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
Golf's Assholes and Karma ( from the 2022 archives)
Rich Easton dives into the fascinating psychology behind Bubba Watson's dramatic collapse at the Travelers Championship, going from leading at 13-under par to a series of bogeys on the final five holes. Harris English eventually claimed victory after an epic eight-hole playoff against Kramer Hickok that finished just as darkness fell.
• The number 13 proves unlucky for Bubba Watson when his wheels "fall off" after holding the lead
• A confrontation at Patriots Point practice facility highlights the worst in golf etiquette when a man refuses to apologize for dangerous behavior
• Patriots Point Golf Course disappoints after renovations, with tree removal transforming it into "a goat field" despite its prime waterfront location
• Manolo Vega emerges as golf's entertaining TikTok sensation with his unique instructional style
• Why golf partners often can't resist commenting when you're playing unusually well – psychological warfare, jealousy, or harmless bromance?
Subscribe to Tales from the First Tee for more unfiltered insights into golf culture, course reviews, and the psychological aspects of the game.
Spotify
Apple podcasts
Amazon Music
all other streaming services
You're listening to an episode from Tales from the First Tee. I'm your host, rich Easton, recording from beautiful Charleston, south Carolina. In this week's episode I'll be ranting about the asshole in the practice area Patriots Point Golf Course in Mount Pleasant, south Carolina, manolo Vega, a new and amusing phenomenon to the TikTok world, or at least new to me. I mean, this guy is so addicting to watch. When you watch or hear him explain golf's tricks of the trade in his machismo Hispanic demeanor, you have to laugh. Yet his pointers they're right on target.
Speaker 2:Okay, maniacs, check it out.
Speaker 1:Man, that's it playing well and the you take when you play well and the cooler have you ever played with somebody that as soon as they get in your presence you start playing like? But I thought I'd share my thoughts on the Traveler's Championship in Hartford, connecticut, with one of the most exciting finishes that I've seen in a long time. Let me start by asking the question is the number 13 an unlucky number? I've lived in two homes with 13 as the address and I can't recall any consistent bad luck stories, although, as I think about it, in both of those homes the first day we were moving in, both times my brother had to get rushed to the hospital. The first time we ended up meeting these boys and had a rock fight and he got hit in the head. First day, so my parents had a nowhere the emergency room, but then you didn't have a lot of emergency rooms. It was everything was connected to the hospital. There were no walk-in clinics. The second time my parents wanted to give us some toys to distract us. So while they're moving in, we just get out of their way. So my brother bought a boomerang and we were playing with it and we went across the street to this open field area and he tosses the boomerang and it actually came back to his surprise and hit him in the head. So that was the second one. But besides those two incidents, I can't remember 13 as being bad luck, or at least I never thought of it that way.
Speaker 1:But on Sunday at the Travelers Championship, 13 to Bubba Watson was an unlucky number. So we'll pick up the tournament on Sunday. The end of the 12th hole. Bubba Watson is 13 under par. He's three under for the day. He's one stroke better than Leishman, who recorded a 64 on Sunday to be the sitting leader in the clubhouse.
Speaker 1:So now Bubba comes up to the 13th hole and it looks like nothing can go wrong. His swing is Bubba's wild swing and and the broadcasters are talking about what an artist he is and how handsy he is, and they're just again in awe with his style of play. And he is long off the tee. So hits, hits a great drive on 13. And then all of a sudden he hits an approach shot.
Speaker 1:Now this is a par five and most of the players are hitting their second shots right of the green. There's a hill on the right that if you hit perfectly, it will propel your ball down towards the green. So it's a target area for a lot of these pros. And on the left side of the green is water. So not many players are going for it in two. They're kind of laying back or just rolling it down to the edge of the green.
Speaker 1:Chip up for a possible eagle make the birdie putt. So now it's his turn. He's got like 243 yards to the hole. He pulls out a five iron 243 yards. Even Nick Faldo was in awe with the club that he selected. But he's been hitting it a mile all day.
Speaker 1:He pulls out his five and I'm watching his swing and he wanted to hit it right to left and he's a lefty, so to him that's like a power fade and it looks like he pulls it and he didn't like it. Even his hands look funny. They did not look like any swing I had seen all day. But even the announcer said hey, he can get away with that. He laid it back, no problem.
Speaker 1:Next shot he hits, doesn't even make the green, hits the front and sits right off the green and then he two putts for a par. Now that's not bad, because now he comes off 13. He is still 13 under. But then the trouble ensues he hits a bad drive on 14, has a horrible approach shot and just messes up 14 horribly 15, 16, 17, 18, all bogeys. So on the 13th hole, when he's 13 under, it never got better than that.
