Opinion & Analysis

Finding solace in golf

Published

11 years ago

Apr 1, 2013

Among other things, they call him a friend.

There is a secure reckoning in Tony Ferrell’s tread; every turn in the golf shop leads him to something –- and in this case, someone -– familiar.

Happy Valley Country Club — population 235 — is not a vast continuum of old money, privilege or status. By contrast, the sharpest points of its spectrum are found in dollar bets, the last few hands played on a Wednesday evening and the speakeasy nature of its membership.

Most of the club’s longstanding bourgeois have parted ways with their given name –- some enthusiastically, some reluctantly -– in favor of a moniker truly befitting their disposition.

Glide. Skeeter. Candy. Nokahoma. Rickonite. Canted faces, built on the backs of grandiose tales, on a mocked-up Rushmore.

“It’s the people. There’s a brotherhood here,” Ferrell says.

Indeed. They are one against all comers, more than capable of marking each other’s shadow in a darkened alley. Furthermore, and perhaps most important, is their ability to know when that grayed figure, albeit out of reach, is in need of a helping hand.

And Ferrell’s bearing –- whether as acting presider of the men’s golf association, or tending bar, or splitting trees after a hurricane, or telling a member to “call home, immediately” — is not obligatory, nor the genesis of a debt left unpaid.

It is the spirit of camaraderie.

Perhaps brothers best define this force; riding atop the crest of time together in the tide, well beyond inside jokes, and settled in the merriment of an emergency nine holes.

This is Tony Ferrell’s home, and his second Happy Valley -– one markedly different from the first.

Among other things, they call him honorable.

He watched, as did the naivety of America, and waited.

“They (the United States Army) were drafting so many in such a short period of time,” he recalls, “and I applied for the National Guard. But there was a list. A long list.”

Vietnam –- the irony still mocks him.

“By the time I was eligible,” he said, “I already had three weeks in boot camp.”

Grueling five-mile runs, homesick. Classroom sessions, homesick. Weapons training, homesick. Pick up the man around you, soldier –- he is homesick, too.

“It was scary,” he says, “I grew up on a farm. And in four months, everything changed. I got married in September of ’65, and I was in the Army by February of ’66.”

Basic training, his crude goodbye to adolescence, was in Fort Gordon, Ga., -– just a stone’s skip from Alister MacKenzie’s famed architectural masterpiece, Augusta National.

But, as he recalls, “I didn’t know anything about golf, and didn’t care. When the Masters was played, they let us take a vacation.”

Any furlough, however, was short lived.

Happy Valley, a nickname given the rugged terrain southwest of Qu?ng Nam Province –- and a primary North Vietnamese tactical position -– lay in wait.

And along with countless young men who looked just like him –- green, jittery on the trigger, and full of dreams otherwise –- Tony Ferrell began a descent into madness.

Among other things, they call him dedicated.

Someone kicked the rail of his bunk.

“Hey, Ferrell,” the man said, “Congratulations. You have an eight-pound, 10-ounce boy.”

He doesn’t recall who told him the news; not that it mattered. In two years, and still a month shy of his 21st birthday, he had traversed life in total –- farm boy, husband, soldier and now, father.

“I’m from Lucama, N.C.,” he said, “just as far away from home as you can get.”

His voice trails.

“I thought, I’ll probably never see him,” he said.

A soldier’s intuition.

It is a valuable part of infantry life, a way to preserve those closest to you — and very much a natural by-product of watching dreams explode, the daily threat of jungle rot and love letters sent home by dead men.

But even by Hell’s new standard, something was wrong. He knew it. With only 45 days left in the broiler plate, an eerie premonition settled over him -– one that would not relent.

“The night before all this, I told a friend of mine, another squad leader, ‘Something’s going to happen to me tomorrow,’” he recalled.

The next morning, as Ferrell’s men organized a position necessary to relieve a weary night patrol, a Viet Cong soldier ran through the perimeter’s post.

Charlie blinked, and his goal -– part concentrated chaos, part death en masse — was achieved.

