A first round at Pine Valley

Four members. A 6:38 tee time. A round that didn’t go the way anyone expected.

C.W. had been on the Pine Valley wait list for eleven years. He'd played the course twice as a guest in that time — once with a college friend who'd inherited his father's membership, and once with a client who had insisted on it after a particularly successful quarter. Neither round had gone well. The course is famous for not going well on a player's first attempt, and C.W. had not been the exception.

He got the call in February. The wait list had moved. There was a spot. The initiation was due within thirty days. C.W. was in his early forties, a managing partner at a Philadelphia private-equity firm, and had been preparing for the call for so long that when it came he could not remember what he'd planned to say. He said yes.

His first round as a member was scheduled for the morning of his swearing-in, in May. He had been allotted a 6:38 tee time. The other three members of the foursome were chosen by the club's golf committee, in keeping with a Pine Valley tradition that the new member's first round is curated by the existing membership rather than self-selected. C.W. did not know who he would be playing with until he arrived at the club at 6:00 a.m. and was greeted in the locker room by three older men, two of whom he had never met.

The fourth was J.H. — a member of thirty-two years, in his late seventies, who had won the club championship twice and who had been one of the three members who, six weeks earlier, had voted to admit C.W.

"I voted for you because of what your boss said about you in his letter. I want to see if he was right."

J.H. said this on the practice green, at 6:25 a.m., with a putter in his hand and no particular expression on his face. C.W. did not know what to say to it. He nodded. He missed his next four putts.

The other two members of the foursome were W.P. and B.K. W.P. was in his sixties, a member of fifteen years, a former rower at Princeton, and a man whose handicap had stayed at exactly 8 for nine consecutive seasons. B.K. was in his fifties, a member of nine years, a partner at a Wall Street firm, and a player whose 18-hole scoring average had not deviated from 84 by more than two strokes in the time he'd been a member.

They were, in other words, the kind of foursome that the club was likely to produce for a new member: three veterans whose familiarity with the course was profound, whose handicaps were reliable, and whose collective judgment of C.W. as a future member would be reported back to the committee with a level of detail C.W. could not yet imagine.

C.W., for his part, was a 12-handicap on his best days. He had not played a competitive round of golf in nine months. He had been preparing for this round, intermittently, for eleven years.

The first hole at Pine Valley is a 421-yard par-4 with a dramatic drop from the tee to a fairway that gathers slightly left. The green sits up against a wall of pine forest on the right and falls away to the left into a deep bunker the members refer to as "the trench." C.W. hit his drive into the right rough. He punched out to the fairway. He hit his third shot into the trench. He took a double-bogey six.

J.H. made his par. W.P. made his par. B.K. made his bogey.

C.W. had been worried, for months, about what would happen if his first round at Pine Valley went badly. He had not been worried about what would happen if it went catastrophically. The 1st hole had been a six, the 2nd was a seven, the 3rd was a five, and by the 4th tee his hands were shaking enough that he was finding it difficult to address the ball. He had not eaten breakfast. He had not slept. He was, on the 4th tee, on pace to shoot something in the high 90s during his first round as a member, in front of three men whose votes had put him there.

It was J.H. who saw it. After C.W. had hit a wide push off the 4th tee, J.H. handed his own driver to his caddie, walked over to where C.W. was standing on the tee, and said: "Let's walk together to your ball."

They walked. J.H. said: "You have not breathed all morning. You're playing a course you do not yet know with three players you've just met. Your hands are shaking. None of this is your fault. None of it has anything to do with whether you belong here."

"The first round is the worst round. Every member has had it. The trick is to survive it."

C.W. made a bogey on the 4th. He made a bogey on the 5th. He made a par on the 6th. He shot 89 for the round, which was worse than his average but better than what the 4th tee had foretold. None of the three men commented on his score after the round. They commented on a specific shot he had hit on the 13th — a recovery from the right rough that had landed two feet from the pin, which J.H. had described, as they walked off the green, as "the shot of a member."

In the grill room after the round, J.H. ordered four bloody Marys without asking. They sat for an hour. C.W. found himself telling the three older men about his daughter, who was twelve, and about a tournament she had recently won, and about a coach who had taught her to swing with a kind of patience that C.W. had been unable to teach her himself. W.P. told him about his son, who was now older than C.W. and who had grown into a man W.P. had not anticipated and now did not entirely recognize. B.K. did not say much, but at one point reached across the table and put his hand on C.W.'s arm.

When the round was over and the four men were standing in the locker room, J.H. said: "We'll do it again next month. The 4th of every month is mine. You'll come."

C.W. asked: "What about the other two?"

J.H. said: "They'll come if I tell them to. They like you."

C.W. is now a member of Pine Valley. He has played in J.H.'s foursome on the 4th of every month for fifteen months. W.P. has missed two of those rounds, B.K. has missed one. C.W. has missed none. His handicap, over the same period, has come down to a 9. He thinks of his first round at Pine Valley, still, probably twice a week.

The four of them found each other on Tee Time when C.W. was preparing to play a round at Friar's Head, in May of this year, as a guest of a Long Island member, and discovered that J.H. was also a member there. They have since played eight courses together as a four. They have a private group thread in the app, which they use to coordinate.

C.W. told The Journal, in the conversation that became this piece: "The round at Pine Valley was the worst round of my life, and one of the best mornings I've had. The three men I played with that morning are my friends. I would not have found them again, on the other clubs we now play together, without the network. We would have lost each other."

Some foursomes are worth finding twice.

Members in this piece appear with their permission. Initials are used at their request.

The Journal Staff writes for The Journal.

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