The Road Hole Bunker caper

Several years ago my family had the opportunity to go to Scotland for a vacation. Actually, the main purpose of the trip was for my father, son and I to play golf at the Old Course at St. Andrews. We made all the necessary arrangements and were fortunate enough to meet up with Eddie Adams who at the time was in charge of all the maintenance activities for six golf courses in the St. Andrews system.

Playing St. Andrews with my father and son was undoubtedly the best round of golf I’ve ever played. Not because I played well, but because of who I was with and where I was.

That night, after stopping at one of the local pubs, we came up with the brilliant idea to bury a photo of my father’s father, Jay Woodward, in the Road Hole Bunker on the Old Course. My grandfather is the one who got my family started in the golf business in 1938. He was a mentor to not only our family, but to hundreds of young men who worked for him, many who have gone on to be superintendents.

After a few hours of plotting and scheming, we decided to put the photo in a plastic bag. On the back of the photo I wrote, “You are here with us in spirit,” thus in our minds, closing the loop of having all four generations together for the first time in many years at the birthplace of golf. By honoring my grandfather this way, we were saying thank you to him for getting our family started in what turned out to be a tradition of careers spanning multiple generations of family members.

As our plan developed throughout the evening at the pub, there were several members of our family who were not in full support of my dad, my son and I going out onto the Old Course at night, digging a hole in a bunker and burying a picture. But we rationalized our scheme by telling each other that since St. Andrews was a place to be enjoyed by the residents and visitors of St. Andrews that it would be just fine. My mom in particular was mortified.

We picked midnight as the time to pull off this caper. So after the town kind of shutdown, we left our bed and breakfast, walked to the golf course and directly to the Road Hole. My son and I proceeded to jump down into this beautiful bunker, get down on our hands and knees and dig frantically with our hands (just like a dog digs a hole.) We got down about 15 inches, carefully placed the plastic bag with the photo in it and carefully filled in the hole. Now, being good stewards of the golf course, we proceeded to do our best to rake out the bunker.

At that point we got out of there because we started thinking maybe Mom was right and we were about to be busted.

The next morning my son and I had the opportunity to tour all six of the golf courses with Eddie and he proved to be an incredibly gracious host. During the tour, I asked Eddie how often they had to rebuild the sod-faced bunkers. He told me that typically they rebuild them about every five years. I then asked him when was the last time they had rebuilt the Road Hole bunker. He casually told me that it was about four-and-a-half years ago.

Realizing that Eddie and his staff would probably find the bag with the photo within the next few months, I immediately confessed about what we had done in the middle of the night before.

Once again — and as just another example of the type of people we have in our business — Eddie chuckled and said to Matt and I, “When we rebuild that bunker and if we find the now infamous bag, they would complete the bunker renovation and replace the bag in the bottom of the bunker in its rightful place.”