[Editor's note: Last month, Little, Brown and Company reissued a series of books by George Plimpton, including "The Bogey Man: A Month on the PGA Tour." Below is an excerpt from the book, which can be purchased here.]
The 16th at Cypress Point is one of the famous golf holes of the world, certainly one of the most difficult and demanding par 3's. In the 1952 Crosby the average score of the entire field on the hole was 5, an average bolstered by Lawson Little getting a 14 and Henry Ransom an 11. Ben Hogan got a 7. The golfer stands on a small elevated tee facing the Pacific Ocean that boils in below on the rocks, its swells laced with long strands of kelp. Occasionally, a sea lion can be seen lolling about, turning lazily, a flipper up, like a log in a slow current. It would be a clear shot to the horizon if it weren't for a promontory that hooks around from the golfer's left.
On the end of the promontory, circled by ice plant, is the green, a 210- yard carry across the water. The green is shallow, with some traps behind, and then the ice plant, and beyond that, ready to receive a shot hit a touch too powerfully, the Pacific Ocean. There is a relatively safe approach to the 16th, which is to aim to the left of the green and carry a shot 125 yards or so across the water onto the wide saddle of the promontory. A lonely storm bent tree stands in the fairway, and it is in its vicinity that one drops one's first shot. From there the golfer must chip to the green and sink his putt to make his par.
Many players are critical of the 16th at Cypress. Gardner Dickinson told me that he thought it was no sort of golf hole at all. His point was that risking a direct carry to the green, particularly if any sort of wind was blowing in the golfer's face, was ill-advised and "cotton-pickin' stupid," and the sensible golfer was penalized for the shot he should make that is to say, to the fairway on the saddle of the promontory, from where he must get down in two for his par. The chances of birdieing the hole playing it that way are, of course, almost nil. Dickinson himself would not try the long shot. (One's whole daily score could be affected; Jerry Barber got a 10 on the hole the year that he was PGA champion.) He always chose the safer route, cutting across as much ocean as he dared with an iron, aiming for the promontory saddle, all the while mumbling and carrying on and pinching up his face in disgust as if the kelp surging back and forth below him in the sea were exuding a strong odor.
The spectators loved the hole, though. They gathered on the wooded bluff above the tee, some perched on the wide cypress branches, squatshaped, like night herons. When a player motioned somewhat theatrically, one always felt to his caddy for a wood, and the caddy, warming to the drama, removed the woolen cover with a flourish, there would be a stirring in the trees, like a rookery at dawn, and a stretching forward, since the spectators up there knew the golfer was going to "go for it." And it was a wonderful thing to hear the click of the club and see the ball soar off over the ocean as senseless an act, at first glance, as watching someone drive a ball off the stern of a transatlantic liner the ball rising up against the wind currents and high above the line of the horizon beyond. Then, with its descent, one realized the distant green had become available, until it was a question of distance whether the ball would flash briefly against the cliffs that fronted the green and plummet into the ocean, or whether the green itself would suddenly be pocked by the whiteness of the ball, the feat done, accented by a roar and clatter rising out of the trees behind the tee.
Here was the distinction of this ocean hole at Cypress: it epitomized the feat of golf excessively, Dickinson would say namely, the hitting of a distant target with accuracy, a shot so demanding that it was either successful or, with the ocean circling the hole on three sides, emphatically a disaster.
When our foursome reached the 16th tee, the wind was slight. Amid a stir of excitement, Bob Bruno went for the green with a wood. He made one of his best shots of the day, it seemed to me, and behind us the cries came out of the treetops. Bruno wasn't so sure. The ball had landed on an area of the green that we couldn't see from the tee. He thought he had "come off" the ball somewhat, a bit "fat," he thought, and that as a result the shot might have caught the ice plant.
Not being at all convinced that the hole was secure for our team, he suggested that I play my shot safe and short for the promontory and, done with his advice, he walked away and stood looking moodily out at the sea. I think I would have played it that way in any case. A 210-yard carry into that slight wind would have created sufficient pressure that I would have missed the shot in some way.
I motioned for a wood, a three wood, a club I had been feeling comfortable with that day, and again there was a hum of expectation and interest among the spectators. Abe, my caddy, coming forward with the golf bag, said, "You going for it? You'll be needing a driver. Maybe two drivers." He was speaking loudly enough for some of the spectators to overhear.
"I'll take the wood, Abe," I insisted.
I reached for the wood and handed him back the woolen cover.
"You're up," Bruno said from the edge of the tee, still staring out to sea. He was impatient to check the lie of his ball.
I set the ball on the tee and did what I had been intending to do all along -- I hit a good easy wood across the short neck of water to the saddle, just what Dickinson would have done, except he would have used a five iron, possibly a six, but if it took me a wood to feel comfortable and get the ball there, well, that was wise golf, too. There was an odd stir and fidget in the trees and in the crowd around the tee. I could imagine an elderly man, sitting on a golfing stick, saying impetuously and sharply: "You see that? That big fellow takes out a wood. He's going for it. So what does he do but hit a tiny little wood over yonder ... Shortest wood I ever saw without it being topped." The thing to do was hurry off the tee as quickly as one could.