Surgery? Check. When’s tee time?
One issue raised by the Golf Nut Society’s annual honor, Golf Nut of the Year, is whether a single act of obsession should count more than a steady 12 months of folly in pursuit of the game.
Michael Jordan won in 1989 after he skipped the ceremony awarding him the NBA Most Valuable Player trophy to get in 36 holes in Pinehurst, N.C. Though Jordan accumulated Golf Nut Points for other acts -- for challenging Mickey Mouse to a putting contest in Orlando, for instance, and for having “Registered Golf Nut” license plate frames on his Ferrari -- one has to believe his grand gesture of blowing off the MVP event was key to his victory.
So it was in 2001, when Golf Nut of the Year went to Ireland’s Ivan Morris, who had asked his pregnant wife to have labor induced so he could play in a tournament, then plopped their new son in the trophy, a large loving cup, when he won.
This scoring issue was no casual matter to Jim Malone, who a year ago decided to go for the Golf Nut title in the wake of his cancer surgery, then set out to obliterate the field.
Risking one’s health is one of the three prime ways to score points, up there with risking one’s marriage and livelihood. The first Golf Nut honoree, in 1986, Joe Malay, quit his job to play 53 tournaments over the year. He figured employment “would have a negative effect on his golf,” according to a summary by Ron Garland, who founded the Golf Nut Society 22 years ago and as Head Nut had sole authority to award points, as 2007 began, to its 4,000 members.
Golf Nut of the Year for 2000, Mike Noyes of Fountain Valley, won points on the health card by chipping and putting within a week of quintuple bypass surgery on a three-hole green he’d spent $10,000 to build in his backyard, complete with dry creek bed, ball washer and bar stools.
James L. Malone III had an artificial putting green too, in the basement of his home in Connecticut, and similarly was practicing on it almost immediately after his prostate surgery in the closing days of 2006. He’d prepared for his operation by speed-walking a golf course twice daily while hitting two balls -- in effect playing four rounds a day. Then, after the surgeons at Johns Hopkins were done with him, he made a supposedly recuperative trip to Florida, where he “tried to hit a few nine-irons,” he reported, “but the surgical area pulled a bit.”
That’s when a friend -- me -- suggested he was crazy and he e-mailed back, “There’s actually a Golf Nut Society. I’ve been meaning to go on their website ( www.golfnuts.com) and join,” so he did, sending in $24.95 and becoming member No. 4122.
A tad shorter than average, with prematurely white-gray hair and a pixieish face made to seem rounder by oval glasses, Malone would not be picked out of a crowd as a fanatic of any sort, though a stranger might guess he was a lawyer, given his litigator’s confident strut. He made his name successfully battling IRS efforts to collect tens of millions of dollars from the estates of two legendary football team owners, the Chicago Bears’ George Halas and Cincinnati Bengals’ Paul Brown, and such cases enabled him to retire in 2006, at 58, with enough free time and resources to pursue a certain hobby like few others.
As winter segued into spring, and his wounds healed, his campaign began for real: He managed three loops on opening day at his club in suburban New York and that first week played 216 holes in all, a dozen rounds. Soon after, he got in a round before a morning meeting on rules changes -- he’s twice attended a United States Golf Assn. “rules school” -- then was flying to a law school reunion in Charlottesville, Va., while squeezing in a tournament there, another in Colonial Williamsburg and third in Baltimore. Then he had one on Long Island, but had to be among the leaders after the first round to play the second, so he signed up for yet another tournament on that same day -- back down in Virginia -- just in case. Being a good player is not a factor in being a Golf Nut, but Malone happens to be one. Though likely to be out-driven by 100 yards by the young brutes of today, he excels around the greens. When it was time to try to qualify for the Massachusetts Amateur Championship, against college players and the like, he picked a qualifying site suited to short-hitting and made it, with a 73.
Have we mentioned that he belonged to two clubs in Massachusetts -- both on Nantucket -- in addition to the ones in New York and Virginia? He did drop a club in Chicago in 2007, but immediately added one -- in Ireland. And among his spring e-mails was one gushing about a new course in South Carolina, designed by former Masters champ Ben Crenshaw, where if you signed up as a distance member it cost only. . . .
