Frank's Place: A rare peek into Pine Valley's wonder
Pine Valley, which emerges from the shrouding mists just once a year, is a Brigadoon in the Barrens.
Pine Valley, which emerges from the shrouding mists just once a year, is a Brigadoon in the Barrens.
Like that mythical Scottish village, the world's top-rated and most exclusive golf course is a locale almost exclusively of the imagination. Most of us will never see it, never get beyond the evergreen woods and hidebound tradition, both equally thick, that shield the mysterious course near Clementon, N.J., from reality.
The club's elite membership - fewer than 1,000 golfers from all around the world - has access, of course. As do privileged guests. But to everyone else, Pine Valley reveals itself just once annually, a Sunday in September, when a limited crowd is admitted for the final day of Crump Cup competition.
There have been a few exceptions in its 103 years, the most notable being the Walker Cups played there in 1936 and 1985.
Recently, though, while mindlessly channel-surfing during the holiday season, I stumbled upon another occasion, long since forgotten, when the curious world got a glimpse of Pine Valley.
In 1962, the early days of Shell's Wonderful World of Golf, the long-running TV series wrangled permission from Pine Valley to film an episode there, a match between two future Hall of Famers, Byron Nelson and Gene Littler.
Apparently, that permission didn't come easily. According to the book, Golf Anecdotes: From the Links of Scotland to Tiger Woods, it took three days for the show's producer, non-golfer Fred Raphael, to sell the idea to the club's persnickety president, John Arthur Brown.
Whatever it was that convinced Brown - and it likely was the presence of the gentlemanly Nelson and Raphael's promise to shoot the episode in color - this hour-long exposure remains the best, longest and only look most of us are likely to get.
What we view in the opening aerial shot is Pine Valley's essence - a sea of sand and pines interrupted sporadically by green islands of fairways and greens. At most great courses, the trouble is subtle. Here it's in your face, and in your head, on every shot.
The geography, while strikingly beautiful, is also frightening. Stray a foot or two from your target, and all ye must abandon hope. As the televised match makes clear, there are no safe misses at Pine Valley.
"You must drive the ball very straight," Nelson said in what soon proved to be a massive understatement. "Otherwise you won't have a chance here."
Littler, in his prime at 30 and at the time the defending U.S. Open champion, found out quickly that he was no match for Pine Valley.
He would be 7-over after nine holes, 8-over through 12.
Littler took a seven on the par-3, 225-yard fifth, despite a tee shot that hit on the green. Struck just a fraction too hard, the ball bounded off and into a thicket behind. A constricted swing from a sandy lie advanced his ball three feet. The next shot landed in a tiny but deep greenside bunker. Blasting out, his ball came to rest in a tangle of matted rough. He finally reached the green with his fifth shot and two putted for a quadruple-bogey.
"This course," Littler had said prophetically in a prematch interview with narrator Gene Sarazen, "is too tough for me."
Sarazen, in a blazer, tie and trademark knickers, was stiff and formal but reverential in describing Pine Valley. He called it "the world's toughest golf course" and a place with "an abundance of beauty and an abundance of trouble."
Both aspects were apparent in the broadcast, which the Golf Channel sporadically resurrects.
The geography Pine Valley occupies is surprisingly hilly and teeming with tall pines, thick shrubs and swaying hedge. There are visually appealing elevation shifts on virtually every hole, and water appears on a few.
But its most striking characteristic, by far, is the sand. It's everywhere. Between tees and fairways. Between tees and greens. It runs along the entire lengths of some fairways, bisects others. It fills the deep, threatening bunkers that guard each green.
Some of the sand hazards bear deservedly foreboding names, such as Hell's Half Acre and the Devil's Hole, names no doubt earned through the misery of generations of golfers.
Each Pine Valley hole, Sarazen notes in dialog scripted for him by famed golf writer Herbert Warren Wind, contains "the usual sandy wasteland."
In 1962, the level of course manicuring was nowhere near as fastidious as today. Weeds can be seen sprouting up sporadically throughout the waste areas and along the edges of roughs. Some fairways are pocked by faded brown spots.
In addition to displaying a lot about itself, Pine Valley circa 1962 revealed much that has changed in the game. Players could decide not to remove the pin while putting. The greens, though mammoth, were slow rolling. The drivers were minuscule. And the distances players could expect from their clubs were laughably short by today's standards.
Both men, for example, hit 8-irons on the 135-yard 10th. The 399-yard 11th, a 3-wood and gap wedge in 2016, required a driver and 5-iron. And on the 603-yard 15th, Littler hit a driver and 3-wood and still was 160 yards short.
Nelson, 50, at the time, won by four shots. Littler could only shake his head in dumbstruck misery when Sarazen sought a postmatch opinion.
We've never gotten another long look at Pine Valley. The mystery created by its long absence from public view undoubtedly has added to the course's allure and lofty ranking.
That long-ago episode from a now-defunct TV show was just Golf Channel filler during the tournament-less Christmas holidays. But it was a welcome gift.
We're all fascinated by the unattainable.
On a cold December night, that fetching, unexpected peek at something that until that moment I'd only admired from afar temporarily sated my curiosity.
But, like a round that ends with a birdie, it left me wanting more.
@philafitz