Pittsburgh Golf, April 23-25, 1999
                            Dave Tutelman


This time we went for three days of golf.  (Hey, if you're going to drive
seven hours each way...)  Still, it appeared ill-advised for most of the
previous week.  The long-range forecast for the weekend changed every day,
but it never looked very good until the day we left -- at which point it was
hardly long-range.  By that time, they were predicting a nice Saturday-Sunday,
but an absolutely disastrous Friday; rainy all day, with violent thunderstorms
just south of Pittsburgh in the middle of the day.  And we were playing
Lindenwood, just south of Pittsburgh.  Of course, the Weather Channel reckoned
without Thor.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I met Fred for dinner Thursday evening at Hoss'.  Then we drove the hour to
Coops' exit on the Turnpike.  A few minutes after 7PM, we were all on The Road
To Pittsburgh.  (Did Crosby and Hope ever do that movie?  Never mind.) Made
good time, and checked into the Best Val-U motel in Belle Vernon well before
11.  Usually we stay in the B&B at Butlers Golf Course, but we were too late
with our reservations this time.  But this wasn't a bad venue at all.  A bit
Spartan perhaps, and a bizarre sense of what constitutes a Continental
Breakfast.  (Coffee, juice, and -- instead of toast or bagels or danish --
fake Twinkies.)  But the staff was very cooperative and the price was right.

Saturday morning was warm but rainy.  Since we had till 11 before our tee time,
we went for a leisurely breakfast at a nearby Denny's.  Drove to Lindenwood
through intermittent rain, where the rain magically stopped.  So we knew
Thor was there, even before we saw him.  Outside the clubhouse, we
rendezvoused with Thor, Joe Dean, and Mark Georg (who does the organizing for
this every year).  We expected to have enough time before dark for 27 holes,
provided the weather held.

We played the first nine on the red course.  I played in the threesome with
Thor and Mark.  Great course.  Hilly.  (Of course!  This is Pittsburgh.) The
course was wet so it played long, and we were already playing from the blues.
(Our approach is to choose a set of tees that give us a 6200-6400 yard 18. So
we played the blues at Lindenwood, the whites Saturday at Butlers, and the
blacks -- longer than the blues -- Sunday at Cedarbrook.)  Even the putts were
long; the greens were soaked, and you really had to give it a rip to get it to
the hole.  Well, except for the first green.  We all had downhill first putts.
We all had uphill, 20-foot-plus second putts.  Only once have I seen a pin
position like that.  (Eaglesticks; I was playing with Thor that day, too.)

I think the seventh is the gem of the red nine, though most of the holes are
very strong.  A little 140-160 shot (depending on the tee placement) from an
elevated tee over a pond.  Trees left and right, water short, bunkers and deep
rough long.  Leave it long where I did, and you have to dig it out of rough
from a steeply downhill lie, then stop it on a downsloping green or run it back
into the pond; I was lucky the greens were really slow.  Thor put it not just
on the green, but close to the hole, and didn't miss his birdie putt by much.

We walked off the ninth wondering whether to stop for lunch.  At that moment,
it started to drizzle; decision made!  As soon as both our groups were safely
sheltered, it started to rain in earnest.  We finished our lunch under the roof
of the back porch, with the promised thunderstorm raging around us.  A couple
of lightning strikes were REAL close.  Later, when we went out on the course,
we saw a tree down that had been up in the morning, and it smelled of wet smoke.

About an hour after we first took shelter, blue skies appeared in the west,
and came quickly overhead.  The rest of the day was lovely, and we got in our
27 holes with daylight to spare.

We re-paired for the second nine on the gold course.  Thor, Joe, and Mark went
first, then Fred, Coops, and me.  The gold is a fine course, but doesn't have
as many really characteristic holes as the other two nines.  We moved right
along, but had trouble keeping up with the three ahead.  (Of course, there was
nobody else left on the course after the thunderstorm; we had it to ourselves.)
By the time we finished, the Thor threesome was several holes ahead.  No
opportunity to re-pair again.  We stopped for a snack at the clubhouse, but the
snack bar was closed and the guy behind the pro shop desk didn't seem
interested in us -- or anything else but closing and leaving.  So we teed off
on the blue nine and finished the day's golf.  Unknown to us, the other group
had stopped at the clubhouse, paid for the third nine, and were told by the
starter that the blue nine was closed; they had to play the red again.  By the
time we got there, nobody was interested in collecting our money, and nobody
told us about the closed nine.  So we played the blue (my favorite anyway) for
free.

