One Memphian, 72 hidden tee markers and a pandemic
Kimbal Gordon was working from home like just about everyone else with a desk job over the past few months. His bosses at Liberty Mutual kept encouraging their employees to not just sit around all day. Walk around for a bit, stretch your legs and get some fresh air, they said. It will help with productivity during this odd moment in history, when a pandemic put a pause on life as we knew it.
So Gordon, 68, made the two-minute trip down the street to The Links at Galloway, to the public golf course he started playing at more than 50 years ago. When the novel coronavirus initially gripped this country and Galloway was closed, facility manager Sean Mcfetridge allowed those from the surrounding neighborhoods, like Gordon, to use the course as they pleased.
And it was on those walks that Gordon discovered the “pet project” that helped him get through quarantine. He noticed that the tee markers with the exact yardage of each hole had been covered over by grass through the years.
Gordon determined he would uncover all 72 of them (four per hole). Even though there was no map indicating where they might be located. Even though, at least initially, he began digging with a screwdriver.
“It’s a special place to me,” Gordon said when asked why he would take on an endeavor that, if we’re being honest, seemed to involve a lot of work and not that much of a reward.
But this tumultuous spring has forced all of us to figure out how to live fulfilling lives without the sense of fulfillment watching our favorite sports once brought us.
And golf, in particular, has become a sanctuary from the mental fatigue. Public courses have been re-opened longer than just about anything else – and
some private ones never really closed – because the game is played outdoors and social-distance friendly.
This week, golf will join auto racing and mixed martial arts as the first American professional sports to return when the PGA Tour holds the Charles Schwab Challenge in Fort Worth, Texas. Next month, The Memorial in Ohio is slated to be held with a limited number of fans. If all that goes off without a coronavirus hitch, it could bode well for some Memphis fans attending the WGC-FEDEX St. Jude Invitational at TPC Southwind less than two months from now.
So it makes sense, as the world in which he lived was changing, that Gordon sought out a place that represented normalcy. He went back to Galloway day after day, to the course he’s played more times than he can remember, to the course he helped build in a way, and started digging.
Gordon was the surety underwriter who approved the bond for W.H. Keller Construction Co. and the city of Memphis back in 2001 when Galloway underwent a $3.5 million renovation. It’s why today most Memphians would agree Galloway is the nicest public golf course in the city.
Galloway course superintendent Ben Haddad drove by one day, saw what Gordon was doing and offered a wood stick with a long nail at the end that’s typically used for the course’s tarps. It looks a lot like a tool one might use to pick up trash on the side of the road.
In this case, though, it “saved my back,” Gordon said.
Each tee box at Galloway is about 30 by 70 yards, and each tee marker in the ground is about 3 by 6 inches.
“I just started hunting and pecking to find out where they are,” said Gordon,
One day, he uncovered three markers. Many days, he didn’t find any. No. 12 was the hardest hole because three of the four tee markers had been grown over. Some holes he’d find one and then use a tape measure to estimate where the others might be.
He found one of the hidden tee markers for No. 5 on Cinco de Mayo. He found the tee markers for No. 16 and, shortly thereafter, his 3-year-old grandson got the first bogey of his golfing career on that par-3 hole.
Gordon located the final hidden tee marker last month, about 45 days after he began, at No. 4.
“It was only fitting,” Gordon said, because that’s where he scored his first eagle back in the early 1970s. “It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun.”
Let’s be clear: There aren’t many people who would have done what Gordon just did simply because the man hours it required were enormous and the tangible payoff at the end probably will go unnoticed by the typical golfer at Galloway.
But when you dig deeper, Gordon’s memories were hidden underneath all that grass. During a moment in time when the whole world felt chaotic, he found an escape at the golf course. Just like a lot of us have.
So a couple weeks ago, before showing off the tee box his grandson hit from at No. 16, Gordon said he would be playing in a foursome at Galloway later that afternoon. It was going to be him and the three people he works with at Liberty Mutual.
They hadn’t seen one another in six weeks, but they were reuniting at a golf course.
You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter: @mgiannotto