Along the Ropes

There was so much joy at The Open… from the remarkable beauty of Royal Portrush twisting through and over the dunes, to the fantastic and welcoming residents of the Irish island, to the sights and sounds of fans across the links as they helped lift Shane Lowry into history as Champion Golfer of the Year.

There were so many moments of joy tumbling through the week. There was a magical Irish pub that became a home away from home, a unique group of guys who love the game of golf sharing breakfast each morning and drinks at night, every hue of green from coast to mountain and back again, the company of remarkable strangers from across the globe, along with golf to score, watch and play. But through a week of immense joy, a handful of moments radiate across time and oceans as memories that will last forever.

Barreling along the Coastal Causeway, in a well-worn Peugeot driven by a curious Irish lad as we sang County Crows at the top of our lungs with the wind carrying our voices off across the emerald landscape, lingers as a moment of great joy.

“Believe in me
Help me believe in anything
‘Cause I want to be someone who believes…”

But even that was far from the only singing that danced through the entire week as live music at local pubs created a soundtrack to our drinking, our eating and our time abroad.

Without doubt however, the most powerful singing was belted out by thousands of serenading Irish fans Saturday as they gathered behind the 18th green while Lowry signed for a bogey-free score of 63. Their songs carried forth across his windy, rain soaked Sunday round of 72 as well – accepted by most of us as rivaling the 8-under score he posted in the lovely Saturday sun – growing to an endless roar of cheers as he played through the final holes and owned The Open with a six-stroke lead.

These happy, singing, joyous fans wanted something to believe in after waiting 68 years for The Open to return to their island. And as the drama unfolded, they had more than something to believe in, they had someone to believe in. While Northern Ireland’s own faltered – lingering well behind the leaders or failing to make the cut altogether – Lowry carried the torch for the entire island.

Yet the joy was hardly contained to the players – and not even just to those who live on the great, green island… the joy was felt by anyone with a pulse, by anyone who was trying to feel anything at all.

One who seemed to tap into that joy as much or more than any of us was my Thursday carry-board carrier Louie, a 16-year-old from England who plays off a 6 handicap. Louie had flown over with a buddy early, in time to spectate the Sunday practice round – and he wasn’t leaving until after the final putts fell the next Sunday.

While his dad was coming for the weekend, for less than $190 Louie secured himself a tent in the campground just a few minutes from the course that included a junior ticket to watch all the golf he could during the week. He and his buddy were in golf spectating heaven – and both were volunteering inside the ropes as well. And while I couldn’t quite get my head around camping at The Open, his excitement was a joy to behold.

Our Thursday game also didn’t disappoint – we’d be walking with Jon Rahm, Matt Kuchar and Patrick Cantlay. Rahm – a two-time winner of the Irish Open, including just down the road at Portstewart – rocketed up the leaderboard with a front nine 31, holding a share of the lead for most of the round we walked with him.

Thanks to Rahm’s start – and the challenge of the course itself – Louie was busy, changing scores on the board 23 times. He only had five change-less holes and got to swap out all three scores on both the second and seventh holes. Besides his absolute joy at being inside the ropes bearing witness to the oldest major in the game, he was a first rate board carrier – with numbers changing almost as fast as the putts were falling.

As life would have it, I ran into him minutes after Lowry’s final putt Sunday while taking in the big yellow scoreboard in a hazy rain. The next day I even met his dad at the airport on our flight out of Belfast. Louie didn’t really need the R&A’s encouragement to love the game, but the one-price ticket / camping option for juniors no doubt helped spread the joy of the week to the next generation and felt like a great “grow the game” initiative despite the rain and wind.

Of course Louie was far from the only joy I encountered inside the ropes.

My American friend Dave Belding was scoring his third major of the year – including the final round with U.S. Open champion Gary Woodland on Father’s Day in June – and volunteering at his fourth. We’d been referring to it as his Volunteer Slam for well over a year – something I’m unaware of anyone else doing as a volunteer in the same calendar year, though perhaps others have as well. During the week at Portrush we’d walk a few holes inside the ropes together training local scorers in the pouring rain who’d never scored a major before.

