Nice Shot, Mr. Nicklaus: Stories About the Game of Golf

by Michael Konik

Overview

Golf-writer and hacker extraordinaire, Michael Konik, roams the golfing universe in this outstanding collection of stories about the game and its grandeur. Konik's intimate profiles take you inside the minds and motives of some of the biggest names in golf—John Daly and Phil Mickelson, Raymond Floyd and Jim Colbert, Helen Alfredsson and Laura Davies, Dave Pelz and Vince Gill among them.

Nice Shot, Mr. Nicklaus guides readers around the planet in search of exotic golf adventures, from Scotland and Spain to the United Arab Emirates and El Salvador. Konik chronicles his own misadventures in some of the world's quirkiest tournaments, writes eloquently and movingly about demeanor on the links, and, of course, caddies for Jack Nicklaus in the memorable title story.

Throughout Nice Shot, Mr. Nicklaus, Konik brings a refreshing originality to his coverage of the game:

"Golf is more than a sport, and far more than a pastime. It's a journey and an examination, a diversion and a trial, a romantic love affair and a heart-wrenching betrayal. It's rich in symbolism and even richer in sentiment—a tidy little metaphor for being alive."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780929712031
Publisher:	Huntington Press
Publication date:	11/01/2000
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	3 Months

About the Author

A former professional sports gambler and gaming columnist, Michael Konik has served as expert commentator on more than 100 televised poker broadcasts and penned several highly acclaimed books on gambling, including Telling Lies and Getting Paid, The Smart Money, and one of the Wall Street Journal's "Five Best Gambling Books of All Time" — The Man With the $100,000 Breasts.

Konik's writing has appeared in hundreds of newspapers and magazines on every continent, including the New York Times, Travel & Leisure, Sports Illustrated, and virtually every special-interest publication extant. He was the regular gambling columnist for Cigar Aficionado, where he earned the honorific "Dean of the World's Gambling Writers," and for more than 10 years he penned the golf column for the Delta Air Lines in-flight magazine, SKY. More recently Konik has turned his hand to fiction, with Becoming Bobby, Instructions for My Funeral, Making It, and Year 14.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 2 The Cow Pasture Open

Wisdom, Montana, population 120, has a motel, a gas station, a post office, a restaurant, a general store, and, this being the wild frontier, two saloons. And while there's an art gallery trafficking in western-type things, forget about symphony orchestras or opera companies or ballet troupes, not to mention a movie theater or video store or municipal swimming pool. There's not even a school.

Wisdom, to be honest, is a five-second visual respite from Montana highway emptiness.

Which is why Wisdom, Montana, might be among the least likely candidates in the United States to host a golf tournament.

Another compelling reason: Wisdom, Montana, doesn't even have a golf course.

Now, having a golf course might seem like a fairly important, perhaps utterly necessary, first step in putting on a golf tournament. But we're talking about cowboy types here, not easily dismayed suburbanites. Lacking a golf course did not strike the rugged folks of Wisdom as much of a reason not to put on a golf tournament. They figured they would use what they did have, which is plenty of wide-open, tree-less, links-style, cattle land. (The region in which Wisdom is situated, the Big Hole Valley, is known as "The Land of 10,000 Haystacks," something that cannot be said about, for instance, Augusta, Georgia.) This is the kind of raw untamed land that, were it in the Scottish highlands, would inspire volumes of impassioned prose in all the golf journals and mandatory pilgrimages from well-financed members of our better country clubs.

But this is Wisdom, Montana, 76 miles from Butte and 121 miles from Missoula. Close to an hour from a proper golf course. Worlds away in spirit from synthetic driving-range mats and custom-fitted irons and heavily promoted graphite shafts.

Still, the people of Wisdom wanted to have a golf tournament. Just because it seemed like an amusing thing to do. Play golf, drink beer, have some laughs. Nothin' serious. They figured a golf tournament might turn into a bona fide event and help tourism in the area - if you can call a once-a-year deluge of a hundred or so out-of-towners "tourism." They figured it might put Wisdom on the map, at least for a day or two. But mostly they figured hosting a golf tournament in Wisdom, Montana, just might be a lot of fun.

Fun. Remember that concept? Whether because it's inherently impossible or because its participants tend toward masochism, golf, it seems, seldom breeds fun. Momentary joy, yes; a pleasant day in the park, certainly. But fun? No, if you want fun, you play golf of the miniature variety, where getting your ball into the dinosaur's mouth wins a free game. The grown-up version of golf is the stuff of set jaws and steely scowls, of hot sighs and shaking heads.

Not in Wisdom, it's not.

Every year around Labor Day, local rancher Monte Clemow, who owns a little old parcel of land - about 20,000 acres or so - goes out into one of his fields with a shovel. He digs up some holes and puts flags next to them. He puts directional stakes in the ground and big black feed buckets in some spots and sawdust in other places. Then he lets 1,200 or so head of cattle chew the rough grass down to almost playable levels. And that's it. For a few days Monte and his neighbors have a 12-hole golf course. Two of them, actually: Monte usually makes 24 holes and divides them in half. Then Monte and his Wisdom neighbors invite everyone they know to come to town and play golf for the day.

The event is known as the Cow Pasture Open. Participants often wear funny costumes, similar to what you might see at a masquerade ball, with a large contingent opting for the lone ranger look. They ride horses and motorcycles or drive trucks and four-wheel all-terrain scooters on the golf course. They drink lots of free beer. They take six hours to play 12 holes. No one cares about scores. Nine or ten is a typical tally on a typical 200-yard hole. There's a shortest drive contest. Balls roll into cow pies. Balls disappear. There are no greens. There are no yard-age markers. There are no rules.

