Praise of Golf, Praise of Folly: A Reformation Golf Fantasy ......................... Donald Millus
18. Of Sandbaggers and Handicaps
“Folly alone keeps men and women young.”
I, Folly, do not always speak the truth, like golfers, fishermen, and Mark Twain, who “told the truth mainly,” according to his caddie, Huck Finn. Sometimes the truth hurts too much, so, like the French, I tell a polite lie, not to be confused with tight lies, the feeble excuses of drunks. (In response to moans in the live audience, Folly grins: Alright, that was a bad joke; I just wanted to see if you were paying attention.) My question is “Why must we be so quick to meanly yell ‘sandbagger’ when someone shoots a great round in a handicapped tournament?”
Golf myths, like any others, die hard, especially when it comes to sandbaggers, the name some of you high handicappers apply to your freinds who happen to make a few putts more than you on a given day. Did they win those tournaments because they were spotted too many strokes or because they were a bit less unlucky than usual or because they used their head--or didn’t use it--for a change?
Who knows? What I know is that the specter of sandbagging never dies, especially when it comes time for thousands of golfers with their USGA certified handicaps to show up in Myrtle Beach late each summer during a slow week for the tourist industry just after school opens for the fall term.
The classic sandbagger is associated with the so-called world championship of amateur handicappers. (Are there professional handicap championships?) Each year, we hear repeated the allegedly shameful story of a Myrtle Beach sports editor, later exiled to Florida, who won the DuPont World Amateur Handicap Championship with a 20-something handicap and a few rounds in the eighties.
Hold the confessions of shame and the breastbeating from his more ethical and virtuous successors as sports editor. The man was a genuine high-handicapper who put together some of the lowest scores of his life. He may not have paid his own entry fee, but how many sports editors in years gone by could afford memberships at Augusta National--as if they’d even be considered!--or The Dunes Club, or even a few hundred bucks for a golf tournament?
“Every golfer who’s ever won a handicap championship has been called a sandbagger--or worse,” according to former PGA Tour player and professional, Mike Schroder.
I agree, but the one time Folly was called “sandbagger,” the word sounded like the way the “Star Spangled Banner” or whatever national anthem must sound to an Olympic athlete who knows she’s never going to be on a Wheaties box or get a million Eurodollar signing bonus but just cries real tears because she’s happy to win. (Some of you out there will call tears of joy with no money in the bank “folly,” but it’s the kind of folly that I’m proud of.)
It was at the annual championship of the Golf Writers Association of America, always held in Myrtle Beach the week before the Masters. Although the local press will celebrate our low-gross, no-handicap champion, all our bets and all our enthusiasm are based on play at handicap.
You may ask “what is Dame Folly doing playing in the Golf Writers Championship?” Remember, these are the guys who critique the best golfers in the world and then have the nerve to think they can play the game, even if it’s from the front tees! Herbert Warren Wind nominated me for membership back in the persimmon era and I was elected by acclamation, the first woman member. Actually, I helped him, a truly wise man, with those marvelous pieces in The New Yorker magazine about the Masters. We would walk the course together and share a lot of laughs. When they got a woman editor in there she became jealous after she heard about me and dropped Herb’s annual pieces on Augusta National. Pity. Bill Tyndale cancelled his subscription after that, not because of the four-letter words cropping up in Updike’s short stories at the urging of the new editors, but because he missed Herb Wind’s byline so much.
While speaking of Herb Wind, I should mention that he was one of the half-dozen writers who played in the first Golf Writers Championship in Myrtle Beach back in 1953. Jimmy D’Angelo, another wise man who never got rich, except with friends, put the p.r. event together and it stuck. But I digress, which is a privilege of mine both as a woman and a writer.
No matter what it looks like when the writers championship is played--the courses are open to spectators, but, aside from a few members hors du combat with gout, by-pass surgery, or just very old age., absolutely no one watches and why should they?--there is an incentive for improvement from year to year, for handicaps in this championship are earned by previous years’ performances. Have a terrible year or two or three? Up goes your handicap. Got an assignment to do a story on a golf school and it takes a few strokes off your game? Enjoy it! Nothing counts save your previous chokes at The Dunes Club and other Myrtle Beach courses.
This was back when I first started playing golf and I had a 32 handicap, not the highest edge awarded by the Golf Writers tournament committee, which blinks not at scores in the hundred and teens or higher. (Cut that laughing out; we never pay greens fees--or even for carts--and we get our money’s worth out of every round, usually with complimentary balls.) I had taken some lessons from Schroder during the winter and I was driving the ball 200 yards and keeping it in play. I shot a 90 on one of the older and easier North Myrtle Beach courses: lots of good drives, plenty of pulled irons, and when I left my putts short I made a bunch of five-to ten-footers, mostly for bogey.