Dave scores more tournaments in one year than most people do in five and no one tells better golf tales over a bottle of wine than the attorney from South Carolina. He was kind enough to travel to New Jersey a few years ago to score when I was doing the scheduling for the Women’s U.S. Open and notably spent an entire evening entertaining my dad while doing laundry in our hotel while I was tied up on the course.

Between visiting the tailor to get our volunteer uniforms fitted and taking our first look at Royal Portrush, Dave gathered a group of American volunteers together – a couple from California, another from Illinois, and a mutual friend from Atlanta. We had our customary fish and chips together on a sunny Sunday afternoon outside on the course… and most of us later met up again for drinks and dinner in the town of Bushmill over fresh fish, good wine and Irish coffees.

We each told a decent golf story or two during dinner before Dave took control, sharing a series of hilarious anecdotes that left us laughing and excited for the week ahead. The joy that night was fueled by the stories, the shared experiences, the people who were suddenly friends, the week of golf ahead… and naturally the Bushmills whiskey made just up the winding main street of the town.

Of course there was outstanding joy from those who would never get the opportunity to duck under the ropes and experience The Open as we were so fortunate to do.

Early in the week, on a perfect day where the temperature hit 75 degrees and the clouds were wispy and sparse, I broke out my own sticks and wandered among the dunes of Portstewart’s Strand golf course – home to the 2017 Irish Open won by Jon Rahm.

I made the customary jokes to an Englishman my age and his dad – as well as a nice guy from Boston who rounded out our foursome – about how sorry I was they were forced to enjoy this beautiful day with my golf swing… before playing probably the worst five holes of my life. Mind you, these were some of the most remarkable holes I’ve ever walked, truly unique and memorable among majestically high dunes – but my swing had totally abandoned me. To make matters worse, my kind and lovely caddie was a member of Portstewart, had looped that morning for a guy who shot even par, and carried a +2 handicap of his own.

But even then, there was joy around the bend.

Thankfully, before the first nine were through I’d scraped together a couple pars. I made a further attempt to pull myself together at the halfway hut with a gin and tonic. With no ice and no limes (or any citrus) to speak of, I ended up slowly sipping a cup of warm gin mixed with equally warm tonic for the duration of the tenth hole.

It remains unclear if it was that odd and not very satisfying elixir that did the trick or my caddies’ suggestion that I make a fuller shoulder turn, but I managed to find my driver once again and parred five of the final nine holes to marginally feel like a golfer limping up the 18th. I think it was a concerted effort to keep my head down while chipping and a much improved – and fuller – shoulder turn with the driver, but there’s a certain joy to thinking the warm gin took some strokes off my back nine score that day!

While the course itself was a joy to walk – the front nine was a marvel carved among dunes where no golf course should have been, yet remarkably was – the clubhouse bar is truly where I shine. So it was that the Englishman and his dad and I ended up telling stories and drinking a wee bit more gin after the round – with ice and orange slices this time.

Like most of the trip – which was full of the most amazing strangers insisting on making the trip the best it could be – my caddie and his wife swung by our table to tell me he’d arranged for a buddy of his to drive me back to where I was sleeping.

The ride was a joy unto itself… for a bit of gin was in my veins, the northern Irish skies were crystal clear, and the drive meandered along the old coastal route hugging the Atlantic Ocean.  The driver insisted on stopping a few times because the setting sun and the views were too remarkable not to pause and soak in – in fact, he kept apologizing for wasting my time; I kept stressing time spent like this was never wasted.

He was nice enough to drop my clubs at our place and deposit me at the Central Wine Bar in the heart of Ballycastle – as much a home for the week as the spacious room in the B&B itself – where I was reunited with my Australian golf scoring volunteer and friend Dave Wintrip of Dubai, Shinnecock, Carnoustie, Pebble Beach and more.

In a four-level Irish pub founded by their parents a mere five minute walk up the hill from where we slept, Aaron McHenry and his sister Cara, created for us a perfect living room filled with UK Navy veterans, hurling and rugby fans, local curmudgeons, live music, and golf on the televisions. From local sea trout, salmon, shrimp and scallops to great risottos and duck pancakes, the food out of the kitchen was always outstanding. And Aaron’s knowledge of Irish whiskey – both north and south, from Jameson to Redbreast 12 to Bushmills of all ages, including the smooth 21-year-old – and stints bartending in Tuscaloosa (of all places) ensured I was drinking outstanding cocktails every evening.

