Tales from the first tee
Stories about my life experiences and others as I work at one of the premier golf clubs in Charleston, SC. Interviews with golfers around the world that have one thing in common...the pursuit of excellence on a golf course and everything else that happens along the way.
Tales from the first tee
Crow Thieves and Golf Shenanigans Re-Release
Rich Easton shares tales from his experiences as a Charleston golf course starter and longtime golfer, including unexpected encounters with wildlife and colorful characters. His storytelling weaves together the humor, social dynamics, and surprising coincidences that make golf about much more than just the game itself.
• Meeting Victor Hovland's Australian caddy Shay Knight practicing with a bubble level on the practice green
• A black crow stealing Rich's perfectly placed approach shot from the green
• The story of a woman whose wedding ring was stolen by a crow and found months later in a nest
• A dramatic women's putting contest where the universally disliked club champion was finally defeated
• Tales of "Jimmy Butler," the stubborn golf executive who refused penalty strokes and ruined his new clubs
• The embarrassing moment when Jimmy insisted on playing from championship tees despite not having the distance
If you like it, forward it. You know, one person can make a difference.
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Welcome to Tales from the First Tee. I'm your host, rich Easton, recording from beautiful Charleston, south Carolina. For those of you that are first-time listeners, welcome. And for those returning, thanks for listening. We've been downloaded in 132 cities in nine countries over four continents.
Speaker 1:So during this pandemic some of you might forget what you were doing, but I'm certainly going to remember the last two weeks. I somewhat deviated from my normal golf talk and I got into some other stories, mostly pertaining to myself, about crash landings, and the feedback was surprisingly overwhelming. So I'll get back to stories like that in the future, but this week more golf. This week's episode is dedicated to a good friend of mine, bob O'Lear, who suggested I have to tell these two Jimmy golf stories, so I'm going to include them. This week I'm also going to talk about how black crows can fuck up your golf round, a UJA parimutuel golf betting story where the spectators went apeshit. But first I have to tell the story that happened to me two weekends ago while I was working the first tee at Charleston National. It's a Saturday afternoon, it's like 3.30, 4 o'clock and there are not many people teeing off anymore because it gets dark here at like 5.15. It's hard to get in nine holes. And so I'm sitting there and I'm actually sitting down and writing this episode I see this guy come up to this practice putting area in his golf cart and he parks it on the other side and he gets out, walks up and he doesn't have a putter in his hand.
Speaker 1:He's got something else in his hand and he takes it. He walks around the green, he takes it, he puts it between his feet on the ground, he closes his eyes and I'm like what? What is this guy doing? So I'm watching him. He picks it up, he walks around to a different part of the green, he puts this thing down again, right between his feet. He closes his eyes and I'm thinking is this like a ritual? Or is this guy a surveyor? Maybe he's going to do something with the green. He's going to change it, maybe put more undulation.
Speaker 1:My curiosity got the best of me, so I had to go up to him and when he opened his eyes, I didn't want to interrupt and look like he was meditating and I said hey, how you doing? He turns around to me and he says Hi, how are you? But he says it in an Australian accent, which I can't do. So, mates, I'm not going to make you suffer through it and I say I'm interested, what are you doing? And he picks this thing up and it's a bubble level, like you know, when you're putting up pictures in your house, and you have that level and you have that little liquid with a little bubble inside of it to to try and straighten the picture out and make it level. Well, he's putting it on the green to try and straighten the picture out and make it level. Well, he's putting it on the green.
Speaker 1:And what he said he was doing was he's getting a feel for the greens so that he could read them. And when he closes his eyes, he feels his feet and then he imagines what is the pitch of the green. And I'm like, okay, why is he doing this? He did it a few times and he goes. Look, he goes. I'm a caddy. I just need to do this for my play, you know, for my my pro. I'm thinking maybe it's a local pro in the area here in South Carolina and I'm thinking, wow, is this how caddies are doing this now? And so he goes. Yeah, I'm a caddy for this guy, victor Hovland.
Speaker 1:Now I know who Victor Hovland is. He's this 23-year-old that just burst out onto the PGA like a year ago, from Norway I think, he went to Oklahoma State. He went to a big college and he did really well there and then he came out and he won. I think he won in Puerto Rico, this caddy, and he introduced himself as Shea Knight, which I thought was a pretty cool name. He was telling me that he's just preparing to go back on on tour. He said we're going to Mexico in a week and then we're going out to Dubai.
