The Amazing Tale of Oscar W. Bootosh and the Redneck Rota
A Tribute to Golf Friendship and Good Country Cookin' (with apologies to P.G. Wodehouse and James Beard)
Golf, as we all know, is a game that forever surprises.
For an aging golfer whose playing index is sliding downhill like a drunk in a mudslide is there anything more welcome than the unexpected discovery of new golf pal who gets the competitive juices flowing again?
Say hello, friends, to Oscar Willard Bootosh, late-in-life proof that age brings its own form of compensation (to mangle the timeless words of Ralph Waldo Emerson) to those who truly revere the game in all it imperfect manifestations.
OWB, as he prefers to be called, is not his real name. But Sandy Shelton – which is – says it’s okay to share his identity with a small circle of discreet golfers like you because for more than two decades he served as the top rules official at Pinehurst’s historic North and South Amateur Championship as well as a tournament official who set up several national intercollegiate championship courses.
Along the way, perhaps inevitable for a veteran enforcer of the rules, Oscar earned the wrath of a promising amateur hothead who blamed him for an untimely infraction that cost the lad a championship. The strapping youth subsequently swore a blood oath to part OWB’s hair (what little of it remains) with a 60-degree sand wedge if he ever encountered the cold-hearted SOB again.
In truth, Oscar’s anything but cold-hearted. He may be a gentleman of diminished follicles but is full of Southern charm and a roguish sense of humor, which he proved the summer morning we met three years ago on the steps of the old Episcopal church my wife and I had recently joined. As Senior Warden of aptly named St Andrews Church, OWB was cheerfully greeting parishioners as he handed out service bulletins and gentle barbs.
“I know who you are,” he greeted me warmly. “You’re the guy who writes the golf books.”
“Not all of them,” I pointed out. “I assume you play golf?”
He winked and smiled.
“Do fat babies fart?”
As a true son of the South familiar with quaint Southern phrasings, this existential question has never crossed my mind.
After church – the gifted lady rector’s aptly timed sermon was titled “Life’s Moments of Unexpected Rebirth” -- we made an afternoon date to meet at a fine public course east of town.
“How about if I pick you up? We’ll have lunch first,” Oscar graciously offered. “I know a roadside joint out in the country that serves the kind of Southern cookin’ that will make you slap your mama.”
With or without a mama to slap (or, more likely in my case, to be slapped by) how could I possibly say no to that?
The place turned out to be as good as advertised, the kind of old-fashioned roadside diner where the waitress is named “Tammy” and calls you Darlin’ as she as touts homemade “Pee-can” pie for dessert. Over a monumental lunch that left me considering a nap, I was intrigued to learn more about OWB’s impressive credentials as a former rules man and major collegiate tournament set-up official. Perhaps more impressive than his encyclopedic knowledge of the baffling rules of golf, however, was his geographical awareness of state’s hidden backroad lunch joints that soon became part of our once-a-week afternoon golf matches.
Though I am Oscar’s senior by almost two years, we discovered that our golf games are statistically similar, nearly identical USGA handicap indexes of 10.2 and 10.5 respectively. This meant that our friendly matches would be straight up affairs with no strokes given or expected.
In his youth, I learned, OWB grew up to be a scratch player at the premier country club in town, later an anchor on his private high school golf team in Virginia before matriculating to Hampden-Sydney College, the oldest privately chartered institution in the Southern United States, famed for producing brilliant civil engineers, silver-tongued politicians, and gents who can golf their balls and hold their liquor.
I secretly envied his vita. Mine was nowhere near as interesting. I grew up to become a decent single-digit player on a semi-public golf course in town, then went off to a major state university where I spent most of my time studying English literature, running the school newspaper, and skipping classes to play golf on a funky golf course built by big-bellied tobacco farmers. On an early trajectory to become a southern version of Woodward or Bernstein, I veered dangerously off the professional path to become, instead, a golf writer. My late journalism professor never quite forgave me.