In all honesty, among the remarkable joys of the week, this pub was a unique and distinct pleasure just as great as Royal Portrush’s Dunlace Links, or Dustin Johnson’s swing I scored through 18 holes Sunday, or the lush green fields and magnificent ocean vistas that enthralled us all week. After all, I’ve been a regular at more than a few restaurants and bars in my life, but never so quickly, never more heartfelt, almost never feeling more welcome anywhere than I did in the front bar of this Irish pub.

For we were all tourists in Northern Ireland that week, gathering like golf fans do for every great championship looking for something to believe in, some experience that will be indelibly imprinted on our life’s journey. Everywhere we went we felt the great joy of those who lived there – and their need to share that joy to enhance our time spent among them. No one captured that feeling more day in and day out for me than our man Aaron in his family’s pub.

Aaron brought Louie’s excitement and passion, all Dave Belding’s experience and dedication and combined it with the joy and hospitality of  those we met from Portstewart to Portrush to Ballycastle and the little towns and villages in between.

It was a week of pure joy.

Such that on the way out of town, the same curious Irish lad and I blasted Mr. Jones one more time, singing near the top of our lungs across the back roads and down the motorways toward Belfast…

“Believe in me
Help me believe in anything
‘Cause I want to be someone who believes…”

Maybe none of us came to The Open at Royal Portrush rooting for Shane Lowry, but I left full of joy that he’d lifted the Claret Jug and won this championship for the people of this island.

And full of hope the R&A would invite us all back to this wonderful place very soon.

While the U.S. Open may have been born along another ocean, on the other side of the American continent, when it returns to Pebble Beach it truly feels like something of a homecoming. The trophy looks at home on the first tee and our national championship itself feels tied to this part of the California coast, to this stretch of the Pacific Ocean, to this incredible place.

“It is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea… we are going back from whence we came.”

He wasn’t talking about the U.S. Open at Pebble, but I’d like to think John F. Kennedy would have understood the notion.

We know he knew our game as a member of the Harvard University golf team, we know he loved the ocean (and as President preserved 43,000 acres of beachfront as the Cape Cod National Seashore), and we know he played the game across the Monterey Peninsula – including a near hole-in-one on Cypress Point’s signature 16th hole just days before securing the Democratic nomination for President in 1960.

But as the 787 lifted off from SFO after a week at Pebble Beach for the 119th U.S. Open, his words exposed a bit of the meaning – maybe even a part of the purpose – that tied together so many of the characters gathered on the Pacific coast that week.

For my English golf scoring buddy, it was a lifetime dream to score the U.S. Open at one of the most beautiful golf courses on earth; for my college roommate’s son, it was likely the final time to carry the standard inside the ropes; and for an old boss and lifelong friend, it was her redemption at volunteering at Pebble Beach after a tennis injury sidelined her plans nearly a decade earlier.

Bob and I have scored tournaments together and volunteered in the Middle East, the United Kingdom and in the United States, but Pebble was the first time we both scored the men’s U.S. Open together – and it was exciting to share the training, the meetings, the meals and the stories over the course of the week. There’s a joy in watching someone you like do something you love for the first time – their wonder is reflected and their happiness contagious. My dad, with whom I attended my first U.S. Open nearly 20 years ago and started this journey with, has “retired” from volunteering and though he’s a bit younger than my dad, there’s a special feeling to sharing some of these experiences with Bob – the U.S. Open most of all.

And I’ve known Will since before he had any memories of his own. While I’ve watched him grow and mature – and even tagged along on a college visit – his dad and I have volunteered with him now at three U.S. Opens. Even though I was less than pleased he and I would share no rounds together as scorer and sign carrier, he walked with three other guys I know very well – all of whom he’d been inside the ropes with before at either Chambers Bay or Oakmont. Each remarked after the round how efficient and professional he was, how pleasant he was to spend the hours chatting with, and how much enjoyment they had sharing the time with him during each round. I would never have guessed that hearing them talk about Will would actually be more gratifying, more rewarding than if I’d had those experiences with him myself.

