Another track entirely

This time around, the course is nothing but dogleg lefts

What would you get if you combined NASCAR with golf? My guess is fans standing around the practice green and shouting at each player who walks past, "Show us your Titleists!"

Actually, we already have a combo platter of NASCAR and golf now that Ford has taken over as sponsor of the tournament we used to call the Doral Open, which was won by Scott (Night Vision) Hoch in a Monday playoff. Ford is heavily into the racing business and its marquee Winston Cup driver is Dale Jarrett, who also happens to be an avid (and a pretty good) golfer.

One of the perks (no, not you, Craig) of last week's Ford Championship at Doral was a chance for PGA Tour players to visit the nearby Homestead Speedway south of Miami, get behind the wheel of an actual Winston Cup stock car and drive a few laps. Ten tour players, including Stuart Appleby, Billy Andrade, Billy Mayfair, Craig Perks, Fred Funk, Garrett Willis, Hank Kuehne and Thomas Levet, along with player-agent Steve Loy and myself, put the pedal to the metal at Homestead. Oh, yeah, NBC golf analyst Mark Rolfing also came along for the ride. He was easy to spot. Wearing a Tommy Bahama floral shirt and golf shoes with non-metal spikes, he was the only guy who stepped off one of the helicopters that shuttled players over from Doral who looked completely unprepared to hop into a Winston Cup race car. "I do it all the time at home," he said when a golfer asked him about driving while wearing golf shoes. British Open runner-up Thomas Levet had the second-most curious fashion choice for racing -- black dress shoes. "You got to look good," the cheery Frenchman said with a laugh.

After an orientation session on the basic dos and don'ts of driving a race car, we piled into a white van and took a few laps around the track. The driver/instructor showed us where the car should be on the track, how to hit the brake when we reached the orange cone they'd set up just before the turn, how to drift down to the inside part of the track on the turn, and how to hit the accelerator again when we passed another orange cone placed at the end of the turn.

We took the first lap in the van pretty easy. On the second lap, the driver pushed a little harder. As we barreled through a turn, the van, loaded down with eight passengers, leaned sickeningly to the right. I was sitting in the back row next to Loy, who coached Phil Mickelson and Mayfair at Arizona State University. We were not enjoying this demonstration. "Don't these things turn over?" Loy asked. As we went through turn No. 3, Mayfair pointed out a set of tire marks that went straight up the track and into the wall. "That guy didn't make it!" Mayfair said, which, at that moment, wasn't what we wanted to hear.

The van didn't roll, and we made it back to the garage area behind the pits. We changed into driving uniforms, gloves and helmets -- they were notably hot because it was a summer-like day in south Florida -- and took turns taking the six Ford race cars onto the track for eight or 10 laps each. There was only one mishap in the whole adventure. Perks -- yes, you, Craig -- spun his car out on the infield. It was out of sight of the rest of us in the pit area, but his spinout threw up so much dirt and debris, the other cars came in for a few minutes while the track was cleaned.

"It was kind of surreal," Perks, last year's Players Championship winner, told me later when I asked him what happened. "I didn't know I was spinning out until the dirt started flying past. He (the accompanying driver) grabbed the wheel, we spun maybe two times and ended up facing backward." It was basically a size problem. Perk, who is about 6-foot-3, was shoehorned into driver's seat. "My foot is too big," Perks said. "While I'm punching the brake, my foot caught the accelerator. We were digging into the turn and then we accelerated and lost control."

No one was hurt and the car wasn't damaged. "I want to do it again," Perks admitted. "It was awesome. I had an absolute ball. I love speed."

I asked if he owned a fast car at home. "Not yet," he said, laughing. "But I'm going to get one now."

You have to like the mentality of drivers. When one of the professionals heard afterward that a golfer had, indeed, been involved in a slight mishap, he said, "Somebody spun out? Cool."

Jarrett, in fact, used the spinout to answer one of the frequently asked questions he gets. He talked with the golfers at a mini-buffet set up behind the garage after we'd finished our driving. "Everyone always asks me what it feels like to go that fast," Jarrett said. "You don't really have a sense of your speed. You don't really know just how fast you're going until you spin out like Craig did and see the dirt flying past, or have some other problem. Then you realize how fast you were going."