“We took fire,” Ferrell recalls, “And I got lucky; the first bullet that hit me knocked me down.”

He never felt the impact. The crossfire entered just underneath his breastplate; it seared through his skin, glanced down the collar bone, and exited near the fold of his right arm.

“I was face down on the ground,” he said. “Trembling. Every time my heart beat, blood came out of my mouth.”

It was eight in the morning. It was his 21st birthday, and his son had been alive just three weeks.

Among other things, they call him loyal.

He was in the wrong pile.

Amongst a litany of the dead, wounded, and those not expected to survive their maker’s call — he attempted to move, to highlight for anyone that his life, though in jeopardy, remained loosely intact.

“Everything was moving in slow motion,” Ferrell noted. “I couldn’t hear anything. I kept going in and out.”

He would die there, by God’s grace, with the rest of them. Back home, family would tell stories. His widow would receive an impeccably folded flag. Taps would be played.

His son would have only pictures.

“They just happened to see me trying to get up,” he said, “and got me inside a medic tent. I could see a great big, white light, and people with masks on around me.”

A squadron helicopter circled back for the farm boy from Lucama. Time was on the vine, dangling.

“Those choppers had nothing but wall-to-wall radios,” he said. “I remember seeing the equipment, everything turning red –- and I kind of knew what that was.”

One rotor blade after another, he rose into the azure sky, high above the blood-stained floor of Conrad’s darkness.

He thought of his friends; there were other farm boys, too.

Among other things, they call him fearless.

His return home was met with no ticker tape parade; the main street of America -– at least for Ferrell –- was closed. Public opinion was divided, and our soldiers fodder for its ranging passion.

America had become immutable.

“If you ever saw the movie ‘We Were Soldiers,’ when one of our guys was pushing his buddy in a wheelchair, through the airport, the people wouldn’t walk close to them,” he says.

The film’s facsimile is all too clear.

“One lady grabbed her daughter,” he said, “and pulled her to the other side of the terminal. That’s the feeling you had -– that all of us had.”

Like many others, he pondered life anew. There were endless days of wracked silence, fury, guilt and visions of mind-numbing horror that would never be erased.

“I tried to wipe out everything,” he says, “I drank. Never mentioned anything about my company. Never looked at my pictures.”

He pauses, wearing the long look of the dead pile.

“My friends weren’t with me,” he recalls, “and I didn’t have my rifle.”

Among other things, they call him grateful.

No. 15 at Happy Valley Country Club prefers a gentleman’s fade from the tee; measuring only 315 yards, it hardly qualifies as a task insurmountable.

Here, bets are doubled; salty verbiage flies, as one might expect from names like Glide, Skeeter, Candy, Nokahoma and Rickonite.

The perfectly struck drive can, however, receive the proper bounce and with any luck, leave the deserving author a bid for eagle.

In an instant, things can change.

Ferrell’s round that Sunday resembled many he has played at Happy Valley Country Club. It was a charted study in normalcy, complete with the ridiculous and splendid.

There were fairways hit, three putts, bogeys and birdies — marks of layman’s golf on the card.

His cell phone rang.

“It was my wife,” Ferrell recalls, “she said I had a very strange message — from a guy who said he was in Vietnam with me.”

Thirty-seven years. He was scared again, just like Fort Gordon. Just like the night before his birthday. Just like coming home.

“What if this guy is real?” he asked himself.

It was nearing midnight.

Ferrell clutched the piece of paper. Looked at the phone number for an eternity, each time hoping the numerals would disappear. If they did, he wouldn’t have to go back.

“I’m trying to picture this guy,” he recalls of the moment. “But I just couldn’t remember. I had wiped all of that stuff away.”

The voice wasn’t instantly recognizable -– too many years had now passed, and too much time had been spent parting with his deeds done for God and country.

“Look at your pictures,” the man said.

Piece by fragmented piece, it came back to him. LRP rations. An Khe District. Night patrol. The matrix laden, earsplitting burst of a Claymore mine. His first trip through Happy Valley.

