CBS decided, apparently, that Max and I (he the only redhead and I the sole pink-shirted fan) were necessary to its panorama.
You may not have noticed, but I enjoyed a little more than three seconds of national television fame last Saturday.
This was just one of the many surprises when, honoring my visiting grandson Max’s wishes, we drove the 30 some miles from New Haven to Cromwell to witness men hitting little white balls around manicured fairways and greens, in hopes of winning the $3,600,000 top prize in the Travelers Championship.
Max, I should point out here, retains his obsession with sports even as he has pursued a degree in business at Syracuse University. When he was a little kid, I told him he was the only person in America who knew the shoe sizes of every utility infielder in the Major Leagues.
At the time, he said I was exaggerating. But then, I am a grandfather. And grandfathers have certain rights.
The truth is, however, I was not salivating at the chance to venture out in the extreme heat and humidity. And I had not at all rehearsed the utterance that golf fans on the scene are obliged to master: “In the hole!”
And yet I was aware that this was a unique opportunity for bonding, and, as with adventures past, it would create pleasant memories for Max, as long as heat stroke didn’t become one of the results.
The young man had witnessed scores of professional sporting events, most of them involving the baseball and football teams in Philadelphia, but never a PGA tournament.
The Travelers tourney is always attended by an enormous crowd observing New England rules of etiquette. That is, creating something that might be called a polite mayhem.
For a while, Max and I stood quietly along the ninth fairway, and watched the golfers as they calmly swung their fairway irons, and lifted the ball over the meticulous grass and sand traps and onto the green.
The sight of it prompted me to tell Max that I was once an avid golfer, but “eventually I gave up the game because I found it too easy.” He dutifully smiled at this, and said something like: “Take cover. Incoming joke from Goppy.” (This is what he calls me, a result of his sister Molly’s utterance back in her toddlerhood.)
As it turned out, Max was my personal play by play announcer. He had his cellphone at the ready, and followed the scores as they came in.
For example: “Cameron Young just got an eagle on the front nine.” And then “Cameron Young just got another eagle on the back nine. He might break the course record.” We could hear the cheers from somewhere.
Well, we had to see how he would end the day. On the way to the 18th green, we walked past the path to the expensive seats. Some patrons had paid up to $450 each to sit in relative comfort in grandstands around greens, and have their servings of Samuel Adams ale delivered to them.
The man guarding the entrance saw my Vietnam veterans boonie hat, and thanked me for my service, saying that he’d once had a chance to meet old soldiers from World War 2, Korea, and Vietnam, and it had been his honor.
I thought he might, then, let us sneak into to Sam Adams territory but, alas, this did not happen. Yet Max, I could tell, was moved by his comments, and tapped me on the shoulder.
We found a natural seat at the 18th green – that is, sat on the sloping grass – to get a good view of Cameron Young approaching, with the chance, if he scored a par, to finish with a 59, which, if I have my stats right, would make him only the eleventh player in the modern era to record such a score.
We gasped, however, as his third shot out of the bunker was something like a Lary Bloom
Special, landing nowhere near the cup. Maybe it was not to be.
But I’d told Max about my own brush with such fame many years ago, when I played in a scramble tournament with three Hall of Famers on my team – Gordie Howe, Otto Graham, and Jim Calhoun – and saved their sorry asses by recording a net three on a par four hole, to keep us competitive.
Indeed, the same sort of material occurred with regard to Cameron Young. He holed his long put, and the crowd, for a moment, forgetting the need to applaud politely, proved it could produce an uproar.
And yet Max and I were already up, and heading back to the first tee to see the opening drives by the superstar Scottie Scheffler (the eventual winner), and Max’s personal fave on the tour, Akshay Bhatia.
This was where CBS decided it would focus on the first tee and along with it my pink summer shirt, the only pink shirt in the group, and Max’s red hair, the only red hair in the group. I was unaware of it, but Max said, “I think we’re on TV.”
If I had been interviewed in the moment by the CBS announcers, I would have referred to the heart of my companion. I would say that it is the heart of a competitor, and always has since his soccer days. But there is another, more compassionate, side to it.
When he was 8 years old, we went to the a game between the home team, Philadelphia Phillies, which he adores, and the Cleveland Indians, the team that has given me shortness of breath since the 1950s.
My side was ahead by one in the bottom of the ninth, and with two outs, and one runner on. The next Phillies batter, with two strikes, hit a home run, and the game ended in brutal fashion for me. But I wasn’t the one crying.
“Max, why the tears?” I asked. He said, “Because I’m sad for you, Goppy, because your team lost.”
As the clock neared 3 p.m., Max must have taken inventory of his grandfather, who had already walked his required number of steps for the day. He knew this because I had told him, and also that when I am short of 10,000, I hire a young person to walk my iPhone around the block. “Maybe we should head home, and watch the rest on TV.”
We walked toward the “Pink” parking lot, by my estimation about 45 miles from the first tee, and Max said, “Why don’t you wait here, and I’ll get the car.” No sweeter words were ever uttered on a golf course.
When it was all over six hours after we departed New Haven, he thanked me for the experience, and I replied, “It was my pleasure, for the first three hours and 15 minutes.”
Postscript:
The next morning and afternoon, Max was glued to the televised version of the final round, and reported regular updates. He commented on the increasing tension, only part of which was the crowded competition for the top spot.
There was a tornado threat near Cromwell, and then, on the 18th green, polite mayhem turned into impolite chaos. As the playoff between the two leaders, Scheffler and Tom Kim (another of Max’s heroes, as Kim is about the same age), came down to its final shots, six climate protesters had more than three seconds of fame, or more precisely, infamy.