For during the week off the course he and I – sometimes with his dad (my college roommate) and sometimes without – would spend hours talking through life, about college, about hopes and dreams that were no longer distant but right around the corner. Sitting on the expansive balcony of the AirBnb as the Pacific beat upon the shore just below us, we talked about his friends, his excitement and his worries – some vague and some specific. He and his dad would leave Sunday to fly to Tucson so he could register for freshman year classes, scope out the campus and maybe drive by to check out fraternity houses.

And in fact there was someone along in our volunteer ranks – actually volunteering most days with Will’s dad as a 10th hole marshal – who I’d known even longer than Will. I’d met Judy 25 years earlier – my first boss when I arrived to work in Washington, DC, we’d since traveled around the world together with family and friends.  Nine years earlier she’d signed up to volunteer at Pebble Beach with my mom, dad, and other friends before a knee injury dashed those plans.

This year tumbled down upon her far worse than any knee injury when just a few months before the U.S. Open she found her closest relative – her Army pilot nephew just barely in his 30s – dead in his home across the street from hers. The blood clot that ended his life threw hers into a spiral and very nearly derailed her plans to volunteer at Pebble Beach yet again. But she’s got the kind of spirit that won’t be denied – and despite all the personal grief and the physical trauma of preparing his house for sale – Judy was on that 10th tee box for her first shift soaking in every remarkable player that fired tee shots down that beautiful lush fairway hanging just above the beach and Carmel-by-the-Sea.

So while the people, the mighty ocean, some great food, stories and wine might have consumed the week – we were there for some golf as well.

In the first round I was scheduled to score I ventured out with two college dropouts and a guy who’d never even started college… but he’d since won the U.S. Open at Merion and a Gold Medal in the Olympics and the other two combined for 19 majors between them. It was the third time I’d scored Tiger Woods at the U.S. Open and the crush of media, the fans mobbing the rope lines, and the utter thrill of watching one of the greatest golfers of all time never gets old. Watching – and listening to – Jordan Spieth is a treat and experiencing the grace and skill of Justin Rose in a round of golf is always a personal pleasure.

But in what must always be earned and never taken for granted, on Sunday the USGA blessed me with a second late walk in as many years with Brooks Koepka in the final round. And if Judy was daily demonstrating the kind of spirit that wouldn’t be denied each day at Pebble, Brooks had a recent habit of bringing that to the course as well.

While he started four strokes behind Gary Woodland that afternoon, Koepka was gunning for an incredible three-peat of our national championship and my brain was flirting with a potential back-to-back scoring opportunity – especially as holes one through five exploded across the chilly, foggy start to the round.

The afternoon began with two decent drives from Koepka and playing partner Chez Reavie. Coming off the 1st tee, Brooks made at least a 30-yard detour to the right rope to give his dad a hug on Father’s Day before marching his way up to his ball in the first cut. A clean wedge to six feet set up his birdie on one.

A drive right of right, past the bunker and even the cart path, left his second hole tee shot buried in thick rough. Brute strength let him muscle the ball across the fairway, moderately forward, but led to a second shot in more gnarly rough just outside the sand in the ditch 100 yards from the green. With a big swing where almost anything could happen, Koepka did the absolute unbelievable, sticking the ball to within a foot of the hole and tapping in for a par that felt like a birdie after never sniffing the “must hit fairway.” The growing crowds went wild.

A one-foot tap-in for birdie on the third was followed by a five-footer for birdie on the fourth. Four holes into his Sunday round, Koepka had made four putts for no more than 13 or 14 feet total.

The marine layer might have been keeping everyone in quarter-zips, but the Pebble Beach crowds were four to five deep at the ropes and the place was vibrating with the kind of excitement we were beginning to expect from Brooks Koepka at the majors.

When his tee shot on the 204-yard fifth fed off the fringe to about 20 feet, the string of easy one-putts faltered… but his string of one-putts did not. Brooks was now four under through five holes, the crowds had grown to Tiger-like size, and the march up the hill to the 6th hole was utter chaos – running fans, screaming his name, the words “three-peat” repeated so loudly, so often it was just a continuous chant.