Speaker 1:And I just happened to have another friend that was there, this guy McCracken, who was the club champion at Charleston National, who is, I think, is one of the best golfers in the Charleston area and he's watching it. And I tell him about this guy and he goes up and kind of talks to him, but the guy gets in his cart, drives away. Brandon McCracken comes up to me and says why would a caddy be here in Charleston? I mean, why would he be like I've never seen him before? And I'm like I don't know. I'm thinking the guy just got out of the loony bin. He for some reason he's doing this, maybe because he thinks this is what caddies do, and he's trying to impress people that are around the grain Like he knows what he's doing.
Speaker 1:I turned the TV on on Sunday and I'm watching the PGA and it just so happens Victor Hovland is leading the tournament and he wins the tournament, and next to Victor is this guy, shea Knight the guy that I just saw a week ago, and he's sitting there and hugging him. I had to look the guy up. He was a caddy from Australia and he's been out on tour for like 13 years and he just started with Victor or so a year ago, and they've already won twice. So go figure, he was a caddy from Australia and he's been out on tour for like 13 years and he just started with Victor or so a year ago, and they've already won twice. So go figure.
Speaker 2:So, shane Knight, if you're listening, you're welcome.
Speaker 1:A few years back. I'm visiting my folks down in Isla del Sol. It's this small little island right off of St Pete Beach. On the island there's a golf course, the Isla del Sol Country Club. It is the longest, 6,000 yards I've ever played in my life. Every shot seems like it has to be one club longer and there carries over water for a lot of the holes. I'm playing there with my folks and we get to this one hole. It's a par four with trees on the left, trees on the right but a pretty wide open fairway. Both my folks hit. I get up and I blast this drive but it's fading. It's fading up, up up to the right, over the trees. My dad made some sarcastic comment. He was pretty funny to play with.
Speaker 1:I go out, we're in, they're in a cart together. I'm in a cart by myself and I ride over to get my ball and I've got a shot. But it's like an 80 yard shot up and over all these palm trees and I could hardly see. There's like an elevated green. It's protected by sand. I get up to my ball and this is one of those hit and waste shots. So I take my club back. I hit it. It felt perfect. The ball goes flying up up over the palm trees. I can't see where it lands, but it felt good. If any of you play golf and have hit that butter kind of shot, you know what it feels like. So now I get in the cart and I'm like okay, I hope this is a good shot.
Speaker 1:As I'm driving through the palm trees into the middle of the fairway, I hear my dad say incredible shot. At least in my mind, that's what I remember. My dad was pretty sarcastic, so he probably said something like hey, nice whipped cream on a shit pie. My ball is a foot or so from the pin and I am feeling pretty good about this. I mean, I had like no shot and I made a great shot.
Speaker 1:We pull our carts over to the side of the green and as we're walking up to this green, over to the side of the green, and as we're walking up to this green, this gigantic black crow dives down on the green right by my ball, takes two steps, picks the ball up and flies up on top of this palm tree up to what looked like his nest. And I'm going up to the palm tree and I'm trying to hit it and shake it and this guy's not moving, he's not in the balls, not coming down. I pull a ball out of my bag and I go to place it back where it was and I'm looking at a birdie and my dad just goes hey, nice five. I'm like what he goes yeah, lost ball, nice five.
Speaker 1:Those fucking crows so after that incident I wanted to research this to see was this an anomaly? Was this like, did this just happen to me or does this happen to other people? So I started doing research on do crows steal golf balls? Well, not many articles on that, but there were a lot of articles on crows steal golf balls Well, not many articles on that, but there were a lot of articles on crows picking up shiny objects. And there was this one article and I think it was Corvid's Love Bling where this guy from Cornell University his name was Kevin McGowan did a study because people were asking is this a natural occurrence? And he does this study, and it might have been a two-year study. And he comes back and he goes well, according to my research, there is no evidence that crows go after any shiny objects. And he goes on this whole diatribe. Meanwhile, after he writes this article, there are like 20 responses to his article underneath it about stories of people having shit stolen from crows. Which leads me to my next story and this is a story told to me by my 91-year-old mom who has a better memory than I do At Isla at another time and this might have been a few years after my crow incident, isla.
Speaker 1:At another time and this might have been a few years after micro incident one of her friends I think her name, was Sadie O'Sullivan. Sadie was out golfing and she was a very good golfer, but she couldn't golf wearing her engagement and wedding band. What she would do is she would actually wear it to the course and then she would take it off and put it in one of those compartments on the golf cart and then she'd play and at the end she'd put the ring back on. And you know so it was always invisible sight and she always knew where it was. She's out playing. One day she goes up to the green to put her ball this might have been the same hole that I had my ball still on and this black crow flies down to the golf cart, picks up both her wedding and engagement ring and flies off. Now imagine how she feels. I mean, she is just going lunatic on this whole thing. She's throwing her clubs at the bird, she's trying to throw everything she can Not a good idea, because I think she threw a club in the water but and obviously she was irate she reports it to Isla del Sol, to the you know, I guess the golf committee. There, you know, like, you know, like they're going to track down a crow, and then she reported it to an insurance company. I guess she had to file a report, and all of that.
