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MARY MOAN

MARY MOAN
Head coach, Women’s Golf Team
Interviewed on November 30, 2004

Interview (57 mins)

Mary Moan first learned golf from her family in Far Hills, NJ . She played for four years at Princeton, becoming the senior captain and first Ivy League individual champion in 1997, as well as achieving All-American status (there are only two such women in the history of the Ivy League). She worked for one year within the administration of the USGA. She was the assistant coach of the woman’s team at U. Florida, where she received her Masters degree in sports management. 2004-5 was her fifth year as head coach here. She is the only full time women’s golf coach in the league and the only one who is female. The 2004-2005 team has members from all over the USA, including Hawaii, Washington, New Mexico, Florida, Pennsylvania and Illinois. In 2004 she won both Connecticut woman’s amateur tournaments (medal and match play), She has taken a leave from her coaching position to turn pro and play the Futures Tour, hoping to qualify for the LPGA.

HARRY MEUSEL

HARRY MEUSEL
Course Superintendent, 1951-93 
Interviewed on September 14, 2005

Interview (1 hr 24 mins)

Harry’s neighbor, John Czenkus, gave him the 1924-26 construction photographs that he took (he is the construction worker in the photo) which are now on display in the clubhouse.

Harry grew up in Hamden and as a youth, Harry caddied at the New Haven Country Club, playing in the Monday caddy tournaments. Drafted in World war II, he served as a German translator for POWs. He met a general from New Hampshire who sent him to Rutgers University to learn skills so that he could maintain the golf course at Fort Dix in New Jersey. After the war, he went to the University of Massachusetts on GI bill to study horticulture. He interviewed at Race Brook Country Club, Woodbridge CC, and Yale for a job of superintendent. He took the Yale position because course was “unreal”. Hired by Bill Perkins, business managed of Athletic Dept. (he had maintained the course as superintendent of the athletic field crews from 1926-45, when he hired Tony Longo) and charged with making “our unique course the most beautiful golf course in the world”. Perkins argued with Harry about proper fertilizer blend of nitrogen, phosphorus and potash. Harry used 24/10/12 and Perkins had used 8/6/2 . Harry called that a “farmer’s blend” and not proper for the course. Harry won the argument; “use any damn thing you want” said Perkins, and he was dead within the year from a heart attach. To respond to the Perkins charge, Harry transplanted mountain laurel from below and behind the 9 th green all over the course (including the cliff in front of 13 th tee by dangling workers by ropes), planted dogwoods along fairways, 1000’s of daffodil bulbs, etc.

When he arrived maintenance “barn” had no electricity, was heated by a wood stove, it burned down in 1966. The clubhouse was a cabin-style building in the present location; one room with nails on walls for clothes, electricity by a generator, and a hot dog stand in the parking lot area. Crew was 2 in winter & 17 in summer. Greens were cut by hand with push mower, fairways every other day and rough once a year. Only greens were watered. Wells below 9 th pumped water to tower near WC Parkway behind 7 th green, then by gravity through above ground cast iron pipes to no more than 5 greens per night, starting with the highest i.e. 10 & 12. Fairways were only green until July using fertilizer and a lot of lime (learned from lime lines at football field etc. kept grass green). Dogwoods that he planted along many fairways have died. Pines that he planted for “protection from stray balls” have been cut down.

He carried out a number of course changes to “make the course more pleasurable… for the average golfer.” He filled the bunkers on holes two, ten, (across road from tee 12, 17,18 ( highest hill). He also built up the green on hole three, cut down the right side of the second green, covered 17’s cliff with loam by dredging the pond and lowered the right side of cliff by three feet.

When he arrived, Joe “Porky” Sullivan was the golf pro and coach, as well as “the only coach he ever saw giving lessons on the course to team players.” He was often behind the fourth green “pitching ball after ball.”

Perkins died just a year after Harry was hired, so Widdy Neal became his business manager for the remainder of Harry’s term. Widdy not interested in beauty, just the playability of the course. Because money was tight, “the university did not understand what they had here.” It wasn’t until the Beinecke gift in 1969-70? that the fairways were finally irrigated.

His daughter carved stumps around the course; the only one left is a German leprechaun to the right of the fourteenth fairway which she did for his birthday.

He saw Gary Player and Ken Venturi play here, though the best he has seen is Bill Lee.

The original greens were built by piling up rocks taken from fairway areas and covering them with layers of sand and swamp muck.