In June, I invited him to a member-guest tournament at my own home course north of Manhattan. That’s when he told me he was moving south to teach tax law part time at the University of Virginia, and so he could play, well, more. Problem was, the van was coming shortly after the three-day event, and there was much to pack. Plus, the younger of his two daughters was graduating high school. “I’ll have to check with Alice,” he said, naming his wife of 33 years. Translation: Of course he’d play, though he did promise Alice he’d get up early each morning to pack boxes. “Warm-up,” he called it.
So play he did, and move he did, and then came a new e-mail: “I seem to be way ahead in Golf Nut race.”
Indeed, there he was on the society’s Web page, atop the midyear point standings, “Jim Malone . . . 76,006.” The second-place nut had just 44,990. What’s more, he was climbing the lifetime cumulative Nut Point list topped by Bob Fagan of Pleasanton, Calif., whose nut resume included “Played 6 different 18-hole courses in 114-degree heat in Palm Springs in July in a single day,” “Owns 319 golf caps” and “Achieved the ‘Golf Nut Slam’ by playing on Easter, Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spouse’s Birthday, plus Anniversary in a single year.”
Though Fagan’s 111,314 lifetime points still were far off, Malone seemed a lock for Nut of the Year, except for one complication: The society was poised for seismic change. The founder, Garland, sold it the week of July 4 to nut No. 3160, Michael Donovan of Henderson, Nev., who had undergone two surgeries to remove a brain tumor and while under orders to slow down played 195 holes in 24 hours -- nearly 11 rounds, two in the pitch dark, with glow sticks and tracer balls.
Donovan clearly was a worthy new Head Nut. But the potentially ominous wrinkle for Malone was the liberation of the old owner, Garland. The organization’s George Washington would now be eligible to compete for its top honor.
“I’d also like to start spending more time scoring Golf Nut points,” Garland e-mailed the members, “instead of tracking them.”
Talk about grand gestures. HEAD NUT SELLS GOLF NUT SOCIETY TO . . . PLAY MORE GOLF. How many points might that be worth?
Much was unsettled, then, when I joined Malone for a November member-guest at his newest club in Okatie, S.C., the scenic Chechessee Creek Club, winding through wetlands and moss-draped oaks. He’d made an earlier trip there to practice, playing four rounds in a day and walking the whole way until the last nine, when he had to take a cart because two caddies had conked out.
Other members were calling his feat the “Death March” and it normally would have earned a chunk more Nut Points. But the posted standings had not changed -- the new Head Nut seemed to be neglecting the website. Malone had no idea whether he’d gotten credit for that or for his play over the summer, when he’d celebrated turning 60 by winning two titles at Nantucket’s Sankaty Head Golf Club.
Now Malone and I had been putting in long days warring against other teams on the Chechessee links and thought it only fair to take the golf widows to a waterfront restaurant in Savannah, anything on the menu, on us. The eatery had a historic map on the wall, a touch sure to please Alice, who did graduate work in early American history and headed an education program at the Smithsonian when they lived in Washington -- a cultured woman who deserves better, in other words.
Her husband started the evening with a joke about a fellow in the Old Country, playing with his buddies. When a funeral hearse passes the course, he takes off his golf cap and puts it to his heart and the others are duly impressed. “Yes,” the fellow says, “we would have been married 37 years next week.”
“This is what I live with,” said Alice Malone.
When they were courting, he said, she did occasionally walk the course with him, and he once thought of proposing on the spot. “But I birdied the first three holes, and why spoil a good round?”
Though he did soon pop the question, the honeymoon cooing inevitably ended, and after they had their first daughter, in Chicago, she said one day, in utter exhaustion, “You cannot play.”
“But it was the club member-member!” he said.
“When he got to the 10th hole,” she said, “I was there waiting, with Virginia and a pram, and handed her to him.”
He shrugged and recalled how he pulled the tot the entire back nine, no problem. “She slept most of the time.”
Today, he might get a few Nut Points for that. “But the way to max out,” he said, “is, say your wife breaks her leg. You take her to the emergency room, where you know they’ll keep her waiting. What you do is, go play 18 holes, then come back and pick her up.”
“What’s sad is he thinks this is funny,” said the missis. “There are a lot of grounds for divorce with full support.”
“One way to get points is being divorced over golf,” he said. “Every time you threaten me, I get more points.”
“Full support!” she said, and the next morning, back at his newest club, she asked the pro what sort of carpet that was in the clubhouse and whether it would be the right speed for putting, because if it was she might install it in the basement of the house they were still fixing up in Charlottesville, for that’s how you stay married for three decades, and happily, to the likely Golf Nut of the Year.