Perhaps it was my natural love of public courses and smalltown municipal layouts that prompted me to propose to OWB that we play a weekly rotation of public and semi-public golf clubs and courses scattered in the countryside around us.
“Wonderful idea,” agreed the Sage of Hampden-Sydney. “A weekly tour of our rural southern golfing heritage.”
“A redneck rota,” I proposed, pointing out that since we both hail from people of the southern soil (in my case sweet potato farmers and jackleg preachers) this would be a respectful recognition of our antecedents who traditionally worked the land, produced the Earth’s bounty, and achieved gloriously suntanned necks in the process. No less than Thomas Jefferson (great president, pathetic putter) hailed farmers as “the chosen people of God.”
“What shall we play for?” Oscar W. casually inquired on the first tee of our first match, a short four-par with a kidney shaped pond on the right.
“How about one million dollars per round?” I proposed in jest, fearing that otherwise my lunch money for the week might vanish in no time flat.
“Better idea,” OWB came back smoothly. “How ‘bout we play for a million Confederate dollars per round? It’s a dead currency. That way, nobody loses much.”
He won the coin flip and swatted a lovely little fade to the center of the fairway with a seasoned golf swing that recalled the Merry Mex in his prime.
I teed up and drove my ball straight into the pond.
“Oh, too bad,” Oscar sympathized, sounding genuinely sympathetic. “Have another go – a free lunch ball.”
My mulligan found the heart of the fairway, and we halved the hole.
In fact, we halved every hole until the 18th where we both took bogeys and shook hands like a pair of dueling gents whose pistols missed in both directions.
“This is a sign from the golf gods,” mused Oscar. “Must do it again next week.”
Best of all, as a pair of former single-handicap players approaching the shoals of complete golfing ineptitude, we found that our diminished senior games were not only remarkably competitive, but also source of constant laughter, creative swearing, the occasional blue joke, and philosophical discussions of the state of the world and our far-flung children – all of it fueled by the unbridled motivation to beat the stuffing out of each other at our favorite game.
The moral being, what an abiding pleasure it is to find a great new golf pal in the shadow of one’s pre-dotage years, living proof that the joy of playing golf is really about who you choose to play with – and against.
As I write, we have waged links warfare on at least 40-plus golf courses around the region, hidden small town gems built by long-forgotten architects where the welcome is Jimmy Dean-genuine, the golf is unfailingly fine, and the mid-week green fees are as easy to digest as a mess of slow-cooked collards and a bowl of homemade ‘nanner puddin’.
True, having gone through a recent rough patch with my chipping, I’m presently twelve million down in Confederate dollars to my gracious and learned redneck friend.
Moreover, the good news according to Oscar, who enjoys a dizzying head for numbers, is that twelve million in Confederate money amounts to less than three bucks in today’s world, or roughly one-third of a sleeve of new Titleist golf balls.
Frankly, I can live with being down by the cost of a lone new Pro-VI.
Best of all, our unexpected friendship reminds me that golf is a game of a lifetime in which unexpected friendships can flourish regardless of who wins or loses the match.
That said, as another season dawns, the winning arrow seems to be sweetly tilting in my direction.
Just last week I vanquished OWB resoundingly at a charming rustic layout in the hill country just over the Virginia line, designer unknown, probably for good reason. According to the friendly gal in the pro shop, however, his kin were best known for the excellent moonshine they produced in the woods somewhere off the back nine. Talk about the spirit of the game.
Next week, to officially herald a new competitive season, were heading off to play Southern Hills.
Not the famous one out in Oklahoma, mind you, that has hosted three U.S. Opens and five PGA Championships. That one is way too high cotton for our humble tastes and beggared wallets.
Our Southern Hills is a rustic hidden gem tucked way up yonder the Blue Ridge hills, reportedly with views to die for. Maybe more importantly, Oscar knows a hotdog stand on the way there that’s been around since the War of 1812.
Does life get better than a golf pal who makes you laugh and a couple hotdogs all the way?
I seriously doubt it.
Especially if I can beat the sumbitch like Mr. Emerson’s doormat.