Speaker 1:I think most amateurs and, quite frankly, a lot of pros can relate to that. When your wheels fall off in the middle of a round it's hard to get them back. It's just hard. When your swing starts going south and you lose the confidence that you had just a few swings ago and now you can't find it and you're second guessing yourself. Then only bad things happen.
Speaker 1:But bad things didn't happen to Harris English and Kramer Hickok, who were tearing it up. Both ended up tying at 13 under with deciding birdie putts on the 18th green. That made it exciting. So now they're going to go into a playoff. They both tie the first playoff hole and then they get to the second playoff hole. Again they're playing 18. And Hickok lips out a 40-foot putt. I mean it is heading to the hole. The announcers are starting to trying to come up with some witty phrase that could stay forever and the ball starts to go in the hole and, just because of the speed, goes in the edge and lifts right out, he makes the par and Harris English makes a great par save. And they go on the next few holes Par safe, par, safe. I mean it was incredible golf. And then, by the eighth playoff hole, harris English makes the birdie putt to win the tournament.
Speaker 1:And he did it in the nick of time, because the sun was setting and they could not have played one more hole in the dark. So I think 13 is an unlucky number. If you make it that way, I mean just because he's on the 13th hole, 13 under par. When he makes that horrible approach, shot on 13,. There are 13 people standing next to him with a total of 13 coins in their pockets. His real name is Jerry Lester Jr. That's J-R. 13 letters, the collective age of his two kids, 13. How many cuts did he make out of 20 entries last year? 13. And what does this all mean? That you could do whatever you want to do with numbers. The numbers might be real, but you could be making up causation and correlation all you want, and some people believe it. So the reality is his wheels fell off. He had a bad afternoon.
Speaker 1:It happens to all golfers Assholes in the practice area. Have you ever decided you're going to spend an hour half hour, maybe more than that going to the practice range to try and work on some bad habits you've had? Or maybe you've caught some lightning in a bottle and you just want to underscore that and figure out what it is you've been doing so you could take it out to the course and repeat it. Most of the time when you go to the range, you go by yourself. I mean, I know some buddies that go together and they do it a lot, but they are usually very respectful of other people. They go to the end of the range or when they're at the putting area. They might have competitions with each other, but they're very aware of other people around them. So typically when you go, you're going there to practice. You're typically not going there to engage with a lot of other people, but every once in a while you'll go to the range and you'll find people that all you know. They come upon people they haven't seen in a while and instead of pulling away from the range and sitting down, there's some sitting areas and talking to each other. They decide, hey, while we're here and we're standing here, let's chat it up and see what's going on in each other's lives. Meanwhile, people are going into apoplectic shock, trying to hit the right shots that they haven't been hitting. That's why they're at the range. Well, the other day I had an experience about a guy who could not get out of his own way. This podcast is about outliers in human behavior and this guy was an outlier. So here's the story.
Speaker 1:I go to the practice range the other day and I just wanted to work on my short game. It just so happens that Charleston National has a great short game area. They've got a big putting and chipping area, a sand area, as well as this 70-yard by 40-yard pitching area where you could take a bucket of balls or a shag bag, as I do, and go out and practice your 30, 50, 70-yard shots, which are shots, unfortunately, that I have all the time, and they're typically not because I busted a great drive. It's usually because my approach shot wasn't where I wanted it to be, and now that's the distance. I have the green to get on one more than regulation. So I go there quite often and I'm going there this one day day, and I've done this now for over five years. And if you go the same time, particularly on late weekend afternoons or weeknight, late weeknights, you'll tend to see a lot of the same people.
Speaker 1:And there's this woman that I have seen there for at least four to five years. She and her husband come out to play late in the afternoons and I see her practicing a lot. She's really into getting better at golf and so typically when we see each other, we talk a little bit about golf. We talk a little bit how are things going, how's your game? It's always nice, we're smiling, it's fun, we both like the sport.
Speaker 1:On this day I see her picking up some balls in one of the far back greens in this 70 yard pitching area and she's coming back and I see her and I'm kind of smiling and she's not smiling and she's walking back and I'm like hey, how's it going? And she is livid and I'm like, oh, what happened? And she's like she was on one of the back greens and somebody was at a different green back there. And the rules of this pitching area are that you only hit it one way. You hit it away from the putting green, you hit it away from where people are, because not everybody is a pro and not everybody is going to have a perfect shot and people can shank and thin and do all kinds of things to golf balls that will make them projectiles, missiles, and so you certainly don't want to do that and hit it towards somebody. Getting hit by a golf ball is an injury waiting to happen.