He longed for his rifle; that would make him safe.

But the boys of Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 12th Brigade, First Calvary Division –- Ferrell’s unit -– had survived the mayhem of his birthday in the jungle.

And to a man, at every reunion since, they had asked about him.

Among other things, they never call him a hero.

Sgt. Tony Rose Ferrell, United States Army, is not the flowing, regal cape of a graphic novelist’s inkwell. He is not the ninth inning grand slam we dreamt of hitting as teenagers, nor a jersey canonized in the rafters of a gymnasium.

He is more, and unfortunately, often what we take for granted — a father’s timely counsel, an easy smile, an honest day’s work in the golf shop, and the corner chair of the Wednesday night poker tournament.

“Life has been great to me,” he says, “really great to me. I have a son, a daughter, and five of the prettiest grandchildren you’ve ever seen. I’ve been rewarded to the max.”

He shifts in his chair. “Blessed,” he says.

The jungle still echoes, still prowls his dreams. But its cacophonous hymn is somewhat softer now –- he knows they made it.

This weekend, the 10 o’clock crowd will gather in its usual regalia at Happy Valley Country Club. Dollar bills and barbs will be exchanged. The same stories, about the same exploits, will be given new life.

And Tony Ferrell will be there –- he’s a company man.

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19th Hole

Vincenzi’s 2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans betting preview

Published

5 days ago

Apr 22, 2024

Matt Vincenzi

The PGA TOUR heads to New Orleans to play the 2023 Zurich Classic of New Orleans. In a welcome change from the usual stroke play, the Zurich Classic is a team event. On Thursday and Saturday, the teams play best ball, and on Friday and Sunday the teams play alternate shot.

TPC Louisiana is a par 72 that measures 7,425 yards. The course features some short par 4s and plenty of water and bunkers, which makes for a lot of exciting risk/reward scenarios for competitors. Pete Dye designed the course in 2004 specifically for the Zurich Classic, although the event didn’t make its debut until 2007 because of Hurricane Katrina.

Coming off of the Masters and a signature event in consecutive weeks, the field this week is a step down, and understandably so. Many of the world’s top players will be using this time to rest after a busy stretch.

However, there are some interesting teams this season with some stars making surprise appearances in the team event. Some notable teams include Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry, Collin Morikawa and Kurt Kitayama, Will Zalatoris and Sahith Theegala as well as a few Canadian teams, Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin and Taylor Pendrith and Corey Conners.

Past Winners at TPC Louisiana

2023: Riley/Hardy (-30)
2022: Cantlay/Schauffele (-29)
2021: Leishman/Smith (-20)
2019: Palmer/Rahm (-26)
2018: Horschel/Piercy (-22)
2017: Blixt/Smith (-27)

2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans Picks

Tom Hoge/Maverick McNealy +2500 (DraftKings)

Tom Hoge is coming off of a solid T18 finish at the RBC Heritage and finished T13 at last year’s Zurich Classic alongside Harris English.

This season, Hoge is having one of his best years on Tour in terms of Strokes Gained: Approach. In his last 24 rounds, the only player to top him on the category is Scottie Scheffler. Hoge has been solid on Pete Dye designs, ranking 28th in the field over his past 36 rounds.

McNealy is also having a solid season. He’s finished T6 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and T9 at the PLAYERS Championship. He recently started working with world renowned swing coach, Butch Harmon, and its seemingly paid dividends in 2024.

Keith Mitchell/Joel Dahmen +4000 (DraftKings)

Keith Mitchell is having a fantastic season, finishing in the top-20 of five of his past seven starts on Tour. Most recently, Mitchell finished T14 at the Valero Texas Open and gained a whopping 6.0 strokes off the tee. He finished 6th at last year’s Zurich Classic.

Joel Dahmen is having a resurgent year and has been dialed in with his irons. He also has a T11 finish at the PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass which is another Pete Dye track. With Mitchell’s length and Dahmen’s ability to put it close with his short irons, the Mitchell/Dahmen combination will be dangerous this week.

