Cover Me Boys, I'm Going In

And who can blame them.

I read, listened and watched with interest as players (current and former), captains (former), fans and so called experts, bloviated and opined about the disastrous effects and far-reaching consequences of America losing the Ryder Cup this year. I am both intrigued and a little saddened by it all.

Yes Team USA lost and the reaction and race to blame was both swift and intense… but wait, weren’t they predicted to lose by many of the same people leading the hue and cry after the inevitable? Team Europe was stronger in spirit and on paper even before the stripes lost its stars Tiger, DJ and Duf. The surprise to me was that the Americans got out of the gate looking like they were going to put up one heck of a fight.

On the very first morning Patrick Reed and Jordan Spieth were surprisingly spectacular and Ian Poulter was positively ineffective. Still, had Jimmy Walker not chipped in late during his and Rickie Fowler’s halved match with Thomas Bjorn and Martin Kaymer AND Keegan Bradley not hit the shot of his weekend on the par 5 16^th leading to a 1 up upset over Garcia and McIlroy, all of those eyes, bleary from watching commercial after commercial with a few golf shots mixed in, could have moved on with their lives secure in the knowledge that this was going to be the blowout everyone, save for family members and die hards, expected. Instead good ol’ Team USA gave them all false hope, in the form of a 2.5 to 1.5 four balls lead, that this year might be different. The fact is it was never going to be.

Should Captain Tom Watson have played Spieth and Reed again that afternoon? Probably. Should he have benched Keegan and Phil on Saturday? Maybe not in the morning four balls matches but certainly in the afternoon foursomes, (a discipline in which the two got shellacked on Friday afternoon). But no matter the machinations, this team was not going to win the Ryder Cup. So let’s stop blaming the “curmudgeonly” captain or the “petulant” prima donna. Let’s stop talking “pods” and “resets” and “task forces” and “overhauls to the system”. In my opinion what’s wrong with Team USA in the Ryder Cup is that to many American players the year-after-year burden of being involved in “us against them”, made for TV, arm wrestling tussles has drained them of their “give a damn”.

The Ryder Cup was established in 1927 as a golf match between the United States and Great Britain and Ireland. Fifty years later Jack Nicklaus suggested that GB & I invite the rest of Europe to join its team to make the matches more competitive. At the time, Team USA’s record was 18-3-1. The U.S won again in 1979, ’81 and ’83 but since then Europe has gone 9-4-1. Bottom line is THIS THING MATTERS to Team Europe. If the International Team could ever win another President’s Cup (1998 was the last and only outright International win) that competition would matter to them too. The simple fact is that it has all become too much for the American players who rightly put their passion, focus and attention toward winning things that DO MATTER to them, namely MAJORS.

There is not only too much golf on the schedule every year, there is simply too much golf trying to compete, in importance, with the major championships. And in 2016, for good measure, we add golf in the Olympic Games every four years. In addition to glut, many European players live and most play in America. In addition to that “opponents” every year or two in international “pillow fights” are teammates corporately. It all adds up to very little, if any, animosity in the game anymore.

What all of the pundits, experts, and opinion givers are not mentioning in this equation is the adverse affect the PGA TOUR created President’s Cup, which is played in Ryder Cup off years, plays. I think it matters because it means that almost all of the guys who make up Team USA playing Europe in the even years now have to manufacture the enthusiasm to play against something called “The International Team” in the odd ones. Odd indeed. By the way, they’ve played 10 President’s Cups and the USA is 8-1-1.

So all the talk post 2014 Ryder Cup is “How do we fix it?” and my contention is, in the current climate, we can’t. Why does it always have to be “US” against “THEM”? In one competition we seem to be outsmarted, outmanned, outmatched and outmaneuvered. In that exhausted state “our” team has to turn around and play in another head to “heads” competition and as Adam Scott stays great, Jason Day, Graham DeLaet and Hideki Matsuyama get great and Camillo Villegas, Geoff Ogilvy and Tim Clark get completely back to form, how long before the U.S. dominance in that one is also a thing of the past? Tennis saw top players decide not to play for their country in the Davis Cup and it’s my contention that that phenomenon is right around the corner in golf. It’s just too much too ask.

