Putt-putt: the other U.S. open
Golf Digest,
June, 2003, by
John Barton
There's no fame and fortune for the champion, but for the putting
professionals gathered in Augusta, this is no trivial pursuit four miles from
the gates of Augusta National Golf Club, out past the many splendored
fast-food temples and religious emporiums, beyond the off-brand video parlors,
the Skate Red Wing Rollerway ("Christian Nite on Tuesday!") and the Wife Saver
Chicken Sea Food restaurant, on the other side of the tracks of the freight
line that runs to Atlanta, lies a collection of the scariest putting surfaces
in town.
We are gathered here today for the 43rd annual National Championships of
Putt-Putt, a serious endeavor--not to be confused with miniature golf--but one
that nevertheless is to sport what the kazoo is to music, what holding hands
is to sex. It's August in Augusta, the dog days of summer. The azaleas have
long since wilted, the National is shuttered until October, and Tiger and the
tour are in another town, far away.
At the Putt-Putt Golf & Games facility, where major champions like Mark
Calcavecchia, Lee Janzen and Scott Simpson have come to putt during Masters
week, the atmosphere is electric. At 10 a.m., a crackly national anthem is
played over the loudspeakers. A huge, bemused fiberglass giraffe looks down on
the proceedings from a fake rock outcropping in the middle of the course. The
official starter, sitting behind a counter surrounded by racks of putters and
candy-colored golf balls, leans in to the microphone and announces the first
group onto the tee.
The defending champion steps up to the first hole of the Red Course and
meticulously places his ball in just the right spot on the little green
plastic square that constitutes a Putt-Putt tee. It is perfectly quiet as he
wipes away an imaginary impediment in front of him, hunches over the ball,
takes a series of tiny practice swings, and hitches up the back of his pants.
Then he strikes the ball, and it silently rolls over the synthetic green
carpet, traverses a hump and falls tidily into the center of the hole. The
game has begun, this tournament that everyone refers to as "our Masters" but
is really Putt-Putt's U.S. Open, amateur, junior and senior all rolled into
one.
The defending champion is Greg Ward. He would never say such a thing, given
his modesty, but he might be the greatest putter who ever lived.
First stop: Lynchburg
The road to Augusta began for me three months earlier, on a warm Tuesday
night in Lynchburg, Va. Because I wasn't a Putt-Putt pro, I had only one
avenue to play in the Nationals--join the Amateur Putters Association. To do
that, you have to play in a local tournament and be recommended for membership
by a Putt-Putt course owner. The owner of the Lynchburg Putt-Putt, Joe Aboid,
happens also to be the commissioner of the sport, so I had come to the right
place.
"All kinds of people play the game," said Joe, who was grappling with a
malfunctioning machine in the videogame room when I met him. "You can play
with grandmothers and grandchildren, you don't have to be able to hit the ball
300 yards. It really gives me a thrill to see families come out and all have
fun together."
Joe's father, a Putt-Putt Hall of Famer and the son of a Lebanese cobbler,
built the first ever Putt-Putt in Cleveland, in 1960, and Joe soon entered the
family business. In the heart of the Bible Belt, he is a full-time Putt-Putt
evangelist.
He gave me a Strata Tour Ultimate--the official ball of Putt-Putt--then I
paid my $7 entry fee and headed toward the first hole of the tournament
course, where I met a fellow named Ron who showed me the ropes over a couple
of practice rounds. Local knowledge is a big part of this game. Ron explained
how heat, moisture, wind and even time of day can affect the way the ball
rolls. He would say things like: "This hole we use the No. 3 tee spot, bank it
off the left rail, front door."
We played with a retiree named Gene, who took up the game four years ago,
has 104 trophies to his name, and was dressed in denim shorts, sneakers and a
baseball cap sporting the logo of a mobile-home dealership.
There were kids playing with their parents, older kids playing with their
dates, students from nearby Liberty University, middle-aged middle managers,
an accountant, a janitor, a painter, a guy who works for the Ramada Inn,
retirees, some fuzzy-haired ladies--the whole carnival of humankind was on
parade beneath the neon lights of the nearby Dairy Queen on Timberlake Road,
utterly engrossed in the wholesome, sweetly innocent act of putting. Popular
hits from long ago lost summer afternoons hung in the air like a warm mist.
It was when we were on the third hole in the second round that the
proceedings were interrupted by the arrival of a big black SUV, honking its
horn. A big man in a big black suit stepped out. It was the Reverend Jerry
Falwell.
