Golf Exhibit Provides Link to Greens of Memory

Robert Watt sees golf as a metaphor for life.

“The game is just an unbelievable challenge,” Watt said. “You never master it as long as you play it. It’s like life in that way. You enter each day with great expectations. You go down the road and sometimes all you see is difficulty.”

But golf, like life, affords rare moments, too. Pleasures you will never forget. Watt has fired a hole in one not once but twice. The first was in 1985, the second a year later.

Watt, 67, is retired now, living in La Jolla. He plays golf several times a week, usually at Torrey Pines Municipal Golf Course. On a recent rainy afternoon, he was indulging his favorite pastime by taking a walk through Balboa Park. He stopped in at the Hall of Champions, where a $55,000 golf exhibit opened last week.

Suddenly, he was swimming in memories.

The exhibit sparking his reverie was funded by the Century Club of San Diego, which oversees the annual Andy Williams San Diego Open at Watt’s favorite course, Torrey Pines. A primary force behind the exhibit was Norrie West, who for 10 years was executive director of the open.

The exhibit, in part, pays homage to San Diego County’s 71 courses, extolling the virtues of modest green fees and dynamite climate. It features scores of photographs, as well as mementos and memorabilia donated by some of San Diego’s golfing greats, including Billy Casper, Mickey Wright, Gene Littler and Craig Stadler.

A couple of the nicest touches take in the participant. They include a video game in which the viewer plays some of America’s toughest holes. You can also putt, using a putter once owned by the Golden Bear, Jack Nicklaus.

Philip A. Bonomo, spokesman for the Hall of Champions, said the “hands on” effect is one the museum has studied for some time, modeling itself after similar venues at the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. More participatory stuff is planned because, in Bonomo’s words, kids love it.

Two of those kids are Tim Dahl, 12, and Eloise Dahl, 11. Tim is from Gloucester, Mass.; Eloise is from Chicago. The cousins were in San Diego on vacation, hoping for sun but getting rain. That meant museums instead of sand castles.

Tim and Eloise were hooked on video golf. They played the 18th hole at Pebble Beach, a 540-yard par-five. Tim’s driver put a shot 200 yards down the fairway. A 3-wood put it 161 yards closer. He next played Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Tex., and wrestled with his putting--electronically--before finally calling it quits.

“This is great,” Tim said with eyes the size of golf balls. “I really love this. This is really great.”

Tim’s father is Robert Dahl, a writer-photographer hoping to place an exhibit on peacemakers at the nearby Museum of Photographic Arts. The exhibit--”Making Peace”--is now in Baltimore. It focuses on the lives of everyday Americans and how they struggle to make peace a requisite of daily life.

Dahl sees golf as a peaceful game. It’s easy to think about peace, he said, strolling cascading hills, full of lush, verdant greens. But, ah, golf involves hitting a little white ball that in its rudest peregrinations can be as nettlesome as a bratty child, causing warlike fracases within.

“Peace starts with the individual,” Dahl said, watching his son engage in video golf. “To help others reach peace, you must first reach peace within yourself.”

On the golf course, or in life.

Museums are wonderful, Dahl said, for the gentleness they inspire, the feeling of calm they mandate, the memories they somehow unavoidably provoke.

Catherine Watt, Robert Watt’s wife, saw a photograph of the walrus-like Craig Stadler and remembered she had taught him in Sunday school at La Jolla Presbyterian Church.

“I used to pray on Saturday nights that he wouldn’t show up on Sundays,” she said. “He was so disruptive. Boy, could he be bad. I remember, though, chocolate-chip cookies were his favorite.”

Suddenly, her husband flashed on another memory; once again, a smile dimpled his crinkly face.

“Seventy-five,” he said. “Seventy-five was the best score I ever had for 18 holes. I just remembered. And you know, I’d almost forgotten.”