Yet the Golf Nut scoreboard still didn’t budge as fall became winter. He did have some good news -- by the anniversary of his surgery he was up to 4,806 holes on the year, 267 rounds, despite being unable to play the first 2 1/2 months.
Then, after New Year’s, he sent an anxious e-mail: “Have you noticed GN Society has a new website?” Indeed, the site was 100% revamped -- meaning that’s what the new Head Nut had been doing -- but without the 2007 standings.
Instead there was an article headlined, “New Nut Sets Entrance Exam Record,” stating that one Leo Gispanski, member No. 4195, had gotten 28,743 points upon joining for everything from caddying at 11 to nearly birdieing all three holes of Amen Corner at Augusta National. He also was a chairman of the new Head Nut’s course, Dragon Ridge, in Nevada.
It was time to call Michael Donovan.
The new Head Nut first wanted to share his own bona fides, like how he promised his wife a romantic week in Hawaii for their 10th anniversary until he was invited to a pro-am in Charlotte, N.C., and how the tumor, thankfully benign, had reminded him what’s important -- like golf -- so he was making a pilgrimage to Florida to, among other things, seek an audience with Arnold Palmer.
He had ambitious plans for the society too, including chat rooms, thousands of new members -- and a “bigger than ever” Nut of the Year ceremony. He’d kept the contenders in the dark only so they’d be more excited when he invited the top 10 to Nevada for their own tournament, airfare paid too for the winner and his spouse. I was sure it was the previous Head Nut, Garland. “Noo,” he said. His club’s chairman? “Oh no.”
He told me of this member who kept e-mailing: “If I’ve got it wrapped up, I’ll stop begging for points.”
“I never answered,” Donovan said. “I must have really made him nervous. But his points haven’t moved because he had everyone beat.”
Malone got the call Wednesday, which was good timing. For although he’d started ’08 at his usual pace, with three tourneys in Florida, he was planning a shocking trip that would risk his getting considered, ever again, for Golf Nut of the Year.
He was going to take Alice to Paris. And for the second time in 33 years of marriage, just Alice.
“No clubs,” he said. “Museums.”
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The nuttiest of the nuts
Here are some of the ways basketball’s Michael Jordan and others won the Golf Nut Society’s annual Nut of the Year award:
2006: Steve Thorwald, La Verne
“Played golf with his future father-in-law on his wedding day. They changed into tuxedos at the course, without a shower. . . . On the first day of his honeymoon he teed off at 7:32 a.m. and played 36 holes.”
2003: Bob Fagan, Pleasanton
(All-Time Leading Scorer)
“Has struck all three of his sisters with golf shots . . . ricocheted balls off cars, a school bus, a police squad car . . . has a library of more than 2,820 golf books . . . a collection of more than 1,200 golf pencils . . . [and] found as many as 58 balls on a single hole.”
1997: Tom Jewell, Oldsmar, Fla.
“Collected over 5,130 logoed golf balls over the past 12 years. Prior to moving to Florida, they covered three walls of his home in New Jersey. When he moved . . . donated them to his church for a ‘Golf Ball Garage Sale.’ Unable to break his habit, he now has ‘only’ 400 logoed golf balls adorning the walls of his garage, including four from former United States presidents (Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush).”
1993: E.M. Vandeweghe, Indian Wells
“Bakes several loaves of bread every day. First, he mixes the dough, then goes to the putting green for an hour while it rises; returns home and puts it in the oven, and practices his chipping while it bakes; then returns home to take the bread out of the oven, and goes back to the driving range while it cools, returning to package it . . . and take it back to the club where he gives it away to his playing partners, club employees and friends. . . .
“Is 88 years old and . . . shoots lower than his age every time. . . . When the family would send him videotapes of [son] Kiki’s [NBA] basketball games, he would often record golf telecasts or instruction videos over Kiki’s game before viewing it.”
1989: Michael Jordan, Chicago
“Was a ‘no-show’ for his 1988 NBA MVP award in Chicago. He was at Pinehurst Golf Resort in North Carolina playing 36 holes of golf, and . . . the day following the end of his 1989 NBA season he left Chicago at 5 p.m. and drove all night [880 miles] to Pinehurst . . . where he joined friends the next morning . . . then drove to Rexford Plantation, S.C., and played 54 holes a day for four consecutive days. . . .
Source: Golf Nut Society’s
Golfnuts.com
