Wednesday, Aug 17, 2011 --- Waterville, The Favorite of Payne Stewart

We arrived to another glorious day – windy but mostly sunny. Now, I say “glorious day” because the Irish standard is high temperatures in the mid-60’s with intermittent clouds and even a spontaneous light shower for a few minutes (note that we were never out of the 60’s at any point on our trip and most of the time we were at 65⁰ or less - down to 50⁰ at some points). We were greeted by the club Captain (all the courses have one of these) who made sure we had everything we needed. We were told that Payne Stewart liked to come here to play, and so he is memorialized in a statue behind the clubhouse near the putting green.

The course was another links course with all the aforementioned challenges, except the fairways were a little more generous and flat, the elevation changes a little less dramatic and the bunkers a little less intimidating. All agreed that it was a very playable. The scenery was also striking at points, but the course also had some inland holes that were more protected from the wind.

Now, we all know golf is a dangerous sport and the risk of serious injury is not trivial. To that end, Steve had decided to forego a caddy and get a trolley (aka pull cart) – one of the old, two-wheel kind. Of course, the preferred mechanism is to pull the cart, but one can also turn it around and push it. (OK, get ready, I am about to vilify myself.) As Steve was pushing the cart ahead of him near the green at Hole 2, he walked over a small mogul at a rather brisk pace on the downhill side, and as the terrain began to turn upward, the front of the cart (without a third wheel mind you) jammed into the ground, came to an abrupt halt, and the handle impaled Steve. Fortunately, the blow came just above the family jewels, but nonetheless resulted in severe low blow by any boxing standard, a loud groan and a fall to the turf. After lining up their putts, Steve’s playing partners came over to the green side to see how he was doing as he was writhing on the gorund. With some aid from his partners, Steve barely got to his feet, but promptly two-putted for his par (thanks goodness one does not have to stand up straight to putt!).

It was at Waterville, on the par-5 Hole 18 that we had our most striking and dangerous hole that went right down the beach. Tim was cogitating on whether to hit “Mr. Trusty” or pull out the driver on the long hole. He had been driving the ball well that afternoon (after no less than 2 grip adjustments to his swing), and after seeing Steve stripe one 303 yards down the middle (mind you the winding was blowing strong from behind), he went with the driver. Well, a few seconds later we were madly yelling fore to all the people on the beach, and Tim re-teed. Now here is where the mystery comes in. After Tim played his second drive and we were strolling down the fairway, Bob Lazard saw a 5^th ball in the fairway and confirmed it was Tim’s Pinnacle with a green dot. Could the wind have blown the ball back into the fairway? Could it have hit a rock along the beach and bounced the 46 yards back into the fairway? Did someone on the beach heave the ball 46 yards? Was our caddy right in saying that sometimes people on the beach carried golf clubs and hit balls off the beach onto the golf course? Were there other supernatural forces at work for this lucky Irishman? We will never know, but this author is subscribing to the leprechaun theory.

After golfing, our really nice driver took us to a mountain top in Waterville that had a spectacular view of the towns and bay below. It was there that the longest drive in the history of golf occurred – it carried an estimated 1,760 yards with another 1248 yards roll-out. It was an amazing drive that disappeared into the distance. OK, enough said about that.