Speaker 1:And so she's telling me this story where this guy in the back area was from the back area one of the other holes was chipping it to where she was picking up balls and kept doing it, and she must've said something to him and he kind of ignored her. Well, first of all, if you see anybody picking up balls on a green and you're where you're supposed to be, you wait. You wait until they pick up their balls or you shoot at another green that's nowhere near them, but you don't ever shoot at a green where somebody's picking up balls. It's just not the right thing to do. It's disrespectful and it's dangerous. And so now she's telling me this guy's hitting balls at her and she he's doing all the wrong. Now I said, well, let me talk to him, and she was like I mean, she was really upset and so I'm walking. He's now starting to walk back towards the area where most people are supposed to be hitting from, and he sees me and I see him and I'm walking towards him and we get close enough where you could start talking to each other and I'm like, hey, I don't know if you were aware of this, but you're only supposed to be hitting your balls in one direction and after you hit them in that direction. If there's somebody on a green picking up balls, you don't hit it that green after you hit him in that direction. If there's somebody on a green picking up balls, you don't hit it that green. And this guy is like, well, I have been coming here at nights and I see people hitting from all different angles and they're hitting all different greens and I'm like, well, that might be the case, but I work with Terry. Terry kind of runs the range back here and I work with him on different occasions and he's explained the rules to me and I get it.
Speaker 1:There are no signs that tell you what you should be doing. Some places will put up signs. There actually are signs that tell you not to hit out of the sand trap towards the putting green because they don't want you to take out players. So there are those signs and so it's rare to see somebody trying to hit sand shots onto the green. They want you to hit it to this other mode practice area if you're doing it at all. So there are no signs and I tell them look, I understand there are no signs.
Speaker 1:But Terry has asked me and other people that work here as they see people doing this because, quite frankly, I've done this. There's been nobody out there before and I've been on the back of this practice area hitting balls back, and I've watched Terry walk all the way from this building, which is probably 150 yards away towards me, in a very polite manner, to come up to me and say we only hit balls one way, and that is away from the building, away from the practice area. And so I get it. And so I tell the guy this and he keeps telling me that well, I've seen this before, I've been here before. No one's ever told you I go. I know no one's ever told you I get it. And maybe when you're coming late at night Terry's not working here. But this is kind of how he wants to run it. It's less dangerous, and I get down.
Speaker 1:The guy's like okay, a second later the woman comes up behind me and she wants to rip this guy a new asshole because she didn't think that my helping coach, this guy, was good enough for the situation that might have transpired before I got there and she starts going off on this guy. She goes you were hitting into me, you just kept hitting into me and I told you to say you kept hitting into me. And at that point what somebody should do is stop and read the situation. You've got an upset woman and this is not a 20 year old woman, this is a mature woman who believes that she's in the right and she's making a lot of sense. And the bottom line is she felt nervous, she felt disrespected and you could see in her tone and her body language that there was only one thing that was going to help to placate this, and that was him just apologizing in a very sincere manner and saying well, I really appreciate what you're saying and I didn't realize I was making you nervous. Instead, this is what the guy says hey, look now, I've been golfing for 35 years and I control my shots. You are never in danger at all. And then she went off at him and he goes listen, girl. And he calls her girl and she goes don't you call me girl, I'm old enough to be your mother. And now they're going at it. And he's like look, I, I know how to play this sport, you are never in danger at all and you know that I could sit here and hit balls to five feet and no one's in danger. Well, that is the biggest asshole remark response I've ever heard.
Speaker 1:She keeps getting even more upset and I'm like now I have to placate them. I'm like and I go to him, I just pull him to the side and go. I think the best thing here is an apology. And he just keeps justifying himself and he goes okay, well, I just won't do it again. And he picks up his balls and he walks away and I'm about to go talk to her. But I could see she's visibly upset from this. So I just let things lie and I go and I get my balls and then she hits some balls and then, as she's coming back, I stop hitting my balls. I'm making sure nobody else is hitting balls when she walks back. But this really upset her and you just wonder now was she upset with something else when she came to the range?
Speaker 1:And I've talked about this I've talked about. You know, you never know what somebody has gone through. You don't know what pee they have under their mattress and what trigger can upset them. So why create a trigger? Why do that? Number one, so you know, she might have been disrespected that day, that week and just had something under her crop, or it could have been weeks, months, her lifetime, I don't know. Also, you know, maybe this guy was just he doesn't like women and he disrespects women, and I don't know what it was or what the core of the situation was. What I do know is this guy was a disrespectful, selfish asshole. And I've talked about my thoughts on karma in the past. We create waves, positive and negative, and whatever waves we create, it comes back and we're either riding a nice wave or we're drowning in the wave that we've created to drown ourselves.
