Even in a pandemic, watching a great round of golf unfold never gets old

    Somehow we’ve reached the end of 2020, the weirdest and scariest year many of us have ever experienced.

   You almost have to double-check the date on your laptop to make sure it really is the end of the year. So many of the things you use as markers as you navigate a normal year were so completely out of whack in 2020. Take sports events, March Madness, the Masters in April, the Derby on the first Saturday in May, the U.S. Open finishing on Father’s Day, were either obliterated or played at unfamiliar times with no fans. The Masters in November, the Derby on Labor Day weekend, the Open at Winged Foot in September, the U.S. Women’s Open two weeks ago, for cryin’ out loud.

   In the midst of all the madness, the always rising death toll from the coronavirus pandemic, the masks, the outrage that followed the murder of George Floyd and, in some corners, the outrage about that outrage, and all the polarization enflamed by a presidential election, there were a few moments to treasure.

   The second act of my caddying career, revived after I had been spit out by the newspaper business after 38 years in 2016, has gone better than I had any right to expect. A warm winter had even yielded a couple of January loops and one in February in 2020. At the end of a loop on a beautiful late winter day in March, though, the word was that Stonewall would be closing for “a couple of weeks.”

   There were times in April when I wondered if we were ever going to be able to get back on the golf course. But restrictions on outdoor activities, golf in particular, were slowly lifted and caddies were back carrying bags by early June.

   Many golf events in the spring were postponed or cancelled altogether, but by summer it had become apparent that a golf tournament could be staged safely.

   I didn’t hold out much hope in the spring that the Pennsylvania Golf Association’s Senior Amateur Championship, scheduled to be held Aug. 3 and 4 at Stonewall’s North Course – the Udder Course, as it is affectionately known among the ’Wall’s partners – would come off.

   The coronavirus attacked those of us on the other side of 60 pretty aggressively, but as the summer wore on, it became obvious that golf was something you could do safely. And what the heck else was there to do?

   I signed up to caddy in the state Senior Am, although the North is the “cart course” at Stonewall and most of the seniors were more than happy to take a cart rather than walk. But I did manage to snag an assignment with Gary Daniels of Applebrook Golf Club, playing in the Super Senior division, 65 and older, which was appropriate since I qualified as a super senior caddy for the first time in 2020.

   The super seniors would play basically the up tees at the North Course, about 5,900 yards, which did not work in the favor of my man Daniels, who, at 66, can still bomb it. Any advantage his length would give him was negated by playing a shorter North Course.

   Monday, Aug. 3 was going to be a beautiful day, but it wasn’t going to stay that way. Everybody in the field was aware that Hurricane Isaias was bearing down on the region and that the state Senior Am, scheduled to be a two-day, 36-hole event would likely be reduced to one day and 18 holes. Hey, 2020 was always a bumpy ride.

   Daniels’ playing partners, riding in carts, were Bucky Jones, a veteran of the Golf Association of Philadelphia and PAGA events whose name I was familiar with, and Lee Lykens from Clearfield in western Pennsylvania, a name that was new to me. Early in the round, Lykens would proudly announce that he was 74 years old, although he hardly looked it.

   The PAGA official on the first tee knew Lykens, though, and reminded him that coming from behind, which sounds like was a typical MO for Lykens, might not work with the second round likely a washout. And boy, did Lykens heed that advice.

   Lykens had never seen the course before, which might have helped him on the gettable par-5 third hole. He probably cut the slight dogleg right a little closely, but it left him with a real good look at the green from the right rough. I never saw Lykens’ second shot as I was on my way to the rough to the right of the green to try to locate a couple of blocked approaches by Daniels and Jones.

   Lykens drilled a mid-iron from a flyer lie to about four feet, canned the great uphill look for eagle and he was off and running.

   As I mentioned at the time, Lykens did a great job of getting the gettable holes at the North Course that day. He stuck it close at the short par-3 sixth hole and made the putt to get it to 3-under. Lykens made a nice approach at the par-5 eighth hole to 15 feet and dropped that putt and he was 4-under.

   Lykens’ only mistake of the day came at the par-4 10^th hole when his first putt didn’t quite crawl out of the swale in the middle of the green and led to a three-putt bogey. But he got it back to 4-under when he stuck his approach at the par-4 14^th hole to three feet and converted the birdie opportunity.

   Lykens had mentioned several times that the North Course greens were much slower than the ones he was used to at his home Indiana Country Club, which, he said, routinely roll at 12 to 13 on the Stimpmeter. But he had adjusted, hitting his putts firmly, but rolling them true. Sometimes when adjusting to slower greens, players start yanking putts while trying to be more firm with their stroke.

   Lykens stayed at 4-under with tough six-foot, par-saving putts at the 15^th and 16^th holes. His first putt on 16 was downhill and defied gravity by stopping on the downhill slope. But Lykens calmly knocked the par putt in. We were all quietly rooting for him by that point.

   He bunkered his approach at the par-3 17^th hole, but blasted it to three feet and again saved par. The par-5 finisher at the North Course is a birdie hole, but Lykens settled for a routine par. It was a 4-under 66 for a 74-year-old guy. And yeah, when Isaias arrived right on schedule the next day, Lykens was crowned the Super Senior champion.

   There was an article on the PAGA website recently announcing that Lykens had shared its Super Senior Player of the Year award with Vince Zachetti of Greensburg and Hannastown Golf Club, who finished in a tie for second at the North Course, the 70-year-old nearly matching his age with a 1-over 71.

