The Legacy of Tom Meeks

[John Kavanaugh]

Will he be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame?  How will history judge his tenure?  What impressions do you have when you hear his name?

[Terry Lavin]

He is without question one of the greatest guys I've ever met in this great game. Smart, plucky and fearless. He was also a risk taker. Sometimes, you swing and miss and he let a couple greens/hole locations get away from him. But that is more of a sidebar than a theme of his contribution to championship golf.

[John Kavanaugh]

Please, Tom Meeks is as responsible for the set up of this US Open as Mike Davis.  Most of our legacies are best illustrated by the actions of our successors. 

When Meeks first visited Victoria National I was somewhat disappointed in his insistence that we needed extensive tree removal.  Now 4,000+ trees removed I am grateful for his guidance.

[Peter Pallotta]

When I first started drinking the occasional beer, some of the big companies had just introduced the short neck/stubby bottles, which in comparison to the long-necked ones looked really cool to me. I mentioned it to my dad, but he wasn't all that interested. He noted that when he first arrived in Canada and had his first beer, the bottles were all stubbies -- and then they went long-necked for a while, and now they were back to stubbies, and he suggested that soon enough the bottles would get re-designed yet again. I didn't believe him - I couldn't imagine how the long-necks would ever return. Well, they did of course; only my inexperience-short term view prevented me from seeing that. Same applies here, needless to say. Tom Meeks' legacy will be that, in a little while, there will be a Tom meeks junior, re-discovering as if for the first time the classic USGA approach.

Peter

[Terry Lavin]

The year before we hosted the Open at Olympia, I was playing the course with Meeks and a couple other guys.  As of that time, the entire course had been rebuilt, regressed, rebunkered, etc.  Let's say 700 trees had been removed.  We get to the 14th hole, which is the signature hole at Olympia, a grand-scale long par-4 with a creek that traversed in front of the fairway about 100 yards off the elevated tee, then took a left turn, went in a relatively straight line parallel to the fairway, only to cut to the left across the fairway about 100 yards before the elevated green.  In any event, he turns to me and says, "let me tell you my idea about what to do to improve this hole."  I spit out my vodka lemonade or choked on my cigar or something and told him that most of the membership was ready to excommunicate me for letting the USGA ruin their chapel and now he wants me to change the signature hole.

He then proceeded to tell me that the creek to the right of the fairway should be more in play and it was hard to even see at that time because of the overplanting of about 20 trees.  He said, "cut all of those trees down, maybe leave one, then move the fairway to the right and toward the creek and you have some angle in the hole and you'll have a better signature hole."  I instantly knew he was right and I persuaded the Grounds Committee and took the plan to the Board.  I suggested that we go to the hole one morning and start cutting down trees as we voted, tree-by-tree whether to cut or spare a tree.  As soon as we cut the third tree down, the Board saw the hole for the first time and we cut all but two down and then moved the fairway.  It is a much better hole, one that accents the natural hazard and one that is only in this condition because he had the balls to sell me on something that even the consulting architect would never have been able to sell the club on.  For a while, we were calling the hole "Meeks' Creek", but then he ordered the rough cut, the pros killed the course for a couple days and the fickle members forgot all about Tom Meeks.  Not me.

[Tom Ferrell]

I met Tom Meeks at a media day for the 2005 U.S. Women's Open at Cherry Hills in Denver.  We struck up a conversation about GCA, and, ultimately, I asked him about the debacle at Shinnecock the year before.  He was very open and humble about the whole thing, and said that risk of living on the edge is that you were on the edge.

A few weeks later I was amazed to find in my mail a very nice note from Tom Meeks, telling me how much he had enjoyed our conversation.

What a gentleman.  He wore his responsibility heavily, and he made more than his share of mistakes.  But I left reminded how easy it is to criticize and jab when you are not the guy on the firing line.  He might have fired and missed at times, but fire he did!

[Tom_Doak]

He then proceeded to tell me that the creek to the right of the fairway should be more in play and it was hard to even see at that time because of the overplanting of about 20 trees.  He said, "cut all of those trees down, maybe leave one, then move the fairway to the right and toward the creek and you have some angle in the hole and you'll have a better signature hole."  I instantly knew he was right and I persuaded the Grounds Committee and took the plan to the Board.  I suggested that we go to the hole one morning and start cutting down trees as we voted, tree-by-tree whether to cut or spare a tree.  As soon as we cut the third tree down, the Board saw the hole for the first time and we cut all but two down and then moved the fairway.  It is a much better hole, one that accents the natural hazard and one that is only in this condition because he had the balls to sell me on something that even the consulting architect would never have been able to sell the club on.  For a while, we were calling the hole "Meeks' Creek", but then he ordered the rough cut, the pros killed the course for a couple days and the fickle members forgot all about Tom Meeks.  Not me.

Yes, and my question is:  didn't you have an architect that was supposed to be advising on that sort of stuff, instead of the USGA field man??

In fact, I know you did, and I don't know whether he may have advised the same thing or not, and castigated for even suggesting such a thing.  But when the USGA talks, people listen ... because they have to.

I never met Tom Meeks, but I know how highly Mike Davis thinks of him.  At the same time, I remember he was the one who set a couple of horrible hole locations for the Senior Amateur at Crystal Downs ... without consulting the head professional, who would have told him they wouldn't work.