Lindenwood is a lovely course, and the blue nine is the best of the lot, IMHO.
There is a monster par-five, with the approach over a pond and surrounded by
tall trees -- gorgeous.  But it isn't the number-one-handicap hole, nor even
number two.  The toughest on this course are a couple of long par-fours with
water on them: a big lake off the tee on #1 and a stream where a long drive
will land on #9.  Fred and Coops agree with me about the blue nine, but Thor's
favorite is the red.  So perhaps things worked out for the best anyway.

Fred's golf game is very solid, as good as at any time I've played with him.
He still hits his three-wood (REAL wood) off the tee, and hits it high and as
long as most people using driver.  His iron game is much better than it was,
and he hits real bunker shots now, not sand chips.  Add to that a solid putting
game (which was never in doubt anyway), and he was the big winner in our
quarter skins game.

We finished with plenty of daylight left to find the TGI Friday's, and settled
in for beer and supper.  Lots of both to go around.  On the way back to the
motel, we stopped for snacks and breakfast fare.  (Fake TWINKIES?! Wrong!!)
Coops, Fred, and I had our assignments what to get at the Giant Eagle. (For
those of us who live closer to the east coast, that's a somewhat unexpected
name for a supermarket. :-)  Somehow, we had made the mistake of assigning Fred
to get the bagels.  After we had been waiting for him at the checkout line for
five or ten minutes, we went after him.  He had pretty much bought out the
bakery department.  In spite of our protestations, he wouldn't put any back.
When I dropped him off Sunday evening, the remaining bagel bag still rivaled
his golf bag in size and weight.  (Brita, if you read this, we DIDN'T throw
rolls of toilet paper at him; we didn't learn about that deterrent until later.)

Saturday we had very early tee times at Butlers; we had to be on the road by
6:40 to make our tee times, and we were.  But we encountered a frost delay
there, so we milled about and met the weekend additions to the expedition. I
don't remember everybody, but I played the first 18 (Saturday was a 36-hole
day) with Joe and "the other Dave".  Actually, there were four Daves; that is
Thor's real given name, and DJ Osborne from the Buffalo area is also a Dave.
Other folks who showed up for Saturday were Steve Metzler from Erie and several
guys named Bill who were somehow related, according to a complicated note from
Mark.  And Mark's 16-year-old son Chris joined us for the weekend; he has
become a fixure at our events, having played at RSG-Ohio and Lancaster in the
past.

I played really badly the morning 18, and I had the impression Joe wasn't happy
with his game either.  But it was fun watching Dave hit the ball.  Even when I
was as young as Dave, I never had anything like his flexibility.  BIG, long,
loose swing.  The ball went a mile when he hit it square, and he often hit it
square.  I was using my "exotic components" driver (KZ Golf's maraging steel
head and a HP/M shaft); didn't hit a single drive that I liked.  By the middle
of the back nine, the driver was lashed to the bag, and I was teeing off with
the three wood.  Hit enough good shots with it that the driver wasn't missed.

Again, we re-grouped for the afternoon round.  I played with Dave again, and
Coops.  I had switched drivers to old reliable, a steel head on a steel shaft,
and was hitting them a lot straighter.  I had "found my game", and turned in
my best score of the weekend.  It should have been even better; on #9, I hit
every tree on the right side of the fairway, and turned in a ten for the hole.
And that was even with an up-and-down from 100 yards.

After golf, we went to Woody's Little Italy in Versailles, only ten minutes
from the course.  (If you've been following our annual adventures, you've heard
of Woody's -- perhaps not by name -- more than once.)  Anyway, dinner at
Woody's was great.  Nine guys at a long table, obviously enjoying themselves.
Take that to mean boisterous -- no, really noisy.  I kept wondering when they
were going to throw us out.  We were completely non-ignorable by the other
diners.

