Right Edge Firm
If you drive, don’t drink. Don’t even putt.
Dean Martin
August 25, 2018 (Bandon, OR)– The match had come down to this. One putt.
One putt to capture the flag, claim the jackpot, conquer the mountain. One putt to procure the prize, seize the showpiece, hijack the jewel. One putt to bring home the bacon. One putt to garner an eternity of bragging rights.
One putt to win it all.
Make this putt and the magnum opus of my golfing life will have been reached. Miss it and I’ll snap my $300 putter over my knee and commence a 500-mile march of shame back to Moraga.
The distance between a lifetime of glory or eternal condemnation to purgatory was roughly five-feet. Five-feet, four inches to be exact, because to close the deal the ball would need to make an abrupt 90-degree dive and traverse a final 4-inches toward the center of the earth. The intimidating presence of the knee-knocking gallery surrounding the 18thgreen at Bandon Dunes was palpable, half of whom holding their collective breath hoping I succeed and drive a stake through the heart of our feeble adversaries, the other half with their hands held in prayer asking for divine providence to launch my Titleist Pro V1 whizzing ten-feet past the hole. Nonetheless, a single thought ran through my shockingly uncluttered mind and provided a laser focus I hadn’t experienced since I last took a call from the IRS.
Right edge firm, Geiger. Right. Edge. Firm.
This competitive flashpoint was the pièce de résistance of a magnificent 2018 Campolindo Cup, arguably the greatest gathering this motley Moraga neighborhood crew had ever experienced. We had returned to our roots, first planted in 2003, at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort. This was our ninth trek to the Mecca of American golf, and the first Campo Cup since the cancellation of the 2018 rendition due to the tragic fires in Napa/Sonoma. As we’ve often found when we traveled to this windswept oasis on the Oregon coast, the weather was enticing yet challenging, the food delicious, and the wine and whiskey positively divine. The golf was pretty good, too.
Today was Saturday, the last day of our annual event, and Campo Cup tradition dictated that singles matches were to be contested. I was paired against The Professor, a Golden Bear of a man blessed with an analytical mind worthy of short odds to become a Noble Prize Laureate, but whose odds of appearing on time to accept the once-in-a-lifetime award is the textbook definition of a longshot. This pairing conjured by the two team captains was not by accident. Six years prior, in 2012, The Professor and I had a memorable match at this very same golf course that went down to the wire. Down by one with two holes to play, I staged a remarkable comeback by winning the 17thand 18thholes to snag victory from the jaws of defeat. However, because I had spent the Thursday and Friday matches of the 2018 Campo Cup hacking up the other three Bandon courses (Bandon Trails, Pacific Dunes and Old Macdonald) and playing as though I had spinal fusion surgery on the flight up, the odds of that happening again were between slim and slimmer. Smart money said Geiger v. The Professor would be over before the restaurant where we ate broke down the breakfast buffet.
The Professor and I were the last match in the last group. On Bandon’s par-3 second hole he knocked it stiff for an easy two-putt to go one up. I countered on the par-5 third hole by nailing a four-iron into a four-club jet stream from two hundred-fifty yards out (sadly, the grass divot from my second shot traveled farther than the ball) for a kick-in birdie. Back and forth we went all morning, and I finished the front-nine 1-up.
I was 2-up after eleven holes and about to take a commanding 3-up lead when The Professor made the mother-of-all up-and-downs to shockingly halve the windswept par-3 12thhole. His mojo restored, The Professor proceeded to dissect me like a fermented frog and win three of the next four holes. Just like in 2012, I trudged to the 17thtee box 1-down with only two holes left to play. But the chances of a 2018 sequel did not look good.
The Professor teed off first. Dealing with a severe left to right wind, his 3-wood drifted right and flirted with a hazardous ravine before rolling into a fairway bunker. I played it safe and aimed left towards Portland and promptly drilled a worm-burner of a 4-hybrid two-hundred yards down the center of the fairway. Advantage no one.
I had 150 yards to the center of the 17thgreen, but it was all carry due to the cliffside hazard. Factoring the howling wind, the shot required a level of confidence I had lost days ago. I chickened out and decided to lay up short and well left of the green. The Professor laid up as well, though his ball flew beyond the green and landed in some tall grass. Advantage me, but only slightly.
Walking toward the green, I could tell that it sloped severely from back to front, and that a ball moving with any sort of momentum past the hole could easily roll or bounce into the hazard and spend the next thousand years decaying at the bottom of the ten-story ravine. I took out a five-iron and hit a simple bump and run along the turf, my ball rising no higher than six-inches off the ground, leaving myself a twenty-footer for par. Two putts later I was in with a bogey 5. Not pretty, but effective.
