STROKE AND DISTANCE

Dear readers, this story came to us the way the best ones do. Secondhand, over a drink, from a guy who swore he knew a guy. We tried to find someone to confirm it, then we tried to find someone to deny it. Nobody would do either, so we'll just tell it as we heard it.

The club shall remain nameless. The location was "somewhere back east" and the year was sometime in the nineties. A time when golf carts still ran on gas, locker rooms still had ashtrays and a handful of clubs in this country still strongly believed that a woman on the property was a threat to the integrity of the game. A few still do. We will not be naming those either.

It was a weekday. Men's grill, a little after one. A member we'll call Mr. Whitcomb, a retired businessman with a seven handicap and a standing order for a patty melt, mentioned to the table that he smelled burning toast. Nobody thought anything of it.

A minute later he set down his iced tea and found that his right hand would not pick it back up. The right side of his face had gone slack. His sentence about the greens committee came out in the wrong order.

To the club's credit, somebody called 911 quickly. It was the last thing that happened quickly.

The ambulance arrived at the front gate with a crew of three. Two EMTs and a paramedic. The EMTs were men. The paramedic was a woman, and she was the senior medical authority on the rig.

The gate attendant, a courteous man named Gus who had worked the booth for nineteen years, stepped out, looked inside and apologized. He was very sorry. Only two of them would be permitted to enter the property.

The paramedic was out of the ambulance before he finished. She told him what a stroke was. She told him what the next twenty minutes meant for the man inside. She told him she was the paramedic on that rig, and then she told him to open the gate to all of them. She did not say please.

Gus listened to all of it. When she was done, he touched the brim of his cap.

"I'm sorry, ma'am. It's forbidden."

The assistant manager arrived at a jog, heard the situation and agreed with Gus. He was sorry too. She would not be allowed to enter the property.

Her partners looked at her. She looked at the clubhouse, a quarter mile up the hill. Then she pulled the heavy kit off the rig, set it on the asphalt and told them to go.

So the two EMTs headed up the drive under the sycamores without her.

They came through the foyer with the gurney at a pace the house committee would later call brisk. Mr. Whitcomb went on. Straps, blanket, a hand on the shoulder. A gentleman by the window asked them to mind the wainscoting. They did. He thanked them.

Back out past the portraits of past presidents. Down the drive with the lights going. Out the gate, which Gus raised for them and lowered again behind them.

Our source puts the whole round trip at around ten minutes.

Paramedics have a phrase for strokes: time is brain. Mr. Whitcomb was spending his being transported to the front gate.

She was on him before the wheels stopped. Kit open, line in, questions fired at the two EMTs, who answered before she finished asking. A few members had wandered down the drive to watch, stopping at the gate like a gallery behind the ropes at eighteen.

As they loaded him, Mr. Whitcomb mumbled something that might have been an apology. The only word anyone could make out was "bylaws."

Then the doors shut, the siren went and the members walked back up to finish lunch. Whitcomb's patty melt was still on the table, and there was no smell of burning toast.

Mr. Whitcomb lived. He came back and he played again, but the seven handicap was gone. For the rest of his playing days he carried a fourteen and the private opinion that if that young woman had been let through the gate, he'd still be a single digit.

Despite this opinion, he never lobbied for a rule change.

As our source tells it, the board took the matter up at its next meeting. Staff were commended for handling a difficult situation in full accordance with club policy. Gus got an employee recognition award and the board approved a small paved area just outside the front gate, with good lighting and a proper bench.

It was for the next one. So she'd have somewhere to wait.

At Grey Rock Golf Club in Austin, Texas, a beverage cart was stolen from the property and the club turned to Facebook for help finding it.

According to an update on the post, the teenage culprits were located and the cart was returned.

No word on whether the alcohol made it back too.

This inaugural Club Nugget of the Week was submitted by a reader.

Have a great “nugget” that isn’t quite a CCC story, but is still too good not to share? Submit it here!

How many tries before Mr. Tolliver finally let you in?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Nailed it on the first try
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ It took me 2–3 tries
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ It got embarrassing
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ I’m still in New Mexico

Nice work readers! Looks like a lot of you made it on the first try - or at least you claim you did. Either way, the lesson here is that when it comes to the most coveted invites in golf, the saying “ask and ye shall recieve” doesn’t really apply!

Congrats to our comment contest winner Charles D. who said it best - “Tolliver is clearly a blowhard but ya gotta play the game to play Augusta!” Amen (corner) to that! For taking the time to vote and comment, Charles will be recieving a sleeve of LA GOLF balls from us!