"To do a common thing uncommonly well brings success." - HJ Heinz, the inventor of Heinz ketchup
Day 1, hole 7
My morning job for the upcoming Liberty Mutual at Savannah Harbor is to cut the cups on the front nine. The assistant superintendent is taking the back nine, the TV holes. I'm not ready for prime time. The caddies are casing seven, and I ask them about the plugs on our greens.
"Typical, but you should see what they do at Augusta. They use ice picks to suture the turf together." One of them offers to show me some tips, claiming a particular aptitude. I hand over my special fork, the one lifted from the Westin Hotel employee cafeteria with the middle tines amputated. The caddy finds a low plug, squats on his hamstrings and commences to butcher it. Thanks, buddy.
Day 1, round 1
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I've cut cups on three different courses in two different states, but this will be the first time I'll be doing it under the scrutiny of the PGA. Cup cutting is the most hated job on the golf course because of the exquisite exactitude required and because it doesn't involve a fancy machine to ride. So it packs a double whammy: It's difficult and no fun.
It's a job anybody can do (there's no licensure, nobody is going to die if you don¡'t do it well), but one at which everybody fails to some degree. Everything a cutter does has a consequence. A cup cut slightly off perpendicular will cause the flagstick to lean a few degrees, something the human eye will pick up on like a laser beam out on the fairway. A cup sunk in a shallow hole will fill the flag's funnels with gritty sand, causing the caddy to pull up the surrounding turf when he pulls the stick. A bad paint job results in white flecks or halos around the hole. The list is endless, but worst of all are plugs sunk too low or too high. A millimeter either way will cause a professional standing over a $100,000 putt to think he's playing bumper pool.
The job drives people crazy, literally. A guy named Rocky used to change cups every day for years at the Westin Savannah Harbor Golf Resort & Spa. "Front, middle, back ... middle, back, front ... back, front, middle. I started having nightmares. I was changing cups 24 hours a day," he tells me. Back in Tennessee, I heard of a longtime cutter who started sinking his holes in the collars of the greens to get out of the job.
I arrive before dawn to give my kit the once over. Ron is the course mechanic. He used to cut cups at The Landings in Savannah. "Man, those PGA guys are gonna be all over you ... watching," he warns me. I don't take him seriously. My only concession is to wear my Sunday shoes, a pair of flat soles from Wal-Mart.
The assistant superintendent tells me I'm going to be dogged by a PGA rules official named Flip and to meet him on No. 1 green at 6:45 a.m.
- Hole 1: I cut the hole, pull the cup from the old one and insert the plug. Flip puts his foot half on, half off the plug to judge its levelness. "It's low," he says. "I'm a low plugger by inclination," I reply. "High plugs get scalped by the mowers and die." He's not amused. I replug it. I think it's high, but he says it's playable. I start shaking an old rusty can of hole paint. "Got a new can?" he asks. "No sir," I reply. "Always carry two cans, just in case one goes bad," he advises. "Yes sir," I say. He finds tomorrow's pin placement and marks it with a dot of yellow paint.
- Hole 2: Flip catches sight of my paint guide and freaks because it's caked with old paint, not overly so in my estimation, but caked nonetheless. He takes a knife out of his pocket and tries to carve off the goo. He gives up and pulls out a cell phone. Hanging up, he tells me, "A new paint can and template will be waiting for us on three. In the meantime, go ahead with what you have." He grimaces at the result. I'm a little pissed at this point. His random gouges of the template made it sit unevenly on the grass, causing the less-than-stellar outcome. I'm tempted to point out this fact, but don't. At 45, I know better.
- Hole 4: Flip is on the tee boxes adjusting the tee markers, and I'm on the green. The marshals start arriving and, wanting to see some action (anything at all), congregate around me to watch. Flip catches up. He's an imposing man at 6 foot 3, most of it in his legs. He's handsome, tanned and exudes an instant authority that a pencil neck like myself can only wonder at. He says, "Marshals! Off the green, please." They obey immediately.
- Hole 6: Things are going better. I reach into my kit and show him a cup puller I had custom made by a brush manufacturer in Omaha. It has a bristled end to automatically clean the flag hole when you extract the cup. He's unimpressed.
- Hole 7: I finally sink a perfect plug without having to do any adjustments. I'm giddy and call him over. Flip puts his hand on my shoulder and says. "Take it easy, we're not building a bridge."
- Hole 8: A marshal calls me over to look at something. Flip intercedes and says he'll handle it. I can't be trusted to keep my focus, evidently.
- Hole 9: Flip spots some mole cricket damage and wonders where we can get some green sand. "Hey! I got some in my cart!" I announce. Unbelievable! "Thanks, partner," he says. We finish the hole, and he promises me a Champions Tour cap. I never get it.
Day 2, round 2
- Hole 1: No Flip. I'm working from a pin sheet today, and he'll be following behind adjusting the tee markers and inspecting what I've done. I can't find the yellow dot marking the hole placement until I start taking giant man strides to pace off the steps.