Andrade wound up winning a small trophy for turning in the fastest lap among the golfers, edging out long-hitter Kuehne. It was the first time behind a race-car wheel for both of them, although Kuehne admits to having some experience driving at high speed. "I used to have a real quick car, a Mercedes E65. It was fast," Kuehne said. Asked about the top speed he ever got it up to, he grinned and said, "I'm not gonna say. But [it was] faster than we went today. They told me I was going just under 160 today."

What is it like to drive a race car? Well, it's not unlike the best racing video game you've ever played, except that you know you can't just press "reset" if you happen to get the car airborne, flip over five or six times and explode in a ball of fire against the wall. So I was a lot more careful.

Two things were difficult. Getting into and out of the car, for one. After they removed the steering wheel, I had to slip in through the window. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem, except now I have this big ol' helmet on. It clanged against the roofline until I was able get more horizontal. The other difficult thing is fatigue. Like most rookie drivers, I had a white-knuckle death grip on the steering wheel. The grip pressure and fighting the wheel to make left turn after left turn takes a toll. I'm sure the pros have a much lighter touch, but, still, steering this rocket around for a couple of hours or 500 miles is hard to imagine. I'll never say drivers aren't athletes again. After eight or 10 laps -- hey, I was way too focused on the road immediately ahead to be bothered with details like counting laps or even looking at any of the dials on the dashboard -- I was glad to get the checkered flag and ease into the pits. My arms were starting to ache.

And Jarrett was right about the sense of speed. I'm strapped into the front seat like an astronaut, hit the gas as I come out of the turn and feel the amazing instant acceleration -- not like driving my '96 Camry at home, where I hit the accelerator on the expressway and wait a couple of seconds for a reaction. It wasn't the sense of speed I felt, it was a sense of power. The straightaways didn't scare me at all. In fact, they seemed so short as to be silly. I'd come out of the turn, accelerate and what seemed like two blinks later, I'm at the next orange cone already and having to hit the brake.

The turns, now they were a little unsettling. I blame Mayfair for pointing out those errant tire tracks during the van ride. I was pretty cautious heading into the turns -- usually too cautious, prompting my ride-along instructor to give me a thumbs-up sign halfway through the turn, which meant more throttle. I got passed a few times by golfers driving other cars, which was unnerving only because my instructor, using the rear-view mirror, reached over to suddenly grab the wheel and move our car to the right side of the track so an approaching car could pass us on the low side. Being strapped in with a bulky helmet on, I couldn't see much except straight ahead. I don't know how the pros keep track of where the cars around them are. It's unimaginable. Or, as Andrade told me later, "I can't believe there are 43 cars on the track at once."

After we'd all had a turn behind the wheel, Jarrett and the other drivers took over. They drove and the PGA Tour players rode in the passenger seat so they could get the feel of how it's really done. "It was a lot different," Kuehne said. "They're on it the whole time. They've got the foot on the gas even in the turn, and the other foot is on the brake to keep the nose down. It was awesome. I've got to talk to the Ford people about getting a sponsorship. I'd like to drive for six months and play golf for the other six months."

I didn't hitch a ride with a real driver. The event was running a bit late and this outing was really for the golfers, not for media schmoes like me, so I didn't want to get in the way. Andrade came off the track feeling queasy following his ride. "It wasn't scary," he said. "I felt in control because Elliott Sadler, my driver, was so good. Whatever the G-force is when you're making those turns and you're up against the wall ... I don't know, but that motion thing was not good. He goes right up against the wall on the straightaway and they go much further into the turn and kind of ease through it, while we brake quicker and turn it faster. I didn't feel real good. I couldn't wait to get out, to tell you the truth."

He walked off the queasiness in the garage after he got out of the car. I asked him to pick a highlight of the day."Beating Garrett Willis," he said. Anything else, I asked? "Nobody died, so that was good," he said, laughing. Then he added, "I know one thing. I'm a lot closer to playing senior golf than I am to driving a race car for a living."

As the sun began its evening descent, the players were herded back to the helicopters for the quick trip back to Doral. I got into my rental car for the not-so-quick drive back to Doral and, for your information, obeyed the speed limit the whole way back. Well, mostly.

