Drilling a 4-iron off a hanging lie to five feet the first time I played the Road Hole comes to mind, as does the 9-iron backed into the jar for a three on #16 at Olympic Lake. My ace 20 years ago on the 205 yard 3rd barely counts. A 4-iron off the toe in the death throes of a debilitating hangover magically found its way to the hole. But it was God's way of punishing me for my indiscretions the previous evening.
While everyone in the bar enjoyed a drink on me, a soda water and handful of aspirin was all I could choke down. To make matters worse, the lass in whose rack I awoke that morning gave me the crabs - which partially explains why I swore off barflies and brown whiskey to this day.
Every "great shot story" seems wanting since my close friend Eric (who several of you know) canned a deuce on #8 at Pebble Beach a few months back with what he refers to as “The magic 4-iron.”
He was trying out his father's graphite Pings to see if he liked them better than the new Titleist irons - and strangely still decided to go with the Z muscle-backed blades. When his father went to Cleveland's, he gave me the set of Pings - ending a 26 year run with my Eye 2's, so old they predated the square groove argument.
The first time I hit the 4-iron on the impossible 5th hole at Olympic, I nearly put it in the jar – proving that sometimes it really is the bow, not the Indian.
However, my most memorable shot involves an 87 year-old (12 years ago) man named Douglas Graham. Around 1995 I wrote a piece for the local rag about a wonderful golf course called Deep Cliff (Cupertino, CA.) I had come to see on the recommendation of a friend who ran a club populated by elderly women golfers.
Hidden in a little valley adjacent to a sprawling metropolis, Clark Glasson (NorCal guys will recognize his name) routed this little par of 60 jewel around a tree lined creek at the base of a cliff where local legend has it that two young lovers leapt to their deaths before the turn of the century.
Suicide pacts aside, I thought it was an ideal destination for juniors, ladies, seniors - and an excellent place to bludgeon low handicappers with more ego than brains.
As part of my research, I erroneously wrote that the course record was 55 - which seemed plausible despite its length given the cleverly contoured greens and overhanging elm trees.
A week or so later, I received a beautifully composed letter with lyrical penmanship from this elderly gentleman in Sacramento. Enclosed was an article from the San Jose Mercury in1964 about this man who shot 50 at Deep Cliff.
Someone had noticed my error and sent off a copy of the article to Doug - who was living in assisted care near his daughter after losing his wife of 50 years.
So began this friendship of letters and columns back and forth at least once every couple of weeks on all things golf and life. Doug was born in Scotland, but his family emigrated to Michigan when he was nine. His first job? - a caddie at Oakland Hills.
He still remembered his first golf lesson on the back lawn behind the clubhouse by a beautifully dressed professional who had taken a liking to his young caddy.
Quite a fuss was made about an exhibition match that day and taking a break from the party for a smoke, Walter Hagen told the boy to fetch a club and a few balls and he would give him some pointers.
Over the next few years, I waited for Doug's letter like a small child peering into the mailbox every day because there was invariably a great story or piece of Michigan golf history waiting for me. Doug and his wife had moved to Santa Clara sometime in the late 1950's, but for him it always seemed like time stopped after the Great War.
I never called him on the phone the first three years - maybe I was afraid to break the magic - so though he was only 90 miles away, we communicated only as pen pals. Doug hand-wrote his letters, always with perfect form and never a misspelling. I typed mine - ashamed of my horrible handwriting and need for a spell checker.
One day the phone rang and the voice on the other end was a creaky sounding man with a hint of Scottish brogue and maybe a dash or two of whiskey.
Doug was coming to Colma with his daughter to put flowers on his wife’s grave and wanted to buy me lunch. I told him that I needed a putting lesson and some grandfatherly advice and asked him join me on our 9-hole Cliffs Course, a par-3 course that clings precariously to the foggy bluffs above the windswept Pacific coastline.
It took Doug a long time to climb the stairs at my office, standing before me all of 5’6” and barely 120 pounds of skin, bone and a red nose. I asked him if he was sure he could walk the nine holes. Though he admitted having not played for several years since taking a fall, he was going to give it a go.
So off we went to Olympic, first for lunch and a dram or two to get the joints oiled. His set of clubs featured a weather beaten Helen Hicks 5-wood and a series of mismatched irons he carried because “they feel right.”
I’ve got to admit to being nervous my #1 fan was going to take a fall right there on the tee and silently prayed to God that the flaps on his ancient two-toned Foot Joys would still be upright when we reached the 9th green.
Too proud to play from the front tees, Doug pulled his 5-wood, teed up his Top Flite and without a practice swing or moment of hesitation whacked the ball 75 yards right down the center.
The problem was the hole is 184 yards long and the women’s tees are 80 years down the fairway. Still, I was thrilled he made contact after so many years and pulled my 3-iron hoping it was enough to get there into the teeth of the breeze.
“I’ll tell you what,” said Doug, “since you are going to hit a great shot, how about if I just play from where your ball ends up?”
“Only if you want to play from a buried lie under the lip of the bunker,” I said with my usual confidence.
Doug laughed and gave me this far off, knowing look in his eyes.
“Show me a great shot,” he said firmly.
“You just jinxed me,” I said. “This will probably be a shank.”
“Hit it with confidence like you have done it a thousand times Gib. That is the key to golf.”
Cold stare.
“Now, show me you can do it,” he said.
I nervously addressed the ball, re-gripping it a half dozen times.
My spine shivers writing this because I can still feel the compression of that Lady Precept flush against the clubface. The ball took off like a shrieking rocket into the wind right at the flag with a tiny draw.
Oh my God. It went in.
Dead center. Bottom of the cup. Right before my eyes. First swing of the day, first shot I had ever hit in front of him.
“It sounded pretty good, where did it go?” Doug asked.
I later realized that Doug is nearly blind. The flagstick may as well have been cut on the Farallon Islands 25 miles offshore, yet he knew in some metaphysical way what was to come.
Shocked, I fished the ball out of the hole and staggered in a daze to the next tee. It was as if this little man willed my ball into the hole as a gift to me for paying attention to him all those years.
But the gift was not the ace, but the letters of wisdom I still have stacked upstairs in my golf library – right on the shelf next to Scotland’s Gift and a copy of The Evangelist of Golf that George Bahto gave to me with a personal note.
We never finished the nine holes, Doug started to tire after the fifth and I carried both of our bags back to the clubhouse. After he sat to rest for a while, his daughter showed up to retrieve him. She was nearly 65 with gray hair and a kindly face.
She thanked me several times for taking the time to invite her father out to play golf, commenting that except for singing in the church choir, he rarely gets away from the senior home.
Before she drove away, he gave me a ball marker that had been in his bag for decades as a keepsake. He knew he would probably never see me again and I am sorry to say he was right.
I still received letters from time to time for the next couple of years and always wrote back, but we never spoke again. His handwriting started to get noticeably shakier the last year as he alluded to battling a health condition.
One day the letters stopped coming and the lady at the senior home said he had been moved to a convalescent hospital, but did not know where.
I had not the presence of mind to get his daughter’s married name or address that day and Doug vanished from my life without a trace.
Still, every time I stand on the 1st tee of the Cliffs Course, I silently say to myself “Show me a great shot.”
Maybe if I say it enough times, a letter will reappear in my mailbox.