The Story
Andrea Kellar, former aspiring LPGA Tour player, answered the cell phone. It was her daughter Grace, calling after playing the Minnesota Women's State Amateur. She is a top junior in the State at age 17, with a golf scholarship in hand to the University of Minnesota and a bright future in the game.
"Hey Babe, how'd it go?" inquired Andrea. Grace broke down, inconsolable. Choking through her tears she said, "I shot 92 with a 13 on the last hole. I'm terrible, I'm gonna quit."
"I'm so sorry, but you know what? It's ok. You'll be ok."
"It was terrible. I couldn't hit it. I hate this game," she said through the tears.
"Honey, everything will be fine. It's ok."
Grace was hearing none of it. "That's easy for you to say. You didn't make a 13 in front of your friends on the 18th hole."
"You know what? I shot 91 in a tournament on tour. I just kept hitting ground balls, it was awful. And I felt the same way you do now. I went out the next day and shot 69. That's my story, now you have a story. Every golfer has a story. This one is yours."
She did listen to her mother and finished the tournament by shooting 74, the third low score of the day.
Golf is such a wonderful game. It brings us enjoyment, friends near and far and the challenge of playing against ourselves. It is a great game. However, it can also be very cruel.
Most of us are fortunate our collapses are not out there for the world to see. Imagine what it was like to be in Greg Norman's shoes. He was leading the 1996 Masters by six shots going into the last round but ended up shooting 78 and losing.
Jean van de Velde (pictured above) came to the 72nd hole at Carnoustie needing a double bogey or better to win the 1999 British Open. Fifteen minutes later he made a seven foot putt for a triple bogey, which got him into a playoff and lost. "It took me a few days to find my sleep again after Sunday, due to the stress or whatever," he said. "There were 300 million viewers and it has taken me a while to meet them all and explain what happened." A little levity always helps.
Jean van de Velde has gone on to a nice career, finishing in the top 30 in four majors. He is well regarded in his home country of France for working with kids and helping to get the Ryder Cup to France in 2018.
Everyone has a story of a time when the game turned on them, devastated, feeling sorry for yourself. However, maybe as soon as the next day, the game will return with good shots and solid putts.
In 2003 Tim Herron led the Bob Hope Desert Classic by five shots after four rounds. He left the first tee on Sunday, the fifth round, paired with Jay Haas and Mike Weir. The wind was blowing at more than 30 MPH.
I had driven over from San Diego to watch Tim, walking with his father and my close friend, Carson. Tim was a four time winner on tour. Every time he led a PGA Tour event going into the final round, he won the tournament. Surely with a five shot lead he would notch the fifth victory.
Choking dust whipped around as we walked down the first hole toward the foothills bordering the course. Clouds hung dark over the nearby mountains. There were few spectators as the horrible winds drove people to their TVs to watch play. With hands jammed in my pockets, walking backwards into the wind, the light windbreaker I wore could not keep me comfortably warm.
"I wasn't hitting it great, but I was 30 under par, so I couldn't have been too bad," said Tim, "Driving over to the course, I knew weather was coming in and it would be tough."
By the turn Tim's lead had evaporated, he was three over par, while Mike Weir was two under. Tim continued to slip, until the 15th hole where he found himself two behind. After two great shots and a 15 foot putt for eagle, he was back tied for the lead.
The group climbed up into the rocks to the tee at La Quinta's 16th hole, a 360 yard, 90 degree dogleg right, with a bunker through the fairway at 297 yards. Standing on the tee, a steel gray rock wall bordered the right side of the fairway as the mountain crept its way to the top. Down below a barranca ran down the left side of the fairway, some 40 yards from the right border. A concrete walled water feature ran in front of the green about 20 yards short of the green.
"We're straight downwind here, it's 297 to the bunker, from this elevated tee let's just hit three iron down there, about 250 or so," counseled Scotty, Tim's long time caddy. "That will leave about 60 or 70 yards in."
Tim struck the three iron perfectly, with a high ball flight up into the flat cloud sky, landing about 260 yards down the firm fairway. Then, unbelievably, the ball traveled another 40 yards, ran through the six feet of rough, and into the bunker. No one knows how a three iron could travel over 300 yards, but this one did.
Tim was faced with a 67 yard bunker shot over the water hazard to the green. "I just wanted to fly the ball over the narrow hazard and go from there," Tim told me later. It was an uncomfortable shot.
The result was a disaster as he bladed the ball over the green, into the rocks. After declaring the ball unplayable and, not wanting to go back and play from the bunker again (one of his options under the rules), he dropped the ball and promptly hit another bladed shot, back over the green and into the hazard. From there he dropped again, chipped the ball onto the green and three putted for a nine.