Everyone has fun.
***

The night before the fourth annual Cow Pasture Open, in 1997, I’m sitting at the bar in Antler's, one of Wisdom's two drinking establishments. This is the kind of place where the jukebox has nothing but country music, and if you don't like Garth Brooks, you'd better keep it to yourself. Parents bring their young children, who fall asleep on the floor next to the pool table while the adults slam back beer and whiskey and, if they're feeling exotic, drinks with fruit juice in 'em. Antler's is buzzing, like the pubs in St. Andrews the night before the Open Championship. " I’m gonna do good," one cowboy promises his drinking mate. "I’ve played twice this year."

I ask the cowboy if most people prepare for the Cow Pasture Open. "Hell, no," he says, laughing. "Most of us play golf once a year if we're lucky. You play much?" He asks me. I tell him I do. "Oh well then, you'll win," he says. ***

The cowboy, I’m sad to say, is mistaken. I do not play well enough to win. But I have an excuse, of course: I feel way too self-conscious. When I see most of the Cow Pasture Open contestants dressed in their best cowboy duds wielding persimmon clubs circa 1964, I feel woefully out of place, like a black Jewish homosexual Democrat might feel on the first tee at the Los Angeles Country Club. For a moment I cannot decide which is more embarrassing: my toga-like Egyptian sheik costume that I’ve brought from home in hopes of winning "best costume" or the fact that I am using an oversized titanium driver.

When I make a brief pre-round survey of Monte Clemow's cow pasture, the cows, who have been shooed off the course, are wandering near the parking area, mooing irritably. I'm not sure if this is because so many club-toting strangers are in their midst or because someone has already fired up a big hickory-smoke barbecue. Cows, in fact, are a recurring theme here. After paying my $20 entry fee, I receive a commemorative Cow Pasture Open bag tag. It's made out of an ear tag, the kind ranchers use to identify their herds. Lunch is roast beef. And the high scorer gets a (man-made) cow-chipping trophy.

Following a ceremonial cannon blast, play begins. Even after playing three or four holes, it's difficult, if not impossible, to discern the course's design concept. "oversized putt-putt" might be the best way to describe the cow pasture's architectural quirks, though that might be investing too much credence in the whole scheme. "Goofy" is, perhaps, more accurate. Some holes, like the one that has a plastic feed bucket partially submerged in a dry creek bed, are best played with clever bank shots off rocks. Others require more than an inventive imagination; you need luck. Like the one with a toilet seat over the hole: you can't quite putt over the rim, and most chips bounce out. I take a 13 on that hole.

The course is a 3,000-yard unplayable lie. The cow pasture looks a little like what Royal Troon might look like if the superintendent there had lost his lawn mower. Finding your ball is almost as difficult as getting it in the hole. As far as I could discern, Cow Pasture Open participants do not assess themselves a stroke-and-distance penalty for a lost ball. They just drop another one and have a beer.

Often I find myself "greenside" in two. Most of the holes are between 200 and 300 yards, and I usually hit driver-sand wedge to within 10 or 20 feet. And then it normally takes me four or five additional stroke to hole out. (Imagine a "green" constructed from hardpan and three-inch rough and you'll understand.) Never again will I complain about spiked-up putting surfaces.

Despite the trying playing conditions, the Cow Pasture Open is suffused with good cheer, enthusiastic hollering, and drunken howling. Nobody throws clubs. Nobody whines. Nobody stands, hands on hips, looking toward the sky with thinly veiled disdain. About the only complaining you'll hear at the Cow Pasture Open is when a well-struck ball is sent skidding wayward by an unfortunately positioned cow chip ("damn, cow chip got that one!"), The prevalence of which makes wearing traditional golf shoes highly impractical. Players also complain when the guy driving the beer truck stays away too long.

Generally, though, the Cow Pasture Open is a persuasive reminder that golf is not about perfect swings and impeccable fairways. It's about being outdoors with friends, walking - or, what the heck, driving your pickup truck - through a fertile field, with the Big Sky above you and the land beneath your feet, just as Scottish shepherds did centuries ago. It's about failing repeatedly and not letting it bother you.

And it's about occasionally doing exactly what you set out to do, feeling the sweet contact of club-face on ball, sending it high and straight and long, watching it escape the mundane bonds of gravity and soar where you want it to soar, lifting your spirit as the ball zooms toward its final resting place: a big, black, plastic, feed bucket.

That, my friends, is Wisdom.

Table of Contents

Preface

  1.   Nice Shot, Mr. Nicklaus

Hackers And Their Dreams
  2.  The Cow Pasture Open
  3.  Answer: 62,000 Strokes
  4.  Hacker's Heaven
  5.  The Need For Speed
  6.  Wizards Of The Wand
  7.  On Mashie! On Niblick! On Spoonie!
       On Stymie! 'Tis The Holiday Season: Now,
       What Will You Buy Me?

Players Of The Game
  8.  A Young Hogan
  9.  The Money Player
10.  The Art Of The Drive
11.  Selling Short
12.  The Man With The Golden Swing
13.  Long Laura
14.  The Curse Of Lefty
15.  Better Late Than Never
16.  Swede Demon
17.  The Jockey Who Became A Bulldog
18.  My Pal, The Touring Pro
19.  The Vinny

Have Clubs Will Travel
20.  Barging Through Scotland
21.  The Land Of Camelot
22.  Canterbury (Golf) Tales
23.  Golf In The Arctic Circle
24.  Le Golf
25.  El Golf
26.  Jugadores Y Pelotas
27.  Golf In The Gulf

Thoughts For The 19th Hole
28.  In Praise Of Caddies
29.  The Healer
30.  Alacrity And Demeanor