The Man Who Played 10,000 Rounds
He hits the links only on days that end in 'y'
October 21, 2006; Page P6
GLADWYNE, Pa. -- James Finegan reckons he has played the main course at the members-only Philadelphia Country Club here more than 10,000 times. He is fond of saying he plays "only on days ending with the letter 'y.'" At a minimum, he chalks up 250 rounds a year at Philadelphia, which in the 40-plus years since he joined the club -- he is 76 -- pushes him easily across the five-digit frontier.
The total would be higher if he and his wife hadn't spent 12 consecutive summers in a rented flat in Scotland overlooking the 18th green at St. Andrews, a course he has played more than 100 times. And he estimates he plays 50 to 60 annual rounds at courses other than Philadelphia, including the world's No. 1 ranked course, Pine Valley in New Jersey, where he is a member.
Mr. Finegan is undoubtedly an eccentric -- anybody who has ever met him will tell you he is one of a kind -- but he isn't a kook. A kook would play his home course 10,000 times more or less as a stunt, perhaps in lieu of creating the world's largest ball of aluminum foil. Mr. Finegan has done so simply because he can't stand not to play every day, weather permitting. And for him, permitting weather includes days with temperatures in the 20s, so long as the wind isn't howling.
Such passion -- or obsessiveness -- isn't unique to Mr. Finegan. There are quite a few recreational golfers who play 100 rounds to 200 rounds or more each year, particularly in Sun Belt retirement hot spots, and Mr. Finegan sees no reason to think there couldn't be other members of the 10,000-round club (not that he's met one). The game's peculiarly addictive quality stems from its inherent imperfectability -- one can spend a lifetime improving, and yet somehow never really get better -- coupled with the occasional jackpot thrill of hitting a perfect shot. Given the time, energy and favorable circumstances (Mr. Finegan's house is a six-minute drive from his club), why not play every day?
Mr. Finegan came by his passion honestly. Born into modest circumstances in Philadelphia, he grew up caddying (including for a while for Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr., founder of Advance Publications, who regularly tipped him the then-fortune of $5 a round) and, after college and a stint in the Navy, raised three children with his wife and worked his way up from junior copywriter to the longtime chairman and chief executive of an ad agency. The office was precisely 23 minutes from the course, and he learned to change out of his suit into golf clothes on the expressway. He retired in 1990.
Since then, when not playing golf, he has devoted himself to writing about the game. His first undertaking was a 500-page history of golf in Philadelphia. He has also written the club history of Pine Valley, numerous magazine articles, and four books about golf in the British Isles, the latest being a beautiful and humongous coffee-table tome, "Where Golf Is Great: The Finest Courses of Scotland and Ireland."
All that rooting about in golf's past must be partly responsible for Mr. Finegan's delightful, quasiarchaic manner of speaking. "You, gentlemen, have arrived with ambassadorial punctuality!" he recently greeted some friends who happened to arrive on time for a round of golf. "This hole, I dare say, prompted one of the most amusing moments in our fair club's history," he told me last week when I met him for a round of golf at Philadelphia. (The story concerned Arnold Palmer's reaction to the 225-yard uphill 15th. "What the hell kind of par four is this?" Mr. Palmer is said to have said, and was told, "It's the kind of par four that's a par three.")
But playing golf, not writing about it, is the main thing for Mr. Finegan, and his enthusiasm remains unbounded. In his prime, sporting a two handicap, he won the club championship at Philadelphia four times and the senior championship at Pine Valley once. He always walked and carried his own clubs in a pipestem bag, completing nine holes (with two balls) in an hour and a half or 18 holes (with one ball) in "one and 55." In recent years, leg problems have slowed him down. He sometimes must take a cart, and his handicap is 11. But one thing remains the same: Most of the time he plays solo, in the late afternoon, as a reward to himself for having satisfactorily completed a day of work.
"It's almost like a child, truly," he says. "I was, and still am, very conscious of the fact that at a quarter of four, or four, I can look forward to a round of golf." On weekend mornings, he plays in a regular foursome, but as those rounds near their ends, a feeling of despondency creeps over him. "I know there will be no more golf that day," he says. "That's always in the forefront of my mind -- a circumstance I can't control but must reluctantly accede to."
Despite Mr. Finegan's leg problems, his consistency is uncanny. Tottering a bit from his cart to the ball, his pants hitched high on his waist, he sometimes resembles Martin Short's Ed Grimley character. As he lines up to the ball, the club shaft quavers visibly, but then, quickly -- smack! The sound is always the same, and every drive flies 170 yards or 175 yards to exactly where he wants it in the fairway. I've never played with a straighter hitter.
Has he ever once grown bored with his daily rounds? He gives the question serious thought. "No, I never have. Truly, I never have," he says. "But in this regard, I must give due credit to the course itself, as it is an undeniably great one."
Greatness isn't a concept that Mr. Finegan uses lightly. Bestowing greatness, whether on individual holes or on courses, is an intense subsidiary passion for him. He deems Philadelphia to have only two great holes. "How can this be a great course with only two great holes, you ask? Because so many other holes, 14 or 15 at least, are truly excellent. And even though you are saying to yourself, 'I know this hole isn't great, I know I have played many that surpass it,' you have to acknowledge that such a steady run of excellent holes produces, I submit, a course that qualifies as great."
That certainly settled the matter to my satisfaction. And I further submit that my afternoon with Mr. Finegan was great, as well. Late in our round, with the sun angling low into the autumn trees and deer literally gamboling in the fairways, I suggested to him that this was a paradise. "Yes," he confirmed, "it's the only place to be."