Going into the second and final day at the formidable Dunes Club--the Senior Tour Championship is played there in the fall, once sponsored by that stupid Energizer bunny--I had a one stroke lead on a 26-handicapper, net 58 to net 59.
I blew it, of course: balls in the marsh, three-putt holes, and I needed a miracle wedge over some telephone wires from the grass next to a palmetto tree in the parking lot to salvage bogey on No. 9, my last hole. 105, not even a net par golf round. I was the Faldo-Foldo, Payne-Pain, Norman-Unperformin’ of our final round.
You would think Folly would be philosophical, right? Wrong! I even got a speeding ticket driving to Conway, over the Intracoastal Waterway, where I was staying with my fellow golf writer, Don Millus and his family. His wife, Patricia, consoled me with some remarks about doing better next year, but as any golfer knows, second place is for the birds when you have a shot at first. (You could tell she was not a golfer, just married to one.) I had stubbed my chance for a championship, besides losing the two bucks I had bet on myself to win in the sweepstakes.
“Sandbagger” greeted me as I entered the clubhouse dining room that evening. What a sweet sound! Even Folly, despite all she has seen, can let things go to her head. I may be a goddess, but I have spent my life hanging around with real men and women.
The guy who trailed me has shot 115. I won an obscenely large golf bag and a lecture from my partner in On the Green magazine--that’s how I stayed eligible to play with the writers--about having too high a handicap.
I wish I didn’t have such a high handicap.
So do most high handicappers.
Sure, some try to keep their handicaps high, sed cui bono, but for what? A pro shop gift certificate or dinner for two at Uncle Bubba’s Seafood Buffet?
I’d rather have a single-digit handicap. So would most of you. So would Willie Binette, the “infamous” Myrtle Beach sportswriter who once won the World Amateur Handicap Championship. It is the ghost of his sandbagging that I wish to exorcise.
A few years ago, Binette and I got to play at The Witch, an atypical Myrtle Beach course with real hills, natural gullies, snaky swamps, and river-fed alligator ponds. Binette lines up his tee shot as if he’s hitting it on a right oblique into the woods! He then hits a duck hook which doesn’t go in the woods but runs up the center of the fairway--but only if his timing is right.
If it isn’t, he shoots a hundred and a quarter. But in that one World Amateur Championship many years ago, Binette’s timing was on, or off, just right. He also made a lot of putts. No more hand wringing and snide jokes. He deserved his handicap championship.
Now if you play in a tournament like this and claim a lower handicap to just edge into the bottom part of a tougher flight, I hope someone outfudges you. For the rest of you, whose handicaps are mainly the truth of your ability to score, or not, I hope that if you happen to get it together for a day or two or three, the best rounds of your life, that those who played their usual mediocre game will at least smile when they call you “sandbagger.”
“Amazing But True”
(By the way, The Witch, like ninety-five per cent of “Myrtle Beach” courses, is not in Myrtle Beach. It’s far closer to Conway, South Carolina. The city of Myrtle Beach has--barely--two golf courses, if you don’t count the five hundred “Monster Putts” and their progeny.)
No. 18, the Par- 4 Eighteenth Hole at Glen Dornoch, Little River, South Carolina, by Clyde Johnston
Our foursome agrees on a finishing hole that all their readers will find easily accessible, a new course on the Intracoastal Waterway at the north end of Myrtle Beach golf. An ancient live oak that demanded a precise draw off the tee to take a shortcut to a landing area just a pitching wedge away from the double green had mysteriously disappeared, allowing Folly to keep up with the guys. More’s 2-iron, Erasmus’s 3-wood, and Tyndale’s 5-wood are safely in the fairway over the marsh grass, aided by the wind which has not abated since the morning. Folly hits her prettiest driver of the day, rolling past Erasmus’s ball. Puzzled that the flag is so far back on the long, narrow, double green, Erasmus hits a 7-iron low into the wind and all watch incredulously as it bounces high, rolls, and disappears against the pin. Erasmus has eagled on eighteen to win all the skins . . . or has he? A white handkerchief is waved, as if in surrender, from a foursome coming on the double green from the ninth fairway. One of the group moves down the green, pausing to pick up the flagstick for eighteen that was left out by the previous foursome. Erasmus’s eagle has landed, but in the wrong hole! More, Tyndale, and Folly manage to hit the green, despite the laughter coming from golfers in rocking chairs on the long clubhouse porch who have observed the comedy. Erasmus is allowed a free drop from the wrong hole, and he three-putts from the fringe before More and Tyndale silence the beer-drinking onlookers with smooth birdie putts. Like characters in a bad golf story, they are all even after eighteen holes