Speaker 1:At least six months later these guys at Isla del Sol were working on one of the roofs and up there was this nesting area for these crows. And they get over and they find her ring and they found all kinds of other shiny objects. Now when my mom tells me this story, she's fascinated about the fact that these workers actually found these rings and other things. What fascinated me was the kindness of the people that found it. My guess is, people that are doing that for a living probably need every dollar they can get. And they find this diamond ring and instead of taking it home, they go back and they bring it back to their management because they knew that this woman would be frantic until she got it. I thought that was great. Yeah, it was either that or they just had too many witnesses.
Speaker 1:Getting back to the esteemed Kevin McGowan, who wrote that article when he was doing research at Cornell University your research might have been good, but your results were way off. And if you don't believe me, why don't you leave a sandwich in your golf cart when you're out putting or going up to drive the ball? Guaranteed, if there are crows in the area, they will sniff that out, they'll come down with a knife and a fork that they stole from the previous day and they're going to eat your lunch. Hmm, and I wonder if Sophie O'Sullivan ever got any money from the insurance company for the crow claim. And if she did, did she return it? I'm sure she did, karma baby.
Speaker 1:This next story took place almost 40 years ago in the Meadowbrook Long Island area, and this story again was told to me by my 91-year-old mom, who was part of this story. There was this UJA charity golf tournament at this country club not to be named. There are four to five country clubs in a 15-mile radius in Meadowbrook, so go ahead and pick. Anyway, there was this charity event and it was a Calcutta with parimutuel betting. There were 72 men playing in this, 18 foursomes and this was a big money game. Tens of thousands of dollars were at stake, half of it going to the charity, half of it going back to the golfers At this golf club.
Speaker 1:While it is a family golf club, it is a men's ownership golf club, which means if there's a divorce or if there is a death where the husband dies, there is a death where the husband dies the ex-wife or the widow cannot stay in the country club. So it's a pretty odd situation. I even asked my mom, like how'd you feel about that? And she was like what do I care? She said I was there to be with your dad and I was there to beat up on the other women on the golf course. If he wasn't there, I'm not going to be there. Yeah, so maybe not a vote for women's lib, but I digress.
Speaker 1:This tournament was such a big money tournament where the money was placed on each foursome that they had to have somebody walk with the foursomes to make sure nobody's cheating. And it just so happened to be it would be. All of the wives, all the women golfers that were not allowed to play in that tournament donated their time to follow the foursomes and obviously you couldn't have any player's wife walking with them. I mean that would be collusion. The men threw the women a bone and what they did is they set up this putting contest on the ninth green that happens to be right by the clubhouse. The men get done. They all get to the ninth green and here are all the women.
Speaker 1:Again, there's paramutual betting on the women as well. There is this one woman who is a really good golfer, gertrude Lipschitz, and they call her Gertie. She was by far the best, most consistent golfer, probably the club champion, but the most despised woman at the country club. She was mean to the staff, she was mean to other women, she was condescending and she would call whenever she played in tournaments she would call penalties on other women. So she was by far the most hated. But because she was such a good player and good putter, with the parimutuel betting, almost everybody bet on her, except my dad. He bet on my mom.
Speaker 1:So they start to have this putting competition and Gertie gets up. She's looking at everybody for them to be quiet and she's asking people to be quiet. Meanwhile everybody's thinking what a bitch. And she gets up. It's a 60-foot uphill putt that breaks and she hits her first putt and it's going up the hill. It's going up the hill, it's going up the hill. It's going up the hill. It's going up the hill. It's breaking towards the hole. It looks like it's going to go in and you could hear everybody kind of mumbling and the ball stops. One more revolution. It goes in the hole. But they're playing closest to the hole.