By the same token, I do know a bit about living on the edge, and per Tom Ferrell's point, it is not an easy job.

[Terry Lavin]

Tom,

We did have Mark Mungeam and to tell you the truth, I have no recollection if he ever mentioned anything about touching the 14th hole in his master restoration plan.  I sort of doubt it.  Your point about people listening when the USGA speaks is correct, but at the same time, I guarantee that if I told him that I wouldn't even entertain the notion, that would have been the end of the conversation.  As far as letting a USGA "field man" make a decision about the golf course, the change only involved cutting down a bunch of ash and spruce trees and moving the fairway line 20 feet, so we didn't feel like we were materially altering Willie Park's hole, just making it more "apparent" and utilizing the creek that had been sort of rendered irrelevant by the gradual tree planting.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,

We did have Mark Mungeam and to tell you the truth, I have no recollection if he ever mentioned anything about touching the 14th hole in his master restoration plan.  I sort of doubt it.  Your point about people listening when the USGA speaks is correct, but at the same time, I guarantee that if I told him that I wouldn't even entertain the notion, that would have been the end of the conversation.  As far as letting a USGA "field man" make a decision about the golf course, the change only involved cutting down a bunch of ash and spruce trees and moving the fairway line 20 feet, so we didn't feel like we were materially altering Willie Park's hole, just making it more "apparent" and utilizing the creek that had been sort of rendered irrelevant by the gradual tree planting.

I didn't mean to criticize the change, or to demean Tom's stature as a "field man" ... I have the highest regard for the guys who work out on site.  I was just pointing out that the USGA [like the R&A] tends to come in over the top of architects and suggest design changes, and most clubs feel compelled to listen. 

The change at Olympia Fields sounds like it was for the better -- I actually didn't notice the move when I was there for the Open.  But it also sounds like the precursor for more heavy-handed moves like moving the fairway on the 6th at Pebble right to the cliff edge, or moving the fairway at the 2nd at Merion right to the freaking pavement on Ardmore Ave.  I'm sure it was that way originally, but there was also a hell of a lot more room on the opposite side of the fairway.

[Keith Grande]

Unfortunately, the only knowledge I have of Tom Meeks is sitting in the grandstands on 18 at Shinnecock on Sunday's final round, seeing the exasperated looks on the players faces with +18 and up on the scorecard.  Balls catapulting off the front of greens like bouncy balls off concrete.  He retired just after that if I recall correctly.  That and his famous quote "They're not pins!!! They're flagsticks!!!"

The one complaint (of many) with the USGA and the US Open, they always try to make it about the course, no matter how hard they try to alter what the course is, to fit their own vision of "difficulty", and what the course should be.  I don't know if it's ego, distorted view of strategy, or both.

[Terry Lavin]

Keith,

That's the signature moment for many, in addition to the guys putting off the green at Olympic Club.  Our club's issue with the USGA was sort of the opposite.  We WANTED a tough setup.  We WANTED high rough, brittle greens and over-par scores.  Most clubs that host the US Open are more comfortable with that setup, in a macho sort of way, because they would want to see the pros suffer on the course that has caused suffering on so many occasions in our lives.  It just so happened that the Competition Committee (I think that was the name) had decided that it wanted to eliminate the high rough of so many prior Opens, thinking it was time for a change.  Given that our course was clay based and pretty saturated, we didn't want to see the rough cut, but they cut it.  I was on "Live From" on GolfChannel after Saturday's round and I said the club understood it was the USGA's championship, but that we would have preferred to see high rough and that we didn't want to be seen as a "one-year experiment of the kinder and gentler USGA," which is pretty much how the club was, and is, seen by many.  Which is unfortunate.  But after they left Olympia, smarting from some of the barbs from the media, they went for a tough setup at Shinny after a quick pendulum shift.

The point being that there are cycles and fads in setup, course selections and the like in US Opens and Tom Meeks and his predecessors and successors do have to answer to a committee and they usually get it right but sometimes they get it wrong.  Babe Ruth struck out over 2,000 times, as I seem to recall...

[Tim_Cronin]

As Terry remembers all too well, Olympia got the worst of the criticisms for a couple of reasons. First was the error in cutting the rough, which was only rectified by the application of fertilizer after the first round – or so the story goes. You could hear the rough growing on Saturday morning. I found Meeks, an honest man, on the course on Sunday morning and asked what he thought. "Exactly how I wanted it," he said.

His only little white lie of the week was on the Sunday pin sheet, which noted the cup on the fifth hole as four paces from the left side. It was three. Tom told me, "I couldn't bring myself to put a 3 on the sheet."

The second mistake of the USGA was believing their meteorologist rather than the local guys who knew the wind would be coming from the northeast the first two days. The course is designed to play hardest with a southwest wind.

Still, only four players finished under par, and one of them was not Vijay Singh, whose 63 tied the U.S. Open record.

[Howard Riefs]

A quick trip to the time machine....

Watching the 7th hole at Shinnecock:
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,13682.50.html

And then the analysis:
http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,13732.msg234169/topicseen.html#msg234169

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tom Meeks is a terrific fellow and one hell of a basketball referee !