While I was attending Wichita State University on a Golf Scholarship the golf team took many trips. I want to speak about a few of the more notable ones. The Wichita State Golf Team qualified for three NCAA Golf Tournaments while I was attending college. What happened was that the US Open would occur one week prior to the NCAA Tournament each year. The proximity to the Open gave college players an opportunity to see the Open and then compete in the NCAA Tournament. Our coach was Bob Kirkpatrick who was also the Athletic Director and I am sure that his position helped fund those trips to see the Open and then compete in the NCAA Tournament. When I was a sophomore, we traveled by station wagon to St. Louis to watch the Open at Bellerive CC. We watched the Open then traveled to Knoxville, TN to Holsten Hills CC to compete in the NCAA Tournament. The night before the tournament Don Atchison (ATCH) my roommate and I decided to go downtown in Knoxville. Not a great idea. We found a dance club and went in. Don was dancing with this girl and it turned out the girl was the girlfriend of a guy known as the Ace of Spades. The Ace of Spades was not happy and Don and I made a quick exit. We literally ran all the way back to the motel. The next morning both of us were feeling the aftermath of that run and neither of us fared too well in the tournament. The coach never knew about our escapade… it was a bad decision that could have actually turned out much worse. Just a side note. The coach always assigned me to share a room with Atch. He was a bit difficult and really didn’t get along with most of the other team members. On the golf course he had a very volatile temper and since I had known Atch when we were in high school Coach thought I should be his roommate. When we returned to the WSU campus it was just me and the Coach in the station wagon. Everyone else had left and picked up their cars. Coach asked me how it went with Atch during the trip. I told him that the nicest thing Atch had said to me was “F—k You”. We both laughed about that one. I told him that I was kidding and that was that.
The next year, my junior year we flew to San Francisco. We watched the Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. This was the Open where Casper came from behind in the final 9 holes to win the tournament and we were on the hill behind the 18th green watching it all unfold. It was amazing. The NCAA tournament was being held at Stanford on their campus course. It was a great golf course and I was actually playing well. On the second day it looked like I would make the cut. Coach came out on the twelfth tee to watch me tee off. He pointed out that there was an out of bounds to the right. A point that I hadn’t even thought about. I proceeded to hit my drive out of bounds. I ended up missing the cut by one stroke. I never blamed the OB on Coach. I guess you could say that if he hadn’t mentioned it maybe I wouldn’t have hit my drive out or maybe I would have hit it there anyway. Whatever. I did manage to birdie the final hole in front of a pretty big crowd and that was exciting. One of the most notable players in the tournament was Johnny Miller. He didn’t win that year but he was near the top of the leader board. Two things stuck with me about that trip. One was that all the hills were brown and dead dotted with Oak Trees in the summer. In Kansas the grass was green mostly from rain but it turned out that in California it rarely rained from March thru October so the green grass on the hills happened in the winter where the grass was dead in Kansas in the winter. Oh well. The other thing was that we were staying in Palo Alto, and it got cold every night. We had to wear jackets or sweaters every night, in June. That also surprised me. I understand the climate now, but being a kid from Kansas it seemed wrong.
My final trip in my senior year was to the east coast. We flew to Newark, NJ and went to New York City to the Empire State Building. It was grand. The Open was being contested at Baltusrol CC in New Jersey. One of the things that struck me was that the homes around the golf course were very impressive. Some were actually like estates or compounds but here is the thing. The people who lived in those houses were collecting money to let people park on their land or their front yards. They were involved with their whole family selling parking and letting these people destroy their landscaping. I couldn’t get over how they thought that was a good idea. It certainly didn’t look like they needed the money. We watched the Open then we went to Fred Waring’s Shawnee on The Delaware to play in the NCAA Tournament. We stayed on site in this incredible hotel that looked like a big plantation house with rocking chairs outside our rooms. We were next to the Delaware River and it was an amazing place. They had the long drive event on the river and you would hit your drives from one shore to the other. Clearly it was too far to go all the way across but they had people in boats to mark where the drives went. A very cool event. It turned out that the course we were going to play was very long. Longer than any of the previous NCAA courses. All the par threes were over 200 yards and all of the par fives were over 600 yards. It also should be noted that it rained several days leading up to the tournament making the course play even longer. During these NCAA Tournaments we had caddies. This was quite a luxury and it was a great way to play these tournaments. Normally we carried our own bags so having a caddy was awesome. So, I was assigned a caddie. He was very nice and his parents followed us around during one of the practice rounds. It turned out that his father was a state senator or state legislator. That only becomes important when you know the rest of the story. So, we are teeing off on this par three. The ground is wet from the rain and the tee if very elevated. It would be slick and dangerous to walk directly off the tee. I ask my caddie to take a safe route off the tee which meant taking a more gradual slope. He simply walked straight off the front of the tee and fell and he was fine but my driver was in two pieces. I had played that driver for years. Now on the longest course I have ever played I had to negotiate it without my trusty driver. Unbelievable. The good news was that I had a great excuse for not doing well and the fact is that I did not do well. The real point is that I never heard a word from this kid’s parents. Their son was irresponsible and I get a broken driver and I don’t even get an I’m sorry from him or his parents. That stuck with me. It was wrong on so many levels.
I will never be able to tell you how great all of those trips were. I got to travel all over the country. See three US Opens and play in three NCAA Tournaments. It was truly wonderful and even the Ace of Spades scare and the (help?) from my coach at Stanford and the broken driver in Delaware will not take away from how great all of those experiences were. I consider myself extremely lucky to have participated in all of it. There will be other Golf trips to talk about but I will stop here for now.