Speaker 1:Gertie feels like okay, no one's going to even get it closer. So a lot of the other women are hitting the ball. Some don't even get it up the hill, some get it up, but it goes to the left and the right and every time a woman's going to go putt, gertie makes some comment like good luck to you, I hope you do well, and meanwhile it was such a shallow kind of comment that all the women would glare at her. But she's trying to get in everybody's head because she wants to win the money, because that's Gertie Lipschitz. So now it's my mom's turn and she gets up there and Gertie says something to her. If you ever seen my mom back then, glare at you. I mean, she would stop my brother and I from fighting just from one. Look. She glares back at Gertie and she gets up and she makes her putt and it's going up the hill. It's going up the hill, it's starting to curve. You can't tell what it's going to do, but all of a sudden it's like it's got this downhill at the end of it and it's going and it's going and the ball drops in the hole and you could hear yelling and screaming all throughout the Meadowbrook area.
Speaker 1:I mean, this was a big deal. There was one voice you didn't hear and that was Gertie Lipschitz, because she was pissed. But all the other women went up to Gertie and they tried to console her, and it was a shallow consoling. They're like oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry you didn't win. It was so close, it was really that close. Meanwhile they'd go back over to Harriet and say oh, I'm so glad you kicked your ass, I'm so glad you beat her. Even a lot of the men were coming up to my mom and saying oh fuck, we hate Gertie, she is such a. They wanted to say the C word, but this podcast is not done in England, so we'll just call her a bitch.
Speaker 2:I'm so sorry for you being a humanist cunt.
Speaker 1:So there it is. My mom wins $250 just from making that putt, but then my dad, who was one of the only people to bet on her, won a shit ton of money on her putt, and, by the way, I think his foursome was in the money as well. So what a weekend for the Eastons. My last two stories are Jimmy Butler stories, commonly called the commish. Down here in Charleston, jimmy's been retired for a little over 12 years and in retirement he plays softball, tennis, golf and buys used cars at these auctions down in Florida and then turns around, and his son, jamie, has a car lot on Clements Ferry Road here in Charleston, and so Jimmy does at least two of those, if not more, activities every day. I mean, he is the epitome of retirement. Before he retired, jimmy was a vice president of sales for Hefty Consumer Products, a company that I had worked for for a while. Jimmy was in charge of having national sales meetings and he'd have at least one a year, if not two, and every one would be a destination where we could play golf. The first story takes place at a desert golf course. I think it was either Stallion Mountain or Painted Desert. Both courses were built into the terrain of the desert outside the Las Vegas area. If you've never played there before, if you hit your ball off the fairway, there are these transition areas that are fraught with sharp rocks, rattlesnakes, cactus and other things that will absolutely make your day really bad if you step in the wrong place. We're playing this match where a friend of mine, bob O'Lear, who asked me to tell these stories about Jimmy, my partner Dennis and Jimmy Butler we're playing a match for $2 for the front nine, two for the back and two overall. What we're talking about is a $6 bet, unless there's all kinds of presses happening, and typically I don't accept presses. So let's just say it's a $6 golf match. We're playing this match and we're on the front nine.
Speaker 1:Jimmy starts off, he's not having his best day and he hits his ball off the fairway into this transition area and his partner, bob, is like Jimmy, just take an unplayable, put it in the fairway, take a one-stroke penalty, hit it. Well, jimmy, who has figured out all the strokes before we even started, figures that if he can just get his ball off this transition area back on the fairway, somehow get it back on the green, make one or two putts. He has a chance of tying or winning the hole for his team. This is how he thinks every hole. Penalty strokes are something everybody else gets, but not Jimmy. There goes Jimmy, he goes into the transition area and, by the way, jimmy just got a new set of ping zing irons New right out of the box, not a scratch on the clubs and Jimmy goes in after his ball. By the way, jimmy always miraculously finds his ball wherever he hits it off the fairway. He just has good eyesight. Jimmy goes in and as he goes, he's going to hit his ball. You've got these sharp rocks. It's not a soft area. Every time Jimmy takes a swing at the ball, you could see sparks flying from off the fairway, I would say half the times. He got it back in the fairway and he ended up at least being competitive for that hole, which basically means no penalty strokes.
Speaker 1:We're going through this match and Bobby, who is really one of the funniest guys I've ever met, keeps telling Jimmy in his Chicago accent hey, jimmy, just get the ball back in the fairway. Jimmy doesn't listen. He, you know he giggles. He, jimmy, just get the ball back in the fairway. Jimmy doesn't listen. He, you know he giggles. He does whatever, but he won't listen to anybody. He goes along, sparks, sparks, sparks. The whole match. We get done and for some miraculous reason they win the back nine and the overall and we have to hand them $2. We won the front, they won the back, they won the overall $2.
Speaker 2:As we're going to pay them.