REVEREND WILLIAM LEE

REVEREND WILLIAM LEE
Interviewed on November 1, 2004

Interview (35 mins)

Bill Lee is the three-time winner of the CT State Amateur, the ten-time Yale Golf Club champion, and the three-time Yale Golf Association Champion.

Bill learned to play the game in Texas, with his father, mother, and brother and sister. He attended a small college in Illinois where was he was a medalist in the NCAA college championship (he still holds the lowest-score round record) and was 7th in the NCAA as a senior. From 1966, he spent seven years at the Yale Divinity School, and only played golf recreationally at the course—at a time when it had no watering system and no carts and when one hit one’s own balls (and retrieved them) on the practice range. He found the “course demands creativity” and played hard and fast “like a Scottish course.”

In 1975 he returned to competition and won his first state amateur, which was held at Yale. Had to stop play several times because of the noise of construction of the present clubhouse. That plus the addition of watering system, carts and outside play has changed the character of the course. He rates the best Yale players to be Peter Teravainen, Bob Heintz & Heather Daly-Donofrio (who, like Larry Nelson, didn’t start competitive golf until middle of Yale career). Several times he has not competed for stretches of many years and then come back to win championships. He qualified five times for the US Amateur, four times for the Mid Amateur, three times for the British Amateur, and qualifying for US Open by 2 strokes (playing against PGA Pros). He has played with Brad Faxon, Billy Andrade, Jay Sigal, Joey Sindalsr, and John Schroeder. He caddied in PGA tournaments for Julius Boros and Tommy Bolt (who warned him “don’t give me any negative thoughts”) after they had won US Open. He was scheduled to caddy for Tony Lema on the day that Lema died in a plane crash.

The Yale course remains one of his top five, along with Winged Foot and Baltusrol. In spite of technology adding distance to equipment, the course has remained the same and continues to be a stern challenge i.e. 2004 NCAA regional only 2 played at less than par for 54 holes. His best score at Yale has been 66. For several years played with a dog which had perfect golf etiquette. For Lee, the course is “my Walden Pond”.

DR. SAM KUSHLIN

DR. SAM KUSHLIN
Member of the Yale Golf Club since 1942
Interview on April 17, 2005 [conducted by telephone by John Godley]

Interview (15 mins)

Dr. Sam Kushlin learned to play golf as a caddy and played at Muni, while he started at Yale in 1942. He took lessons from Joe Sullivan and played many rounds with him. He recalls that if one of the foursome hit into the water on the ninth hole, Joe would “hit his ball with ease across the pond from a kneeling stance” to show the duffers how easy it was. Sam’s lowest handicap was 12, and he twice broke 80 with scores of 79.

Now at age 93 he plays 5 or 6 holes by himself twice a week (number 12-18), and then finishes with “the best part of my game: the shower.” Through his long and distinguished medical career he “has had much stress,” and he firmly believes that “the Yale golf course kept me off the psychiatrist’s couch.”

HERBERT V. KOHLER Jr.

HERBERT V. KOHLER Jr.
Yale ’65, and Chairman of the Board and President of The Kohler Company

Interview (75 minutes), November 8, 2006

Due to technical recording difficulties, the interview will not appear here. However, a recent interview with Mr. Kohler , conducted by Gary Cartwright, titled “It’s good to be Herb” appeared in Golf Digest Index Magazine, Winter 2006-’07, pg. 126-133.

One question that John Godley posed to Mr. Kohler that does not appear in the Cartwright interview is whether his experiences at Yale contributed to the Kohler Company’s later commitment to golf course development. Mr. Kohler’s response was “Not at all”!

ROBERT TRENT "BOBBY" JONES JR.

ROBERT TRENT “BOBBY” JONES JR.
Golf architect
Interviewed on June 4, 2006 at the Yale Golf Course 
(photograph of “Bobby” Jones in 1959 team picture and of Mr. and Mrs. Jones)

Interview (1 hr 17 mins)

Mr. Jones grew up in Montclair NJ. His paternal grandfather had been introduced to golf when in grade school in Rochester NY he pulled a girl’s pigtails and she offered him a job if he would stop. “You need a dime to go to the end of the trolley line, then walk a mile to the golf club where my uncle will give you a job as a caddy.” Her uncle turned out to be Walter Hagen!