Before those things happen, let’s do this… Let’s stop getting our undies in a bunch about this past Ryder Cup or the next one. Dismantle the “task force” while there is still time and put an end to The President’s Cup altogether. The solution is to make the bold move and include the entire golf world in the Ryder Cup starting in 2016. You pick the two teams. Give Europe Africa and Asia and the USA can add Canada, Mexico, South America, Australia and New Zealand. Like I said mix and match them any way you want but have two international teams and play the thing every other year. Try that for a few years and so what happens, in the meantime LET IT GO!

And another thing… shouldn’t the penalty in football be “catch interference” instead of “pass interference”?

In January our daughter, Hayley, moved to Tokyo. This wasn’t a whim. This wasn’t an act of fancy. This was a conscious, well thought out decision based on years of interest in, and respect for, the culture, as well as decades and dollars spent learning the language. She is Japanese Government certified fluent and graduated with honors from Beloit College in Wisconsin (one of the nation’s top International Studies schools). She had also lived in Japan previously, in high school, as part of a months-long student exchange program. She knew she wanted to go back even then. So after spending a year working in the international department at Golf Channel, she decided the time was right.

A one-way ticket later, she was living, working and navigating her way around as a foreigner in, for her, a not so foreign land. She is also fluent in Mandarin Chinese and thanks to her boyfriend John, with whom she now lives, is in the process of learning Turkish. But enough bragging. My wife had some business to attend to in Tokyo and I was lucky enough to join her so we scheduled a trip to visit our girl.

As part of the adventure we included a day long detour in San Francisco to see the baseball Giants win; thanks in large part to pitcher Yusmiero Petit who needed only 84 pitches to dismantle the Arizona Diamondbacks. I am a Giants fan, living in New Jersey, with season tickets to AT&T Park. Strange, unless you consider that I grew up in Reno (218 miles from baseball’s best ballpark) and was part of a family of fans. After a good night’s sleep (thanks Bill, Kirsten, Fletch and Bear) and an amazing breakfast at Plow in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill neighborhood, we made our way to SFO and boarded a United flight for our transoceanic trip to Tokyo’s Narita Airport.

The “Land of the Rising Sun” was 16 hours ahead on the clock so we departed at 1:35 PT on Wednesday and landed at 4:35 PM GMT+9 on Thursday. Thanks to miles and points we ended up in business class, so after excellent service and lay-flat seats we were actually in decent shape upon our arrival. We took Hayley’s advice and road an Airport Limousine bus from Narita to The Shangri-La Hotel adjacent to Tokyo Station. We rode through an amazingly diverse landscape, alternating between farmland and cityscapes, away from the setting sun and arrived after dark. We were scheduled to meet Hayley and John for dinner and because the ride was smooth and relatively quick we had plenty of time to check in, unpack and freshen up a little. It didn’t take me long, so while my wife got ready I took a moment to look out the window of our 32^nd floor room. What I saw was impressive. Skyscrapers and lights which showed signs of humanity as far as my eyes could see. Tokyo is one of Japans 47 prefectures, its capital city, seat of the Japanese Government, and the most populous metropolitan area in the world. In 2010 Tokyo boasted 37,800,000 residents which is 10,000 more than Delhi, India, 12,000 more than Seoul, South Korea, 13,000 more than Shanghai and almost 15,000 more than Mumbai, the world’s top five. If you’re curious New York City claims 20,000,000 residents (ranked 11^th in the world) and has half as many people as Tokyo. The Japanese capital is also home to more than 1/10^th (or 51) of the Fortune Global 500 companies. It looked immense, energetic and magnificent especially from 32 floors up.

We hadn’t seen Hayley since putting her on a plane at the first of the year and we had never met John in person so we headed downstairs with a great deal of excitement and a certain amount of anxiety. We had seen pictures of Hayley’s boyfriend and I had skyped with the two of them so we knew John was a handsome, smart and self-sufficient young man. What we could only hope was that he was also right for Hayley and that they were good to, and for, each other. We left the elevator, walked down the short hallway and turned the corner into the small, well-appointed lobby. I took a deep breath, my wife took a long stride and we both smiled as we saw our daughter. A hug and a kiss for and from Hayley, then a firm handshake from and for John broke the ice as we headed into the lounge for a cocktail and a chat.

