The Dreaded Pro/Am

Hello friends. As I sit here listening to the rain pound against my window I decided to return to warmer and funnier days, if only in my mind. During my five years caddying on tour I had the great fortune of seeing some golf shots that were amazing in their degree of difficulty and execution. I saw Lanny Watkins, a PGA tour pro playing in Africa, cut a 4-wood 245 yards out onto an island green, hit it to 12 feet, but the great thing was that he asked his caddy what the grain direction on the green was before he hit the shot! He had the confidence to want to spin the ball coming down against the grain, allowing for a softer landing! No bull! I was standing 10 feet away as Lanny and his caddy talked this through. I could list many more outrageous shots that I witnessed but that topic is not the heart of this writing. I want to talk about something more relatable to the average golfer. I want to talk about a round of golf that can strike terror into the heart of any amateur. Teeing it up with a pro in public. The dreaded Pro-Am!

This golf outing, the pro-am, has the ability to reduce normally good players into puddles of nerves and shanks as they play, in public, with a tour pro. Oh, the stories I could tell, the abuse of golf balls I have witnessed! I could write a small book on this, but I’ll stay with a few favorites.

The setting is Rochester, New York during the spring of 1985. It is still very soggy and the course didn’t drain well. You actually had to walk gingerly as footing was hazardous at best. Ralph, (not his real name ‘cuz I can’t remember that far back) stood six-four with a long swing that wound up like a lumberjack preparing to fell a large tree with one mighty blow. Get the image? Waaaaay back goes his driver as he decides to show this lady pro (I was working with Kathy Baker then) how he was not going to be out driven by a lady pro. Ralph then started his downswing with all his might but didn’t plan for his feet sliding during the swing. His clubhead started trenching a good foot behind the desired point of impact. It was amazing to watch his club slowly disappear into the ground as it got closer to his ball. Finally his swing stopped with nothing but the shaft of the driver pointing out of the soggy turf, ball still on tee! But this gets better. The giant divot that Ralph created slowly rose into the air, still attached to the ground, and as in slow motion gently laid completely over the ball. All of us in the group were rendered speechless by what we had just seen! Now I was in a quandary because I wanted to burst out laughing but Pro-am etiquette prohibited me from doing this. These men paid a lot of money for this day and Kathy and I had to be on the up-n-up.

Back to the scene. All of us just stared in stunned silence as a foot-long grass pelt laid upon this ball (see quote below). I just handed Kathy her driver and took off up the fairway so I wouldn’t start laughing in front of the group. When she caught up to me she said “thanks for leaving me out on an island with those guys.” I came back with “you are the professional. I couldn’t keep it together.”

But this gets better! A few holes later our all-star Ralph outdoes himself with a shot that I have never seen duplicated in my 45 years of golf. He takes a full swing at a teed up three wood, naturally plows under the ball and pops it straight up 30 feet in the air! Then, without moving his feet and standing in a near-perfect follow through position, he puts out his hand and makes the catch! Instant Hall of Fame material! To this day I have never seen a back-to-back like that. Ahhhhhh. The legendary Pro-Am. The days when anything can happen and something amazing usually does. I miss ‘em.

“I’ve heard of unplayable lies, but on the tee?”- Bob Hope
More stories to come, Scotty