Falwell's house is just down the road, as is Liberty University, which he
founded. He had stopped by to see his son and some of his grandchildren, who
were playing on one of the other courses. It turned out that Ron, whose family
is in the Christian music business, knows him. In fact, everyone seemed to
know him. "He's been great to me," said Ron. "He took me on his private jet to
meet President Bush once. It was the highlight of my life, I would say."
Falwell was waiting for us as we played the 18th. "Watch Ron," he joked.
"He's known for making up his score."
I asked Falwell if he was a golfer, but he said he doesn't even have time
to do Putt-Putt. He was wearing a "Jesus First" lapel pin.
"But he does bungee jump," offered Ron. "He did it once wearing a black
suit. He's not afraid of anything."
The Reverend laughed, gave me a playful jab in the stomach, then wandered
off, strolling around the Putt-Putt, tending to his flock.
There are many mental images that can prove beneficial to the tender,
fragile art of putting--the ebb and flow of the waves, for instance, or the
swinging of a pendulum. Jerry Falwell bungee jumping in a black suit, alas, is
not one those images. After my first round of 30, six under par, I had stood
in third place, but following this strange, unsettling encounter, it was as if
my bottle of Gatorade had turned into a poisoned chalice: The stroke was lost,
a run of bad holes ensued, and the tournament ended for me with a disastrous,
dreaded four-putt. I finished nowhere.
All was not lost, however. Joe told me I had not disgraced myself, and he
agreed to recommend me for membership to the Amateur Putters Association. I
was going to the Nationals! I suddenly felt a great kinship with my fellow
Putt-Putters and promptly chatted up one of the fuzzy-haired older ladies. Her
name was Dorothy, and she'd scored a respectable 94--11 strokes better than I
did--but she wasn't satisfied. "I normally do better than that," she said.
"But I was nervous tonight. There were too many people here."
The runaway winner was Dave Gallier, a 19-year-old student with a
linebacker's build and the touch of a brain surgeon, who shot three 27s for
his first victory. There was a brief prize-giving ceremony and then, of
course, it was back to ... more putting.
It's an addictive game. An empty first tee holds out the promise of
perfection and is impossible to ignore. "It doesn't matter if you're Tiger
Woods or a little kid," one player told me, "there's a universal appeal to a
ball falling into the cup." Putt-Putt is a world in miniature, an endless
series of tiny challenges and obstacles that can be overcome if you approach
them in just the right way, with the right concentration, luck and skill. It
is life reduced to manageable proportions, a small world that makes you
bigger.
The madness sweeps America
Putt-Putt began 50 years ago because a 28-year-old salesman in
Fayetteville, NC, had a nervous breakdown. Don Clayton was tall, handsome
and charming, an outstanding athlete, a good golfer and one of the top
insurance agents in the country. But sometimes, driving in his car, for no
good reason he would start crying.
His doctor prescribed 30 days of complete rest. But instead, Clayton became
obsessed with the idea of miniature golf. He would spend hours designing tiny
golf holes on index cards, then he'd lay them out on his living room floor
with string. He bought some land on the busiest intersection in Fayetteville
and opened the first Putt-Putt course there in June 1954. It was an immediate
success. There wasn't much else to do in small-town America back then. He
opened another course. Then another. And pretty soon, in the same era that saw
the emergence of Holiday Inn, Howard Johnson, McDonald's, Kentucky Fried
Chicken and other roadside attractions, the Putt-Putt franchise that would
bestow millions upon the charismatic Clayton was born.
Miniature golf itself was nothing new. The first such course was built in
1916, on a private estate in Pinehurst, NC Soon they were springing up
everywhere. By 1930 there were 150 rooftop putting courses in Manhattan alone,
and perhaps 50,000 miniature golf courses nationwide.
Miniature golf came to be known as The Madness of 1930. Courses appeared in
the basements of hotels, in the exercise yards of prisons, on the decks of
ocean liners. Instruction books and magazines were published. A record--"I've
Gone Goofy Over Miniature Golf "--was released. The New York Times wrote that
miniature golf "gave some indication of replacing movies as the nation's
fifth-largest industry," something that caused terrified Hollywood studio
executives to order their stars to stay off the little links. Most defied the
ban: Fred Astaire, an avid golfer, was photographed putting on the roof of the
Hotel White in New York, Fay Wray was seen playing in Los Angeles, and Mary
Pickford even opened her own course--the first night brought traffic to a
standstill as she and Douglas Fairbanks took on all comers.
The Marines were called in to build a course at President Hoover's summer
camp in Maryland. The Prince of Wales demanded a course at St. James' Palace
in London. The game was played by the rich and famous, but by ordinary working
folk, too--it was an inexpensive and enjoyable escape from the gathering
economic storm clouds. (Of course, it was not a completely democratic idyll:
There were courses for "coloreds only," and The Los Angeles Times reported
that putting seemed to come naturally to women on account of their "hereditary
gift of wielding a broom day in and day out.")