The conversation crisscrossed from how and when they met, to how and why they liked (or didn’t like) living and working in Tokyo, to some of their hopes and dreams for the future, to finally what we might do and where we wanted to go during our first trip to Tokyo. Last, but not least, we discussed a spot for a first-night-in-Japan dinner. All the while John was easy going and easy to be around. He was comfortable in his own skin, interesting and interested in us. He was also clearly captivated and impressed with Hayley and her ability and accomplishments. I thought I saw in John what I knew to be true about myself and the way I felt about my wife from the very first day I met her, he respected Hayley and that knowledge put me much more at ease. We knew Hayley had complete command of the language and a full understanding of the culture. What we didn’t know was that John also knew his way around and, while not fluent, had a better than rudimentary grasp on the language both spoken and written. My wife had come armed with a list of things to do and see so we talked about both “touristy” and “non-touristy” things at our disposal.

We decided we would see the Meiji Shrine, The Tokyo Sky Tree (the city’s version of the Space Needle in Seattle), Shibuya Crossing, Shinjuku and Asakusa. We also had trips to Karuizawa (near Nagano) and Roppongi so we suddenly had a full slate. But first and foremost we were all starving so we headed out into the Tokyo night to find dinner.

We had a special sushi dinner planned for the following evening, so we wandered a bit before deciding on a simple, casual Japanese dinner in a bustling little place that served a variety of small plate dishes. On the way I couldn’t help but notice two things; the city was incredibly clean and its residents were not interested in making eye contact, with foreigners or locals. Heads down, briefcases, hand bags and man purses in hand, everyone appeared to be in a hurry to get where they were going completely indifferent to who or what stood, walked or sat between them and the intended destination. It’s not that they were unfriendly, just disinterested. We arrived at a restaurant in which Hayley and John had dined previously. Like many, it featured a curtain instead of a front door and cubbyholes for shoes. We took ours off, found a space for them to reside while we ate and headed inside.

We were greeted by a hostess who exchanged a few words with Hayley and led us to our table. A narrow hallway was bordered on both sides by, what I assumed were traditional Japanese booths. Tables set into the ground which allowed for patrons to sit on the floor with room for feet and legs under the table top. The other thing I noticed while walking to dinner was that no one was standing on sidewalks or outside buildings smoking. On the way to our table I realized why… everyone who smoked, smoked inside. I asked John about this and he nodded and answered that it was indeed the custom. He chuckled and said that one of the things the hostess had asked Hayley was whether or not our group wanted to be seated in the smoking or non-smoking section. It reminded me of the time when airplanes offered to seat you using the same distinction. It didn’t matter then when you were inside a 150 tube in the sky and it didn’t matter inside a 250 square foot restaurant.

We ordered drinks, beer and sake, and perused the menu then picked gyoza, edamame, chicken skewers, a handful of pieces of sashimi (I couldn’t resist) and a couple of rolls filled with pickled vegetables (Hayley’s idea) and more. It was all excellent, as was the conversation, but after about an hour the long flight, the excitement of the trip and the fact that I have spent nearly 59 years on this planet began to take its toll. I hit a wall and suddenly I started comprehending about every third word that was being said. I knew it was time for this traveler to get a good night’s sleep and continue our excellent Japanese adventure in the morning. We agreed to meet Hayley and John at the entrance to Tokyo station bright and early the next day and said goodnight with hugs this time instead of handshakes. They headed toward their train and home and we went up to the room and hit the hay.

Next up: our first full day in Tokyo and more

This is part three of a four part series on our recent trip to Bandon Dunes

DAY THREE – THE NAMESAKE

After a few rounds of cocktails and a round of putting on Punchbowl, the 18 hole, 100,000+ square foot putting green at Bandon Dunes, our group of seven (me, my wife, KB, BP, KM, PJ and Pat from Chicago) headed to the restaurant next to the golf shop at Bandon Trails for dinner. We ordered our food accompanied by a couple of bottles of “B” Pinot Noir (Bandon’s proprietary red).

