The Portfolios

The great Byron Nelson is dead. At the ripe old age of 94, one of golf’s greatest legends has passed on. The New York Times did a great obituary on this giant of the game, in which they said

Nelson won the Masters twice, the P.G.A. Championship twice and the United States Open once. His triumphs in those five majors were among his 52 tournament victories, placing him No. 6 on the PGA Tour career list. His 18 tournament victories in 1945 remain a single-season record. During a seven-year stretch in the 1940’s he made 113 consecutive tournament cuts, a total exceeded only by Tiger Woods, who passed him in 2003. He was named male athlete of the year for 1944 and 1945 in an Associated Press poll of sportswriters and broadcasters.

They should have added there (they did later) that part of those 18 victories in 1945 made up a stretch of 11 consecutive wins. Both records still stand, and will probably stand for all time. No golfer has come close to either. The great Sam Snead “only” managed 11 in one season, and Tiger, in all his glory, has only gone as far as six straight – impressive feats, nonetheless. And I believe Tiger has gone 6 in a row twice. But nobody has touched 11 and 18, and I doubt they will.

Another noteworthy part of the article says that Byron Nelson was once an assistant pro in my hometown of Ridgewood, NJ, at the storied Ridgewood Country Club. Actually, the RCC is in Paramus, but hey, what can you do.

Here is my favorite part of the article, which I think sums up the way that I want to look at my own life, whether in golf, music, business, study, or anything:

“What I did in 1945 was mostly a mental achievement,” he recalled. “In those days, I could drive the ball so well that I would really get bored. I just decided I was not going to hit one careless shot. Plus, I had the focus of the ranch.” Nelson needed $55,000 to purchase ranchland, something he had long coveted. In his memoir “How I Played the Game,” his recalled: “Each drive, each iron, each chip, each putt was aimed at the goal of getting that ranch. And each win meant another cow, another acre, another 10 acres, another part of the down payment.”

Nelson’s winnings in 1945 — about $63,000 in war bonds — enabled him to buy a 740-acre spread in Roanoke, near Dallas, that he named Fairway Ranch. It became his home for the rest of his life.

I’ll raise my glass to that.

UPDATE 9-28: NYT has a new piece on Nelson here (requires subscription) which includes this anecdote about Ridgewood:

Nelson hit the ball so straight, the caddies there once challenged him to try to hit the flagpole about 100 yards away across the practice green from the slate deck outside the pro shop. Together, the caddies put up about 55 cents. They put down three balls on the deck and gave Nelson three shots to hit the flagpole, which was about six inches wide.

“I used my 3-iron,” Nelson often recalled with a smile. “My first ball just missed the flagpole, then my second clanged off it. I picked up the 55 cents.”

Damn. And here’s what kind of a guy Lord Byron was, in the words of Ken Venturi:

I once asked Byron why, wherever we went, he would always go into the pro shop and ask, ‘What is the course record and who holds it?’ ” Venturi recalled. “He told me: ‘If the home pro owns the course record, you don’t break it. The home pro lives there. We’re just visitors.’ Now that’s class.”

Last week we had a boys’ night out and went to the seafood market somewhere in northern Shanghai. It’s a bit out of the way, but well worth the trip. It was me, Coley, Adam and Chris – Chris is a chef and posted some of his pictures from the evening on a “foodie website”, to use his term. Check out such delicacies as the “Sausage of the Sea” (pictured above) here:
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=93474&st=

We walked around the market buying mostly crabs and then wandered into one of the local restaurants, which cooked all our purchases for us and charged by the pound. These guys had been a few times before and so knew that for maximum effect, one should bring his own butter and ask the waitress to melt it for dipping.

