to – and seems unable to get out on the golf course as much. And many of those Super Seniors, who make up about 70 percent of most SOS tourney fields, have come to rely on longer putters as a result of health issues (bad backs) or serious cases of the yips. All of which means the ban could have a real impact on the group’s most active demographic. Mulvoy says that no one in the organization is being alarmist. “But if something forces 40 percent of your membership to quit, you have to wonder seriously about what you are going to do.” Another issue comes from one of the foundations on which the Society is built, and that is all its tournaments are conducted under the Rules of Golf. SOS founders Dale Morey, Ralph Bogart and Ed Tutwiler were adamant about that, as you might expect competitive players of such skill and repute to be. In fact, they even wrote that tenet into the Society bylaws.

As the Sun Sets in the West

In round numbers, there are about 200 golf courses of all stripes in the greater Phoenix area, many of them in and around Scottsdale, the golf mecca of the Southwest. On his visit, Mike Purkey took a closer look at several of them, including Raven Golf Club, We-Ko-Pa, Eagle Mountain, Superstition Mountain, Ak-Chin Southern Dunes and Gold Canyon. Before planning a golf vacation to Arizona, this is required reading.

Birdies and Bogota

John Steinbreder finds glorious golf in an unexpected place: Colombia. Also unexpected? An encounter with Bill Clinton, who also had discovered the wonderful golf in this South American country more known for coffee than fairways. Steinbreder learned more about the culture, the wildlife, the coffee farms and dining during his stay. The Country Club of Bogota and La Cima are two of the many courses, designed by the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Robert Trent Jones and Ron Garl. He brings it all to life on the pages of Global Golf Post.

Leupold Rangefinders Boast Pinpoint Accuracy

Officials at Leupold, the Beaverton, Ore., company that makes rifle scopes, binoculars and other sophisticated optical devices, say the release this past winter of its new GX-1i and GX-2i rangefinders, and the unveiling in April of a more economical, entry-level device called the PinCaddie, show that the company continues to make improvements in its golf product offerings. The GX-1i and GX-2i incorporate Leupold’s DNA (digitally enhanced accuracy) engines and advanced infrared lasers so the devices provide even faster measurements with accuracy displayed to the nearest half yard. They also utilize the company’s exclusive PinHunter Laser Technology, fog mode and seven selectable aiming reticles to make it possible to nail precise distances in any and all weather conditions. In addition, these devices employ a Prism Lock system that makes holding them steady less of an issue. Both are designed to be compact, rugged and waterproof, and they weigh 6.1 ounces (173 grams). There are differences between these devices, though. Significant ones. The GX-1i is tournament legal under the Rules of Golf, offering line-of-sight distance measurement only. As for the GX-2i, it may not be used legally in competition because it offers a wide range of other features. Such as True Golf Range, algorithmic software that also reads slope, altitude and temperature. In addition, a Club Selector component combines a player’s specific hitting strength and the TGR to automatically recommend the appropriate club for each shot (after golfers have input data on their usual distances).

In Search Of Putter Stability, TaylorMade Uses Counterbalancing

In developing its latest putters, Daddy Long Legs and Spider Blade, TaylorMade Golf engineers turned to the concept of “counterbalancing” as a way to improve performance by enhancing stability in both the stroke and hit. The idea is to put additional weight in the grip end to counter the weight of the clubhead. Typically, a putter has one light end (the grip) and one heavy end (the head), and that disparity can cause the head to waver during the stroke and twist more easily on off-center hits – which is not good. By counterbalancing a putter, technicians increase the Moment of Inertia of the entire club, which is designed to make it easier to keep the head on path during a swing, and make it more stable at impact. In theory, that should lead to more accurate putting – and to more putts being made. The Daddy Long Legs is described at TaylorMade as a “performance mallet,” and its head, which consists of 16 pieces made of eight materials, boasts the highest MOI of any putter in company history. As for the Spider Blade, it has a heel-toe weighted head that consists of 11 parts made of eight materials. That construction allowed TaylorMade engineers to shift significant weight from the center of the head to the heel and toe – and to give it the highest MOI of any blade the equipment maker has produced.

Golfersskin Makes The Grade On Tours

Ben Steward decided to get into the sunscreen business not long after a good friend died of skin cancer, at the tragically young age of 33. And in fairly short order, the New Zealand native created Golfersskin, which is now being used by more than 200 players on the top professional tours. Golfersskin is made in New Zealand, which Steward says has much stricter regulations in regard to sunscreen than most other countries due to the very quick burn rate there. And he asserts that his product offers total UVA/UVB broad-spectrum protection with an SPF of 30. “That in and of itself is very important,” he says. “But what makes Golfersskin really good is the way we have removed all non-essential oils from the formula. It’s free of all the nasties, which means it is not greasy and won’t run into your eyes, no matter how much you sweat. Nor will it interfere with your grip.” In addition, Steward says that Golfersskin nourishes skin with aloe vera and UMF 18 Manuka honey, which is unique to New Zealand and is touted for its anti-bacterial and antioxidant benefits. The honey is also known for assisting the body’s ability to hydrate and has been used to treat skin conditions and even to provide burn relief.

Callaway’s Now Fairway Woods Deliver

One of the first things Chip Brewer did when he became chief executive officer of Callaway Golf in early 2012 was to challenge his research and development team to do something the company had not done in some time. And that was to produce a hot, category-leading fairway wood. One that was long and forgiving, and also versatile enough to be hit as easily on the tee and off the deck as it could be out of the rough. A little less than a year after Brewer threw down that gauntlet, Callaway released its X Hot fairways. And the sense among technicians at the Carlsbad, Calif., club maker is that they have accomplished just what their boss wanted. These clubs are hot, they say, thanks to the way technicians adapted Callaway driver face technology to increase ball speeds all across the Carpenter 455 stainless steel face of this fairway and push USGA limits on Coefficient of Restitution. That encourages distance, and so does a feature called Internal Standing Wave, which is designed to optimize Center of Gravity. In addition, a modern Warbird sole has been made to bolster performance on shots from lies that are good, bad and/or ugly. Callaway’s X Hot fairways come in three versions. The Standard is available in 3, 4, 5, 7, 9 and 11 woods and boasts Project X shafts stock.

KBS Now Offering Shaft Customization

Golfers like style as much as the next person, which is one reason why customization has become all the rage in recent years. Whether it’s a favorite team logo on a pair of shoes or a set of initials on a putter face, the trend is toward making a statement, and players now have one more place to go for that option – KBS shafts. KBS is the name of a high performance steel shaft line developed by noted designer Kim Braly for the FST shaft company. And this spring it introduced the KBS Custom Lab, through which golfers can customize their wedge shafts in a variety of ways. Start with the flex of the shafts, which come in regular, stiff and extra stiff, and their finish, either black pearl or silver pearl. Once those choices are made, the grip color may be selected from five options: red, orange, green, blue or black. Label colors are also a possibility, with red, orange, green or blue available there, and also the hue of the ferrule may be picked out. KBS shafts also may be personalized through laser etching, and the Custom Lab gives players the ability to say something on each one in a maximum of 18 characters, which generally runs from two to three inches in length.

Mike Kerr, Asian Tour CEO

Lewine Mair recently visited with Mike Kerr, the Asian Tour’s CEO, and the result was a wide-ranging interview focusing, among other things, on how quickly Asian golfers are closing the talent gap. They also discuss an expected closing of the prize money gap that will eventually force the world’s best to play more in and around Asia simply because of the size of the purses.