My friend Burt McHugh is about as mild-mannered as a man can be, but now he was being pushed to his limits. I could feel his pain. We had left Philadelphia, where we both live, on a recent Sunday afternoon in a driving rainstorm. We were intent on playing a late-afternoon game at the Yale course, a hilly Charles Blair Macdonald and Seth Raynor track that Burt — High Orthodox, when it comes to golf, as am I — played as a member of the Penn golf team 25 or so years ago. The storm followed us on our drive north, but when we got to the course it was merely showering. Still, the course was closed.
"The course is closed?" Burt said to the pro shop counter man, echoing the message he'd just delivered. You'd have to know Burt well to hear the desperation in his voice. His morning game in Philadelphia was called after 16 holes because of the weather. And now this. He noted that the rain had almost stopped. His rain gear was on and his umbrella was in his bag — he was ready to go.
"The course is closed."
He staggered out of the shop, without even buying a golf hat. Burt always buys hats. The man was lost.
By Monday, the weather was fair and Burt was back to normal. We were on our annual golfing bender, a short and intense escape from our mundane one-round-a-day lives. (In actual fact, one or two a month.) He bought a hat before our morning game at the regal links of the Newport Country Club, in Newport, R.I. He bought another hat before our midday game at Sakonnet, a little Donald Ross gem with coffin-shaped bunkers in rural Little Compton, R.I., where Ross had a summer home. He bought another hat before our late-afternoon game at Rhode Island Country Club — Ross again — with a windswept, bay-front finish that could appear without warning in your golfing dreams.
On Tuesday, three more games in the Ocean State: a morning round at Metacomet, another work of genius by Donald Ross, where the transplanted Scot managed to get in 18 sound holes on about 100 acres in East Providence. We finished our two-day trip with 36 holes on Tuesday afternoon at Misquamicut, a sublime Donald Ross course in Watch Hill, R.I.
Because Burt and I live in Philadelphia — the epicenter of the Golden Age of American Golf Course Architecture — we are more than a little spoiled. (We have the good fortune to belong to private clubs, and once you belong to one you are sometimes invited to play others, in-state and out-of-state, too.) A brief list of some of the shinier pre-World War II gems in the Golf Association of Philadelphia: Philadelphia Cricket, Rolling Green, Philadelphia Country, Merion East, Gulph Mills, Torresdale-Frankford, Pine Valley, Lu Lu Temple, Huntington Valley, Whitemarsh, Merion West, Philmont . . . The list goes on.
In golf, as in life, it's good to have friends, and I called two to help Burt and me with our Rhode Island trip: Brad Faxon, the veteran Tour player who lives near Providence; and David Fay, the USGA executive director who often goes to Rhode Island for vacation.
It turns out that two days — even at three rounds a day — is nothing like enough time to do justice to Rhode Island golf. Except for a brief drive-by while U.S. Amateur qualifying was taking place, we barely got to see Wannamoisett, outside Providence, which some in Rhode Island consider to be the best course in the state. (Wanno's a Ross, too.) We didn't get to the nine-hole Jamestown municipal course, either, 100 years old and much enjoyed by David Fay. (Speaking of munis and David Fay, he played a significant role in bringing the U.S. Open to Bethpage Black and Torrey Pines.) But the five Rhode Island courses we did play were pure and great and a reminder of the primal understanding of the game that the pre-computer architects had.
For starters, the holes nearly always got more demanding as we got nearer to the flag. Golf is the world's best gambling game, right? When players of disparate skill compete — Burt is a solid 3-handicapper and I'm a solid duffer — you want the holes decided by pitch shots, chip shots, greenside trap shots, lag putts and, most painfully, short putts. (I have, as a New England golfer might say, a wicked case of the yips. I plan to attack it straight-on: My name is Mike and I am a yipper.) Who wants to win a hole with a wayward tee shot, or something out of bounds or in the water or lost in the hay? Not Burt and not I, for that matter. (The lost ball is the bane of the modern golf course.) In general, the fairways were wide and forgiving off the tee, and the thing you had to factor most was the wind. If you lacked confidence with the driver, you could always hit something with a shorter shaft and still think about reaching, or getting close, in regulation. The architect Tom Doak once told me, wistfully, that nobody ever hires him to build a short, wide, playable golf course. In Rhode Island, we played short, wide playable golf courses and had about as much fun as you can have while wearing soft spikes.
I won't torment you with any shot-by-shot recitations, or even hole descriptions. I will say the overall pleasure of Rhode Island golf approaches the general state of euphoria you get when playing golf in Scotland. I love trees — we all love trees — but not so much on a golf course. On the courses we played, the trees had been planted, or left, with a purpose. In Scotland, birthplace of the game, trees are found only here and there. The first architects figured out that you can't hit a ball through a tree and that they make for a poor obstacle. (Rough, when it's fertilized and watered, is overrated, too.) The early designers also knew that golfers cannot stand to lose golf balls.
When you travel in golf, as in life, the people you meet along the way add a dimension to the whole experience that cannot show up on a scorecard or in a glossy shot-at-dawn travel-story photo. For starters, there were the kids working the driveway at Newport who explained that the parking spots with the initials were for members — and certain members at that — and that our parking area was down by the entrance gate, and did we need a ride over there? There was the young assistant pro at Metacomet who described a recent golf exhibition for 500 underprivileged Providence kids, the local pros — Brad Faxon among them — introducing the great game to children who might not otherwise ever hold a club. There was David Fay and his detailed missives about where to eat and stay and watch amateur baseball played with wooden bats. (Next time, next time.) There was Jim Field and Bob Barrett, our hosts on the Little Compton course, Bob leading the way at lunch by ordering root beer (Burt and I followed suit), Jim leading the way on the course in a round that took not even three hours and change to play and never felt remotely rushed. (Jim, the club president, still had plenty of time to tell the stories of the holes and the players on them.)
On the second night of our trip, a Monday night, we had dinner at Brad's house. Brad showed Burt and me his club room in his basement, where we could see the evolution of the driver lined up on a wall: the tiny wooden driver with which he began his Tour career in 1984 and all the iterations leading up to the thin-walled titanium flying saucers that he, and most everybody else, plays with today. "And people say it's the ball," Brad said.
Brad's at the core of Rhode Island golf, and New England golf, too. He's been with Titleist — next door in Fairhaven, Mass. — forever, and he's consulted on or designed courses all over New England. He's close to Peter Broome, a Titleist executive, and has been watching the development of Peter's son, Matt, a promising Furman golfer. When I asked Brad if he was teaching the junior Broome, Brad said, "I ask him questions."
In the early part of the evening, Brad had some people at his house, part of a Fidelity outing. Brad was talking about his Tour experiences and the rigors of the 108 holes of Q-School, played over six days. One of Brad's Fidelity guests, pointing to Burt and me, said, "That's two days of golf for these guys." We walked and carried our bags, except at Metacomet, which required a cart.
We concluded our two days of golf with a 27-hole match at Misquamicut. Burt gives me half a shot a hole — any hole we tie I win — and through 26 holes our match was tied. Our final hole was played in the semi-dark and Burt made a pro's par and won the match. The locker room was closed and we showered in the employees' quarters — next round is on us, guys, and thank you — and made the drive home, richer in golf hats, hardly poorer in golf balls. I keep score by lost balls and played the final 27 without going to the bag once. Ross would be pleased to hear that, I'm guessing. On the way home, late at night, Burt and I split the driving, as traveling golf partners do.
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