Greg Peterson 2003 (and earlier) Stories
“Let’s talk turkey.”
I’ll never forget that phrase. First time it was spoke to me was by the club manager of my hometown golf course in the mid 70’s. A 10-year old golf nut was about to land the first job of his life. The task? Fixing ball marks for $1 an hour.
A whole buck an hour. What to do with such a ransom? I recall the main object of my desire were the shiny white Prostaff golf balls sitting behind the glass in the pro shop display case. Back then they would break up a new sleeve of balls and sell them to you one at a time.
$1.50 bought one Prostaff. Christmas morning wasn’t as exciting. You just had to play your best when you put a brand new Prostaff on your tee.
My how times have changed.
The latest craze sweeping the golf industry is the phenomenon that is the Titleist Pro V1 golf ball. Since its debut on the PGA Tour late last fall, the buzz around this new solid core ball has been non stop. Proponents say it flies farther, higher, straighter and stops quicker on the green than any other ball.
It also costs more.
This golf writer stopped in at a pro shop within an hour’s drive from Rochester recently and was quoted a price of $66 for a dozen Pro V1’s. $5.50 per ball. Yikes. Even so, the Pro V1 continues to literally fly off the shelves.
“They are gone immediately,” said Ed Martens owner of Golf Headquarters golf stores in Rochester and La Crosse. “We used to take down names and keep a list to call folks when they came in, but it was just too much. Now, when they come in, they come in.”
And poof, they’re gone.
Mark Olson has been in the pro shop at Soldiers Field Golf Course since 1977, the past eight years as head pro. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Olson. “People just step up to the counter and pay. We’ve gone through 60 dozen and with the weather we’ve had, ball sales should have been slack.”
As of Monday afternoon, Soldiers Field had just three sleeves of Pro V1’s left.
Northern Hills Golf Course is one of the biggest Titleist pro shops in the state. As such, head pro Jake Manahan and his staff have been able to secure a larger flow of Pro V1’s than most. “We have trouble keeping them in,” said Manahan. “We just got 12 dozen in, but that’s all we get until mid July.”
Locally the Pro V1’s are being sold for between $45 and $50 per dozen. So are these super balls all they are cracked up to be? “What I’ve heard from people is they are longer off the irons, but still get the bite,” said Manahan. “A couple guys have said they add 15 yards or more.”
Count Martens in the believers’ bandwagon. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen a product come out that meets or exceeds the hype. You could tell right away when you hit it.”
The ripple effects are already being felt. Titleist decided to discontinue their previously popular “Tour Prestige” and “Tour Distance” balls to focus production efforts on the Pro V1. Manahan reports sales of Spalding’s “Strata” and Maxfli’s “Revolution” balls have all but dried up.
Recently the hyperbole surrounding the Pro V1 ratcheted up another notch when rumors began circulating that if you align the seem of a Pro V1 vertically when you’re teeing off down wind or horizontally when into the wind, you achieve maximum distance. Titleist came out publically last week and denied the rumors.
Thinking of taking the Pro V1 for a test drive? I say go for it. If nothing else maybe you’ll get lucky and feel half as good as a certain 10-year old did teeing up his first shiny new Prostaff.
—
For five summers, from 1997 through 2001, I wrote a weekly golf column during the summer months for the Post Bulletin. Enjoyed the heck out of it. Talking or writing about golf isn’t work, it’s fun. One year even wrote 22 stories.
But when July of 2001 rolled around, this writer needed a break.
Many of my columns focused on low handicap tournament golfers, or on spiffy new courses just opened. Worthy topics no doubt. But in the last two years I’ve come to realize something, just what a big part golf plays in the lives of folks from all walks of life in Rochester and throughout southeastern Minnesota.
It might be a freezing cold January night at the grocery store, I’ll see someone I know and we talk golf. Maybe it’s the postal clerk I see every morning. What do we talk about? Golf. A neighbor walking their dog stops to visit, more golf talk.
These folks aren’t going to challenge Tiger Woods on the PGA Tour, but they all love golf as much as I do. It gradually began to sink in for me: every one of these golf nuts has a story to tell. In the next few weeks I’m going to tell a few of their tales, beginning this week with my old neighbors Al and Nicole Tupper.
The Canadian barometer.
Each time I would leave the house to head to the golf course I’d glance over at it in the Tupper’s backyard. Would it be a rainy day on the links or would sunshine be in my golf forecast? The Canadian barometer never let me down.
