Welcome! Where are you, you ask. I’m calling this the Weekend 9. Think of it as a spot to warm you up for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We’ll have thoughts. We’ll have tips. We’ll have tweets. But just nine in all, though sometimes maybe more and sometimes maybe less. As for who I am? The paragraphs below tell some of the story. I can be reached at nick.piastowski@golf.com.
For 20 years now, I’ve wondered who carried a drive 50 yards over my head at Bethpage Black.
To start this mystery, though, we need to jump back another six years, to 1999. That summer, while interning, I lived in Huntington Station, N.Y., home to a mall named after writer Walt Whitman, Friendly’s restaurants and my first experience with the Long Island Rail Road. But Bethpage was where I needed to go, the LI’ers told me. Five golf courses. Grillroom. All a few miles away. Say less. I played the Red. And the Green. And the Blue. And the Yellow. But because of funky intern hours and mild fear, I never got onto the Black — but regretted that. On my last day, I tried, but it was booked and I bought a head cover.
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But Ethan was — and still is — a helluva dude. In 2004, I was the best man in his wedding. And he knew that I’d whiffed on not playing the Black. So as a best man’s gift, he wanted us to give it a go. Stay in Long Island. See the city. Play golf. Yessir.
Then it rained.
Every day.
We managed nine holes on the Green, finishing in a downpour — which prompted a firefighter in a nearby firetruck to shout over a speaker: “Get inside, you freakin idiots.” So we did, had a pint and left. But we returned on our last day. This time, Ethan wanted a souvenir, and for amusement, I looked at the tee times board.
There was a Black opening.
For 45 bucks. Twilight rate.
Thirty minutes later, we teed off, and I hooked my first ball ridiculously left. Who cares? We were on. We were paired with a Long Island dad and son. A twosome was behind us.
You may know where this is going. The first paragraph gives it away.
On 5, our foursome was 300-some yards out, when a ball dropped over us, 50 yards ahead.
The dad we were paired with turned around. He shouted. Every other word he said started with the letter F. He needed an apology. He told us we shouldn’t move. Ethan and I were, well, feeling a few things. Confusion? Yes. Fright? Yes. But mainly curiosity. What was about to go down?
And who hit that ball??
It was … a 15-year-old.
He apologized. An older man with him apologized. Our playing partner said some different things. But as he walked away, I whispered to the kid:
“Nice shot.”
But I never caught his name, though maybe ‘the mystery teen bomber of Bethpage’ makes for a better story. As for the point here, besides needing an intro to our weekly conversation? Since this Ryder Cup was announced, I’ve been convinced that golf will see no bigger happening. Team event. In Long Island. At a muni. A beloved one. The People’s CC.
Where everyone has a story.
Let’s see if we can find eight more items for the Weekend 9. (And if you have a Bethpage story yourself, send it to me. I love a good yarn.
One takeaway from the week that was
2. An interview Rory McIlroy did with the Off the Ball group this week at the Amgen Irish Open struck me. In it, while talking about his motivation following his Masters win, he was asked if he could win the Masters again, and he answered this way — which also again showed his allegiance to caddie Harry Diamond:
“Second green jacket, a second Claret Jug, a second U.S. Open,” McIlroy said. “You know, Harry said to me pretty soon after I won Augusta, he said, it’s great you’ve won the Grand Slam, but I haven’t yet. So I was like, that’s — so that’s cool. It’d be cool to be able to do that with Harry. I thought it would — one of my favorite things about winning the Masters was being able to do it with Harry. We met on the putting green at Holywood Golf Club when I was 7 years old, and we’re striding up the last hole with a chance to win a green jacket. Like, that’s as good as it gets for me. So if he’s on the journey for the rest of my career and we can pick off a few more, that would be amazing.”
3. On Wednesday, a member of our team wrote in our Slack channel: “When is Paddy going to write a self-help book?” The thought was in response to Padraig Harrington’s press conference ahead of the Amgen Irish Open, where Harrington answered 12 questions from reporters, but spoke for about 20 minutes, confirming again he may just be golf’s best thinker.
This exchange was my favorite, with the reporter’s question in italics:
How do you keep the fire in your belly?
“I have this theory that I fit very nicely, certainly up to my age group,” Harrington said. “Most careers last about 20 years, but it’s seven or eight years before you start getting into it and peaking. You probably have 18 months, two years of the real peak, a couple years after that, and then 15 to 20 years, you’re burnt out. You’re still playing, but you’re burnt out, and I would have mirrored that. So many people.