   I mentioned in a post I did on the state Senior Am that day what a lousy year 2020 had been, but that I had a chance to witness four hours of golf magic and I wasn’t giving it back. It was a remarkable round and I’m glad I was along for the ride. Watching a great round of golf never gets old, even moreso when the guy who shoots it is, well, old.

   The pandemic cost us plenty of great golf in 2020. The United States Golf Association canceled everything but the U.S. Amateur and U.S. Women’s Amateur and U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open. And the local and sectional qualifiers, such an integral part of the game for the very good players who aspire to play in the game’s most important championships, were not played.

   The U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship was scheduled to be played beginning the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend at Philadelphia Cricket Club’s A.W. Tillinghast classic Wissahickon Course and the adjoining Militia Hill Course. Several pairs with local ties had earned spots in the field, including the Cricket Club duo of Matt Kocent and Robbie Walizer and Huntingdon Valley Country Club’s Vince Kwon and Little Mill Country Club’s Troy Vannucci, who had teamed up a year earlier to reach the semifinals of the U.S. Four-Ball at Bandon Dunes.

   There was no saving the rest of the college golf season last spring, although the NCAA ultimately offered seniors an extra year of eligibility to take some of the sting out of missing their final conference championships and their final chance to make a run at an NCAA Championship berth.

   Still, having no college postseason was another gaping hole in a barren sports landscape last spring.

   Stonewall’s head pro Ryan Lanergren had earned a spot in the PGA Professional Championship with his runnerup finish the previous September in the Philadelphia PGA Professional Championship. The PGA Professional Championship – the National Club Pro as it used to be called – was scheduled for April at the Omni Barton Creek Resort & Spa in Austin, Texas. The event was postponed and an attempt to play it in July was eventually doomed by a summer surge of the coronavirus in Texas.

   The Golf Association of Philadelphia got all four of its major championships in, despite some site changes as coronavirus protocols in the tri-state region shifted frequently from state to state. The BMW Philadelphia Amateur at Lancaster Country Club went off as scheduled in mid-June with GAP being one of the first local organizations, really in any sport, to dip its toes in the water and put on a big event, protocols and all.

   While the Philadelphia Section PGA Junior Tour successfully staged its summer schedule, when it came time for the high school golf season in the fall, there were problems.

   I made my usual runs to the District One and PIAA championships and was rewarded by a couple of fascinating battles between Downingtown West freshman Nick Gross and Holy Ghost Prep junior Calen Sanderson, Gross edging Sanderson for the district crown at Turtle Creek Golf Club and Sanderson winning the state title at the Heritage Hills Golf Resort with Gross finishing third.

   Gross, by the way, is in the midst of an ambitious fall/winter schedule of junior events – how does the Blue Monster at Doral, Nos. 4 and 5 at Pinehurst and PGA National in the space of less than a month sound? --and I’ll be catching up with him in what will likely be my first post of 2021.

   The Central League couldn’t manage the conflicts among its various school district administrations and school boards to play a District One qualifier in time for its players to be eligible for the postseason.

   I managed to get over to Downingtown Country Club for a Central League Championship played the week following the PIAA Championship. Remarkably, the kids, particularly the medalists, Harriton senior John Bradbeer and Haverford senior Riley Quartermain, weren’t interested in assigning blame for the disappointing end to their scholastic careers.

   They were glad they were able to tee it up in a Central League Championship one last time, even if it came too late to get them into the postseason. They could have complained, there has certainly been a lot of that in 2020. But they were very mature about the whole thing. Not all of us adults have rolled with the punches as well as these kids did.

   Shot of the year? That’s an easy one.

   It was a Saturday during that glorious stretch of fall weather the golf gods gave us in early November. Sorry, I don’t have a full name, but the guys just called him Lor, a White Manor guy. He was in a foursome with Stonewall partners Rob Peskin and Dave Schug and Merion Golf Club’s Bob Roche, always a welcome guest at the ’Wall.

   Lor reached for a 5-iron on the par-3 15^th hole, 176 from the blue tees. He struck it pure, right at what looked like a front left pin. Problem with 15, my personal favorite at the Old Course, is you can’t always see where the ball ends up. There’s a steep incline left and short of the hole and if you play it just right, it can roll off the hill and right to the pin. Lor’s shot, though, didn’t look like it took the hill. It was right at the pin.

   As we cleared the hill heading to the green, there was a ball just off the left edge of the green, which I guessed was Lor’s. But it wasn’t his ball. Thinking maybe 5-iron was too much club, Lor and I were searching just over the green. Pretty sure it was Peskin who finally uttered the obligatory, “Anyone look in the hole?”

   Roche was the closest. He looked down. He said nothing, but gave a wry smile and waved a finger at Lor to come look for himself. Lor had taken up the game late in life, at 45 he said, and at 65 he had his first hole-in-one. For my money, 15 is the toughest of the five one-shotters at the Old Course and it is certainly a difficult one on which to make a hole-in-one.

   Funny part of the story is that Lor had struggled for much of the round. He was laying at least four on the short par-4 12^th with 80 yards to go to the pin out of the rough and over a bunker. His partner told him he could pick it up, but no, he wanted to make another swing.

   And darn if it wasn’t a real good swing. Maybe he had found something on that swing because he made two good swings on the tough par-4 13^th hole and two more good swings on the par-4 14^th. And the next full swing at 15, well you know how that turned out.

   Funny game, this golf.

   This is the 240^th and final post of T Mac Tees Off for 2020, more than a hundred less than I’ve been churning out in the post-journalism chapter of my life.

   The good news is that the pandemic was good for the game of golf in 2020. Turned out, it was one of the few things you could do safely. And in a year filled with sorrow and grief, there were a few moments to savor on the golf course.