So what the heck is a Canadian barometer?
“It was a little twig off a willow tree,” said Al Tupper, my old neighbor. The twig was jerry-rigged into the ornamental apple tree in their backyard. “If the twig pointed up that meant fair weather, if it pointed down that meant not fair,” said Tupper.
I swear the thing actually worked.
Meteorology aside, every day is a good day to play golf for Al and Nicole Tupper.
Married in the fall of 1994, the couple tee it up four or five times every week from early spring on into the fall. Eastwood and Soldiers Field are the courses they play most, but they’ll throw in a few rounds at Northern Hills and Maple Valley too.
The fact that the barometer is Canadian is important seeing as Nicole was born and raised and spent most of her life in the area around Grand Falls, New Brunswick, just off the northeast tip of Maine. Located very near the province of Quebec, little Nicole and her 13 brothers and sisters were raised speaking French.
Golf was not part of her childhood.
“I never played golf and didn’t know anything about it,” said Nicole. “The only thing I knew about golf was my father’s first job was as a caddy.”
So the summer of 1995 rolls around and it’s time for Al to teach Nicole how to golf. “He started me with a 5-iron,” said Nicole. “I just had her hit the 5-iron until she got used to it, then we moved on to the woods,” said Al.
She hasn’t looked back since, whittling her handicap all the way down to 22, nearly catching Al with his steady 18 handicap. Put her trusty chipper in Nicole’s hands and she’s dynamite.
Al, now age 72, didn’t exactly grow up with golf clubs in his hands either. A Rochester native and 1949 Lourdes graduate, Tupper worked as an electrician for local firms before retiring ten years ago.
“Back when I was in high school there weren’t many kids that played golf. If you couldn’t play football, basketball or track then maybe you’d play golf. I didn’t really play golf until I quit playing softball when I was 59.”
How cool is that? Nearly 60 years old and he picks up some clubs and learns to play. Then he teaches his wife how to play. Now they stroll the fairways of Rochester together four or five times a week for three hours at a shot.
Cool and rare. How many husbands and wives could spend that much time with each other? Not many, unless they really enjoyed each other’s company.
How could Al not enjoy hanging out with Nicole. Playing golf with her brings a smile to your face as I found out last week. Maybe it’s that French ascent of hers. “She’s such a sweetheart, always up,” said Frank Taylor, former Eastwood head pro and now Director of Golf for the city of Rochester.
Occasionally her French-speaking background makes things interesting as she struggles to find the right English word to use on the golf course. “A couple years ago I went into the shop and told Blake (assistant pro) we really needed a sheriff out on the course today,” said Nicole. Ranger was the word she was after.
And if she happens to dribble a shot along the ground and you hear her exclaim “joual’vert”, don’t worry, Nicole isn’t cussing in French. “It’s something my mother used to say. It means green horse.”
—
Some stories are tough to write. Others are easy.
Put this tale in the later category. After all, it’s not every day I get to write about quite possibly the most amazing shot struck in the history of golf in our fair city of Rochester.
The lead actor in our drama is Bruce Dahlstrom, for the past 14 years owner and manager of the Hers clothing stores at the Galleria and Kahler locations in Rochester. Yes, he has fine taste in clothing. Oh, and he can also hit the heck out of a golf ball. I’m talking cannon shots. Stand next to this guy when he hits a driver and you’ll risk popping an eardrum.
The scene was the driving range at Northern Hills Golf Course, a breezy late June evening in 1994.
“The wind was blowing straight behind us,” said Dahlstrom. “Part way through our session we saw this deer out on the range. It was looking for a place to get out and decided to try and jump the fence. He got up and over, then went out into the field.”
Remember now, this was 1994. There was no four-lane Circle Drive running past Northern Hills like there is now. Just a rutted gravel road and then a corn field. The chain-link fence at the end of the range was the same then as today, approximately 300 yards from the tee. So the deer was standing some 350-plus yards from the tee.
Keep in mind also that this was way before today’s 400 cc driver heads and space-age graphite shafts. Dahlstrom was using a green shafted Langert Lizzard driver. The head on this club is ridiculously small compared to today’s drivers, about the size of a racquet ball.
“I thought I’d see how close I could get to him,” said Dahlstrom of the buck, a mere brown dot in the distance. “I launched one right at him, but of course you couldn’t see that far to see it land.”