Another interesting part of the evening was that we were in a traffic accident on the way to dinner. Our taxi slammed into the taxi in front of us on the elevated expressway. Being up there without a ride is not one of the more fun places to be in Shanghai. Since there are no available taxis driving on the gaojia we tried to flag down anyone. It didn’t take us long to catch a ride with a young successful Chinese businessman, who was driving a rather plush auto. Not a beamer, but one of the nicer classes of locally produced cars. He was happy to drive us, while extolling the virtues of the American economy (I think). He also proclaimed that it was no bother to help us, that certainly if he were stranded on the road in America, everyone would stop to help him. On that point, I had to politely correct him. As the four of us later agreed amongst ourselves, we would never pick up a stranger on the highway.

Yoyo and I took a trip to Sanya – China’s closest thing to a resort city – earlier this month, and I must say, we were very, very impressed.

The beach was absolutely beautiful. Long and wide, with clean, fine, white sand and (gasp!) clean, clear, blue water, it was an absolute joy to lay out, walk through the surf, and swim in the ocean. There weren’t too many people, as it was not a national holiday (we did the long weekend: Thursday evening to late Sunday night), but it wasn’t deserted, either. Just enough people to make us feel comfortable and not crowded.

Our hotel, which was across the street from the beach, had a gigantic pool which usually had no one swimming in it, to our utter delight. The staff were courteous and friendly, and the food was better than I expected. The room itself was big and breezy, with a small balcony where we could sit out and read or eat. We even had HBO and CNN on the tube.

Two years ago I visited the beach in Xiamen, another Chinese city (on the mainland, as opposed to Sanya, which is on Hainan Island) and I came away very impressed with the cleanliness of the beach and water. But in Xiamen, I have to say, they didn’t have a clue about beach culture. Everyone walked around fully clothed, often with shoes and socks. Most of the women had umbrellas. One guy was riding his bike down the beach. No one sold any bathing suits, towels, sunscreen or any beach paraphanellia.

But in Sanya, they knew what they were doing. The hotel provided sunscreen in the room. Every shop sold rubber tubes, towels, floating devices, bathing suits, and cheesy Hawaiian shirts. They even had jetski rides and parasailing. We did the former, but not the latter. And you know I bought a lame Hawaiian shirt.

The only drawback of the weekend was when we showed up to the hotel on Thursdsay night. They tried to put us in a room with twin beds, when we had reserved a king-size. They told us they were out of double beds, and they expected us to resign ourselves to pushing the beds together, I guess, because they refused to put us in another room, insisting that they had no double-bed rooms available. Well, they calculated wrong, because we were ready to fight tooth and nail to get what we were paying for, and they cracked after about 15 minutes, MIRACULOUSLY finding a room with a king-size bed THREE DOORS DOWN FROM THE ORIGINAL ROOM THEY TRIED TO GIVE US. Someone please tell me, when will the Chinese learn the value of good, honest service?

Other than that, things went fine. The area of town we stayed in (Yalong Bay) was a bit more exclusive, meaning more isolated, than the beach area closer to town (Dadonghai), which meant there were no restaurants or shops near our hotel, and we had to take our meals in the hotel restaurant. We did take a cab to town one night: we went to an awful Italian restaurant that someone had given us a flyer for on the beach, stocked up on drinks for the room, and vowed not to come back.

I also got out to play golf one day, which was great. I was able to play alone, which I love, because I’m not really into meeting strangers on the golf course (although, I must admit, when I do play with strangers we usually end up getting along pretty well). I had a nice caddy, the course was great, it had stunning mountain views, and I carded two pars and had my fair share of good shots, considering it was only my second round of the year (and probably my 3rd in two years). My best two shots were: 1) a long, sliding downhill putt from about 20ft which dropped center cut for par; and 2) a 5w which I absolutely HAMMERED on a par 5 over water, though sadly it was still 20yds short of the green

Yoyo and I both got good and tan in about our first 20min on the beach, and just had so much fun swimming and reading and resting and eating. It was a truly relaxing and enjoyable getaway.

And now we can look forward to a weeklong vacation for National Day, Oct 1-7. Haha