Speaker 1:I go over and I look at Jim's clubs. He kept using the same iron. When he was off the fairway into the transition area he was using his five iron. I look at his club and I say Bob, what is that? Bob goes over to Jimmy's bag, pulls up his club. It looks like a branding iron. This thing is beat to shit. He goes to his own partner. He goes Jimmy, we just won $2 and you're going to have to spend $125 for a new club. And Jimmy's like, yeah, but we won the bet.
Speaker 1:The second Jimmy story in the last story in this episode was another off-site national sales meeting. We were in San Antonio, texas, at this course called Silverhorn Golf Club. 32 of the sales and marketing team converge on this majestic hill country golf course after a morning of listening to the marketing team amaze us with their thorough, reasoned, well-designed programs to wow our customers into dropping all the competitive items and put ours in its place. You know there's an old adage in sales that marketing people know a hundred ways to have sex but have never had a girlfriend. So now the buses start to unload our clubs.
Speaker 1:We get our clubs, we head to the practice area and Jimmy's already approved all the foursomes and, of course, our foursome tees off first. Jimmy didn't want to be slowed down by any slow foursomes in front of us. Now we're standing at the first tee and now we start negotiating for strokes and determining the game. That in itself is like attending the Paris Peace Accords. I don't know this for a fact, but I'm almost certain that Jimmy had seen the scorecards, he knew the holes and he knew what holes he needed strokes on before we even got to the golf course. So anyway, we're negotiating, we finally decide how many strokes Jimmy's going to get, and it's probably somewhere around, you know, five strokes aside. So here's where the story gets fun. We're going to the tee box, which is typically the normal tee box. The whites maybe 64, 6,500 yards.
Speaker 1:We're okay, golfers, but we're not scratch golfers. Jimmy goes oh no, we're playing from the tips. Now you have to understand. Jimmy's a 23 handicap and maybe his drives go 210 yards, 230, if the wind's behind us and it hits a sprinkler head. He's walking us back there and we're like Jimmy, you sure you want to do this? And he's like come on, we're playing the tips and it just so happens at this course, the way back tee boxes are so far back that they have the small water retention area between the back tee boxes and the forward tee boxes.
Speaker 1:If you're a pro or you could hit the ball 270, 280, this is nothing to you, but we're not pros. Jimmy walks us back there and we're walking to the back. Now understand, the whole sales and marketing group are standing there and watching this. They're not going to play from that tee box because they're not pros either. But Jimmy's walking us back and they're looking at us and they go oh, jimmy. Again it's like yeah, it's Jimmy. So we walked to the back tee boxes and while we do that, the starter walks up and says something to us loud enough so the whole group could hear it, and he's like gentlemen, these are the far back tee boxes. Are you all scratch golfers? None of us say anything because we're going to let Jimmy do the talking and Jimmy turns around and he goes. I just brought 35 to 40 people here. We are spending thousands of dollars here at your golf club in the middle of the week. We're going to tee off from whatever tee box we want. Now.
Speaker 2:Jimmy's a southern gentleman from Winchester, Virginia. He didn't sound like I just sounded, nor did he use the words that I used, but mark my word he made his point. We're bringing the money.
Speaker 1:And the starter's like okay, man, go ahead. So now Jimmy gets up to tee up his ball. He's got to hit it around 180 to 200 yards over this water retention area just to get it out somewhere towards the fairway. And so he gets up, he takes a few practice swings and you could tell he's not going to hit it over the water. His first shot he tops the ball. It goes flying in the water.
Speaker 1:Not a sound from the rest of the crowd because he has influence on their salaries and their bonuses. They're not going to say anything and they know he could be that way. Way he now. And he gives that giggle that he always get and he could see the starter like he's putting his hat down. He's looking the other way and Jimmy's like breakfast ball. And we're like, okay, breakfast ball, yeah, take your mulligan. And Jimmy takes his club back and this time he hits the ball. Maybe it goes 30 or 40 yards, bam, into the water. And again the crowd was silent but you could tell they were holding in laughs. And then there's a sound from Bob Bollier who has to say something and he's like hey, jimmy, maybe you should have taken a starter's advice and moved up to the whiteys. And that's all the crowd.
Speaker 2:Everybody just started laughing, jimmy, out of a little embarrassment turns to Bob and says hey Bobby, why don't you just go play the girls?
Speaker 1:tees, which was met by an equal amount of laughter, although this time I think it was nervous laughter. Yeah, I don't think Bob got his bonus that year. I don't think Bob got his bonus that year. You've been listening to Tales from the First Tee. I'm your host, rich Easton, recording from beautiful Charleston, south Carolina, and, if you like it, forward it. You know, one person can make a difference.