The elfin courses went to great lengths to outdo their competitors.
Glamorous ladies were hired to entice passersby, as were circus animals, live
bands and singing midgets. Marathon dancing, pole-sitting, pie-eating and
mini-golf contests were held. The themes for individual courses became ever
more ingenious and fantastic: There were sunken gardens, light shows,
waterfalls; courses depicting the Wild West, the South American jungle, the
grand palaces of Europe, the Great Wall of China. Miniature golf courses were
the nation's first theme parks.
Millions took to the game. Courses would stay open until 4 a.m., and tipsy
revelers in ball gowns and dinner jackets would stop by for a quick round
before heading for home--the perfect end to a long night out. In the
vernacular of the times, miniature golf was truly gay.
It was a classic bubble. Inexorably, it burst. The nation was saturated
with courses, which increasingly were facing legal restrictions, and with a
galloping Great Depression, suddenly the game didn't seem so funny anymore.
America's favorite cowboy, Will Rogers, summed up the new zeitgeist: "There's
millions got a putter in their hand when they ought to have a shovel."
By the time Don Clayton quit the insurance business, the blossoming postwar
suburbs had given rise to a modest renaissance of the game (George W. and
Laura Bush had their first date on a miniature golf course in Midland, Tex.).
But Clayton hated all the wacky gimmicks associated with most miniature golf
courses. He wanted his courses to be a true test of skill, not luck. He
personally designed and copyrighted every Putt-Putt hole--they are all par 2,
and all are devoid of clowns' mouths or windmills or other whimsical
distractions (the giant safari animals at Putt-Putt courses are merely set
decoration). Clayton made sure every detail of every franchise was just right.
He persuaded Sam Snead to play Putt-Putt, and he got TV interested too--the
Putt-Putt Parade of Champions on Sundays became one of the longest-running
sports shows in history. At the top of Clayton's game, there were more than
250 franchises in 10 countries. He died in 1996, but his persona still looms
large. As one old-time Putt-Putter told me, "He could sell fleas to a dog."
Now, thanks to land costs, computers and interstates, Putt-Putt has
declined. There are only about 170 courses left, there's no TV coverage
anymore, and Putt-Putt World magazine recently disappeared after publishing
for 42 years.
Miniature golf, meanwhile, has continued to grow. It is looked upon with
disdain by Putt-Putters as a frivolous game of chance, not skill, but there
are thousands of imaginative courses across America, like the Hawaiian Rumble
in North Myrtle Beach, the Pebble Beach of putting, whose centerpiece is an
erupting volcano. Putt-Putt's rival, the U.S. ProMiniGolf Association,
sanctions its own tournaments, and there are international events, too,
frequented by squads of peculiar Europeans who travel with swing gurus and
mental coaches, plus an enormous variety of balls of different spin and bounce
and firmness, all stored in mini humidors to keep them at optimum
temperatures. Miniature golf has even been accepted by the International
Olympic Committee as a provisional sport for the 2007 World Games, a feeder
for the Olympics. (Synchronized swimming suddenly seems almost sensible.) The
future of miniature golf--and tips from the world's greatest putter By Greg
Ward Putt-Putt--remains to be seen, but the days of The Madness are long gone,
and nothing whose defining characteristic is smallness is likely to make it
big in modern America.
Band of brothers
The most remarkable thing about Greg Ward is that he is completely
unremarkable. He lives in the suburbs. Works in sales for a construction
company. Father. Middle-aged. Occasional golfer. A man for all seasons.
Everyone's friend. Hell of a guy.
But Ward's secret is that he can really, really putt. The Putter of the
Decade for the 1990s has won 145 state and national Putt-Putt titles, more
than anyone else in history.
"I really love playing," he had said when we first met a few months earlier
in a steakhouse off I-20 outside Atlanta. "It's a great outlet for my
competitive urges. And you meet so many really nice folks, great people."
Putt-Putt is like golf 's pro tour used to be decades ago, a merry band of
colorful, slightly loopy characters who travel together by car to cheap motels
in one-horse towns, squeezing the game into the oddly shaped crevices between
their jobs and their families for the simple reason that they love it. (It's
certainly not about the money: For all Ward's brilliance, his career earnings
are just get for a 10th-place finish in a crummy PGA Tour event.)
