A Round at Oakmont Isn’t Exactly Par for the Course

The contact was hard but a bit off the sweet spot. My tee shot rifled down the left side, flirting with the trees but bending back toward the fairway. . . until a limb reached out and swatted it into a bunker.

Looked like trouble, caught in sand 170 yards from the flag, with a big bunker protecting the front of the green. The smart play was to just get out of the trap, set up the next shot and play for bogey.

But we duffers don’t play golf to play smart. My lie was surprisingly good and this was the 18th hole and my last chance for a miracle. So I gripped my four iron, dug my spikes in, steadied myself, took dead aim on the flag, visualized the shot, concentrated--and let ‘er rip.

Ask anybody who plays golf and they know the feeling. Sometimes the term “sweet spot” is inadequate. The contact was pure and the ball soared in a transcendent arc straight at the pin, disappearing from view beyond the raised lip of a bunker protecting the green.

No, the best shot of my life didn’t go into the hole. But I’d never seen a more beautiful golf ball, resting a mere two inches from the cup.

And yes, I made the putt.

*

I share this memory for a few reasons.

One is to try to explain the allure of golf to the uninitiated, the addictive magic of those Tigeresque moments. Even the absolute beginner, whiffing or dribbling shots at the driving range, is apt to get lucky and find a little bit of Zen in the first bucket of balls.

Another reason is to let the golfers out there know a little bit about my game. I’m the typical duffer who hits the public links every couple of weeks, usually playing nine holes, sometimes 18, never really serious enough to establish a handicap.

Ten years ago I was pleased to break 100 with the occasional help of Mr. Mulligan. Now my usual goal is to break 90 with no help at all. My best round? Easily the 82 at Hansen Dam--and it could have been a 79, if only. . . . Well, that’s another story.

But mostly I share this memory because it makes me feel so much better than the round I played the other day at Oakmont Country Club in Glendale, host for the second year in a row of the Los Angeles Women’s Championship.

The boss, you see, had this idea: Why don’t you play a round and compare your scores, hole by hole, to the final round shot by last year’s champion?

I would later learn that Terry-Jo Myers shot a 66 to come from five strokes back to defeat Annika Sorenstam. Any comparison, of course, would be comical. But play Oakmont? Free? On company time?

The things we do to protect the public’s right to know.

Speaking of public, I was curious about Oakmont, a private club established in 1922. As a proud carrier of a City of Los Angeles Golf Registration Card, I’m a believer in golf for the masses. So I came as a guest to this members-only club with a bit of an attitude. After asking directions to the men’s room, I found myself facing doors adorned with a sign that said “Gentleman’s Locker Room” and “Gentleman Only.” I entered just the same.

Oakmont was built in 1924 and the Gentleman’s Locker Room was gentlemanly indeed, handsome and tasteful and clean. The conditions of men’s rooms on public links explains why many of us prefer nature when nature calls.

Back outside I surveyed the lovely, well-manicured course and remembered the old Groucho Marx line. I wondered whether, if I had the scratch, the Oakmont crowd would have me as a member and that therefore I wouldn’t join.

Certainly it would seem like a betrayal of the public links. All sorts of thoughts were racing as I bought two sleeves of Titleists, saving the receipts for expenses. (Surely my boss wouldn’t want me representing The Times with old, beat-up golf balls).

Oakmont must have had me feeling self-conscious--not a good attitude when you approach the No. 1 tee. And speaking of tees, they had a whole batch of them right there, free. I stuffed a couple handfuls into my bag.

We started as a threesome--me, sportswriter Peter Yoon and graphic artist Perry Perez. No. 1 is a 482-yard par five, dogleg left, down and then up.

But my mind was on the task at hand. I carried my three-wood to the tee, gripped it--and then realized I had forgotten to put on my glove. My routine already broken, I swung anyway--a mis-hit, the ball rolling maybe 100 yards.

Oh well. It was a par five, so I had a chance to recover. But I badly topped the next shot, advancing maybe 20 yards, then squirted my next shot into a bunker, and it took me two swings to get out. Ugh. Eventually I had a six-foot putt to save eight--the dreaded “snowman”--and missed. I marked down a nine and abandoned the idea of comparing my score to the pros.

*

I’d heard Oakmont was tough but it had been some time since I’d scored in triple digits. Wade Berzas, a PGA pro who teaches at the club, told me that of all the public courses in greater Los Angeles, Brookside’s No. 1 course, which I’d played a few times, is perhaps the most similar. Oakmont is shorter but prettier and not nearly as flat. And as Brookside has the concrete-lined Arroyo Seco, Oakmont has it’s concrete-lined barranca.

This feature provided me with the highlight of my disastrous front nine. On No. 8, a par four that crosses the barranca twice and is rated as the toughest hole for members, I was facing a 130-yard shot to the green. Again I mis-hit it and ball dove into the barranca. I turned away in disgust--and never saw my ball bounce off the concrete and out of trouble, rolling up short of the green.

Despite this remarkable stroke of luck, I still wound up needing to sink a short putt to save a snowman. Once again, the snowman died. A quintuple bogey.

What can I say? I made the turn at 60, my worst nine in years, and only seven better than Perry, a beginner. Peter shot a 47.

I was so disgusted I felt like losing some money. I asked Peter if he wanted to play skins on the back nine. We settled on my usual stakes: 25 cents a hole.

And just like that, it all suddenly turned around. I flirted with a little out of bounds on No. 10 but came away with my first par. My War Bird started to work, sending my drives long and true.

By No. 15, five skins had piled up.

I sliced my drive into the barranca. Peter nailed his.

So I took my drop and the one-stroke penalty and found myself maybe 215 yards from the green. A buck-twenty-five was riding on this hole. I gripped my three wood and told Peter that it was time for my miracle shot.

Again, what can I say? It was a thing of beauty, a joy forever, a glorious shot that bounded between the traps protecting the green and rolled 20 feet past the pin. A TV shot, my friends call it. Utterly Tigeresque.

I could almost hear the invisible gallery ooh and ahh and clap in that polite way of golf fans.

“You da man!” I said to myself.

My confidence restored, I coolly considered a tricky downhill putt and darn near drained it, leaving a tap-in for bogey--good enough, as it turned out, to take the skins.

The back nine? I had 46 and seven skins to Peter’s 49 and one.

Back in the pro shop, I collected my $1.50 and told Wade Berzas how I’d shot 106--a full 40 strokes worse than Terry-Jo Myers--but had made a 14-stroke improvement from the front to the back. So I was thinking to myself that, now that I was familiar with the course, I might very well shoot in the 80s next time, if I was ever invited back.

“Well,” the pro said, shrugging, “the back is a lot easier.”