Taylor Moore/Matt NeSmith +6500 (DraftKings)

Taylor Moore has quickly developed into one of the more consistent players on Tour. He’s finished in the top-20 in three of his past four starts, including a very impressive showing at The Masters, finishing T20. He’s also finished T4 at this event in consecutive seasons alongside Matt NeSmith.

NeSmith isn’t having a great 2024, but has seemed to elevate his game in this format. He finished T26 at Pete Dye’s TPC Sawgrass, which gives the 30-year-old something to build off of. NeSmith is also a great putter on Bermudagrass, which could help elevate Moore’s ball striking prowess.

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19th Hole

Vincenzi’s 2024 LIV Adelaide betting preview: Cam Smith ready for big week down under

Published

5 days ago

Apr 22, 2024

Matt Vincenzi

After having four of the top twelve players on the leaderboard at The Masters, LIV Golf is set for their fifth event of the season: LIV Adelaide.

For both LIV fans and golf fans in Australia, LIV Adelaide is one of the most anticipated events of the year. With 35,000 people expected to attend each day of the tournament, the Grange Golf Club will be crawling with fans who are passionate about the sport of golf. The 12th hole, better known as “the watering hole”, is sure to have the rowdiest of the fans cheering after a long day of drinking some Leishman Lager.

The Grange Golf Club is a par-72 that measures 6,946 yards. The course features minimal resistance, as golfers went extremely low last season. In 2023, Talor Gooch shot consecutive rounds of 62 on Thursday and Friday, giving himself a gigantic cushion heading into championship Sunday. Things got tight for a while, but in the end, the Oklahoma State product was able to hold off The Crushers’ Anirban Lahiri for a three-shot victory.

The Four Aces won the team competition with the Range Goats finishing second.

*All Images Courtesy of LIV Golf*

Past Winners at LIV Adelaide

2023: Talor Gooch (-19)

Stat Leaders Through LIV Miami

Green in Regulation

Richard Bland
Jon Rahm
Paul Casey

Fairways Hit

Abraham Ancer
Graeme McDowell
Henrik Stenson

Driving Distance

Bryson DeChambeau
Joaquin Niemann
Dean Burmester

Putting

Cameron Smith
Louis Oosthuizen
Matt Jones

2024 LIV Adelaide Picks

Cameron Smith +1400 (DraftKings)

When I pulled up the odds for LIV Adelaide, I was more than a little surprised to see multiple golfers listed ahead of Cameron Smith on the betting board. A few starts ago, Cam finished runner-up at LIV Hong Kong, which is a golf course that absolutely suits his eye. Augusta National in another course that Smith could roll out of bed and finish in the top-ten at, and he did so two weeks ago at The Masters, finishing T6.

At Augusta, he gained strokes on the field on approach, off the tee (slightly), and of course, around the green and putting. Smith able to get in the mix at a major championship despite coming into the week feeling under the weather tells me that his game is once again rounding into form.

The Grange Golf Club is another course that undoubtedly suits the Australian. Smith is obviously incredibly comfortable playing in front of the Aussie faithful and has won three Australian PGA Championship’s. The course is very short and will allow Smith to play conservative off the tee, mitigating his most glaring weakness. With birdies available all over the golf course, there’s a chance the event turns into a putting contest, and there’s no one on the planet I’d rather have in one of those than Cam Smith.

Louis Oosthuizen +2200 (DraftKings)

Louis Oosthuizen has simply been one of the best players on LIV in the 2024 seas0n. The South African has finished in the top-10 on the LIV leaderboard in three of his five starts, with his best coming in Jeddah, where he finished T2. Perhaps more impressively, Oosthuizen finished T7 at LIV Miami, which took place at Doral’s “Blue Monster”, an absolutely massive golf course. Given that Louis is on the shorter side in terms of distance off the tee, his ability to play well in Miami shows how dialed he is with the irons this season.

