Down the Middle

Wachovia Championship: Anthony Kim Arrives

Is Anthony Kim a budding PGA Tour superstar like so many claim? Could be.

This much we know: The talented 22-year-old blitzed a strong field on a tough track to grab his first tour title after just 38 starts. Impressive stuff.

Here’s a taste of the Q&A with AK from the Wachovia Championship media conference:

Q. You looked very comfortable out there. Were you as comfortable as you appeared?
ANTHONY KIM:
I was actually pretty comfortable. I thought I’d have a couple more butterflies in my stomach on the first tee and felt pretty calm and confident about my game, and I was really happy with the way I was thinking out there.

Q. You were beating yourself up for not doing it earlier last year and now you’re finally there.
ANTHONY KIM:
I’m a little bit numb right now, but that walk up 18 was the best feeling in my entire life, and I’ll never forget that feeling. I had chills going up and down my spine. I want to recreate that as many times as possible now, so I’m going to really work hard.

Q. Does a place like this get you ready for a major?
ANTHONY KIM:
Absolutely. The greens are as firm and tough as any major I’ve played, and I played the U.S. Open last year and the PGA Championship. I think those would be the harder greens that we play on. I’d say the conditions were easily as tough.

Q. The numbers are kind of staggering. You set the tournament record by three shots, and you’re the first guy to win by more than two. Your reaction to that?
ANTHONY KIM: I didn’t know any of that, but it feels great. I can’t tell you how excited and happy I am. Like I said, I’m a little bit numb right now, but this is what I’ve been dreaming about my whole life, and fulfilling this dream is awesome. I’d like to keep going and working hard and see how good I can really be.

Q. Do you realize your life has changed slightly?

ANTHONY KIM: I knew my life was changing on 18 green when I was lining that putt up. It was so special, and I’ll never forget that feeling. It’s just all these emotions were starting to run through, and I realized what I had done, and all the hard work is paying off.

Torrey Pines the Godzilla of Golf Courses

Torrey Pines is the toughest, says Lefty. (Eddie Honeyfield/Flickr)

Don’t even think about breaking par at Torrey Pines, the site of the U.S. Open, just six weeks away. That’s the word from world No. 2 Phil Mickelson.

“Even if it’s soft I don’t think anything close to even par will win,” Lefty told reporters Thursday at the Wachovia Championship.

Mickelson played the course recently with two friends. Both are scratch amateurs. Both got clobbered by Torrey, shooting about 85, according to Phil. “They had a better-ball of 80,” he said. Whoa.

If the pros have any hope for survival, they’ll also want to keep their Titleists on the short grass. Phil said the rough, even by U.S. Open standards, is brutal.

Mickelson’s summation: “I think it’s the hardest course in the world, 7,600 yards at sea level.”

Makes one wonder what Lefty shot.

A Conversation with Mark Frost (Conclusion)

MARK FROST is the author of The Match, The Greatest Game Ever Played and The Grand Slam.

Following is the conclusion to our recent conversation, which focused on The Match, Mark’s latest golf book about the duel between pros Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson and amateurs Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward at Cypress Point on California’s Monterey Peninsula.

(You can read the first part here.)

DOWN THE MIDDLE: A big premise of your book was that this match was the end of an era. As I’m sure you know, Venturi and Ward came very close to winning majors as amateurs in the 1950s. Billy Joe Patton also came close at the Masters, as Venturi did, and even Nicklaus came close at the 1960 U.S. Open as an amateur. Do you think if one or more of those guys would have been able to pull off a major in the 50s that it might have prolonged this golden era of amateur golf?

MARK FROST: Yes, I do. I think that’s what it needed, and that’s what it would have taken to encourage people who were white-collar players who didn’t want to live that grinding pro life to stay out there as amateurs. For instance, if Ken had won the Masters, he’d been given an indication that he would have been invited to take over as host for Bob Jones who was obviously ailing. And that would have continued the lineage of the great amateur champion. The subtitle [The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever] is a little bit hyperbole, but, in fact, this is the only time that you ever really see the top amateurs play the top professionals that I’m aware of in this era. The pros were very averse to play the amateurs, for a lot of reasons.

