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The World AM consists of 72 holes of flight play on 55 courses throughout Myrtle Beach, followed by an 18-hole playoff for flight winners, complete with PGA Tour–style electronic scoreboards, at the famed Dunes Golf and Beach Club. The committee does most of its work early, sidelining suspected sandbaggers well before the Friday finale. Disqualified contestants aren't eligible for the prizes but may keep playing.
Then again, you never know when a player will balk at being bounced, which is why the tension-filled Room 204 may be the last, best unmade reality show. Tears flow nightly. One year a man threw a beer at the handicap committee. Another time, a woman was so furious that at night's end the men in black required a police escort to exit the building. Another incensed player rode the escalator to the convention floor and, quite possibly the result of being over-served, punched a concrete post, shattering his arm and requiring a trip to the local ER.
Then there was the bomb threat.
"I remember sitting under a palm tree by the 13th tee at the Dunes and hearing on my walkie-talkie, 'Come in, Bill! Come in!' " says Bill Golden, the incoming president of Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday and a former World Am tournament director. "I'm thinking, What could be so important? Did we run out of food? We had to make the decision whether to go on with the tournament or evacuate the golf course," Golden says. "We pressed on, like Hubert Green. It was a big deal. Somebody came from the fire department. The guy called in the threat to the pro shop. We thought it was a guy who'd been bounced the day before, but we didn't have any evidence."
"I remember one guy came in with his lawyer," says Golden, a Conan O'Brien lookalike. "But you can't question the handicap committee. Decisions are final."
Harbaugh, a 36-year-old pro and director of golf at a South Carolina club, plays the good cop. If he looks unimposing, that's by design. He doesn't want to give a player an excuse to fly into a rage. So Harbaugh doesn't go there. He likens himself to the Patrick Swayze character in the movie Road House, who's nicknamed "The Cooler" for easing the exits.
Not that he doesn't wish his job were easier. "We should just bring in Lou Ferrigno and put him in an extra small shirt, sit him down and say, 'Look, Lou doesn't want you in the tournament anymore,' " Harbaugh says. "That'd be it."
Three other Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday employees, all men in their 20s, make up the committee: Tyler Hahn, a no-nonsense former tournament player with a nose for the kill (and the aforementioned Bluetooth wearer); Dave Macpherson, a buttoned-down straight-arrow; and Ric Freeman, who at 21 is still in college. They're assisted and supervised by affable tournament director Steve Mays.
"You need to be decisive, firm and able to look someone in the eye and deliver bad news," Golden says.