Speaker 2:This guy created a tsunami, he's never gonna make it all the poor people he's forsaken. Karma is always gonna chase him for his loss. It's just a game away patriots Point golf course.
Speaker 1:What a disappointment. So let me put my statement into perspective. So in the Charleston area there are over 25 semi-private and resort courses in the marketplace, plus there are six members only courses. So if you you love golf, there are over 30 options depending on your personal circumstances and access to resources. In Mount Pleasant, the largest suburban town in Charleston County, there are five semi-private courses, four of them built within housing communities and one, patriot's Point, that sits along the Cooper River, overlooking the Charleston Harbor, shem Creek and the famous Fort Sumter. This is a prime piece of real estate. It has the history, it is sitting on the water's edge and it has a view of historic charleston and the water and the fort. I mean it's really nice. So you'd think, after playing the golf course, you would leave with the same type of memory that you have when you go downtown charleston eating at fig or hall's chop or visiting any of the three sandy beaches at Isle of Palms, sullivan's or Folly Beach. Instead, what you get is W-I-P.
Speaker 2:Whip oh but, babe, I'm really liking the way you whip it with babe. I wanna see you whip it shoulder to your right. Give me just a minute of your time tonight. We both are here to have fun, so let it rip. I'm doing my very best.
Speaker 1:Thanks, that was way too much heat on my neck. I wish it was some of those things but WIP.
Speaker 1:Work in progress. When I first landed in Charleston, I lived within a few miles of Patriot's Point. It was convenient. It had some interesting holes and I always felt it had potential, for when somebody came in and bought it and decided to develop it. It reminds me a lot of Whistling Straits up in Sheboygan, wisconsin, right by Kohler Wisconsin. I mean this is where the Kohler family went to the edge of Lake Michigan and created a golf course that looked like you're on the shores of Ireland, and so when I see Patriot's Point, I think of the same thing, like if someone like the Kohler family came in and developed it like they did all the other courses in Kohler, this could be something fantastic. In 2018, the Bennett Hospitality Group signed a 99-year lease to develop 50 acres of property in Patriots Point, including the golf course. Now the Bennett Hotel downtown Charleston is one of the finest establishments in the tourist crazed city. Everything in the hotel is upscale, featuring a pink champagne room with a ceiling that could only be inspired by a gynecologist, at least in my mind.
Speaker 1:When I heard the Bennett Group took over Patriot's Point and had plans to improve the course, I was cautiously optimistic. So after two and a half years of ownership. I wanted to see for myself how they improved the course. I visited the course midweek in the early afternoon and was able to get out as a single player. Now that was a shock. It's hard to get on most any golf course in Charleston without a previous reservation, particularly as a single player. I mean, typically, if you come out as a single and have an opportunity to play, they are going to pair you up with another single, another three players. It's rare to get out as a single player. So I was thinking well, maybe it's because it had rained two days earlier and it was CPO cart path only, maybe it's because it was a windy afternoon and some golfers just don't want to challenge themselves or lose a lot of golf balls. But what I witnessed told me the whole story.
Speaker 1:Where did all the trees go? Many of the fairways when I played the course two and a half years ago were separated by oak trees or other types of local flora that define the outline of the holes and of the fairways. Most all of the trees were removed. I didn't recognize most of the holes and I played this course for three straight years. It was only two and a half years ago that I stepped onto the course, so it wasn't that long ago, and now it looked like a goat field.
Speaker 1:The winds without some tree protection made the experience harsh. I had to retrieve my visor five times, it was blown off my head and it got to the point where I'm wearing this seventh inning rally cap, which might've been okay, but it was sunny and it's hard to block the sun when you have your cap on backwards. My only good memories were I had laser tee shots on the third and 15th hole, both par threes. That led to birdies, and the Southern Hospitality of the clubhouse staff and the BevCorp girl were outstanding. So to me that might be a taste of the Bennett Hospitality Group at their best. Now I'm hoping the tree removal was just one of many phases to come to change this first class piece of property into the point. A world class facility, a world-class facility. But for me there are far better options in Charleston, including even the newly Troy Miller remodeled Muni on James Island. Once you play those greens, you'll have something to talk about for some time. Manolo Vega.