Dahlstrom and wife Brenda finished their buckets as did friends Tom and Beth Behrens. The couples hopped in their cars and headed home. Before turning onto the gravel road, however, Behrens noticed something brown out in the corn field.
“The corn wasn’t real high and we could see it lying there,” said Behrens. “I honked the horn thinking I’d scare it away.” “The girls stayed in the cars and Tom and I went out there,” said Dahlstrom. “When we got with in 10 yards of the deer we saw this Pinnacle lying there. The deer was flat out dead.”
Who needs a silver bullet when you’ve got a yellow Pinnacle range ball?
“I’ve been telling this story for years,” said Behrens. “I was there and saw it with my own eyes.”
Racking up more traditional trophies for his long driving prowess was nothing new to Dahlstrom. Three times, 1989, 1990 and 1992, he advanced through the sectional round of the old Chrysler National Long Drive Championship, now renamed the Remax National Long Drive Contest.
“For the district competition I went to Dakota Dunes out near Sioux City, South Dakota,” said Dahlstrom. “This would be the same time as a Dakota Tour was going on, so there were a lot of people around. You got to hit five balls and had to keep them in the fairway to count. They had guys holding up the “Quiet Please” signs. Your heart was pounding and you could hear a pin drop.”
Talk about pressure. Five swings then hop in the car and the long drive home.
The long drive contests are a distant memory now for Dahlstrom. But if anything, his love of the game has only deepened over the years.
Want proof? There’s the 625 square foot green he had built in the backyard of the family’s home in northwest Rochester. Don’t forget the pair of sand traps also in the back yard that double as sand boxes for sons Kyle, age 8, and Kory, nearly 6.
Finally, there’s the “WRK2GLF” license plate on his canary yellow Ford Explorer Sport Trac truck.
“I took that one because “GOLFNUT” was taken.”
—
Betty Davis Eyes.
May 1981. This golf writer was playing in the biggest tournament of his young life, the Section 3A golf tournament at the Montevideo Golf Club. As our Benson High School station wagon approached the golf course Kim Carnes no. 1 hit “Betty Davis Eyes” came on the radio.
I played all 18 holes with that darn song running through my head.
“Her hair is Harlow gold
Her lips sweet surprise
Her hands are never cold
She’s got Betty Davis Eyes”
It’s still one of the most memorable rounds I ever played. The skinny little freshman wearing the blue velour sweater shot a 74 that day and qualified for the state tournament.
Couple things got me thinking about golf and music this past week. One was hearing an interview Angela Stanford gave on the Golf Channel after the fourth round of the U.S. Women’s Open. Stanford went on to finish second in the three-person playoff on Monday. In her interview, Stanford said she had a song from the Dixie Chicks new CD running through her head all week.
“She’ll turn her music on you
You won’t have to think twice
She’s pure as New York snow
She’s got Betty Davis eyes.”
The other news item that caught my eye was the death of singer Barry White. Only 58, White was the singer with the unbelievably low voice who cranked out R&B hits in the 1970’s.
But it was one of White’s songs that drove me nuts for years. The tune was the theme music for the old ABC-TV golf telecasts back in the 70’s and early 80’s. Think announcers Jim McKay and Dave Marr and the canary yellow ABC Sports blazers. If you are a golf nut, you’d recognize this tune in a heartbeat.
I loved the song. It was an instrumental piece with lots of sweeping strings and French horns and a cool beat. We all knew it as the golf song. My problem was I didn’t know the group that recorded it. And if I didn’t know who recorded the song, I couldn’t go out and buy the CD.
My salvation came while watching TV late one evening. On came one of those Time Life infomercials for a compilation of “1970’s Hits”. I heard a clip of my golf song. The scroll on the screen said “Love’s Theme” by Love Unlimited Orchestra. I grabbed a pen and jotted this info down on a scrap of paper.
A bit of research on the web and I found the Love Unlimited Orchestra was part of Barry White’s band. I knew nothing about Barry White except the low voice, but I ran out to Best Buy and bought myself the Barry White All-Time Greatest Hits CD. Song no. 1 on this CD is “Love’s Theme.”
Four minutes and eight seconds of golfer’s bliss.
One suggestion though: if you’re looking to implant a song in your head just before you hit the links, I’d go with a song that has words. Twice now I’ve popped in Barry’s CD as I approach the parking lot before a golf tournament. Both times my play hasn’t been up to par.
The strings and French horns are nice, but I think a golfer needs some silly lyrics to really make this thing work.