Putt-Putt is guys like John Napoli, the only man alive to have scored a
perfect 18--he can still recall how nervous he was on the 18th hole that
windless Wednesday evening in Ohio in 1979, how he hit the ball too hard, and
how it dived into the cup anyway. Guys like Adam Sahmel, a senior at the
University of Texas for whom a round of Putt-Putt is a true obstacle course
requiring unimaginable effort and courage because he has cerebral palsy--he is
the No. 2-ranked amateur Putt-Putter in Texas. Guys like Al Simpson, the
official starter, who ran a Putt-Putt in Louisiana for three decades until it
was bulldozed to make way for a bank--he hasn't slowed down any despite having
a device under his skin to kick-start his heart whenever it stops. "If you're
going to go," he says, "you might as well go doing what you want to do."
Or guys like Vance Randall, a tall, Hollywood-looking fellow with
gunslinger eyes and an Errol Flynn mustache, Putt-Putt's first superstar. In
1979 he played 50 exhibition matches all over the U.S., and 20 in Japan, too.
"They really rolled out the red carpet for me," says Randall, a lifelong
scratch golfer who tried to play the Senior PGA Tour when he turned 50. "I
played in Japan's national Putt-Putt championship, and there were billboards
all over town about it. And I won it. They put me up on a podium, like in the
Olympics. It was unreal."
Randall was a key figure in a notorious challenge match between Putt-Putt
and the PGA in 1964. Five tour pros--Dave Hill, Don Massengale, Lou Graham,
Rex Baxter and Randy Glover--took on five Putt-Putt pros in Florida: 36 holes
of Putt-Putt one day, 36 holes of putting on grass the next. The Putt-Putters
helped the tour pros on day one, showing them the line and pace on each hole.
"Then the next day, they didn't show us nothing on them greens," says Randall.
"They had us hitting putts that were 50 to 75 yards, and the grass had been
shaved all the way down. But it was still close. It was our mistake--we
shouldn't have helped them."
Randall invented a highly individual putting style, much copied by
Putt-Putters: You choke way down on the grip and play the ball inches off your
left big toe, with the right foot pulled all the way back. "The main thing is
consistency," says Randall, who also claims to have invented bleachers at golf
tournaments. "If the ball is always just off your left foot, there's no
variation at all in your ball position. Ever."
He first got into the game in college, when he had a job moonlighting as
manager of a Putt-Putt course in Asheville, NC "I'd play with my buddies,"
says Randall. "And I'd keep that course open and we'd play all night long."
Many's the time they'd still be putting when a new day dawned, oblivious to
the rising sun.
The home stretch
Greg Ward was holing everything at the Nationals. He opened the defense of
his title with 14 aces in the first 16 holes. My own putting, however, was
less impressive. I came to grief early on, at the triple-tiered "wedding cake"
hole: An initial effort didn't have enough steam to climb the second tier, and
it rolled back pitifully toward me, over the tee, down some concrete steps and
into a nearby flower bed, a situation requiring an emergency ruling.
It was hard to concentrate. It was hot, and the pace of play was deadly.
The pro competitors, some of whom had been here practicing for a month, were
taking the event very seriously, and could be seen actually backing away from
putts, or hurling their putters to the floor in disgust, or pumping their
fists in triumph. All the mannerisms that you might see at the real Masters
were on display.
There were not many other similarities, however. The Augusta National
clubhouse, for instance, does not offer skee ball, Austin Powers Pinball or a
choice of four Daytona USA Sega machines. Buddy Holly is never broadcast
across Amen Corner.
Then there's the dizzying variety of strange Putt-Putt putting styles.
There was a man who putted bent over double, squatting over the ball with his
elbows fully splayed; another whose putter had a thick, blue toweling grip
that he held at the very end, with both hands wrapped around each other like a
double fist; yet another who putted croquet style, between his legs, with an
implement that looked like it might be better suited to planting potatoes.
For the final day of the amateur competition, I was paired with 13-year-old
Brittany Davis, granddaughter of another putting legend, Augusta native Tracy
Moore, who was dying from lung cancer when he won the 1965 National
Championship--within a year he was buried in his favorite black Putt-Putt
shirt. I had a better day, even managing a couple of nine under-par rounds of
27, but at the Nationals nine under is only average. I finished 38th out of 44
amateurs, 48 shots behind the winner.
When you spend hours a day for days on end doing nothing but putting, you
realize how bad you are at it. All these years, you've just been playing at
it, shoving the ball toward the hole and hoping for the best with no clue as
to what you're doing. After a while, you slip into a meditative putting
trance: It's extraordinary how comfortable you can get over the ball, how
smooth and grooved and precise your stroke becomes, how pure the impact with
the ball gets--it even sounds different. There's so much we don't bother to
practice, or do well, content instead to slide through life taking mediocrity
for granted.