So when our little group stood on the 6th tee – the hole that scored the easiest in the 2000 U.S. Open and most thought was one of the best scoring opportunities on the course – the feeling was electric as Brooks hammered his tee shot dead center in the fairway. But after a wide right shot into the bunker on the approach from 200 yards, an out that left a 16-foot putt, and a roll that came up slightly short and right, it felt like something in the air changed. As much as the made bogey at Shinnecock on his 11th hole a year earlier felt like a rush of fresh, winning air, nothing felt quite right after that par on the 6th.

There was good golf – and actually quite fine golf from Chez Reavie – the rest of the afternoon but the magic of the start refused to be conjured again as we wound our way across the course.

After he signed his scorecard, Brooks Koepka was as polite as he always seems to be to the volunteers, handing me a signed ball with a “thank you” and autographing the USGA sign for the girl who carried the standard with us during the round. But you could sense the fire – and some frustration – that burns in him for majors just after the round and it was clear the passion and desire for the three-peat was just as intense in him as it was in the loud and hopeful crowds that cheered him from tee to green all day.

There was an odd mix of executives, pros, volunteers, media and others who shared our good fortune in having a pass to be near the 18th green as the final group played their closing shots. And so it was that U.S. Amateur champion and low amateur at the U.S. Open Viktor Hovland was just to my left; Justin Thomas, Jordan Spieth and Matt Kuchar and his wife just in front; and USGA President Mark Newell and half the Executive Committee to my right as Gary Woodland sunk his final shot – a 30-foot bomb of a putt – to claim victory by three strokes.

Standing there as the roars burst forth in the grandstands above us, I was happy for fellow volunteer Dave Belding who’d made the walking scorer journey with Woodland that day. Just a minor speck in a massive crowd, I stood taking in the sights, sounds and passion of the moment – listening to the crowd noise overpower the Pacific crashing just below us.

Those thoughts, the memories of so many wonderful people who’d been there for the week, and the words of JFK mingled in my brain not much more than 24 hours later as my eyes closed, the seat reclined and the United jet left the ground bearing east toward the Atlantic Ocean.

The very ocean the 35th President and I grew up within easy reach of – the ocean in sight of the first U.S. Open Championship. That ocean, the ocean of my youth was normally calm, with tranquil swells meeting sandy beaches that stretched for miles – whether it was Cape Cod, the Jersey shore or the low country of South Carolina… that was my ocean.

Last year with the smell of the Atlantic on every breath, I was fortunate enough to walk with Brooks Koepka on Sunday as he claimed his second U.S. Open trophy in as many years. But this year, along the rougher, jagged Pacific Coast, the week contained no profound glory, no historical achievement for the men I tracked inside the ropes. But there were – as there always are if you look closely enough – fragments of greatness. Those first five holes on Sunday by the second place finisher, the steady and sure golf Chez Reavie played all afternoon the same day (that would translate to victory just the next week), the handful of magical shots Tiger Woods mustered through his first 16 holes on Friday to the delight of massive, boisterous crowds.

And of course the salt water of the mighty Pacific – as it rolled into Carmel Bay and Stillwater Cove – mixed with the salt of Judy the 10th hole marshal’s tears of pain and in Bob the walking scorers’ tears of joy, it met the salt in Brooks Koepka’s sweat, and it was most definitely in the amped up blood of standard bearer Will as he plotted and planned for college course selection and the adventures ahead.

It may not be a biological fact that golf runs through our blood at the same percentage as the salt in the oceans, but for each of us – in our own unique and special way – the game of golf runs through our veins and serves as a mighty bond between us all.

There’s little doubt many of us will again be present the next time the U.S. Open returns to Pebble Beach.  For in ways both seen and unseen, we are tied to that ocean, that place and that course.

 

Fourteen years after I started volunteering at golf tournaments and after scoring more than a dozen U.S. Opens, I scored my first PGA tournament at Aronimink Golf Club on a rainy week in September of 2018.