At some point during the conversation KM and Pat from Chicago, buddies from grad school, decided they were good to go for 36 holes on Sunday in addition to the 36 we had all, except Pat, just finished. This change in plans came about because Pat hadn’t arrived yet when the group played Bandon Trails that morning and, having heard so many good things about the Tom Doak design, he wanted to tee it up there too. BP, my wife and I had been friends for years and were looking forward to playing together for the only time on the trip so he was out with them and in with us. PJ in a bizarre coincidence had run into another group of buddies enjoying a golf trip of their own to Bandon and had planned to join them the next day so he was out as well.

To accomplish what Pat wanted to accomplish the six of us decided to meet at The Preserve (the 13-hole par 3 course) at 8 AM and from there KM and Pat would head directly to Bandon Dunes for a morning round before the additional eighteen at Bandon Trails. That plan meant 31 holes for four of us and 49 for the other two. We said goodnight, parted ways with KM and Pat and headed back to the four bedroom cottage. Not surprisingly after 36 holes of walking and swinging in the wind, a good meal and an alcoholic beverage, or four, I slept like a dead guy then awakened in the morning ready for another day at Bandon.

My wife felt the same way and so did BP. Of our group only KB seemed a little slow on the uptake but a quick breakfast and a latte at the main lodge worked wonders. We met KM and Pat at The Preserve and made our way to the first tee. Number one is slightly downhill and only about 75 yards from the tee we played into, of course, a slight breeze. After deciding the match and the make-up of the teams (KM, my wife and I would take on KB, BP and Pat) I plopped a ball down and took a swipe at it with my 54 degree Vokey wedge. I carry three, 50, 54 and 60 degrees and I use and love them all. This one I hit on the nose and the ball flew straight and true eventually settling about 12 feet from the hole. There are 13 par threes at The Preserve and that morning I hit 12 of them in regulation using everything from a 7 iron to my 60 degree sand wedge. I couldn’t miss, much to my amusement and the amazement of the other five. The only green I didn’t hit was the result of choosing the wrong club the ball landing short and in the bunker after a perfectly struck pitching wedge. I got it up and in.

We learned on the first day of the trip that on the 13^th and final hole of The Preserve it is customary to play a shot off the tee with a putter. The hole is straight down hill, anywhere from 75 to 109 yards long and conducive to rolling a ball from the very top to the bottom. We all tried and even on that shot I hit it square on the clubface, exactly where I aimed it. The ball rolled and rolled and rolled before reaching the putting surface then sliding just by the hole. From our perch 80 yards up the hill we thought I made a one but instead it ended up just 3 feet away and I made a two. It may have only been the par three course but I definitely had a little bounce in my step as we headed to Bandon Dunes for an early lunch.

After another satisfying meal (the food at Bandon Dunes is not gourmet but it is very, very good and on most every occasion it was the perfect salve before and after a good walk “unspoiled”) of burgers, bratwurst and banquet beer we stepped outside to meet up with our caddies “Rack” and “Jake”, or “Rake” as my wife had taken to calling them since day one, who were waiting with ready smiles.

Bandon Dunes was the first golf course designed on Mike Keiser’s land and he hired Scotsman David McLay Kidd to fulfill his vision. It opened in the late spring of 1999 and was one of McLay Kidd’s earliest works. Since then Bandon Dunes has become known and respected worldwide and McLay Kidd has gone on to design some of golf’s most interesting and talked about golf courses including South Africa’s Fancourt, which hosted the 2003 Presidents Cup Match, Nanea on the Big Island of Hawaii and Gamble Sands along the Columbia River in central Washington State. From my now customary green tee markers the course sets up at 6,221 yards on the card but there is NO WIND on the card! Sunday’s breeze was around 20 to 25 miles an hour as we got set to play and my caddie, Jake, looked at me with a grin and said, “This is what a normal Bandon wind feels like.” “Does it ever NOT blow?” I asked. “Sure,” he replied and then added, “the day before and the day after a storm.”

Our good friend BP, a single digit handicap, plays most of his golf in the San Francisco Bay Area so the conditions (wind, sweater weather chill) seemed to affect him much less than it affected us. In fact, on the golf course, he wore shorts and a golf shirt with a long sleeve undershirt while I almost always had on a sweater and slacks. I did pack a pair of shorts but they never got unpacked. On the tee Jake handed me my driver, pointed out the desired direction and watched as I blasted another first tee shot right down the fairway. BP followed and ripped one down the left side about 20 yards past me and away we went.

