Freddy’s Fairway Thoughts

Jim Howard (right) retired recently after 35 years as Director of Golf at the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club in Ponte Vedra Beach and he was honored last month at the Jacksonville Area's Golf Association meeting. He's here with PV member and former JAGA President Adair Roberts.

A development in our area has received a lot of publicity lately because of football. It’s called Glen Kernan and it’s the new home of the new Jaguar coach, Urban Meyer, and his favorite player, Tim Tebow. Both names should be familiar to you, even if you’re a casual football fan, but Glen Kernan might be unknown. That’s the way the developer, George Hodges Jr., wanted it. It’s about halfway from downtown Jacksonville to the beach and runs along the major artery called Butler Boulevard. But you can’t see it because of a big berm and it’s hard to find the entrance. The only real indicator is that something is there is the two Butler exits flanking it lead to Hodges Blvd. and Kernan Road. (Hodges is obvious; Kernan is the first name of Hodges’ wife.) The land used to seem next to useless, mostly mined out by the phosphate industry. Hodges’ father bought it up and sat on it, and then scored when he and some pals manipulated politically to get the University of North Florida there. Development followed, and George Jr. built his dream. The main entrance road has one small sign, just a bit bigger than Seminole’s. The road leads through another development and you can get lost getting to the guard gate. Once in, you see a lot of golf course and big homes set way back. The clubhouse is understated but near-perfect. The range is big, the service as you’d expect. The first tee is almost always wide open. It’s almost like they don’t want people around. The residents like their privacy and they get it. There are a lot of doctors from the nearby Mayo Clinic. There are Jaguar players. CEOs. You get the idea. There are many like it in Florida. Oh, as of last week, there were no homes for sale.

You have to go way back to remember Don Veller, a good guy who remarkably coached the men’s team at Florida State on three occasions: 1952-57, 1967-69 and 1973-82. FSU golf is big-league now (Brooks Koepka, Daniel Berger, etc.) but back then he toiled in the shadow of thenpowerhouse Florida (what happened to them?) and were under a somnolent athletic department (this was before Bobby Bowden), but he put his team in the NCAA Championship nine times in those 16 years. FSU honored him: the Don Veller Golf Course. (It’s now called Seminole Legacy Club after a Nicklaus redesign.) Veller also wrote a column for the Tallahassee Democrat and it was an outlet for another love: poetry. Don once sent me his collection and, though he is long gone, the rhymes remain with us. Here are a few: But my pro just ain’t that nice. I call my ball a fade: He says the thing’s a slice.”

“There was this dentist named Keys, Whose golf drove him nuts by degrees. He was heard to mutter, as he stood over his putter, ‘Open a little wider, please.’”

“A member of this club Was just a chronic cheat. He quickly takes a gimme From as far as seven feet. One day he made a hole-in-one fter years of trying hard. But he couldn’t break his habit, Wrote a zero on his card.”

The term “best-kept secret” is usually part of a advertisement and you have to wonder why. If the product — often a resort — is a best-kept secret, isn’t it time to hire another public relations and advertising firm? Why would anything that wants business be proud of being a “secret?” That brings us to the Walker Cup. They don’t say it’s a “bestkept secret” but it is. In many ways, it is one of the best sporting events in the world, but the USGA keeps it hidden in the back room along with things like the Women’s Four-Ball. Why should it get more attention? Many reasons: attractive young participants, international rivalry, great venues (Seminole this year, then comes St. Andrew’s and Cypress Point.) But it get little attention. It’s even hard to figure out the scoring when you go to the USGA website. Another good project for new Commissioner Michael Whan.

Every private club has an employee who has a) been there a long time and b) knows more than he/she should. At Biltmore Forest, the lovely club just outside of Asheville, N.C., the employee was pro shop attendant Sheila Fender. For 46 years! Sheila’s “retirement” came after a dustup over employee hours. It was all hushed up but apparently her situation got tangled up with that of an employee who disputed his compensation and made a legal fuss about it. Out she went … but she left a kiss behind. She wrote a book of her recollections, and the title tells it all: Golf Shop Sheila: The Book Some People Did Not Want Printed.

The Moore-Myers Childrens Fund works with The First Tee in Jacksonville to bring minority children to golf. The Fund held its annual fundraising tournament last month at Queen's Harbour and drew 120 participants. Here are the Moore-Myers Children’s Fund “Eagles” who played in the tournament: Nicholas Flowers, Mahogany Taylor, Morgan Wilkerson, Larry Winters, Ben Moran, Tyson Brown, Kaitlyn Lavant, Andrew Davis, Josiah Foster, Leighmar Wilson, Kamari Smith, Elijah Winters and Mahalia Dartiguenave.