Earning My Keep

I'm back from my assignment, and apparently discharged my responsibilities so well that my contract has been extended for another day.

I was off today looping for Kent St. Charles in the Westchester Open, played this year at Metropolis Country Club.  Kent, better known on these pages as Kunta Kente, has been playing some good golf in recent days, and I naturally assumed my ministrations would put him over the top.

The original metropolis layout was designed by Herbert Strong, whose best known works was Engineers

Early morning on the range.

 Country Club.  The course was expanded later by A.W. Tillinghast, with several completely new holes.  The course and club has a storied history and its professional staff has over the years included Paul Runyon, Jack Burke, Jr., "Lighthorse" Harry Cooper

I'd long wanted to do this and it was a delightful day.  But it turned out to be far more nerve-wracking than I anticipated.  You're out there with your professional and trying to help him do his job, but you don't know if he wants chatter, jokes or dead silence.  Mostly, I just defaulted to repeating lines from the Davis Love commercial, things Like "How about an easy 2?" or "By the way, that's your last ball.  You know, this commercial:

And of course Kent was playing with two other gents, and it feels like you're always standing in the wrong place.  Don't get me wrong, his playing partners couldn't have been nicer.  One of them let me hop on the back of his cart a few times, especially on the hills.  But it takes a few holes to settle in...

The only bunker the boss made me rake.  More on it later.

Kent played extremely well.  He took his medicine when necessary, with both of his bogeys caused by errant  hybrids off the tee.  His opening tee shot ended up in a divot in the first cut, but he didn't say a thing, just hammered it to twelve feet.  He managed his length quite well, making good decisions on when to hit driver and when to play back and make sure to stay on the short stuff.  But Oh that drive...on the 540-yard Par-5 1st (our tenth hole), he had 166 yards in.  OK, it's downhill...but still.

He scared me a couple of times when he asked me whether I liked the seven or the eight?  "What are you thinking," I countered, not wanting to have an over-club on my conscience.  Then on the eighteenth green I happened to note that a downhill putt looked like the kind that could, you know, get away from a fellow.  So I was sweating bullets when he left it five feet short...but he made it to take me off the hook.

My best moment came on the seventh green, our 16th hole of the day.  Kent had hit a great six iron from just over 200 yards that defied his natural draw, right-to-left wind and ball above-his-feet stance, the dreaded straight ball.  It snuck just into the fescue and with the green running away from him, all a fellow could do was to chop it out to about 40-feet.  

As I'm taking the pin out, he asks me what I see in terms of break around the cup.  The putt was in the main left-to-right, but I saw a mound at the front of the green and told him I actually thought it would come back to the left as it lost speed.  Over the clank of the ball into the bottom of the cup he told me it came back a full cup.

Alas, we didn't have to wait long for my lowest point of the day.  The ninth hole, our last, was playing 168 yards uphill to a back pin.  Kent pulled nine iron and said something along the lines that he thought the wind was helping.  I tested it with some grass and got the opposite result, and then did it again with it seemingly in our face.  So Kent asked for his 8-iron.

It's a simple request, I'm sure you'll agree... though one teensy-weensy little issue arose, as it so happens there was no 8-iron to be found in Kent's.  The reader can imagine that I wanted to be anywhere else on the planet right then, though I must give the lad all due credit.  He didn't show the slightest loss of concentration, just merely said "I'm pretty sure it's a nine-iron."  And damned if it wasn't, as he hit a towering shot that ended about twelve feet under the cup.

Kent's ball nestled under the pin on the ninth green.  An 8-iron simply wouldn't have been prudent.

It took us all of thirty seconds walking to the green to remember where he last used the eight iron, it was the bunker shot pictured above.  He had leaned the club against the bag, and cutting me slack suggested it probably slid down into the rough where it was easy to miss.  

Kent finished the day with a one-under 69.  he was the leader in the clubhouse when we left the golf course, though one player is now at 3-under.  And I'll be back out there with him in the morning, though we'll decide then whether to grab a cart based upon how my creaky old body is feeling

My pay for the day's work.  Kent's game ball autographed and signed.