I don’t know if it was because we were refreshed, or that BP had joined us, or simply because we had each played more than 60 (BP had played more than 78) holes of golf in two and a half days but we all played pretty well. My good technique, or was it good fortune, continued with the short irons and as we made the turn there weren’t more than a handful of scores worse than bogey on any of our scorecards. KB made the group’s first birdie with a nice 15 foot putt on the par three third while BP made his first birdie of the round by reaching the par five ninth, in two. No birdies for me or my wife but plenty of pars and bogeys led to respectable front nine scores.

The tenth at Bandon Dunes is legendary, literally. After we had all hit our tee shots Rack started to tell us the tale of a group of Scots who came to Bandon very early on. While Rack spun the yarn Jake instructed BP to “walk this way” and they headed into the right rough. According to Rack’s story the Scotsmen buried a treasure (a very old, very good bottle of scotch) under a tree in the direction Jake and BP now wandered. Years later, the same group returned and set about unearthing, with hopes of enjoying, the golden liquid. “This is where it gets interesting,” Rack said and continued to relate the story. It seems, according to the legend, the men were unable to locate the bottle and assuming the grounds crew had subsequently found and drained the bottle they headed toward the superintendent’s office to get answers. Upon inquiring about the long buried treasure the Super let out a hearty laugh and exclaimed, “So that was YOUR bottle!” The Scotsmen said that indeed it was and announced their displeasure that it had been “stolen” from them and the liquid poured down some American greens keeper’s gullets. His honor questioned, the Super bristled and then assured the gentlemen that he and his crew had done no such thing and then he proved it. He led the return visitors back out to the tenth but stopped in a different place, under a different tree.

Without taking further questions he explained in the intervening years they had reworked the earth in that area and unearthed the bottle. After agreeing that something mysterious was at work the crew put the bottle, unopened, in a box and buried it again, albeit in a slightly different spot. And that’s where it sits to this day. Jake had shown BP the bottle but I passed on taking a peak, preferring to keep the details of the story safe in my imagination. BP birdied the hole while I made bogey from the middle of the fairway. Maybe I should have gazed upon the bottle after all.

After a good par for me and a three putt double bogey for BP at 11 I had the tee at the par three twelfth. From our teeing ground the card says the hole plays 153 but it’s a little downhill and the wind was helping slightly from right to left. “I like this,” Jake said while handing me my 9 iron. I took it, teed the ball up and stepped into my stance. My swing was good as was the contact and the ball beautifully rode the wind, landed on the front part of the green and rolled out to about 15 feet from the hole. “That’s as good as it gets right there,” said Rack. “Nice shot,” echoed Jake as he reclaimed the 9 iron and put it back in the bag.

Back on the first tee my three playing companions (I have no idea where I was) had determined that afternoon’s match. My wife and I would take on KB and BP. KB is a 17 and would get 8 shots, my wife is a 25 and they awarded her a stroke a hole. BP was prepared to give me 3. When I heard the bet, in some fit of bravado, or insanity, I said I would play BP straight up and we went ahead and lost the front 9, three down. After BP’s birdie at ten we went four down and one down and then KB poured salt on the wound with a stellar birdie at the eleventh. That meant the “good guys” lost the front nine, were down five on the 18 and two on the back nine needing something good to happen. Then it did, I finally followed Jake’s advice to perfection on the green at twelve and rolled in the putt for my first “real” birdie of the trip. That got us one hole back and my wife’s par net birdie on the par five 13^th meant we were three down and all square in the match. We lost 14, and the 18 hole match, thanks to a KB par, halved the 15^th and stood four down and one down on the picturesque par 4 16^th tee.