Jones’s father, Robert Trent Jones, was away a lot and his mother was a strong influence. Her father was a Yale graduate, as was her grandfather, Rees, for whom his brother was named. Grandfather Rees had grown up in Cincinnati, and Mr. Taft had arranged for him to the Taft School on a football scholarship, then to Yale, where he shoveled coal to make money, played football under Walter Camp, and was a sprinter. He graduated in the class of 1896, and participated that year in the first modern Olympics in Athens (paying his Atlantic passage by shoveling coal on a Grace Line ship).

Bobby Jones’s father wanted him to take a “combined course of study” in college, as he had, including agriculture and liberal arts. Bobby was considering Princeton, where many Taft graduates went, but his mother encouraged him to follow her father and grandfather to Yale. Before he made his decision, he was able to play the “interesting and unique” Yale golf course. After that his choice was easy.

Before Yale, Bobby had played competitive golf in high school. He was a member of the junior U.S. team that played the U. K. team in 1956 at Winged Foot. His performance there, especially on the 10th hole, prompted Tommy Armour to offer his services [free] to teach him “how to play the game.” He had already learned ball striking from his father and his home pro. Armour taught that each hole had character. In Scotland each had a name, Redan, Hell’s Bunker etc. The course is “animate” and this leads to club selection and “working the ball”. His father wanted to and did teach him course design. Armour, without meaning to, also taught him course design. At Yale, he says, he was “frightened” by the academic work but he “worked hard” and did well. He learned how to study and be curious, especially in regard to “cultural history”. The only course that he took that was directly applicable to his work as a golf course architect was geology.

Making the golf team was not easy. There were five students who had been their state junior champions. He made the team by winning his qualifying match, playing the last three holes in a March snowstorm. The team trained for the spring season in both Bermuda and Florida. They played in the NCAA tournament in Oregon and Colorado. He enjoyed the “psychological ” challenge of match play.After Yale he attended Stanford Law School. His mother had cautioned him that course design was a “cottage industry” and that he should train for a more substantial job. But, of course he apprenticed for his father and concentrated designing and building on the West Coast and internationally. He believes that his father “transformed golf architecture”. Robert Trent Jones began to attract the same attention, as did the players. Especially after Hogan won the 1951 US Open at Oakland Hills, and called it a “Monster” which he had “brought to its knees”. His father taught him the merits and demerits of design by Macdonald, Banks, Tillinghast, Ross, and his favorite Mackenzie.

The interview concludes with an overview of his own design work, the details of which are found in his bookGolf by Design. There is also discussion of the different challenges of working around the world, in Japan, Korea, China, Europe and Norway. But, where ever the location, he looks upon his work as that of “stage craft…setting up the game…and creating a challenge”. Therefore, technology has not diminished the value of the older courses like Merion. The “golf course is alive” and like Augusta often “a work in progress”. He has worked in the “golden era” of golf course design.

REES JONES

REES JONES
Class of 1963, golf team manager and player, now golf course designer

Interviewed on September 14, 2006

Interview

Photographs:

  • Upper: from the 1962 Golf Team picture of Rees Jones as team manager and player.
  • Lower: taken at the Atlantic Golf Club for the cover of Golf Course Management magazine, December 2003, announcing his receiving the 2004 Old Tom Morris Award

Rees toured the course with Peter Pulaski, Scott Ramsay, John Godley and Bill Kelly, in a steady cold rain. Later, a telephone interview was conducted.

Rees Jones interview summary, 1/2/2006

Rees choose Yale for his college education quite naturally. His mother’s father, grandfather and other relatives had attended Yale. She believed in his having a liberal education, before he chose a profession. He attended many Yale football games as he was growing up. This turned out to be “a great choice” for him. The Yale education “expanded his life” and there he made many lifelong friends. Even though growing up with his famous father he had been exposed to all the aspects of golf course design, it wasn’t until his junior year that he decided to practice that “craft”. After graduation he studied the technical aspects of his chosen profession, such as drafting and landscape design at Harvard and the University of California at Berkeley. So, with both a liberal and technical education and the “learning done in the field”, he “had the best of all worlds.”

At Yale, he failed to qualify for the freshman golf team by 1 stoke. But, because his older brother [Bobby] had been on the team, he knew Coach Al Wilson. As a sophomore the coach asked him to be the manager of the freshman team. In retrospect he thinks that was probably chosen because he had a car and could help transport the team to away matches. As a junior he became manager of the varsity. For three years he practiced with the team. In his senior year he “was playing well in practice” and the team qualified for the NCAA national championship. Coach Wilson picked him for the team that traveled to the tournament, played at the Duke University course designed by his father [Robert Trent Jones] in 1957. Several decades later one of his daughters attended Duke. In 1994 he redesigned the course, making it “stronger and longer and with re-contoured greens.” He is very proud of this work, which allowed Duke to host the NCAA championship again in 2001.