Thanks to the committee chair – a lady I’ve worked with over the years at USGA events who I consider a friend – that Saturday I was granted a rare decision:  the option of scoring the final group of Justin Rose, Keegan Bradley and Xander Schauffele or a group further back in the field comprised of Keith Mitchell, Jason Kokrak and Peter Uihlein.

I’d already scored Keith and Peter Thursday when Pete fired an opening nine 30 and came home with a very respectable 64 for a share of fourth place in the opening round. The other group was compelling to say the least, not only were they the players playing best that week, but with a win Rose could move to #1 in the Official World Rankings (on a course he’d notched a victory on already this decade); Bradley was trying to overcome a six-year winless drought; and, after last year, we all knew Schauffele plays some great golf late in the season.

That said, I read her text twice, stared at my phone for a few seconds and typed back: “If I can get there in time, Pete always.”

It was nine years ago – and less than seven miles away – that I watched Peter Uihlein compete on a golf course for the first time. That weekend in the Walker Cup at Merion Golf Club I walked both of his singles rounds functioning as a moving rope to keep him “safe” from the Main Line crowds. He finished that week 4-0-0 as the USA recorded a decisive victory over Great Britain & Ireland.

Over the ensuing years I’ve had the privilege of seeing him compete in elite amateur tournaments, an NCAA championship, a PGA Tour event here or there, and all four major championships – including the Masters and U.S. Open when he was still a college kid after his U.S. Amateur victory earned him the right to play. I’d scored him in Dubai on the European Tour, walked inside the ropes with him during practice rounds on three continents, and rooted for him through iPhone apps, the internet and on television as he played around the world – often texting with his mom and cousin in the process.

He’d introduced me to Talor Gooch, Cory Whitsett and (through Talor) Wyndham Clark – all guys I’ve followed, cheered on and shared meals and drinks with across the country as they too pursue their golf dreams. Thanks to Pete, I don’t just watch golf, or just volunteer, or just score golf… I feelgolf.  Through him – and through those remarkably talented guys I met in his orbit – the game comes alive in ways it never did before those walks around Merion.

But for two rounds in the Philly suburbs I got to record every stroke Pete took on the biggest tour in the world so those apps and those websites – and even those TV viewers – would know exactly what was happening. He had kept his card and was wrapping up his first season on the PGA Tour, advancing all the way to the third tournament of the FedEx Cup Playoffs.

And here I was, inside the ropes, getting to tag along with the best view of all the action.

He was the first player to arrive on the first tee that Saturday morning and walked up laughing with a big smile on his face and said, “Oh you again?” I told him the choice I got to make and he laughed harder, telling me I was an idiot.

I replied that I was just a fan and that’s how fans are.

In the years he’s spent improving his game, honing his talents and climbing the world rankings, I’ve devoted a few weeks a year to volunteering, scoring some golf and better understanding the flow of a tournament – finding a way to be of value, making some friends along the way and earning the trust of the men and women who produce golf on nearly every level it’s played.

The thing that’s never changed is how Pete and I interact on the walks we take around a golf course. We laugh, we pick on each other, the emotions run a little deep. He’s the kid who first made me feel it, the first who let me understand the heartbeat of the game, brush against the insecurities of it, and become immersed in its joy.

I won’t get the choice to walk inside the ropes or score his rounds very often – but if ever given the chance, I’m always going to take it.

So while that week I learned a slightly new scoring system and used a different device to record the shots than I’d ever used before, what I really confirmed was something I probably knew all along:  given the choice – as rare and infrequent as that may be – I will always pick to be inside the ropes with Pete, or Talor, or Wyndham, or Cory over anyone in the world, regardless of the players or the tournament.

Because that for me will always be something even more than being inside the ropes and being of value to a tournament. Those will be the times I will feel every moment:  every made putt, every crisply struck wedge, every thundering drive, every eagle and birdie, every lost ball and dropped shot. And feelinggolf like that will always be more than watching it, or scoring it, or tracking it for any other players, no matter their fame or their world ranking.

What I can’t wait for is to be assigned to score the final group for one or more of them coming down the stretch as the opportunity to win gets within their grasp.

If I get the option – and get the choice – I’ll always take it.

