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; the gallery rope against the chest of Doug Sanders’ girlfriend; TV cameras; Arnie. While leaning on a green metal pipe fence against which scores of golf bags also leaned, and because no one told me I couldn’t, I hefted the clubs of the gods. It awed teenaged me to make a few strokes with Billy Casper’s putter. I expected Julius Boros’s irons to be as heavy as anvils, so languid was his swing and so forceful were his shots, but Julie’s clubs weighed about the same as mine. Arnold Palmer’s driver—Thor’s hammer– was a heavily modified Hogan.
Then, there was that golf course.
Aurora Country Club allowed a few good scores that week, and its 6600 yards weren’t too many even back then, but for the most part it shrugged off the best efforts of the best golfers in the world. Its defense, I guess, was the same thing that made it so much fun to play and to caddie on: Aurora was as varied as the images in a kaleidoscope. You had to slug it on one hole, and caress it on the next. You had to fade it off the tee on two, then draw the ball on three…and on and on like that all day. Credit goes to its very capable designer, a chap named Bert Way, whose resume included Firestone South—and to the land. Aurora opened in 1925. The old architects got all the good sites.
Arnie won that year at Aurora. A college golf teammate, Herbert Page, got a golf shop job there one summer a few years later, so I got to play ACC a few times…The decades passed. The economy slumped in Northeast Ohio, and the golf industry cratered everywhere in the world except China. Would Aurora join the ranks of decommissioned American courses? No, thank goodness. In 2009, a new owner rebranded the lush 220 acres: welcome to Aurora Golf Club, open to the public.
I reacquainted with Aurora last year after a very long absence. On a warm fall day, the leaves on the deciduous trees popped against the lush green background. Perhaps the beauty overwhelmed me; I played like a monkey on crack. But there was real pleasure in seeing the place again, and in hanging with its estimable head pro, Jim Beers, and in having my first-ever meal in the clubhouse. Arnie’s 19th Hole Bar and Grill has an impressive menu for a daily fee course. It also has wine by the glass or the bottle and a giant window with a view of the 18th hole. I drank a bit of the one and looked through the other and imagined 17-year-old me with a giant staff bag on my back.
You may feel sheepish, like you’re stealing, when you pay Aurora’s $49 green fee. It’s not a feeling you get at Pebble Beach, the second best daily fee I’ve played lately. Pebble Beach charges $495. I’d rather play Aurora.