“I do see the peak of people’s careers happening much earlier. That 18-month run, two-season run can happen two or three years, four years into their career, but nobody is ever good after the peak. That’s the nature of the game. So yeah, burnout comes, and it would have come for me in 2016, around then, about 20 years in. I looked at it and did a number of different things. I did a bit of coaching, did a bit of commentary, all that sort of stuff, and I realized I actually really liked playing golf. So I kind of looked at it a different way, got a little bit more relaxed about it, didn’t try as hard, took away some of the stuff that was making it — I basically couldn’t go at the pace I was trying to go at. I couldn’t go at the pace I would have been going at when I was a young man.
“I found a new lease on life. The Champions tour has definitely helped with that. The strange thing is, I play better, [and] the temptation is to go back to working harder and going back to trying harder. It’s pretty simple. I describe it like this: 15 years ago, if somebody said we’re going for dinner, I wouldn’t have gone — I’ve got physio, I’ve got to get in the gym, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do that recovery, all that. Now I kind of go, we’re going for dinner, great, I’ll change everything to go for that dinner. I’ll still go to the gym, I’ll still do my physio. But my priorities, I wouldn’t be anywhere near as professional as I would have been 15 years ago because I can’t.
“It was burning me out trying too hard. Getting up three-and-a-half hours before your tee time, a young man can do that. I watch the young guys and I see them do the stuff in the gym and all that, and I go, yeah, I used to do all that. You just can’t keep that pace up.
“I’m reinvigorated because I found a new way. I’ve always loved playing golf. I’ve always loved practicing, but I do have to have a different outlook. I think it comes to most people in their life, they get to a stage in their own job where they’ve got all this expertise because they’ve kind of hit a wall. The best solution is to try and get rid of some of the stuff that’s annoying them and keep the stuff that they’re good at and experienced at, and that’s the kind of way I’ve tried with the golf.”
One takeaway for the weekend
4. Watch the Walker Cup this weekend at Cypress Point. For the golf. For the course.
Why? Watch the video below, narrated by GOLF’s Michael Bamberger:
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5. I also enjoyed enjoyed the thread below from the Golfers Journal (and the complete story can be found at the bottom of the tweets):
In 1982, a caddie pitched a makeshift shelter between the 15th and 16th holes at Cypress Point and secretly lived there for eight months.
Not in town. Not down the road. Right here, in the trees overlooking golf’s most famous hole.
6. I thought this was interesting. On a recent episode of Barstool’s “Fore Play” podcast, Tommy Fleetwood talked about how he put into play his mini driver — and said he’d learned about it through Fred Couples.
“So I was at the Masters in 2023,” Fleetwood said. “Fred Couples is on the range with this burner mini driver. And I mean, Fred talks to everybody on the range at the Masters. Like he loves talking, hitting balls, hanging out, whatever. And he comes over to me, he starts talking, he’s talking about this club. He’s going, ‘Have you tried this club? I’m going to hit this everywhere. Unbelievable.’ I’m looking at it, I was like, ‘Yeah, it does look nice.’ Like whatever.
“Anyway, I got one at Hilton Head the following week and I hit it everywhere all week and I was like, this club is unbelievable. So I’ve had one since then, like literally that day. And I think I would actually have to give Fred Couples credit because he was probably the first one that used it and I was probably number two, but I think because I was playing on tour, I was the one that people saw with it and it’s become really popular since then.”
7 p.m.-10 p.m. ET: Walker Cup final day, Golf Channel
What you’re emailing me
11. Below is an email I got this week:
“Every player who has played in a Ryder Cup talks about what an honor it is to be part of the Ryder Cup Team and what a dream come true it is.
“But captains these days are more interested in the bragging rights of winning the Cup rather than spreading the honor of representing the U.S. or Europe to as many aspiring golfers as possible. One would have expected that is the most effective way for the captains to exercise the captain’s picks — to choose new players and spread the honor and the dream. Instead, we see, time and again, captains choose players who have played three or four or five Ryder Cups, just because they did well in past Ryder Cups, or because they have a good personal rapport and kinship with the captain himself, regardless of current form.
“Unfortunately the media in general do not flag this practice and criticize it. Perhaps you also believe the bragging rights are more important than the dream itself. A pity!”
; "Rory McIlroy caddie makes 1 request, and a Bethpage mystery | Weekend 9 1")
