Local notes: Pugh still a regular at ‘fun’ tournament
Once upon a time, Fred Pugh spied an ad touting this new-fangled handicap golf tournament that promised to attract players from all over to the South Carolina Grand Strand.
He thought, “That sounds like fun,” and signed up.
He returned the next year and the next, and pretty soon participation took a permanent place on his calendar. Thirty-three years later, the event that developed into the Myrtle Beach World Handicap Championship still fits his original definition – “fun.”
Pugh will tee off again Monday, one of seven who have competed in every tournament. His game isn’t the same. The years have taken a toll and turned him into maybe a once-a-month golfer.
The tournament isn’t the same, either. The competition that fulfilled its promise to bring participants from all over has ballooned from the original 684 in 1984 to more than 3,400 this year. Handicaps have evolved from basically an honor system to today’s stringent checks, and the system works.
Players with handicaps ranging from 3 to 34 have won the title. Celebrities such as Jeff Gordon have attended, and Roger Clemens, who competed three times, is among the more than 100,000 who have played through the years.
“I didn’t know a soul that first year,” said Pugh, a semi-retired manufacturer’s representative who lives in Columbia and plays a wicked alto saxophone. “That’s changed; over the years, I have made some great friends.”
He can spin some great yarns, too – like the day he took a 17 on a par-4 hole at Meadowlands, or the time the ultimate sandbagger shot a 3-over 75 on now-defunct Waterway Hills, a rugged Robert Trent Jones Sr. design, while playing in the flight reserved for those with handicaps of at least 18.
On the former, Pugh laid up short of the pond, then hit four balls in the water in a Tin Cup moment before playing around the hazard. On the latter, a fist fight would not have been surprising.
“To get to Waterway Hills, you had to take a gondola over the Intracoastal Waterway,” Pugh said. “We’re coming back after the round and one guy wanted to know who shot the 75, knowing full well an 18-handicap could never do that. Another fellow said, ‘I did.’ The first guy said, ‘I ought to throw you and your clubs off this gondola and into the Waterway.’
“That night at the 19th hole (the massive post-round party at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center,) tournament officials called the guy who shot 75 up to the stage for recognition, then said, ‘You’re disqualified.’ It turned out he had two handicap cards.”
Pugh, a 1960 Dreher High graduate and a member of the first graduating class at Richland (now Midlands) Tech, has never threatened to win his flight. He likes to remember being tied for sixth after two rounds one year, then finishing 41st.
“Might have been the year I had that 17,” he said and laughed.
He’s more accomplished with his alto sax than with his golf clubs. A member of the Swingin’ Medallions, he remembers cutting his Friday afternoon classes at Dreher to make the trip to the beach to play at the Pawleys Pavilion. And he still uses his musical gift, playing with and managing the Original Five Points Wild Irish Band.
This week, though, he is where he has been this time every year since 1984. He will be playing Pine Lakes, Indian Wells, Tidewater and River Oaks. Scores will not matter so much; camaraderie will.
“When I get to the point where I can’t play,” he said, “I’ll be here as a volunteer.”
Of course he will.
Chip shots
Brothers David and Robert Dargan (Columbia) captured the SCGA Mid-Amateur Four-Ball title at Camden CC. The duo won the State Lefty-Righty title in June. … Burke Cromer, assistant pro at the Spur at Northwoods, teamed with former Clemson golfer Tanner Ervin, an executive with the club’s parent company, to win the Carolinas PGA’s Pro-Official title at Bulls Bay GC. …Robert Dargan (Columbia), Todd White (Spartanburg) and Todd Hendley (Greer) will represent South Carolina in the USGA’s Men’s State Team Championship next month in Birmingham, Ala. … The Columbia duo of Ken Taylor and Leigh Coulter captured the title in the senior division of the CGA’s Mixed Team Championship at Pinehurst. Former Furman players Michael Borton (Winston-Salem, N.C.) and Aubrie Street (Greenville) took the open title for the second straight year. …Adam Hart (Blythewood/Francis Marion) tied for 63rd in last week’s Wyndham Classic in Greensboro. Hart earned his spot in the PGA Tour event in Monday qualifying. Earlier this year, he played his way into the PGA Tour’s Barbasol tourney in Alabama and missed the cut.