A Day in the Life

But I can assure this. No one will beat the Winged Foot record I hold. OK, I’ll admit, it’s a mark I share with three other guys. Still, it won’t be touched, not U.S. Open week or any week. After all, it’s been on the books for 23 years.

On July 18, 1983, my foursome completed 18 holes on the West Course in precisely two hours and 16 minutes. If that doesn’t take your breath away, consider this: 1) on that morning we’d traveled more than 3,500 miles to get there; 2) it was our second round of the day; and 3) that afternoon we went another 18 holes—and another 2,500 miles.

I was editor of GOLF Magazine back then and one of my core duties was to make noise for the magazine—occasionally do nutty things that attracted attention and, by extension, readers and advertisers. In a moment of questionable inspiration I came up with the notion of playing St. Andrews, Winged Foot and Pebble Beach in 24 hours. (I had pulled a similar stunt a couple of years earlier, when Ben Crenshaw had joined me for a tour of 18 holes on 18 different courses in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, starting at dawn on the 14th hole of Shinnecock Hills and finishing at dusk on the fourth at Baltusrol.)

On that day, our odyssey had been accomplished with the aid of a helicopter; this time we needed something a bit more formidable: the Concorde. Happily one of the supersonic’s captains, Monty Burton, was an avid golfer only too happy to work with us. He was flying a charter of American players and officials from the British Open at Royal Birkdale. The flight was due to leave Manchester, England, at 8:30 a.m. on the Monday following the championship. If we could make that flight, he’d be happy to zip us across the pond.

This time, my lead partner was a young fellow who had turned pro in 1980 after winning 32 amateur and collegiate titles. Today you know him as a member of the broadcast team for CBS: Bobby Clampett. He was the perfect guy for this lunatic trip—a free spirit who needed a ride back to his home in Pebble Beach.

Completing the foursome were Bobby’s agent, Hughes Norton, and Scottish photographer Brian Morgan, who would do his best to play golf while capturing all the idiocy on Kodachrome.

After Bobby finished his final round (he tied for 53rd), we drove to Liverpool, caught a flight to St. Andrews and checked in at the Old Course Hotel. The next morning when the first ball was in the air, the big clock on the side of the Royal & Ancient clubhouse read 4:04. It was still dark, but the floodlights from the BBC cameras gave us enough visibility to see our tee shots take off.

Playing the first five holes by Braille, we went a collective 24 strokes over par. Then Clampett birdied six and seven, Norton began to strike the ball almost as well as his client, Morgan made a couple of unconscionably long putts, and I strung together six 4s on the back nine, including the fearsome Road Hole. Bobby ended up with 75, Hughes 80, me 85 and Brian 88. More importantly, we walked off the Old Course at 6:35.

“That’s about right for a St. Andrews four-ball,” trilled one of our caddies. “Maybe a wee bit slow.”

Forty-five minutes later, we were in the air, having driven to nearby Leuchars airport and boarded a puddle jumper for Manchester, where the Concorde awaited. We taxied up next to it, scrambled out, and boarded just five minutes before departure.

The first four seats had been reserved for us. Waiting patiently in the half dozen rows behind us was golf’s Pantheon—Nicklaus, Palmer, Watson, Floyd, Trevino, Crenshaw, Kite, Strange, Irwin—and their wives.

“My God,” I whispered to Norton, “if it’s our fate to die in a plane crash, let this be the one—we’d go down in history.”

“Are you kidding?” he said. “We’d be listed in paragraph 40 as ‘other victims.’ Palmer and Nicklaus would go down in history; you and I would just go down in flames.”

Three hours and 40 minutes, and five courses of gourmet breakfast later, we landed at JFK. It was 7:25 a.m.—we’d arrived an hour and five minutes before we’d left. A private jet took us to the Westchester County Airport, from where a limousine drove us to Winged Foot. By just after 9 we were on the 10th tee of the West Course. (We were sent off the back nine because the front nine was full of local qualifiers for the Westchester Open—a dozen or so of them were about to have their rounds rudely interrupted.)

Clampett played very nicely, another 75, but the three amateurs struggled with the steamy July conditions, the torrid pace and the big ballpark. (Bobby had insisted that we join him from the back tees of all three courses.) Norton posted 85; Morgan and I were in the 90s. Winged Foot was the only one of the three courses where there were holes none of us had pars—the first, the 13th and the 14th—but we did finish strongly with three pars and a birdie by Hughes at the par-5 ninth.

The two hours and 16 minutes we’d taken to hit our 340 shots worked out to 24 seconds per shot. At this year’s U.S. Open, the three-balls on Thursday and Friday will need about five hours to play about 215 shots. That’s 84 seconds per shot—a full minute slower per shot.

It was 11:26 a.m. in New York—4:26 p.m. in St. Andrews—and we’d been on the move for just over 12 hours. That was dead on the schedule I had set with confidence, until the moment back on the Concorde when Arnold Palmer asked, “What kind of plane do you guys have to the West Coast?”

“A Falcon jet,” I replied.

“Yeah, but what kind of Falcon? A 10, a 50?”

“I think it’s a 10.”

“Then you’re not going straight to Pebble,” said Palmer, an expert pilot. “You’re gonna have to make at least one pit stop, maybe two.”

“That’s right,” chimed Ray Floyd. “You know what they say about the Falcon 10—they’re fast, but they don’t last.”

They were right. We had to stop for refueling in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Fortunately, the weather across the country was perfect and we encountered no other delays.

At 4:04 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time—precisely 20 hours after starting our rounds at St. Andrews, we teed off at Pebble Beach. With a comfortable four hours to go on a gorgeous California day, we lollygagged around Pebble in three hours and 11 minutes. Bobby, on home turf, fired an even-par 72 and Hughes remained in good form with an 82. Brian managed 92 strokes while taking almost that many photographs, and I brought up the rear with a 93 thanks to a nervous 8 at the first hole and a choking 8 at the last.

We had done it—played 54 holes, walked 15 miles, flown 6,000 miles, overworked 12 caddies, lost six balls, and taken 1,008 shots—in 23 hours and 11 minutes.

Inasmuch as the Concorde no longer exists, this is a record that won’t be broken for a long time, if ever—and certainly not by me. These days, trundling round the Old Course in three hours and 15 minutes supplies all the rush I can handle.