DTM: They didn’t have much to gain from it, did they?


MARK FROST:
They had nothing to gain from it, and everything to lose. They really believed that their reputations would have suffered tremendously and, therefore, their ability probably to get extra income off the course would have suffered. Would people really want to buy Ben Hogan irons if he had been beaten by an amateur? It actually is a watershed moment. The game didn’t change directly as a result of this one match, but there’s no question that this is the moment at which the shift begins to take place. Within four or five years, there’s no question for amateurs anymore about whether they should turn pro. They’d be foolish not to, given what the game is about to be able to hand them if they can play at the highest level. Yeah, there’s a hyperbolic quality to the subtitle, but I also think it does demarcate two distinct eras in the game. This is kind of the amateur’s last hurrah.

DTM: I think you made a good case for that. Nicklaus, to my knowledge, was the last truly great player to seriously consider remaining an amateur. He had that relationship with Jones, and when he was coming out of Ohio State he was getting ready to have a career in insurance and continue playing amateur golf. But it was over by then and I think he realized that. To make his mark in golf, he would have to be a professional.

MARK FROST:
I think as we’ve seen with almost everything Jack ever did, it was done with a great deal of forethought. He weighed that decision very, very carefully, and realized that there was a street paved with gold lying ahead of him. And although Palmer had opened the way, it was Jack who turned that into a superhighway. I don’t think he’d look back and regret that decision for one second now. We’ll never see the era of the gifted amateur champion again. And for better and worse, you can mourn its passing. It was a different era and a different time in the country. I think a little bit of the greatness of the sport died with that era.

DTM: Do you think you’ll write any more golf books?


MARK FROST:
Yeah, I do. I think I’ll continue to try to tell the saga of American golf, trying to find the right stories to move up another decade or generation and continue the narrative.

DTM: Any plans for bringing any golf stories to the screen?

MARK FROST:
We’re going to make a documentary of The Match. I can’t say too much about it because it’s still in the planning stages. We’re working on developing a corporate sponsor, involving some pretty good names in the game currently to help us tell that story. I’m hoping that that’s going to happen a little bit later this year. Actually, I’m now going to take a break and do a baseball book before I come back to golf.

DTM: Are you a big baseball fan?

MARK FROST: Yeah, all my life. Played the game and loved the game and always wanted to write about it, so this is going to be a fun one.

DTM: How is your golf game and how often are you able to get out?


MARK FROST:
I’m about a 5 handicap. When I’m happy, I can get out at least twice a week. Right now, it’s more like twice a month, which is harder to sustain a 5 handicap. It’s my No. 1 stress reducer and form of relaxation, so I always look forward to a chance to play.

A Conversation with Mark Frost

MARK FROST knows golf history. He is the author of The Match, a book about the fabled challenge match between legendary professionals Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson and amateur golden boys Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward.

Mark is also the author, screenwriter and producer of The Greatest Game Ever Played, a bestseller that became a Disney movie. Between The Greatest Game Ever Played and The Match, Mark authored The Grand Slam.

I spoke with Mark in late March about The Match and other golf topics. Following is the first part of our conversation.

DOWN THE MIDDLE: As you researched and wrote The Match, what were some of the biggest surprises along the way?

MARK FROST: I think the biggest that I didn’t know about was the long and involved and complicated history between Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson. I knew that they had known each other since they were kids and had caddied together, but the extent to which they had been very close during the early days of the tour and then the forces that drove them apart as they both became successful, was a revelation. That was one big aspect. The other was really the whole Harvie Ward story, which I didn’t know much about at all. I’d only known that he had been a great amateur player and never thought to question beyond those years what had happened to him. I think in many ways his story is the most tragic of the foursome.

DTM: One reviewer said the star of the story, besides the players, is Cypress Point. What was most striking to you about Cypress Point and did you play it?