In addition to the LIV finishes, Oosthuizen won back-to-back starts on the DP World Tour in December at the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the Mauritus Open. He also finished runner-up at the end of February in the International Series Oman. The 41-year-old has been one of the most consistent performers of 2024, regardless of tour.

For the season, Louis ranks 4th on LIV in birdies made, T9 in fairways hit and first in putting. He ranks 32nd in driving distance, but that won’t be an issue at this short course. Last season, he finished T11 at the event, but was in decent position going into the final round but fell back after shooting 70 while the rest of the field went low. This season, Oosthuizen comes into the event in peak form, and the course should be a perfect fit for his smooth swing and hot putter this week.

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Opinion & Analysis

The Wedge Guy: What really makes a wedge work? Part 1

Published

1 week ago

Apr 18, 2024

Terry Koehler

Of all the clubs in our bags, wedges are almost always the simplest in construction and, therefore, the easiest to analyze what might make one work differently from another if you know what to look for.

Wedges are a lot less mysterious than drivers, of course, as the major brands are working with a lot of “pixie dust” inside these modern marvels. That’s carrying over more to irons now, with so many new models featuring internal multi-material technologies, and almost all of them having a “badge” or insert in the back to allow more complex graphics while hiding the actual distribution of mass.

But when it comes to wedges, most on the market today are still single pieces of molded steel, either cast or forged into that shape. So, if you look closely at where the mass is distributed, it’s pretty clear how that wedge is going to perform.

To start, because of their wider soles, the majority of the mass of almost any wedge is along the bottom third of the clubhead. So, the best wedge shots are always those hit between the 2nd and 5th grooves so that more mass is directly behind that impact. Elite tour professionals practice incessantly to learn to do that consistently, wearing out a spot about the size of a penny right there. If impact moves higher than that, the face is dramatically thinner, so smash factor is compromised significantly, which reduces the overall distance the ball will fly.

Every one of us, tour players included, knows that maddening shot that we feel a bit high on the face and it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s not your fault.

If your wedges show a wear pattern the size of a silver dollar, and centered above the 3rd or 4th groove, you are not getting anywhere near the same performance from shot to shot. Robot testing proves impact even two to three grooves higher in the face can cause distance loss of up to 35 to 55 feet with modern ‘tour design’ wedges.

In addition, as impact moves above the center of mass, the golf club principle of gear effect causes the ball to fly higher with less spin. Think of modern drivers for a minute. The “holy grail” of driving is high launch and low spin, and the driver engineers are pulling out all stops to get the mass as low in the clubhead as possible to optimize this combination.

Where is all the mass in your wedges? Low. So, disregarding the higher lofts, wedges “want” to launch the ball high with low spin – exactly the opposite of what good wedge play requires penetrating ball flight with high spin.

While almost all major brand wedges have begun putting a tiny bit more thickness in the top portion of the clubhead, conventional and modern ‘tour design’ wedges perform pretty much like they always have. Elite players learn to hit those crisp, spinny penetrating wedge shots by spending lots of practice time learning to consistently make contact low in the face.

So, what about grooves and face texture?

Grooves on any club can only do so much, and no one has any material advantage here. The USGA tightly defines what we manufacturers can do with grooves and face texture, and modern manufacturing techniques allow all of us to push those limits ever closer. And we all do. End of story.

Then there’s the topic of bounce and grinds, the most complex and confusing part of the wedge formula. Many top brands offer a complex array of sole configurations, all of them admittedly specialized to a particular kind of lie or turf conditions, and/or a particular divot pattern.

But if you don’t play the same turf all the time, and make the same size divot on every swing, how would you ever figure this out?

The only way is to take any wedge you are considering and play it a few rounds, hitting all the shots you face and observing the results. There’s simply no other way.

So, hopefully this will inspire a lively conversation in our comments section, and I’ll chime in to answer any questions you might have.

And next week, I’ll dive into the rest of the wedge formula. Yes, shafts, grips and specifications are essential, too.

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