"I would have been better off just hitting the ball in the water from the bunker!"
He finished by missing a six foot birdie putt at 17, but then making his second eagle in four holes, at 18. Two eagles in four holes and still playing over par. Tim finished third behind Jay Haas and the winner, Mike Weir.
Tim was devastated. He signed his card, cleaned his locker, went to the car and drove back home to Scottsdale. "Somehow I didn't drive into the ditch. I had tears. But you know, I really wasn't embarrassed, just felt sorry for myself. I tell my kids that if you put yourself out there and try hard, which I do, there is no reason to be embarrassed. The game brings humility."
"Then something happened I am proud of," he said. "I went to the AT&T at Pebble Beach the next week and finished fourth, one of my best tournaments at Pebble. I could have stayed home and moped around feeling sorry for myself, but I went up and played."
I asked former British Open Champion and number one player in the world, Tom Lehman about his story. Without hesitation he responded. It was the 1982 Minnesota State Amateur, played at Town and Country Golf Club in St Paul.
"We had a classic situation of the three best players in the State in the final pairing the last day. It was (future Walker Cup team member) David Tentis, (future PGA Tour player) Chris Perry and me. We got to the 16th hole. David had dropped back. Chris and I were about even. It was a straight away par five. No water, no OB, no bunkers. I made a 10. I still remember every shot. I did finish with a par and a birdie and got second. You know life went on just fine. Crap happens in this game. Sometimes you get into situations where there is no recovery."
Tom continued. "I find the big numbers are the easiest to get over. The tough ones are three putting the last hole to miss a playoff. It's habitually making the same little mistakes which get into your head that are tough to handle. Like getting to a hole you always play poorly."
Does anyone care about our misfortune? As the old saying goes, half the people don't care something bad happened to you on the course and the other half are happy.
It was the spring of 1986 and the University of Indiana Women's Golf Team had qualified for the NCAA for the first time in the history of the school. Led by future 20 year LPGA Tour star Michele Redman, a sophomore, the team had high hopes of a strong finish in the tournament. Played at New Seabury on Cape Cod, Michele teed off the opening round paired with Daniel Ammaccapane, arguably the top player in college at the time.
Michele felt good about getting through the first nine of her first NCAA, shooting 38. Things turned for the worse on the back nine where "I just couldn't get it to go in," said Michele. "I shot 50. 38-50 in the first round of the NCAA. I have very seldom cried after golf. I cried that day."
She continued. "My coach came up, put his arm around me and just said, 'go out and get 'em tomorrow.' I went out and didn't play great but got through it. I think it taught me resiliency. It's a hard game, just a hard game. I don't know why I remember that story, but I sure do,"
My story happened at the 1984 Crump Cup, played at Pine Valley Golf Club. With Walker Cup Team members, former US Amateur champions and many of the finest mid-ams in the country competing, I was just trying to be respectable.
The format was an 18 hole qualifying round, leading to match play in flights, for all but a few of the highest scores, who are cut from the event. It was my second year to be invited to play. The first year I had placed comfortably in a middle flight.
Thursday opened clear, crisp and beautiful. I warmed up and headed to the first tee to greet my two fellow competitors. The first hole is a dogleg right, par four of about 400 yards. A drive down the right side of the fairway leaves a short iron into a treacherous green perched on at the end of the fairway falling severely off in all directions.
Unfortunately, I pulled my drive left leaving a middle iron into the green, which I left short. I chipped poorly and after three putts headed to the second tee with a double bogey on my card.
The poor play continued and by the seventh hole the caddies reassigned the bags in our threesome, giving me one caddie to pay full attention to my ball, so as to not to slow play!
The nightmare continued all the way around. It was as if I had never played. The ball striking was awful, chipping horrible and the putting! Oh, the putting.
"Well, you handled that a lot better than I would have," said Davis Driver, my playing partner for both the practice round and the qualifying round. "You never got mad, were pleasant to be with and seemed to keep trying all the way. I never saw today's round coming after yesterday's practice round," he said, as we shook hands and walked off the 18th green.
I stood at the large green scoreboard to the left of the 18th green. I was humiliated. "Look at that score," said a competitor standing behind me. "102, that's unbelievable." It was the highest score on the board by 14 shots. I had the feeling I was in a dream where I am out in public with no clothes on. I was standing naked in front of the scoreboard.
While my story was humiliating for me at the time, I learned several lessons from it. First, nobody cared. Next, it didn't define my golf game. It was just a bad round of golf. Finally, while no one remembers a poor round of golf, everybody remembers bad conduct.
Andrea Kellar's message to her daughter Grace was correct, everything will be okay. Enduring a catastrophe on the golf course is not enjoyable, but there are always brighter days ahead in A Life In Golf.
