LETTERS FROM HOME: SHINING THE IRONS FOR A DUEL IN THE SUN

June 28, 2001

Dear Patty,

It may not be accurate to describe Tom Fazio as the Frank Lloyd Wright of golf course architecture, but I will anyway. He has designed some of the best, best-known and most innovative courses in the world.

So when the opportunity to play one of Fazio's courses arose last weekend on a business trip to Branson, I had to. It was an opportunity to test myself against the best.

Mano a mano, a duel in the sun.

I cleaned my golf clubs the night before, making sure each groove on each clubface was manicured. I ironed my favorite golf shirt. An alarm clock and a wake-up call made doubly sure I didn't oversleep.

Sunday dawned cool and cloudy. DC and I saw a good-luck doe and two Bambi's on the road to the course. It is located high in the Ozark foothills. The country singer Tennessee Ernie Ford, the Ole Pea Picker, had his ranch on this land.

I was first on the driving range. Hitting balls, I noticed that I was a little too excited. It was hard to concentrate.

I was paired with Walt and Roger, friends from a town an hour north, and Mike, a vacationer from Albuquerque. The starter gave us some hints. Keep your tee shot right on No. 2 and left on No. 3, he said. And "Trust your yardage book, not your eyes."

Fazio, it seems, was not going to play fair.

On the first hole, my 20-foot putt ended up 6 feet right of the hole. That was a new experience. I lost one ball and took 9 strokes on that hole. That's a quintuple bogey, something Tiger Woods has never written on his scorecard.

Later on, a green that appeared to be downhill from the tee suddenly seemed to be uphill once I was on it. Is that possible? Focus, Fazio calls the hole.

Fazio understands that visual reality is plastic, a malleable medium that can be played with and manipulated. In golf as in all things, you cannot trust your eyes alone. The Little Prince said so.

The holes came with colorful names: The Gauntlet, Heller High Water, Gobbler's Knob, Fazio's Vision, Sea of Trees. Each is beautiful, a work of art. Art can be very demanding.

I felt sorry for Walt, who hit his golf ball a long way but crooked. "Walt, you're going to run out of balls," Roger said encouragingly.

Mike works for Boeing designing lasers that knock missiles out of the sky. His tee shots zoomed like lasers.

We made some pars and a birdie or two, but none of us was a match for Mr. Fazio. The duel in the sun wasn't much of a fight. I lost two balls and needed 10 strokes on the last hole, but for some reason it didn't matter. I didn't play artistically, but Tom Fazio did.

Branson is sort of the PGA Senior Tour for country and western singers. They go there when they're not yet ready to retire but tired of tour buses and fighting for radio air time with the likes of Tim McGraw and Faith Hill.

We saw Jim Stafford, who had some novelty hits long ago like "Spiders and Snakes" and "My Girl Bill."

He came on stage in a white suit emblazoned with a sequin rooster. He told funny stories about how it feels to be 57 years old with 8- and 4-year-old children. Both of them soon were on stage with him. Four-year-old GG told a joke, and 8-year-old Sheaffer played lots of different instruments. Jim Stafford on stage with his children looked like the happiest man alive.

The concession stand sold peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. When we returned to our seats after intermission, a pair of plastic glasses were waiting for each of us. Soon we were watching a 3-D movie starring Jim Stafford and snakes and other things that threatened to jump off the screen and into our laps.

DC and I laughed so hard we were crying. She pronounced him "trippy," an ultimate compliment. So's Tom Fazio.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.