Like Rees, his father was an admirer of the work of CB Macdonald, especially that at the National Golf Links and Yale. His father came to watch matches at Yale during the years that his brother and he were there, but never played the course. As with most of their projects, Rees believes that Seth Raynor did most ”of the work at Yale”. Raynor “was like my father’s Roger Rulewich”. As far as design is concerned, Rees now considers Macdonald, Raynor and Charles Banks all together. He was first exposed to their work at Yale and since then as a member of National and the Montclair Golf Club [Banks] as well as through his work of redesign and restoration at Monterey CA [Raynor] and the Hackensack Golf Club [Banks]. Rees pointed out that in our research there is one Yale graduate designer that we have overlooked. That is Roy Dye class of 1950, the brother of the more well know Pete Dye.

Rees came to know Jess Sweetser very well. He first saw him when Sweetser visited their home as a frequent guest of his father [who “greatly admired” Sweetser’s golfing triumphs as a played and Walker Cup captain]. “Jess was a great influence on my father and took a liking to his sons.” Later Rees saw him many times at Yale reunions. Rees was well acquainted with Mark McCormack who “was the first to see golf as a business as well as a game”. He began with the TV marketing of The Big Three [Palmer, Nicklaus & Player] and went on to “elevate the economics of golf” and many other sports. Rees knew Charles Fraser even better. They served together on the Urban Land Institute. He designed a course for Fraser that was never built. The Harbour Town Links course designed by Pete Dye [with Jack Nicklaus] at Hilton Head Island “has set a very high standard”.

When asked his opinion about a “standard ball” to combat the effective shortening of courses by new equipment Rees said, “all equipment improvements are positive for the average golfer. A ‘standard ball’ is a good idea for the professionals, but it will not be adopted because of the loss of revenue to manufacturers and the experience of the “square groove” litigation.”

As for his undergraduate days at the Yale Golf Course, Rees said that, “he was lucky to be introduced to a great golf course over four years. To learn that a course doesn’t have to be perfect, but that bad bounces and blind holes make it a course that you never tire of playing.” He gets ideas for designing from playing old courses, as Macdonald did before him and Old and Young Tom Morris did before CB. After his recent tour of the course he said that “Yale is still one of the great courses in America. Length is not as important as the angles and hazards, which dictate the shots that make it, like Pinehurst # 2, a stout test of golf which has stood the test of time”. Therefore, the “Open Doctor” will not be needed. The course as it now is “would be an excellent site for the women’s and men’s Amateur or the women’s Open championships. That is a credit to Macdonald and Raynor 80 years ago and to the University today”.

JAG 1/3/2007

BOB HEINTZ

BOB HEINTZ
Yale ’92, current PGA Tour Professional Player Bob Heintz college
Interviewed on December 21, 2006

Interview (98 mins)

Bob has just regained his PGA Tour card for the third time. He talked to us by phone from his home in Florida.

He was born on Long Island, where his parents had taken their first teaching jobs. However, their jobs were eliminated when student enrollment fell, and at age 4 Bob moved to Clearwater Florida, where his parents taught physical education. That was the “best thing that could have happened to him.” He learned to play golf by tagging along when his father and grandmother played at Coral Gables. He was more interested in baseball and basketball than golf in high school. He was not the best on his high school golf team, but in his senior year he led the county in scoring average.

Because he visited his grandparents on L.I. every summer, he wanted to return to the northeast for college. He applied to Yale after he was ‘lightly” recruited for basketball.” He was skeptical of his chances of being admitted, until he went for his alumni interview near his home in Florida. Luckily the interviewer “was very happy to meet the young man”, whose athletic career he “had been following in the papers” and whose father he had taught with on Long Island. He came to play basketball, but after seeing the course and the scores that were posted by college players the summer before he entered, he decided to try out for the golf team. “I thought I was a scratch player…these guys are posting 78, 82 etc…I can compete here easily…I was wrong of course …I didn’t know how hard the course was.”

