"The Meaning of Winged Foot: The club’s exceptional courses aren’t the only thing that set it apart"

Golf.com’s Michael Bamberger filed a long list of thoughts and memories of Winged Foot. Contributions are shared from Davis Love, Jim Nantz, Dan Hicks, Dave Marr, Sandy Tatum and Dave Anderson, among others, with cameos by Al Espinosa Jackie Pung and Tommy Armour.

From the piece, filed while waiting for his COVID-19 test.

Dave was a peach. Years later, by dint of alphabetical seating in different press boxes, we sat near one another. Dave, who died in 2018 and wrote some mega bestsellers, loved Winged Foot, wrote about it often and would have been just the kind of Winged Foot member Butch was talking about. But Dave was happy playing on his side of the Hudson River, at Knickerbocker, a Donald Ross course in Tenafly, N.J. As a reporter, Dave got stuff nobody else did. In 2006, the last time the U.S. Open was at Winged Foot, Dave captured this little exchange between Tiger Woods and Mike Davis for the benefit of his readers. This is how he wrote it and it’s perfect:

“When are you going to get the greens faster?” Woods said.

Davis wasn’t sure if Woods was serious or joking, but it didn’t matter.

“What you have,” Davis said, “is what you’re going to get.”

I am nearly certain Tiger was joking. That’s how his sense of humor runs. Also, the Winged Foot greens have so much slope. They’re always fast. There are many stories about four-putt greens in events major and minor there. Likely some five-putt greens, too.