Tournament golf is harder than it looks
As Dubya, more formally known as President George W. Bush, famously said about his job in one the debates with Sen. John Kerry, "It's hard work."
The same can be said for those men and women who earn a paycheck playing professional golf. Granted, whacking a little white ball around for a job is not quite as taxing as running the free world, but anyone who doubts that golfers are athletes need only try doing what they do for a week.
In one of the more unique events on the golf calendar, some amateurs get exactly that opportunity in the Callaway Golf Pebble Beach Invitational Presented by Merrill Lynch. While a week of golf on the Monterey Peninsula falls far short of any definition of work, it did provide instructive insight into the grueling grind experienced week in and week out by professional golfers.
Here's the deal with the Callaway: Eighty-one teams of four amateurs play together for three days, each day with a different pro as the fifth. The format is that two balls must be used on each hole -- one for gross and one for net. After 54 holes at Del Monte Golf Club, Spyglass Hill and Pebble Beach, the top 10 teams play a fourth round at Pebble Beach. There is also an individual professional tournament, and the winner was Jeff Brehaut, who edged Kevin Sutherland by one stroke with a 69 on Sunday. Third-round leader Kirk Triplett had a wind-blown 78 in the final round at Pebble Beach.
I'll say right off the bat that my team played 54 holes in 15 under. That's the good news. The bad news is that we missed the cut by a mere 24 strokes. And it wasn't as close as the score indicates. We were, by Saturday night, probably glad we didn't have to play on Sunday. As Bobby Jones liked to say, "There is golf and then there is tournament golf." That was his way of saying, "This is hard work."
Callaway uses its Invitational to say thanks to key clients and top customers and invites along a few ink-stained wretches like myself to provide insight into what a week on tour is like inside the ropes. The other unique aspect of the format is that the professionals come from the ranks of the PGA Tour, LPGA, Champions Tour, Nationwide Tour, Futures Tour and club professionals. My partners last week were Bob Penicka, president and chief operating officer of Callaway-owned Top-Flite, Randy Ramsey, executive vice president of Washington Golf Centers, and Greg Maanum, chief operating officer of Golf Galaxy. We played with former PGA Championship winner Rich Beem at Del Monte, LPGA tournament winner Kelli Kuehne at Spyglass Hills and Canoe Brook club pro Greg Lecker at Pebble Beach. It is safe to say that we crushed their spirit and brought them down to our level.
Actually, that's not entirely true. We were a team of very solid players, each of whom had sustained stretches of inspired golf and each of whom stepped forward to carry our team for a series of holes. What we all found out, however, is that the pressure and grind of playing where every shot matters is so wearing that there was eventually a point at which one of us would crack and disappear for a few holes. Tragically, at times we all disappeared and left our pro wondering why he or she didn't opt for a career in home refrigeration repair. In Thursday's first round we were 10 under through 11 holes at Del Monte and finished the day 12 under. The greater the pressure the more we struggled and the more we struggled the quieter we got. There would always be a stretch of a few holes each day when our collective silence more resembled a funeral procession walking to a cemetery than golfers traipsing the fairways.
What you appreciate about tour players is the amount of emotional energy they spend on every shot, and the physical price they pay for that level of concentration. You further appreciate what a grind it is to play with that level on concentration several days in a row, then get on an airplane and fly somewhere else to do it all again, filling free time by beating practice balls. There are no gimmes in this world and our team had more than one 3-footer missed. And standing over a 4-footer for par with four teammates watching you and bogey being the best score in so far is a different kind of pressure than anything we recreational golfers experience in a weekend nassau. Truly, 18 holes in the Callaway Invitational felt a lot like 36 holes, except when you played Spyglass in which case it felt like 54 holes.
If Spyglass Hill wasn't just a couple of John Daly 3-woods away from Pebble Beach it would be recognized as one of the better golf courses in the United States and certainly one of the most difficult. But because Spyglass lives in the shadow of Pebble it doesn't pop by on the radar screen as a top venue as often as it should. Remarkably, almost mystically, Spyglass seems to be able to have a disproportionate number of holes that are uphill and into the wind. It is the kind of course that if you played regularly you would either get better or take up tennis. It is, however, a track that anyone even remotely serious about the game should experience. The first five holes are as beautiful as any anywhere. The four par-3s are as good of a set as any and the several short par-4 holes are real teases guaranteed to lure you into trying something stupid.
For the record, we played Del Monte 12 under, Spyglass at even par and Pebble Beach at 3 under. And the way the mind of a golfer works, as I am falling asleep Saturday night I'm thinking: "We missed the cut by 24 strokes, that's eight shots a round four strokes per nine holes." Part of what makes golf the best sport there is to play is that I was able to replay our 54 holes in my mind and come up with the number of squandered opportunities that if converted would have gotten our team enough under par to play on Sunday.
And I did leave on Sunday very much thinking of Our Team. I'm certain if the four of us got to play together again we'd be much better. For one thing, the next time we'd be better prepared. We'd go into the competition knowing it was going to be hard work -- and worth every ounce of blood, sweat and tears.
Ron Sirak is the Executive Editor of Golf World magazine.