“I first met Dave Paterson in a classroom along with 25 other guys who were also responding to a flyer announcing tryouts for the golf team. We filled out a questionnaire and I said I was a 4 handicap. At the course the first time I was completely intimidated and didn’t break 80. But, Dave saw something I guess, because he let me practice with the team that fall and then invited me on the spring trip to the West Coast.” In retrospect, the highlight of that trip for Bob was not being allowed to play the 18th at Pebble Beach because of darkness. Now, when he plays there in the National Pro-Am as a professional, he can really appreciate where he is [and for free]. He had become discouraged with the basketball program, so he decided to concentrate on being “ two sided”, a student and a golfer for the next 3 years.

He scheduled all his classes before 11 AM. Then it was lunch and the afternoon at the course. Then back to the college for dinner and studying in bed until he fell asleep. The people at the course became his family. He was not always comfortable with the other highly academically motivated students. But Peter Pulaski, Toni Corvi, Mike “Big Mow” Moran and Brad Saunders made a “nice family.” And then there was the course, “my sanctuary.” “Always the question is asked, ‘if you could only play one more round, where would it be’.” For Bob it would be at Yale. Because of the difficulty of the course, the huge greens, the bunkers, and never having a level lie his game improved. “My game blossomed at Yale.” And then there was the influence of Coach Dave Paterson.

“Without Dave Paterson, you wouldn’t be including me in this project.” Coach Paterson had told him, at the beginning of his junior year, that he should consider being a professional golfer. Bob thought that was a joke. But, the “turning point” came that spring at the Wofford Invitational tournament at the Country Club of South Carolina. Bob came in 4th with a 68 on the last day. He beat Chris Patton, then the US Amateur champion, and many other southern collegiate golfers who hadn’t spent the winter in New Haven. He won the Ivy League individual championship 3 years in a row at Bethpage Black [by 13 strokes as a senior]. Also as a senior, he made the Academic All-American Team with a 3.20 GPA. “The NCAA called to make sure the GPA hadn’t been rounded-up to meet the minimum requirement of 3.2.”

Just before graduation Bob was working on job applications when Dave Paterson told him, “you have the rest of your life to ‘get a job’, you’re going to try professional golf.” His parents had always supported him and now they did again, as well as his soon to be wife, Nancy. The financial support he needed came from Dave’s network of friends and from Bob’s friends and family. $30,000 per year for 1992-94 allowed him to play the mini tours around Orlando Florida. But, even when he won a couple of events the prize money gave his investors less than a 50% return. He went to the PGA “Q School in the desert in 1994.” By making it to the final stage he qualified for the Nike [now Nationwide] Tour. Coach Paterson had told him in 1992 that to succeed as a Pro he would “have to cure his hook and learn to play a fade.” He did that, without instruction, by “pretending he was Freddie Couples.” But, in the final stage of qualifying in 1994, “pretending broke down.” This continued on the Nike Tour where he was “out of his element and a complete failure.” By 1996 his investors were losing interest in losing money, and Nancy was pregnant. He quite professional golf.

Now Bob took that real job, with Raymond James Financial, in the back office “counting peanuts” for $21,000 a year. Six months later he had gained 30 pounds, when Dave Paterson saved his golf career. “At Christmas 1996 Dave knocked on our door. When we opened the door, he didn’t say hello, he said ‘you look like shit, why are you not playing golf anymore?’” When Bob explained the situation to Dave, the only question Dave asked was, “how much money do you need?” Within 3 months Dave had raised the needed $35,000 from 18 investors [including 3 Catholic nuns who split 1 share between them]. That money was supplemented, as it had been in previous years, by Bob working as an assistant golf coach at the University of South Florida in Tampa. By 1998 he was on the Hooters Tour and his investors were getting a return on there now $50,000 annual investment. He was 2nd on the money list [$100,00 +] which earned him a $50,000 bonus [half to be paid in ’98 & half in ‘99].

Bob had “conditional status” on the Nike Tour in 1999, so he had to decide whether he would play there or stay on the Hooters Tour. His Hooters 1998 “bonus” was paid out at $1,200, if and when he entered a Hookers Tour event. His “practical” mother advised against his plan of playing the Nike [with no such guarantee]. Bob’s response to mother was, “I didn’t get a Yale degree and turn Pro to play the Hooters Tour, it was to play the PGA Tour and I can’t get there from the Hooters.” Two weeks later he won the Nike Tour event at Shreveport and $42,000. Later that year he won the Nike Tour Championship at Dothan Alabama in a play-off with Marco Dawson [he had played the Hogan Tour event played at Yale in the 1980’s]. He entered the tournament 16th on the money list, which would have gotten him directly to the final stage of PGA Q School. A good check would have moved him to 15th or higher and qualified him for the 2000 PGA Tour directly. Winning was even better.