- Hole 3: The walkmower is still on the green, mowing in his bare feet. Greens mowing takes priority over cup cutting, so I wait. There's almost 170,000 square feet of greens out here. During tournament time, they're mowed three times a day in three different directions. That translates into 51 miles of walking. This doesn't include the tees and approaches on the TV holes. These are being walked as well. During normal times, I'm a walkmower. It keeps me rail thin, and I sleep like the sound sleep of the living dead. Being a refugee from the cubicle, this is important to me. That and the free feed at the Westin.
- Hole 4: The marshals start arriving but give me wide berth, remembering the previous 's admonishment from Flip. They go ball hawking in the weeds instead.
- Hole 7: On the way to seven, I spot Flip back on four and wave. I expect him to wave me over, but he doesn't. He's done with me, apparently. I get the hole captain to take some snaps of me.
- Hole 8: I run out of water to hydrate the potted plugs and a gawking marshal gives me a bottle. I'm feeling cocky, so I give him a tutorial on cup cutting.
- Hole 9: I make a big show of pacing off the hole and finding Flip's yellow dot. I overhear a spectator say, "See. They know precisely where every day's hole is going to be." I finish, and suddenly there's clapping. I look up, but it's not for me. It's for the first duo of players teeing up on one. I walk off the green and down the approach and toward the ropes where a marshal in a cowboy hat stands beside a hot chick flashing a perfect grille of pearly caps. "Good for you!" he says, using a tone reserved for runners-up in the Special Olympics.
Day 3, third and final round
I arrive at 5:15 a.m., and at 7:00 the pin sheets still aren't available. I go with the guys for some free donuts and coffee and to await the rules officials. Time ticks away. The spray plane buzzes us overhead. I'm usually at least on three when he strafes the course with malathion. I'm getting nervous. An official finally arrives with the sheet, and I'm off like a shot.
- Hole 1: No Flip ... but there are plenty of sliver skips by the greensmowers. Fatigue is setting in. Good thing they're double mowing. I stride off the pin sheet but can't find the yellow dot. I try again using shorter strides and find it. Even Flip must be getting tired.
- Hole 2: The coffee kicks in, demanding immediate exit from my middle-aged bladder. I don't have time to go back to the shop and most of the port-a-pots are locked and posted "players only." I duck behind the pump house and do my business. Not very classy, I admit, but the course is irrigated with mildly treated sewage from Savannah so it's no big deal. If you ever get sprayed by the stuff, you'd be advised to go get a shot of gamma globulin. My cell phone rings. It's the course superintendent, Lynn. He tells me to take off the silver tees as I ride by the tee boxes. He's one of best bosses I've ever had (and I've had a platoon), but he likes to get his people multithreading: "Do this, and while you're at it, do that." I move the markers on hole three and unintentionally forget the rest.
- Hole 4: I can't decipher the hieroglyphics on the pin sheet. The hole captain says he saw Flip looking at the lower right quadrant yesterday. I still can't find the yellow dot. I look at my watch, sweating the time. The captain finally spots it. It's partly obscured by a ball mark. Flip parks them close sometimes, telegraphing he wants the mark and dot removed. He's a multithreader, too. The captain asks me how often we change cups normally. "Every day, and it's the worst job on the course," I reply. He grins. Everybody likes some insider skinny.
- Hole 6: There's light at the end of tunnel. I pause and take a snap of my kit. I start my routine, and while I'm bending over the hole, a cart pulls up. It's Flip. He starts knocking golf balls around the green to gauge the play. He's acting like he's not watching me, but I sense he is. Sure enough, when I stomp the cup setter into the hole, he barks, "That's enough!" Then when I give the cup a tepid tap with the flagstick, he says, "Do it like you've just three-putted a par 3!" I don't play, so I stab it like a Spartan in '300'. "See you on seven," Flips says.
- Hole 7: I'm having trouble with the plug. Flip surmises it's because I'm transferring from a swampy swale to a desiccated hillock. The hole captain and his marshals creep forward to watch the pregame show starring me, geek of the golf course. Flip doesn't tell them to step off this time. Instead, he carts off to eight, leaving me and my admirers alone. I get a marshal to take a few snaps of me. All turns out well.
- Hole 8: Flip has marked the spot with a tee and the flagstick. I sense it's his way of telling me to get the lead out. I take a snap instead and save the tee in my belt as a memento. Spectators are coming by now and they tell me I'm laying out the pins wicked hard. "Thanks man," I reply.
- Hole 9: The spot is marked the same way. I cut my last cup of the tournament and pot my last plug. I feel strangely dispirited, like a man who's lying in bed with a supermodel, knowing he'll never have her again. The Champions Tour is a real bitch.
Day 6, three days posttournament
Savannah Harbor is a high-class joint, and we normally change cups every day. But it's three days after the tournament, and they still haven't been touched. Their edges are ragged and overgrown with grass. Their white paint is flaking off. But nobody complains. Everybody wants to play the same cups as Watson et al. I urge on the phenomenon. Change the cups and ruin a piece of history? Not me, brother. Not me. GCI