The mighty Pacific Ocean takes up all the room to the right with tall grass, gorse and dunes if you miss left. That said the fairway, like most at Bandon Dunes, was expansive though riddled with several well placed bunkers. To add to the grandeur of the hole you also have to carry your tee shot over a ravine but Jake was reassuring when he handed me the driver and said, “It’s more intimidating than it looks. Just rip it over the fairway bunker on the right side of the fairway.” So I did. ”You,” he said to BP, “can drive the green.” He didn’t. His ball had the distance but not the direction and it sailed 30 yards left into the rough. From there his approach landed in a greenside pot bunker and his only play was back the same we from which he had come. In the meantime I had hit my 60 degree wedge on the green and my wife and KB, both getting a stroke) had reached the green in three. Three putts for KB later we had won the hole and had brought the only bet we still had a chance to win to all square with two to play.

Throughout the course of this four part discourse I have mentioned fondly our caddies Rack and Jake. If I said they made our Bandon Dunes experience exponentially better once I could have said it a hundred times and not been overstating their impact for me. James “Jake” Muldowney, my guy, was the younger of the two. Fresh from a stint playing competitive college golf for the Runnin Rebels at UNLV he clearly knew, loved and was good at the game. I could sense he would much rather be playing out of my bag as opposed to carrying it and it won’t surprise me one bit if Jake has moved on to other adventures if, or when, we go back to Bandon Dunes.

Eric “Rack” Rackley, on the other hand, is as much a part of the scenery at Bandon Dunes as the kite surfers, the whale spouts and the wind. My guess is he will be there as long as he can hoist a bag or two over his shoulders. Walking down the first fairway on Friday he was quick to mention, but humble enough not to dwell on, the fact that he was the very first caddie hired at the resort and then he never mentioned it again, didn’t have to. I know he plays but have no idea how often or how well. I also sensed, from those first moments, that he has great respect for the game and he LOVES Bandon Dunes. He did much more than give my wife and KB yardages, advice on clubs and great reads on the greens; he told us stories, jokes and imparted a sense of place at Bandon, an idea of what the resort is all about. Then on the 16^th green (our 52^nd hole together) he pulled a rabbit out of his hat.

“Hang on a sec,” Rack said as he dropped to his knees near the hole, “I have a special picture for you.” We, especially KB, had been taking pics all day, Mother Nature providing amazing natural photo op after amazing natural photo op. Now it was Rack’s turn to provide a man made one. We weren’t waiting on the group in front and the players behind us were at least a hole and half from catching up so we weren’t in a rush. We watched, with interest, as our caddie, turned director of photography, speared two tees into the inside of the hole just above the line of the cup. His next move was to place a golf ball on top of the tees and then he spoke again, “Okay now one of you pretend you just stroked a putt and hold your finish. The rest of you react like it went in to win the U S Open.” We wondered what he was up to but didn’t protest and did as we were instructed taking turns being the putter who made it and the appreciative gallery who reacted. The results, some posted here, were predictably humorous and, for us, another memorable moment in a trip more and more full of them.

After, and maybe because of, the photo shoot, we all played the 17^th like dogs but I won the hole with a six foot bogey putt which meant my wife and I stood on the par five, 18^th tee, one up. KB stroked on the hole but made that irrelevant when she sailed her tee shot into the gorse on the right and lost her ball. The rest of us hit good tee shots then my wife and I laid up and watched BP go for the green in two. His second was long enough but missed a little right and ended up ten yards off the green but nearly pin high. My third was average, 25 feet from the hole, but my wife smacked a solid 5 iron that flew true, rolled straight when it hit the ground, and ended up 12 feet away from a natural birdie. The way she had putted all week, and with Rack’s read, a two-putt par for net birdie was a given so BP he knew he had to pitch his in for eagle to sweep all three matches of the bet. He didn’t but man did he come close! Played to perfection the ball landed, pitched forward and rolled toward the cup looking for the longest time like he was going to accomplish what he set out to do… break our hearts. In the end the shot carried just a little too much speed as it nicked the flagstick and settled less than a foot away.

My wife did indeed two putt for her par and we avoided the shutout. Handshakes, hugs and air kisses were exchanged and I penciled in a very respectable 84, with a birdie, on my line of the scorecard. We were more than ready for an evening cocktail, or two, and another go around on Punchbowl. The afternoon was outstanding and at that moment Bandon Dunes had become my favorite golf course on the property with only the newest, Old McDonald left to play.

Up next – The last day and Old MacDonald