The Jim Tanner Caddy Classic

I played a round on Saturday, Jan 29th sharing a cart with Uncle Benny Martin at North Palm. As I have heard, Mr. Nicklaus made the greens virtually unplayable for the average player. Several approach shots and putts that normally would be within 5 feet settled off the green. The layout was very agreeable, but the greens were silly at times.
Earl Peacock played with us and scored 2 birdies reduced to eagles and scored a skin.  Uncle Benny won $25 in the Quota game.
I also played The Rookery at Marco with Paul Dixon and his friend Dennis. I started out with 3 pars in the first 4 holes before I started dropping a dozen balls in the ponds that surrounded 16 of the 18 holes. Great layout, but I prefer playing PCC. We played the blue tees where the course rating is 73.3 and slope is 141. The black tees has a course rating of 75.2 and slope of 145 and measures 7152 yards!

Tags: 2011 by Rod MacKenzie

Sandy: I want you to kill every gophers on the golf course!
Carl Spackler: Correct me if I’m wrong Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers, they’re gonna lock me up and throw away the key…
Sandy: Not golfers, you great fool! Gophers! The *little* *brown*, *furry* *rodents* -!
Carl Spackler: We can do that; we don’t even have to have a reason. All right, let’s do the same thing, but with gophers -!

Tags: 2011 by Rod MacKenzie

Bill Reynolds told many tales about caddying Rhode Island CC and cutting greens at Louisguisett. Bill and his brother cut the greens at Louisquisett in their teens. One morning after a night of partying, they decided to put beer cans atop each flag stick. Their uncle that ran the club was not amused.
Playing college basketball at Brown, Bill said his toughest assignment was guarding Jimmy Walker. He accumulated 4 fouls in short order, leaving the dubious job of guarding Walker to one of his teammates.
Stan Abrams sat at our table with JT, Kevin Fortin, Paul Treanor, and Judge Keough. Stan talked about attending Harvard as a freshman. Stan was one of a dozen QBs, so was playing defensive end as a freshman. In his fourth game, Stan’s knee was pinned from behind by a fellow Harvard frosh ending his career in football.
I recommend “The Match” by Mark Frost and “Who’s Your Caddy?” by Rick Reilly.
Rub of the Green – In 1974, Ross Coon beat Les Kennedy in a 4 hole playoff at Pawtucket CC to win the RI Open. I was fore-caddying the playoff holes. On the second hole, Ross hit his tee shot left in the gully. I was certain it was OB. On closer inspection, the ball was inbounds by a few inches. The OB stake closest to the ball was laying down, so the remaining stakes on either side determined the OB line. If the stake was in the ground as intended, Les would have surely won the second hole and the 1974 RI Open.

Tags: 2011 by Rod MacKenzie