MARK FROST: I’ve played it a number of times now. I don’t think I could have written about it the way I did unless I had played it and gotten to know it as a player. The thing that just immediately strikes you is how stunning that ground is and how effortlessly it seems the course lays into the ground. And the way in which walking the course, which is really the only way to play it, takes you on a kind of journey that very few courses can top. By the time you reach those climactic holes along the ocean, it moves you in a way that I don’t think many golf courses have the capacity to do.

DTM: From what I’ve read, you spent a lot of time with Ken Venturi, and a pretty short time with Byron Nelson, maybe a day or so. How did their memories of this match compare?

MARK FROST: Byron’s were a little less sharp, but he was 96 when I spoke to him. The thing that made this an event that etched itself into Ken Venturi’s mind – there were two elements. One, he’s the youngest member of this foursome. Ben and Byron are both his heroes, and have been since his boyhood. So, to be 25 years old and playing these guys in this setting under these circumstances, burned the whole event into Ken’s hard drive, I guess you could say, in a way that it didn’t probably for any of the others. For the others, it was a good round of golf and a good experience, but for Ken it was a life-changing experience and I think, as a result, he remembered it more vividly than the others. Over time, as we were able to talk about it again and again, he really did literally remember every shot.

DTM: It comes out in your narrative. I can only imagine that a lot of those nuances and touches that you were able to put into the narrative must have come from him.

MARK FROST: The book couldn’t have happened without Ken. He’s the one who for so many years had told the story most effectively. And as the suburban legend about that match had grown, it was largely due to Ken remembering it and telling people about it. It was in many ways his story. And through his cooperation, I was able to translate it into this form and preserve the memory. It had been an oral tradition prior to this and now I’m grateful we have it on the page.

DTM: I think I read that you said that just being in Byron Nelson’s presence made the whole experience worthwhile. What was it like for you personally to sit down with him, and how did Byron Nelson in person stack up to Byron Nelson the golf legend?

MARK FROST: There was really no difference whatsoever in the things I had heard about Byron and how I found him to be face to face. He’s every bit as humble and as gentle and as generous and kind as you’d always heard. The thing I didn’t expect was, in spite of those great qualities, those saintly qualities, there was the memory of the really tough competitor in there as he started to recall the match and could recall shots. He took a lot of pride in the fact that he was as great a champion as he was. There was one moment in particular when I asked him, “How do you think you’d do today?” He got this look in his eye – I describe it in the book as like an old western sheriff – and he said, “I think I’d hold my own.” You knew that he would have been able to back that up. It was neat to see that steely quality of the competitor, the guy that won all those tournaments still living in him.

DTM: He was a great champion. I think a lot of people don’t realize just how good he was.

MARK FROST: I think had he played another five or seven years, if he had the will to do that – but it was an exhausting process to go out on tour in those days and the returns were good for the time but nothing remotely like they are now.

DTM: Everything I’ve read about Byron was he won enough to save up and buy that ranch. But during the period he played he won. Hogan took a little bit longer to develop, but he owned Hogan.

MARK FROST: You really can say he [Nelson] was the great player of his generation, I believe.

DTM: You got to sit down with Byron, which was a great treat. I thought about all these great champions you’ve written about through history. If you could talk to some of these past champions who are gone, who would you want to talk to?

MARK FROST: Gosh, there are so many, having written about the game from its inception. There’s Francis Ouimet, there’s Walter Hagen, Tommy Armour would have been a hoot from what I know about him, Bob Jones, obviously, having written The Grand Slam. I felt like I really got to know him very well. Sarazen would have been a kick, Byron and Ben would have both been interesting, although Ben wasn’t a particularly gifted conversationalist. I think Demaret would have been fun to meet. The list goes on and on.

These were real characters who had been forged in the early years of the tour where life was hard and they had a pioneering spirit about them and devil-may-care attitude that was really refreshing. I think it embodied a kind of particular American quality of let’s roll up our sleeves and go to work against all odds. That’s something I really admire.

We don’t have the same mix of colorful people we used to have and we don’t have the same group of champions who loved nothing more than going out and just beating each other. It was more about that than it was about the money. It was about the fun of winning, the will to win and, in many cases, the necessity of winning for financial reasons.

(To be continued. Read the final part of our conversation tomorrow.)

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