Last Call: Amateur Hour
Stevenson, Matthew
LAST CALL by Matthew Stevenson Amateur Hour WHEN I MOVED TO EUROPE, I JOINED A COMPANY that each year sponsors a pro-am golf tournament for charitable causes. Since 1991, this grand tour, with...
...AMONG OTHER PROFESSIONALS, MY FAVORITES include Steve Elkington and Mark Calcavecchia...
...By the third hole, he knew they would marry because, when he made par, she asked (as only a wife can): "What's wrong...
...As a college golfer, he invited her to watch him play a sport about which she knew nothing...
...If, as the English writer Geoffrey Moorhouse says, golf is the last sport played by gentlemen, this is largely thanks to the current Masters and British Open champion, Mark O'Meara, known also as Tiger Woods's best friend...
...Ambivalent about leveraging a buyout of Ping irons or Tayfor Made woods, I showed up at my third pro-am with a set pulled from the rack at Wholesale Depot in Bangor, Maine...
...On the first hole, a par four, he had an eagle two, holing out his fairway iron...
...Unfazed, he played in sneakers and with borrowed clubs...
...The only problem in playing with Elkington, a man of grace and humor, is that he comes with a gallery...
...Although many of my drives remind me of a remark that followed one of Garrison Keillor's tee shots, "That'll teach them not to bring their Cadillacs," I sometimes find myself in a famous foursome...
...Since 1991, this grand tour, with me in tow, has visited such hallowed ground as Gleneagles in Scotland and Deauville in Normandy...
...Several years ago when I played with O'Meara, who has the same soft touch with strangers that he has around the green, he was more a caddie than a pro to his amateur partners...
...But during most rounds my head swims with advice about the position of my shoulders, hips, and hands, and by the back nine I am again in dancing class, with sweaty palms, trying to learn the fox trot...
...I LEARNED GOLF AS A NINE-YEAR-OLD FROM A friend's grandfather, "Dad" Seamon, who considered it a necessary life tool—corporate finance then as now being a dismal science, he thought we were better off on the links than prepping for business school...
...Under such influence I should have a stroke as seamless as the disciples of the Dutch masters...
...My friend Nick and I honed our game at various Long Island public courses where those who filled out the foursome tucked tees and unfiltered cigarettes behind their ears...
...Sure that my problems off the tee, in this age of titanium, related to the weakness of my capital expenditure program, I handed O'Meara my discount-house driver and then watched a half-dozen range balls disappear over the Scottish horizon, a feat of arms that would undoubtedly dampen the spirit of any Callaway salesman...
...He lined up our putts, searched the rough for our errant drives, and hit his own shots seemingly as an afterthought...
...But he scored under par...
...At the second, he had a birdie...
...But I never followed them with a proper set and after college let my golf go fallow...
...Only back in the clubhouse did any of us realize that he had shot a course record 64...
...The next year we were again in the same foursome and, as I had not played at anytime in between, my best "shot" of the day was to note that while I do not play a lot of golf, when I do, at least it's with Mark Calcavecchia...
...The first year I played with him in Bordeaux, Air France had lost his luggage...
...90 September 1998 • The American Spectator...
...Announced on a loudspeaker at the first tee in Deauville, I felt as if I were addressing the ball in front of the Million Man March, which may explain why my drive barely carried the women's tee...
...I use an O'Meara stance, the grip of Steve Elkington, the backswing of Brian Gunson, the putting stroke of Bill Rogers, and the follow-through of Peter Townsend—much as I once put together a Little League swing from scrutinizing those of Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams...
...Ever the gentleman, O'Meara greeted me on the practice tee: "I see you have new clubs," he said cheerfully, too gentlemanly to add: "I thought Rawlings only made baseball gloves...
...MY CLUBS WERE A MIXED BAG, AN ODD LOT OF forgotten irons...
...Calcavecchia, the winner of the 1989 British Open, is like a character from a Henry James novel, bringing American insouciance to a game that often feels as confining as an English drawing room...
...At my first few pro-ams, I played with clubs cadged from pliant caddie masters...
...DURING THE ROUND, O'MEARA'S WIFE ALICIA joined us, and I asked her how they had met...
...An Australian, Elkington brings to the golf club the charms that Crocodile Dundee dispatched with his boomerang...
...Not today a country club member, when asked where I "play most of my golf," I still answer "Christopher Morley," where a bad approach on the first hole rolls toward the Expressway...
...ONE CONSEQUENCE OF PLAYING WITH PROS IS that many feel obliged to correct my Christopher Morley swing, much as before Sunday school my mother would fuss with my necktie or paste down my hair...
Vol. 31 • September 1998 • No. 9