Ward, meanwhile, had slid effortlessly into the lead on day two, averaging
13 under per round, but come Sunday, he found his highly tuned engine to be,
in his own words, "just a little bit off." Cliff Matthews, a 28-year-old
croupier and self-confessed gambler who had driven 14 hours from Dallas to get
to the Nationals, pushed ahead in round 11, and stayed there in round 12. Ward
beat his previous year's record--120 under for 12 rounds--by 16 shots. But
Matthews beat it by 20. The phenomenal scoring was the talk of the town.
In an impromptu press conference with two members of the press, Matthews
explained his unusual transition to crosshanded putting: He plays golf
left-handed, to a 10-handicap, and in the early '90s, attempting to cure the
yips, he decided to start putting right-handed. But he didn't bother to change
the position of his hands on the club. Whatever he did, it seems to have
worked. For Matthews, the victory was the reward for a lot of hard work: He
had spent 10 hours a day practicing at the Putt-Putt for 10 straight days.
There was no green-jacket ceremony. First prize was $2,500. The assembled
gathering could have fit comfortably inside one medium-size bus. But everyone
was happy, even the defeated Ward, a consummate sportsman.
At the airport I ran into a Putt-Putter called Rich Gilooly, on his way
home to Amsterdam, taking his beloved putter as carry-on luggage in a black
canvas holster. He comes back every year for the tournament, and to catch up
with friends, and if time permits to call in on his brother, a Putt-Putt owner
in Newark, Ohio. "If you go to the mall with him, he knows everyone," says
Gilooly. "All because of Putt-Putt. He could run for mayor."
I had sat next to Gilooly a few days earlier, the night before the
tournament, when the entire Putt-Putt community had crammed into the Partridge
Inn in downtown Augusta for the annual Hall of Fame banquet. Greg Ward was an
inductee. The discussion at our table centered on the tournament's mandatory
and controversial long-pants policy, fondly remembered Putt-Putts ("How about
that sidehill hole in Ypsilanti?"), and what a swell guy Greg Ward is.
Ward was given so many cups and awards that his 9-year-old daughter,
Kaitlynne, had to squeeze her way through the tables to the podium to help him
carry them all.
In his brief acceptance speech, he summed up what the sport means to him:
"The people I've met and the friendships I've made through Putt-Putt," said
Ward. "That, for me, is the whole deal."
For information on Putt-Putt tournaments and courses, go to
www.proputters.com and www.putt-putt.com.
RELATED ARTICLE: Tips from the world's greatest putter.
By Greg Ward
EQUIPMENT I use a Titleist Bullseye. I've had it since I was 16. Putting is
about consistency, so you must know your putter well. Some people try a
different putter every week. One question: Why?
GRIP I use the standard interlock grip, just like Jack Nicklaus and Tiger
Woods use for full shots. I try to keep my hands neutral and quiet. I don't
grip it tight.
STANCE AND BALL POSITION I like to have my eyes directly over the target
line, so that I can clearly see the path the ball is going to take. It's an
old drill but a good one: Drop a ball from the left eye. Where the ball lands
is where you want it to be at address.
AIM I'm a spot putter. So are the best Putt-Putt pros, and some PGA Tour
players, too. Find a spot--a mark or discoloration--on the target line, then
take dead aim at the spot. You've got to be precise. A great discipline.
PRESHOT ROUTINE A consistent preshot routine leads to a consistent stroke.
It helps to calm me down and shuts out all distractions. It almost doesn't
matter what your preshot routine is, or how idiosyncratic it is, as long as
it's always the same.
STROKE There's nothing exceptional about my stroke, but it's the same every
time. No movement of the hands, no breaking of the wrists. The simpler the
stroke, the easier it is to repeat. My stroke is also very short, but my
follow-through can get quite long--I like the feeling of pushing the
putterhead toward my intermediate target. Once you've got a decent stroke,
practice it as much as you can.
LEARN FROM THE BEST Tiger's stroke is the one I emulate the most--short and
simple. Phil Mickelson is a great putter, but for me there's way too much room
for error with his long, sweeping motion--it makes it hard to keep the putter
square. I follow Brad Faxon, too--the best putter on tour. He always has the
same preshot routine and seems to have a positive attitude.
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER You've got to have the right attitude. I focus only
on the speed and direction of the putt--everything else gets shut out. Don't
think about the end result--holing a putt is simply a byproduct of getting the
speed and direction right. You're going to have some bad stretches from time
to time. You can't let it get to you. Stay calm and believe in yourself.
COPYRIGHT 2003 New York Times Company Magazine Group, Inc. in association
with The Gale Group and LookSmart.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group