Sully:
You know I do remember that time against your Dad in the Philly Amateur. It was at Cedarbrook and it probably was more than 20 years ago. I just can't remember the details of that match against him that well probably because of all the stuff that happened to me in that tournament and just before it.
I think at that point I’d just sort of come out on that circuit for the first time, I think I might've been around 37 or 38---that might've been about my first or second year. I had just started to really play golf about 2-3 years before that and I think I won my club championship or something which sort of surprised me so I decided to go out on the circuit and see whether I could hang in there or get my brains beat out. At that point I just had no real point of reference other than my handicap had gotten low. I knew who your Dad was and some of the other guns from HVGC like Brookrerson and Gordon Brewer and such. I had the distinct feeling your Dad was sure a better player than me and then that match happened. In the next round I drew Bob—Bob, God I’m getting so old and senile now I can’t even think of his last name. Anyway, I think Bob (from Philmont, BTW) had won a Philly Am, or I know his brother had or maybe even both of them. Anyway, Bob, oh yeah, Bob Levy was a big strong guy and anyone could see this guy really had game. He hit it long and he hit it well. In that round, obviously the second round, it was really raining….
Oh wait, let me go back and tell you that back then the 36 hole Patterson Cup combined with the 36 hole qualifier for the Philly Am made up the 72 holes of the Silver Cross, and as you know that’s the 72 hole Philadelphia Stroke Play Championship. I’d done really well in the Patterson Cup probably finishing in the top 3 or top 5 or something and with about three holes left in the 36 hole qualifying for the Philly Am at Cedarbrook one of my fellow competitors, Mike Rose, informs me if I can par the next three holes I have a good shot at winning the Silver Cross Championship. He said he had already calculated his chances of winning it but he’d shot himself out of it at that point and by his calculations Brookrerson was the guy I needed to beat. He even said something like---let me go first and I’m gonna bring you home----but by that point I’d sort of become a rules expert (only because I hate sitting on the toilet with nothing to read and by that time I’d read the entire Decisions on the Rules of Golf
) and I told him a fellow competitor really couldn’t do stuff like that without DQing the both of us. He said---well OK, then but take my word for it if you par in you have a very good shot at winning the Silver Cross by his calculations. At that point I don’t think I’d even heard of the Silver Cross. So I parred the next two holes and on the last hole—a par 3 (obviously the 9th at Cedarbrook) I hit the ball onto the back of the green, and when I got up there—there was Brookrerson standing on the back of the green with that big Cheshire cat grin on his face. I think he asked me if I two putted what I’d shoot and when I told him he said---well if you two putt you’ll tie me for the Silver Cross Championship! It sure wasn’t an easy putt ---way down the hill with a big break but I’ll let you guess what I did. So I lost the Silver Cross to him by one shot!
So, anyway, in the second round or whatever it was I drew Bob Levy, it was pouring rain and he hit the ball beautifully the whole day and since I absolutely hate playing in the rain I basically couldn’t get the ball off the ground the entire round hitting one roller off the tees after another, laying up in front of almost every par 4 from there and one putting almost ever single green for par as Levy hit the ball right down the middle and long on every fairway, hit just about every green and three putted 4-5 times and I beat him something like 3 and 2. For that one I really did apologize to him and kept on apologizing to him for years after that, and although I haven’t seen him in years if I run into him again I’ll apologize to him for that again.
In the next round I ran into the infamous Michael Nilon for the first time who I’d heard a lot about and his game too. I think I told him on the first tee I’d heard a lot about him and he said something like----why’s that, did you hear about how easy it is to get sued by me? I don’t remember that much about that round against Nilon other than the fact that he was definitely getting pretty annoyed at the constant junk I was throwing at him on and around the greens and unbelievably on the 18th hole I hit my approach into the right greenside bunker, sunk the bunker shot for birdie and that was the end of Nilon.
In the semi-finals against Brian Rothaus I was basically doing the same thing to him and somewhere around the middle of the second nine it occurred to me that maybe a golfer like me shouldn’t really be doing this crap to golfers like these guys and I got sort of keyed up, made a couple of really stupid mistakes, and he beat me, and he went on to win the Philly Am on Sunday.
But the point of all this is to let David Moriarty know that maybe what he should do is stop thinking about every single tee to green strategic intricacy under the sun like driving the ball close to OB left for the best angle in and just practice the Beejesus out of his short game like I must have done, and he too can skin cats who’re better than he is with regularity by simply pissing them off with short game and putting junk like I used do probably a whole lot more often than I should have! I guess I'm telling him to just practice short game strategies, basically it's easler to do than the long game and he too might be like me someday----basically a short-driving bogeyman who actually became sort of a fake scratchman through short game and putting junk wizardry!
Oh well