Because The Professor’s ball had flown further than mine, his approach shot was to an elevated green that was downwind, downhill and downright impossible. He did his best to hit a soft, delicate pitch shot, but unless his ball grew teeth worthy of a Great White shark it was headed for the hazard, where he would have to take a penalty stroke and knock his next shot into the hole for a halve. No such luck. The match was now tied going to Bandon Dunes’ par-5 18thhole. The memories of our 2012 match were starting to come into sharp focus.
Because of the difference in our handicaps, I received a stroke advantage on this hole, meaning if we both had pars, I would win the hole, and the match, with a net birdie. I teed off first and hit a lazy fly ball toward the left, heading straight for a row of densely-packed gorse bushes, the kind of sinister fauna where humans venture and are never seen again. Thanks to the Category-1 winds, my ball drifted right before landing in some light rough. The Professor, who hits the ball much harder than I do, pulled a bullet of a drive that managed to take the wind out of play. Despite being just ten yards left of my ball, his drive found the dreaded gorse, forcing him to drop a new ball and take a penalty stroke. Advantage, Geiger.
I hit a solid five-iron that found the fairway. The Professor muscled a three-word that sent his ball fifty yards closer to the hole than mine. But he lay three while I lay two. Advantage, Geiger.
With only 175-yards to the center of the green, I proceed to chunk my five-iron a whopping thirty yards. We now both lay three, but I was net two because of the handicap stroke. Hard to believe, but it was still advantage, Geiger.
By now the other misfits from the Campo Cup were spaced around the 18thgreen anxiously watching the train wreck taking place before their very eyes. I was still away, so I had to hit first. Instead of knocking a precision pitching wedge into the center of the green, I puckered up my glutes and skulled a Scud missle that found its way into the far back-right corner of the green. The Professor, however, also blew a gasket, and dribbled his approach shot. Forced to hit again because he was still away, his next shot landed approximately three feet from the hole, leaving an entirely makeable putt that was just far enough outside the “circle of friends” to force him make it, if necessary, for a bogey 6.
Accompanied by a chorus of cheers and jeers, I walked to the back of the 18thgreen toward my ball, secure in the knowledge that two putting for a bogey (net par) would win my match. Surveying the damage, I had a par putt requiring a full shoulder turn with a downhill right to left break equivalent to two lanes of traffic. Making it would require an act of God; leaving a bogey putt inside of ten feet would be worthy of going to church on Sundays. Pulling off a two-putt with the mess I had left for myself would be no easy feat.
I took aim and proceeded to hit and hope, and gosh darn it if the ball didn’t finish hole high about five feet from Nirvana. Not bad if I did say so myself.
At this climactic point, I would have happily said “good-good” on our remaining putts and called the match a draw. However, little did I know that after the earlier individual matches, the overall team score after three days of competition was somehow TIED!!! The intensity of the match between the Professor and me required my full undivided attention, and I didn’t give a hoot about anything or anyone happening around me. What did it matter anyway, I thought, since the Campo Cup is all about fun and we old farts never, ever play for money? But the bellicose clamor from my teammates said it all. “To Hell with a tie,” they bellowed. “Just make the damn putt!”
One of my favorite expressions is, “Real pressure is the sixth month of a ninety-day note.” I’d now like to amend that. Real pressure is facing a five-foot sidehill putt for all the marbles with a group of fifty and sixty-something men you deeply love and admire watching you suddenly start twitching and ticking and yipping like you’ve come down with a severe case of the hives. I asked my team captain, The Beard, to help me read my putt. This was no gimmie putt, and despite being hole high it was downhill all the way, with an ever so slight right-to-left break that picked up speed after the hole. We both came up with the same conclusion; right edge, firm. Don’t baby the putt and miss it to the left and watch it roll another ten feet toward the bottom of the green. And don’t power it through the break and have it motor toward the practice green. Whatever you do Geiger, stroke it like a man.
Earlier that week I took a putting lesson from Sir Lag-A-Lot, my next-door neighbor (and for this event, a teammate) who loves nothing better than drinking cheap wine and lagging three-foot putts halfway to the hole. He had recently installed a practice putting green in his backyard, and for hours all I head was him saying in that deep, highly annoying Boston accent of his was, “Lee, rahk your shoulders.” I even heard it in my sleep.
Right. Edge. Firm. No more stalling. It was Go Time. I pulled the putter back and made sure to “rahk” my shoulders.
Dead. Freaking. Center. Of. The. Cup.
I want this on the record. The Future Nobel Prize-winning Professor, who most likely will arrive late to his own funeral, is a class act, and he handled the ensuing pandemonium reminiscent of the 1999 Ryder Cup with the stolid composure of a Swedish diplomat. He removed his hat and calmly shook my hand like the gentleman that he is.
But damn, did that first beer taste good.