It hit me somewhere along the right side of the 11th fairway on a very specific Saturday afternoon at Riviera Country Club.

We were walking the same ground, tucked below the mansions of the Pacific Palisades, on a perfect southern California day – just as we had exactly three years ago to the day.

Much like that previous week, this week we’d already walked side by side on a golf course, taken advantage of the area’s access to great seafood for a long sushi meal, and caught up on each other’s lives over a few quality cocktails and glasses of wine.

But a lot had changed in those three years.

The obvious difference from the first Saturday to this Saturday was the twist of green and white rope that separated us. The more profound difference was that one of us had made the cut at the Genesis Open on the PGA Tour a day earlier and had just finished his first hole playing alongside the #1 ranked golfer in the world.

There was adrenaline pumping through me, I could feel it; there was excitement and joy, anticipation of another magical moment in a long series of moments witnessing the unfolding of remarkable dreams.

Since the first moments spending time with Talor Gooch and his dad years earlier, I had decided to believe, to share in the goals, and to pitch in where I could as those dreams unfolded.

One of those opportunities happened three years earlier when he called to invite me (maybe pressure me?) into changing my flight back to the East Coast and instead drive from Palm Springs to Los Angeles to carry his stand bag at some eGolf Tour event north of the city.

Naturally, I took him up on the offer.

I’d like to say I walked inside the ropes with him there carrying his bag and occasionally confirming the read on a putt or the direction of the wind, but there wasn’t a rope to be found at Rustic Canyon. There were no fans for the players on the mini tours, guys with no status who fought to find opportunities to play and hone their game. The fact is, Talor played some great golf that day – far better than the two guys we were paired with – but unbeknownst to us there was a cut that we missed by a single stroke. Like much of the first few years after turning pro, it was another week of expenses not offset by earnings.

Stuck with flights and a hotel room, we had some tickets left at Will Call down the road at the PGA tournament underway in Los Angeles. For the first and only time in my life, Talor and I entered the gates of a tournament together as spectators. The course was great, it was cool to see some of his friends playing, but being outside the ropes was no place for him.

Over the next three years, through a meandering path across Canada, the Caribbean, South and Central America and dozens of U.S. states, Talor had progressively earned cards – and the ensuing opportunity to compete in the game he was born to play – on the Canadian Tour, the Web.com Tour and finally last fall golf’s big leagues: the PGA Tour. In the process, he’d done a lot of growing up and a lot of self-improvement, he’d changed up his workout routine, his eating habits, and of course he replaced guys like me with a professional caddie to guide him not just around the course, but through the process as well.

When Talor earned that PGA Tour card, I shed a few tears of joy. And I circled one single event on the calendar – Riviera Country Club. To watch him play – no matter the result of the actual swings – a place we’d walked in some of the darker days just three years earlier, was something I refused to miss.

It never occurred to me then who he might play alongside or compete against head-to-head – it wasn’t about any of them. It was just about the dream, about the goals, about the opportunity life rarely grants us to return to a place a different man, a better competitor, a more fully developed soul.

Three years ago we ate sushi at a perfectly acceptable place with a buddy of mine; this week we spent a few hours making our way through Nobu’s tasting menu.

Three years ago we played with an Aussie who drove himself and his wife in a cart as he played, this week Talor went head-to-head with world #1 Dustin Johnson Saturday and world #3 Jordan Spieth on Sunday.

And instead of walking side by side carrying his bag, I walked the practice rounds with a camera in hand listening in on the strategy and the planning – and we both teed it up on the North Course at Los Angeles Country Club (the host of the 2023 US Open) with an amazing pair of members and two outstanding caddies.

DJ shot his best round of the week Saturday; Jordan fired his best round of the week Sunday. Thousands of people watched those two rounds of golf and the cheer for Talor’s eagle on the 1st was just as loud as the one for DJ. The “Gooches” yelled out by strangers grew as the week progressed. As the final putts fell on 18 Sunday and we climbed the hill back to Riviera’s clubhouse, there was no doubt Talor belonged inside the ropes with the giants of today’s game.

He played his competitive golf. We ate our sushi. We explored a golf course together side by side.

But what a difference three years made.