Speaker 2:Okay, maniacs, check it out. My this is a blue flag. That means it's in the back. The white flags are in the middle, the red flags are up front. Everybody's thinking, oh, I have to hit it all the way to the hole like a professional and have it spin like that. No, that's not it. You're amateur hours. You're not professional players. So I'm going to show you. You have a 60-degree wedges, you 54 degree wedges, you have a 50 degree wedges. It's called a gap wedges. I want you to take your gap wedges and hit what is known as a bumping run. Now, I don't mean r kelly, bump and grind, that's nasty, I'm talking about bump and run. Now, if you don't mind, I'm gonna show you what it is to put it on the green and have it rolling back there, and that's it. Look at that. It's nicer, it's easier, it's not flying all over the place. And then you waggle that nasty and you already ready the place. And then you waggle that shit nasty and you already ready to smack that shit sexy and that's it.
Speaker 1:You got to waggle that shit, you got to smack that shit, that's it. This guy is just funny. He's an actor at a studio city and he's a professional golfer at a Studio City, california, and he has hit the social media by storm. I mean it's just funny to see him. I mean after the US Open there he was at Torrey Pines doing his social media on the course. So yeah, he's got 350,000 followers on Instagram. I don't know how many on TikTok, but he's funny. Manolo knows golf. Go check him out. He's pretty good, playing well and the shit you take for it and the shit you take for it.
Speaker 1:I've never been fast out of the gates in almost any sport I've ever played. When I was a kid and played football, I needed a good shoulder pad to shoulder pad or a helmet to helmet collision to get my head in the game. Collision to get my head in the game. In the cross, unfortunately, I had to whip the ball over the goalie's head or at his face mask before I realized a few times that the goal was not just to throw the ball as fast as I can, it's to actually put it in the goal. In downhill skiing I had to cross my tips a few times and do some face plants until I got my balance and my rhythm. In tennis I always had to crawl out of a hole that I dug myself by losing the first few games. Well, golf is no different to me. Certainly, going to the range before I play helps me set some type of rhythm, gets a feel for the game. But there are a lot of times I could have a great range session and go to the first tee and hit the ball out of bounds or just hit it someplace that I wasn't hitting it on the range. And so maybe these indicators of a slow start are some indicators of untreated ADHD. Whatever the root cause, the symptoms are predictable Bogey, bogey, bogey. First three holes and then somewhere along the course of the round I find lightning in a bottle. So why can't I find lightning in the beginning of a round? I don't know. Sometimes I do. It's rare, but here's the funny thing when I do, my buddies just can't let it go unnoticed. After scoring two under par by the sixth hole the other day, one of my playing partners had to say hey, when is Rich going to realize he's just not that good. That's pretty funny. I've heard guys say hey, have you guys seen Rich or any bets on how long this is going to last?
Speaker 1:I remember when I was in Chicago and I think I held like a 6'5 handicap. I was playing against this competitor and after 9, 10, maybe 11 holes I was even par. And obviously the guy is not playing his best or I'm beating him, and he has to say something like oh really, you're a six, you're a seven, come on, and he would say it every time. I'd hit a good shot, you're a six, you're a seven. Well, he said it enough times where I got to the back nine and I proved to him that I was at least a seven, if not higher.
Speaker 1:I mean, what do you think happens to someone when they keep hearing people rag on them about the fact that they're playing way better than they should be playing? That's right. You just you shit the bed and that's why Earl Woods, tiger's famous dad, would prepare him for this his entire youth. He prepared him for all the shit that people do to try and mess with your game. I mean, there were professional golfers that were infamous for doing this Seve Ballesteros, raymond Floyd these guys played defense better than any player the PGA had ever known.
Speaker 1:So why do you think our playing partners and competitors give two shits about how well anybody but themselves is doing? Well, I have some thoughts on that. If you're in competition, you want to make sure that the playing field is fair. Guys who constantly misstate their indexes to a much higher handicap and then shoot lights out to take your money can anger you, particularly if you're having a bad day. There are not many ways to play defense in golf. Psychological warfare is a strategy to interrupt your competitor's flow, and I've played with a guy for years who played way better defense than he did offense, and sometimes it worked out, but I would say for the most part it just annoyed the people playing with him.
Speaker 1:It could also be jealousy. I mean, think about it. Just a week ago your buddy was peppering the ball out of bounds and today he's striping it down the middle on every shot and you're as inconsistent as you were a week ago. I mean, where's the fairness in that? But here's another perspective Harmless bromance masquerading as a jab or false observation. You're thrilled that your buddy is draining putts like Tiger Woods, but you'd rather express your thoughts as mockery or in jest. It's just funnier. And God knows if you take that shit home with you and you talk to your partner the way you talk to your buddies. Nothing gets waggled and nothing gets smacked, and that's eat. You've been listening to an episode of Tales from the First Tee. I'm your host, rich Easton, recording from beautiful Charleston, south Carolina. Talk to you soon.