“And she’ll tease you
She’ll unease you
All the better just to please you
She’s precocious and she knows
Just what it takes to make a pro blush
She’s got Greta Garbo stand off sighs
She’s got Betty Davis eyes.”
—
Why is golf such a great game?
Because a complete unknown like 26-year old Ben Curtis from Ohio can win the British Open. Need major championship experience to win the big ones? Nope. This was Curtis’s first crack at a major. At least need to have won a few PGA Tour events first? Nope. Curtis hadn’t even registered a top ten finish in his young career.
The proverbial kid out of nowhere, Cinderella story.
Curtis, who learned to play the game on a little public course built by his grandfather, held off the likes of Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, Davis Love III, Sergio Garcia, Thomas Bjorn and Nick Faldo to become the “Champion Golfer of the Year.”
Why is golf such a great game?
Because a guy with a swing as goofy as Jim Furyk can win the U.S. Open. Imagine how many whispers and snickers he heard over the years from other golfers, parents, coaches and spectators about the needless loops in his swing. They are all believers now.
Why is golf such a great game?
Because of all the phenomenal young talent. Take 13-year old Michelle Wie from Hawaii. The “Big Wiesie”. She blasts her drives over 300 yards. This season she has already captured the U.S. Women’s Public Links Championship and competed successfully on the LPGA Tour. Image what she’ll do when the braces come off.
Why is golf such a great game?
Because the old guys can still play. How about 50-year old Craig Stadler winning on the Champions Tour last week and then winning the B.C. Open on the PGA Tour Sunday? What was that you shot the final round Craig, a 63? Not bad for a senior.
Then there’s Tom Watson. What a summer he’s had. The 53-year old led after the first round of the U.S. Open in June at Olympia Fields in Chicago, 21 years after his U.S. Open victory at Pebble Beach in 1982. Last week the five-time British Open champ was in the hunt for title no. six, finishing in the top 20 at Royal St. George’s. Thanks for the memories Tom, the old ones and the new ones.
Why is golf such a great game?
Because the girls can play with the guys. Annika Sorenstam’s historic play in the Colonial Tournament on the PGA Tour was a memorable week indeed. Though she missed the cut, the steely-nerved Swede made countless friends and many new golf fans through her determined, stylish play. You go girl.
Why is golf such a great game?
Because you never know when you’ll find the magic. Hilary Lunke was unknown before the recent U.S. Women’s Open. But the Minnesota native chipped and putted her way to the biggest title in women’s golf. Like Curtis, Lunke had never before won a professional event.
Or take Kenny Perry. The 40-something PGA Tour golfer had a nice quiet, successful career going. Journeyman all the way. Then wham, bam he wins The Colonial, The Memorial and The Milwaukee Open. For good measure he also finished third in the U.S. Open and top 10 at the British Open.
Canadian Mike Weir is another example. After a good start to his career, he slumped last year, never finishing in the top 10 of any tournament. This year? He’s won three times, including the Masters, making him the first Canadian and only the second left-hander to ever win a major. Nice going, eh.
Why is golf such a great game?
Because all things are possible. Ben Curtis scraped through PGA Tour qualifying school last fall by one slim stroke. Now look at him. After earning his Tour card Curtis returned to Ohio to show the card to his grandfather who lay sightless, dying of leukemia. “I can’t see it, but it looks beautiful,” his grandfather told him.
Golf is a great game.
—
Poor J.J.
I knew something was wrong when I saw my golf buddy Joel Johnson from Red Wing sitting at the scorer’s table with his head dropped low and his hands rubbing his temples late last Tuesday afternoon at Mendakota Country Club, site of the local U.S. Amateur qualifier.
36 holes on a scorching hot day over a difficult, testing golf course. 75 guys playing for only three spots. Johnson had just triple bogied his 35th hole of the day then missed a three-foot putt on the final green to fall into a playoff for the last qualifying spot.
Ouch.
Johnson went on to lose out in the playoff, along with Tom Lehman’s big brother Jim and some golf writer from Rochester. No trip to the famed Oakmont Golf Club in Pennsylvania for us. Just a long walk back to the clubhouse after the playoff. Toss the clubs in the trunk and head for home.
Why do we play this cruel game? Yea, I know my last column was on why golf is such a great game, but if you play this silly sport long enough it will break your heart. Doesn’t have to be a tournament lost. Golf can break your heart in any number of ways.
Take the e-mail I got from my sports editor this past week. Sorry boss, bet you didn’t know I’d go public with this info. But the pain is a perfect fit for my story.
