Saturday, April 7, 2012

A Beach Boy, Golf, and a Real Marathon

Maybe it is because this is the weekend of the most hallowed of golf tournaments in Augusta or maybe it is because I met the author at dinner Thursday night at the Town Point Club in downtown Norfolk, but I actually read a book on golf today.  It is titled King of Clubs:  The Great Golf Marathon of 1938 by Jim Ducibella, the long-time sports editor of The Virginian-Pilot and current resident of Williamsburg.

It is a true story about a young couple from the Alanton area of Virginia Beach, who went to Chicago, where he worked as a stockbroker and was a member of a prestigious country club, called Olympia Fields (which I am certain is not as good as the Cavalier Golf & Yacht Club, which he should have joined and stayed in Virginia Beach).

His name was Smitty Ferebee, and he had a handicap of 15, which is good but certainly not great.  However, he did have incredible endurance . . . and a sucker's face for a bet.  Against his wife's wishes, he bet his family's 296 acres of land on Broad Bay in Virginia Beach that he could play 33 rounds of golf in 96 hours, starting in California, before going to Phoenix, Kansas City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York without any round having a score over 100.

While Trane Air-Conditioning provided the plane, Ferebee still had to walk 182 miles on foot (no golf carts) and lost 21pounds  in four very long days.  Despite his caddie saying the blisters on Ferebee's feet had their own blisters, despite many weather-related problems, and despite being "slipped a mickey" by a bookie in Philadelphia who wanted Ferebee to fail, he eventually overcame it all and won the bet.

The fictional story of Rocky Balboa was no more heroic than this true story!

Then, it got even more strange.  When World War II broke out, he wanted to become a pilot but was too young.  Of course, he overcame all opposition and succeeded in becoming the Navy's oldest pilot, eventually meeting the Navy's youngest pilot, a certain George H.W. Bush.

He also wanted to experience what it was like to be a paratrooper.  (I could have told him that!)  Under strict orders not to jump out of any airplane, he instructed a junior pilot to fly an old open-cockpit two-seater and to turn it upside down.  Since he was not belted-in, he fell out of the plane from 2,000 feet, deploying his parachute and breaking several bones upon landing.

In 1945, his plane crashed while dropping supplies to American POWs north of Tokyo.  Although his co-pilot died, Ferebee was lucky -- with only 13 breaks in his left arm, a fractured skull, and a hemorrhaged left eye. While he only re-gained 35% usage of his arm, he resumed playing golf after the war.

Moving to the Richmond area in 1950, he joined the Hermitage Country Club and still won the Virginia Sate Senior Amateur Championship in 1962, despite his war injuries.  He worked for the Equitable Life Assurance Society before retiring in 1970.  After dying of cancer in 1988, he was buried on the old family property in the Alanton area of Virginia Beach, where his wife joined him nine years later.

For those of you like myself, who enjoy a good non-fictional story that is both well-researched and well-written, I recommend this book.  For me, I enjoyed the book until I realized that his average score over the 33 rounds was 85 . . . an unattainable goal for a duffer like myself.  I couldn't shoot an 85 on one round, much less average that over 33 rounds in 4 days.

Maybe . . . I'm just jealous?  But, I'm not going to read it again!