Let's race out to check the Mailbag:

I've just read your answer concerning a match among three players, two 18s and a 9 handicap. You suggest having the 9 play as a zero and then giving strokes on holes 1-9. Is this the universal way to play this? I'm a member of a group of 16 that plays as two eight-man teams in a Ryder Cup format every year. The handicaps differ greatly from man to man. We adjust the handicaps off the low man (he's a 6, so we adjust him to 0 and then subtract 6 from everyone else's). This leads to some arguments. The basic beef is that by having the 6 play as a 0, the higher handicaps don't get their strokes on the correct holes. Example, say our 6 plays a 12. As is, the 12 will get a stroke on handicap holes 1-6, but if we do not adjust the handicaps, he should get his strokes on handicap holes 7-12. Follow me? This is a huge difference because handicap holes 7-12 are theoretically supposed to be easier. We get into this argument every year. Having an opinion from someone as respected as you are would go a long way in resolving our argument.
—Chris Arnold, Buffalo, N.Y.

There were a surprising number of letters about the handicap issue, especially from NDLNs (No Discernible Last Names), a distinction at least you managed to avoid. The 1-6 handicap holes are the most difficult on the course, and therefore the obvious holes where higher handicap players need help. On an easier hole, the difference in players' abilities would be somewhat negated, thus giving the higher handicapper strokes there would be to his or her advantage. If you don't adjust to the low man, no one will ever get shots on the course's most difficult holes -- that would seem to be ridiculous.

When asked about handicapping for skins, you suggested playing full strokes off of the low man. When there is a significant handicap discrepancy, one that is far too favorable for the high-handicapper in a skins format, we play a half-stroke on each of the stroke holes calculated your way. Try it. I think you will agree it works better.
—John, Vancouver

A handy tip from Van-land. Thanks.

Why are golf magazines and TV golf commentators so afraid to talk about equipment? I will often read, years later, that so-and-so was in a slump after making an equipment change. Even then the article will fail to state which company made the original equipment and to which company the pro switched. Are they that scared about losing advertising dollars? I would love to know that pro X was considering a change from Nike to Taylor Made because ...
—Bill Summons, Bartlett, Tenn.

Isn't it obvious, Warrant Guy, or don't you look at the ads in your golf mags? They're mostly equipment ads. Golf magazines and networks that show golf are part of the golf industry. Say something bad about equipment and that company yanks its ads -- in some cases, millions of dollars in ads. The same is mostly true of travel stories, too. There are more than 100 courses in the Myrtle Beach, S.C., area. Some of them are awful. But you never read which ones because that might cost a magazine some ad revenue. The Underground Golfer, however, tells it like it is ... except when he's a lying bastard.

NASCAR has restrictor plate races. Is it time for the PGA Tour and USGA to consider some sort of "restrictor plate" golf balls (or drivers) for pros?
—Greg O'Brien, Hamilton, Ontario

I think more and more tour players and officials agree with the concept you're talking about, O-Man, but when it comes down to putting a specific principle into play, too many self-interests will prohibit an agreement on what kind of equipment compromise should be made. While it might make sense for the PGA Tour to adopt its own rules and limits on equipment, if it takes money out of tour players' pockets (because they can't play the specific club or ball they're currently endorsing), it won't happen.

PopSickle, do you think that golf writing has become ubiquitous? It seems that with the exception of GolfPlus, every golf article can be fit into one of six categories: Tiger Tales, No Babes Augustaland, Majorless & Lefthanded (and no, it's not Russ Cochran), Not old Enough to Drink but Can Drive 350 yards, one of the FUNKy, BEEMing, WEIRd Underdogs, or some revolutionary zip-code clearing ground-to-ground polymer propulsion system (a.k.a. drivers and balls). P.S. What does ubiquitous mean?
—Moe Green, Washington

Consider yourself an honorary member of the Golf Writers Association of America, Greenpeace, for your astute observation. As for your question about the meaning of ubiquitous, gimme a break. I'm a hack golf writer. I like to use words I can spell. And whenever possible, no verbs.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Van Sickle writes for the magazine's Golf Plus section and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.

 

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