Curt Sampson's Blog, page 2

Reunion of Enemies at the PGA Championship

As the PGA Championship comes to the South Carolina coast next week, we can’t help looking back to Kiawah Island’s first brush with fame. The Ocean Course at Kiawah was literally built for the very eagerly awaited 1991 Ryder Cup, an odd, unprecedented circumstance: when they raised the flags and played [...]

La Toretta

In the lake region an hour’s drive north of Houston, in the town of Montgomery, resides a resort called La Torretta. It’s got a new hotel, a conference center, tennis courts, an aqua park for the kids, and a golf course. Of its primary asset, I cannot comment. La Torretta is Italian for “the tower,” [...]

Golf’s First Yogi

The US Open champ should be creaky at age 90, but he’s not. Two things keep Jack Fleck younger than his years. The first of these occurred very recently. In June, the US Open champion of 1955 returned to the Olympic Club in San Francisco, the site of his big win [...]

Naked Mexican Golfers, part dos

On a cliff in a thatched roof bungalow 700 feet above a turquoise river in primeval Mexico, Gilbert Freeman serenaded the night with Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd, and some Sinatra-sounding guy with clarinets and a string section. The music bounced off the soft roar of the Rio Gallinas emptying into the Rio Santa [...]

Steak in the Afternoon, part uno

Beef tongue taco—part uno. Recently we found ourselves in the center of Mexico on Highway 57 just north of San Luis Potosi—two days after two American DEA agents were shot (one killed) on Highway 57 just south of San Luis Potosi. They were in a big black Chevy SUV with tinted windows. We were in [...]

Criminal Trespass at the British Open

I tried on the prima ballerina’s tutu before her final scene in Swan Lake. I kicked a few field goals on the Super Bowl turf before the before the teams came out of the locker room. I ran the bases at Fenway Park before Game Seven of the World Series… Finding the right metaphor for [...]

The Way Dave Marr Smoked a Cigarette

While researching a book a on the ’91 Ryder Cup, I paused today to consider the greatest RC team of all time—the 1981 US squad. And I paused a while longer to recall the captain of that team, Dave Marr. Marr was part of a continuum of Texans who led our side in the biennial [...]

Dry Run to La Cantera

GOD PLS SEND RAIN The message on the portable marquee outside a Hill Country church could have been speaking for our entire drought-stricken state. Not that I picture God as a voice in the drive-through at a cosmic fast food restaurant. “This is God, may I take your order? Rain…a meaningful relationship with a human [...]

The Old American

What’s Old is New Again! Some joker brought a giant thermometer to our game at Old American Golf Club last week. As the needle nosed toward 115, James Monroe began to pant after the exertion of pressing the accelerator pedal on his cart, and Dan Strimple cut back on the twitches and tics in his [...]

Aurora Golf Club

Nosing Out Pebble Beach In the days before Tour players had their own caddies, they took potluck with loopers recruited from nearby clubs. Thus I got a bag in a couple of Cleveland Opens played back in the Vietnam War era. I saw things that popped in my teenage head like fireworks: galleries; gallery ropes; [...]