We also teased the waitress, and she really earned her tip.  (She got a big
tip; her evening wasn't wasted.)  Actually, I was most surprised when she said,
"So long; you guys were a lot of fun."  And a couple in their 70s, also
leaving the restaurant, stopped us and said how much they enjoyed watching us,
and how they loved to act like that when they were our age.  (In trying to
figure out what "our age" means, bear in mind that our ages were distributed
from 16 to 57, with a median around 35.)

Fred, Mark, Chris, and I went back to the motel and went to sleep after
dinner.  But the others went looking for a brew-pub.  Actually, they found two.
The cars got separated and wound up at different establishments.  Coops, Steve,
and DJ wound up at a place in Greensburg.  Good time, until the "social event
of the year" (a Harry Belafonte concert) let out.  The earlier crowd had Coops
working to avoid a brawl with a biker.  But the concert brought a bunch of
people in tuxes, and changed the whole atmosphere.

Sunday started early -- TOO early!  I was expecting to wake up at six, but we
got a wake-up call a little after five.  I got up, then noticed my watch, but
couldn't get back to sleep.  Maybe that's why I played tired Sunday.  (Or maybe
it's because I walked 63 hilly holes the previous 2 days.  Yeah, that's the
ticket.)  So it's going to be a challenge to see how much I remember.

I do remember an hour of frost delay.  I do remember huge numbers of people
milling around on a really small practice green.  (Fast green, too; much to
fast for that many people.)  I do remember DJ starting the "Cinderella story"
soliloquy from "Caddyshack", just as Thor addressed a 20-footer on the practice
green.  Everybody in the group joined in the punch line, "It's IN THE HOLE!"
when the ball was about 5 feet from the cup; dead center all the way. Either
that was a defining moment of the trip, or maybe I just dreamed the whole
thing.

Come to think of it, I remember a lot.  Considering how badly I played, I
probably remember more than I really want to.  I played with Fred, Chris Georg,
and Shawn Bannon; I finally met Shawn, who I knew from RSG for years. Chris
and Shawn hit big boomers of drives for most of the day.  But Chris just kept
getting straighter and longer as the round went on.  By the end of nine holes,
he had won ALL the skins.  He also won a few on the back, the clear winner in
our group.  But I don't think it was his drives that won all the marbles; he
has a very good short game.  He uses a lob wedge very well, and seldom misses
a putt inside about eight feet.  On the front nine (while I was still playing
plausibly well), he sunk putts on top of my bid for a skin three times. Over
lunch, he figured he was ahead about twenty dollars for the two days. (And
that's with Dad paying the greens fees -- LITERALLY ahead.)  Shawn struck the
ball well, but his putter let him down just too many times.

Cedarbrook has a couple of courses, the red and the gold.  We played the red
course, which is shorter.  I'm told it is also less hilly, but it was hilly
enough and then some.  Like Butlers, it has a gorgeous overview of the
Youghiogheny river from the 13th tee (yes, even the same hole on both
courses).

I don't know how any of the other groups played, but our group really got to
see the whole course.  There's woods, and water, and deep grass... don't ask
how I know, but I'm hardly the only explorer scout from our foursome.  But I do
know that I only hit four fairways the whole round.  The high point of my round
came on the fourteenth hole.  I had been playing tired (and, of course, not
well at all) since the ninth hole.  Now, I was lying two about forty yards
right of the green, closer than five feet dead behind a 15-foot pine. Absolute
stymie!  I decided to try heroics with my new lob wedge; full swing put it over
the peak of the pine and on the green with an easy putt.  I got the skin (and
a couple of carryovers -- shows you how luck-prone skins are; I was never close
to being in the carryover holes).

On the drive home (which was a record 6 hours for me, and correspondingly short
for Coops and Fred), Coops shared with me his two indelible moments of the
weekend.  I was surprised that both involved me.
 1. When his group got to the tenth tee at Cedarbrook (major-league elevated
    tee, overlooking the whole valley as well as the long par-five), the only
    visible member of my foursome was me, in my red-and-white striped shirt,
    standing by my ball in the absolute dead center of the fairway.
 2. In the dark motel room in the middle of the night, Fred saying, "Next bed
    over, Dave."  (Don't ask!  But it WAS right after the unexpectedly early
    wake-up call.)