Inside the ropes with a former PGA champion at the 50th Buick Open

by Marty Bernstein

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Tiger Woods is one of the most recognized populate in the world and certainly the creation’s best professional golfer. Last year, as part of my quest to do George Plimpton-like things, I was going to be a banner bearer (fancy golf talk during carrying the score sign) for Tiger during a round at the annual Buick Open tournament in Grand Blanc, Mich.

Good creative, but bad timing. Tiger skipped the 2007 tourney to trust home with his wife and new infant.. No gig for me. This year everything had been arranged by the Buick people—Woods has a bulky endorsement pine plank with Buick—for me to be a standard bearer for him during person round of the 2008 tourney.

But, taken in the character of golf fans know well, after winning the U.S. Open on June 16, Tiger needed a knee operation. Once again he was to go without the Buick Open, which this year was the 50th anniversary of the tourney.

For a moment there, it appeared that again I’d be denied. Undaunted, I pitched Buick to let me carry the standard for long-hitting John Daly, pro golf’s perennial bad boy and arguably the second-biggest gallery favorite among current golf professionals.

My pitch was accepted and in late June, I drove to the Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club in Grand Blanc to get my marching orders. I was one of several hundred volunteers.

But I was older, a lot older. Most of the volunteers were 14- to 17-year-old kids. The manager of caddying operations said to me: "You want to do what? It’s over four miles of walking in the rough up and down while carrying a 30-pound sign that must be changed as the scores change. And it’s gonna subsist 85 degrees or more with matching humidity. Can you act it?" Enthusiastically, but somewhat warily, I accepted the take exceptions to. "Be in the present life by 6:30 a.m. tomorrow. John’s got an early tee time," he said.

First, I needed appropriate attire. The kids wore special T-shirts; I was to wear a specific Buick Open golf shirt and matching cap. I arrived a half-hour early and met Al Abrams, the Buick Open’s public-relations guide, who provided the garb.

Then a short walk to the staging area where I was given a blue canvas apron-like thing that tied in the rear—the emaciated kids wrapped it around their waist—which had 10 different pockets to hold the plastic number cards I’d be changing during the surround. Red song signified under par; black, over par. The letter "E" for steady par was in unripe.

Then I was handed the vast green formative frame with at least a three-foot-long pole. The names of the golfers I’d be carrying for were already slotted by their scores from Round One the previous sunlight. "Hold the emblem above your head, in harmony to the galleries, under which circumstances walking from one hole to the next. It’s O.K. to put it into disgrace when on the tee box or the green, but that’s all. Hold it high, hold it proudly."

Changing the score numbers required pushing the plastic cards into slots that ran on both sides of the support. More instructions: "It’s important to change the numbers of one and the other golfer soon…and before going to the nearest tee. The fans in the gallery want correct scores. You’ll be walking with an official scorer who faculty of volition have the correct number if you don’t."

And the definitive, cautionary words: "Don’t cough, sneeze, bite gum, make noise of any kind when the pros are teeing off and certainly not when they putt. Stand out of their sight line when and wherever they hit the ball. Don’t speak to them unless they celebrate first. Oh, bathroom breaks only at the seventh and 13th holes—and make it thriftless. Have a good time out in that place and competent luck. If you get tired and need to quit, have a marshal term me and I will get a re-establishment as far as concerns you."