Seems our esteemed editor was on the verge of finally breaking 40 for the first time for nine holes.
“I was on a roll on the back nine at Soldiers Field. I was 1-over with only no. 18 to play. In other words, a double bogey is good enough. My drive and layup were fine. I’m hitting a 5-iron from about 165-170 (yards) and feeling good.”
“Then on my downswing the thought pops into my head, “don’t hit it fat.” It was too late to stop the swing, but not too late for my hands and arms to act on the thought. I didn’t hit it fat, I hit it thin and lined it into the river.”
The end result was a 9 for a score of 41.
Ouch.
How to avoid going batty? The trick is to not focus on the disappointing end result, but on the positives that led up to it. So J.J., I say you played awesome golf for 34 holes. You were 2-under par for the day to that point. Boss, you were only 1-over par through eight holes. That’s terrific.
I’m reminded of sitting in the Mayo Civic Arena stands a couple winters ago, watching the St. Charles boys basketball team battle Kenyon-Wanamingo for the Section title. What a game. Both teams played brilliantly. Back and forth the lead went until St. Charles claimed a slim lead with just seconds remaining. Time left for a long pass and a quick shot.
So what happens? A miracle. Kenyon-Wanamingo’s point guard launches a 30-footer at the buzzer and cans it to win the game. The Knights went on the win the state championship. Did that make the St. Charles kids losers? Certainly not. All those kids were winners that night.
So boss, hang in there, you’ll break 40 soon enough.
And J.J.? Give me a call bud, the sun will be out tomorrow and it will be a good day to tee it up.
—
I want to be like Marv.
Play golf three or four times a week. Hit each tee shot right down the middle. Make every putt I look at. Yep, when I’m 81 years old, I want to be just like Marv Carlson of Rochester.
I met Marv last month on the first tee at Northern Hills on a sunny Saturday morning. A golf buddy of mine called me during the week wanting to get together and play. He called out to Northern and got us paired with another two-some. We stepped to the tee that morning and met Marv Carlson and his grandson Eric Davidge of Brainerd.
“I’ll play the whites, you guys play the blues,” said Marv. “That’s the difference between 81 and 31.”
Marv proceeded to impress with his very steady play. A slug of pars piled up on his card. On the par three 12th hole he knocked his tee shot within 10 feet of the cup. Not sure if his ball ever wandered into the rough. Don’t think it did. And his putting? Impressive. The first three holes Marv nonchalantly drained 10-footers. Right in the middle.
“I really don’t have a putting secret,” said Carlson. “I just eye the ball then putt.”
Not exactly like the first time Carlson held a putter in his hand, 16 summers ago at the Lake City Country Club while playing his first ever round of golf.
“I had retired and my brother Harold called and said now that I was retired I should consider coming up and golfing with him. I had never played before, didn’t know anything about golf. I’d never even picked up a club.”
So at 65 years of age Marv played his first round of golf with big brother Harold. What does he remember about that first round?
“The putting, I had no idea, each time it went way past the hole.”
Maybe not surprising considering Carlson had been laying brick for 35 years. A masonry foreman with Stocke & Olson Co., Carlson had a direct hand in building much of downtown Rochester since he moved to town back in 1948. Marv and wife Dorothy were married in 1950 and raised their two daughters in the house they built in 1954 on the “edge of town” on 19th Avenue NE.
Marv continued to drive to Lake City for a couple seasons to play golf with Harold, then began to tee it up more and more here in Rochester. For the past dozen years or so Carlson would play five times a week, Monday through Friday, mostly at Soldiers Field, but also at Northern Hills and Eastwood. His regular foursome includes Gordon Vicker, Frank Wicklein and Norman Kurth.
This year Carlson is slowing down a bit, playing just three or four times per week and occasionly taking a golf cart. Up until this season he was a faithful walker of the links.
What about the game clicked that turned a retired brick layer into an avid golfer? “One thing I enjoyed about it was that it got me out of the house,” said Carlson. “I didn’t want to be a couch potato after I retired.”
“I also like it for the exercise and the challenge. There’s always something to work on, something to try and get better at.”
So there were Carlson and the boys this past Monday out at Eastwood playing 18 holes. Heat index of 100-plus. Working on their games, playing golf, having fun.
Yep, I want to be like Marv.
These stories originally appeared in the Rochester Post-Bulletin. Reprinted with permission.