Yale graduate and rookie on the 2000 PGA Tour attracted the attention of Sports Illustrated. Bob agreed to write an online weekly diary. It was immensely enjoyable, but he stopped the time-consuming series after 9 months. It was difficult, he admitted, to “relive his failures weekly,” and he also was surprised and discouragd by some “painful” negative feedback from critical fans amidst the overwhelmingly positive response. [The diary is still posted online, and complete archive is here.] He led the PGA Tour in putting in 2002, but that wasn’t a good thing, since it really meant that he was not hitting greens in regulation and missing 16 of 21 cuts. Since then he’s been on the Nationwide Tour in 2003, 2004, and 2006 and back on the PGA Tour in 2005. No more thoughts of a job at Raymond James.

Bob is very excited about returning to the PGA Tour for 2007 since he believes that this time he is ready with “the tools in place and his ducks in a row.” He now has an instructor [no more Freddie Couples pretend] and the same caddie for the past 2 years. That’s Jeff Dean a 52 year old country boy from “LA” [lower Alabama]–a bachelor who sold a few restaurants in 1999 to try the caddie life. He made $50,000 with Bob in 2005. His demeanor is of one who “could care less” which helps Bob’s to “de-stress.” And Bob has had a chance to study the focus of Tiger Woods and how he deals with the “circus of the tour.” Bob will be able to use the fitness trailer and trainers provided on the PGA, but not the other tours, to be ready to play no matter when his tee time. Finally he points to his wife Nancy as being a “huge” positive for his team. They now have 3 children. Never once in 14 years has she “told [him] he should be doing something else.” She is very “astute” in analyzing his swing and game plan. Together they work out a “plan of attach” and “set goals” for the smallest detail of that plan. It’s not just “one shot at a time, it’s even how do I breath over this putt.” They now live in Dunedin Florida. When at home he occasionally plays the Dunedin Country Club (which had been the first site of the PGA headquarters, but much more regularly plays at the Countryside Country Club in Clearwater, which he represents on tour, and where he is a member.

At the end of the interview, Bob Heintz speaks of his admiration for Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.

STEVE GRAY

STEVE GRAY
June 17, 2006
Interviewed by John Godley and Bill Kelly at the Yale Golf Course on June 17, 2006.

Interview: part one (6 min.) part two (20 min.)

Growing up in Kansas City, MO, Steve was very active and successful in junior golf competition. With the encouragement of his parents, especially his stepfather, he was planning to attend San Diego State University and hoped to play golf professionally. During the winter of his high school senior year he received a call from David Paterson, inviting him to visit Yale. He came and toured the course [then covered with snow] and met some of the team. He was “drawn to the university,” and his change of plans was supported by his grandmother. At present, he is Columbia University in a Master’s degree program in Organizational Psychology. During the past season he helped Coach Paterson on weekends with the team.

Steve played in every tournament during his 4 years at Yale. The team won the Ivy League championship in his second year and he was the team captain as a senior. The annual spring trips were especially memorable. First year to Scotland, where they played Troon and St. Andrews, then California and Pebble Beach, Spyglass, Cypress Point and Riviera. His third year found the team in Texas playing Colonial, and finally to Hilton Head and Florida. “You can see that after more than 30 years, ‘coach’ has made some great contacts”. Since graduation Steve has had some contacts with former team members at the annual spring Yale Golf Association event.

In describing “Coach” Paterson, Steve used the term “old school”. When asked to define that term, he said that “Coach can be harsh and a disciplinarian, though never on the course. He has some interesting metaphors, and kernels of wisdom”. For Steve, David Paterson was “as influential as many of his professors and “compared to other college golf coaches, much more open to his players personal and academic growth”.

DR. PAUL GOLDSTEIN

DR. PAUL GOLDSTEIN
Longtime member
Interviewed on November 6, 2004 [conducted by telephone by John Godley]

Interview (18 mins)

In 1945, Paul Goldstein played baseball for Yale as a first year medical student. Subsequently, he began playing golf in 1947 and received lessons from Joe Sullivan. He remembers the lessons were given in an area between the second and fourth green, and they consisted of learning the motion of pitching a softball underhanded. The course was hard and fast because it lacked irrigation; after rain it became wet because of poor drainage. He believes the most significant change to the course was the elimination of the rock cliff on hole 17 across the pond from the tee.