Inside Comments by Steve Turcotte

Stories from the Myrtle Beach World Amateur

Every year when I head to Myrtle Beach for the annual Myrtle Beach World Amateur

Championship, the stories just keep on coming – off and on the course.

Off the course, this is a tournament that pulls out all the stops. The event takes over the Myrtle  Beach Convention Center for four nights after the rounds of golf for the 3,000 players and their guests. There is free food, free beer and free hard drinks – which go down nicely after yet  another bad round of golf on the place they call the Grand Strand.

On the course, the players you run into in your groups all seem to have stories.

On the first day of the tournament there was Chris who had back surgery a few weeks before the tournament and his doctor told him not to even think about playing. But there he was, battling the 18 holes and saying he hoped his back held up. It did.

There was Allen, who had open heart surgery a month or so before the tournament and his doctor also told him it was probably not a good idea to play four rounds in 90-degree weather. He disobeyed the doctor’s orders like Chris and got through the four rounds just fine.

There was Tom, who is a USGA rules official in South Carolina and a guy who works some big  events. If we had a rules issue in our group, we knew who to go to. On this day, no issues but you could tell that Tom was disappointed because he likes his rulings.

There was Dave who had a cancer story that couldn’t be believed. Both his wife and his daughter were both breast cancer survivors and he felt so fortunate that both were still a big part of his life. He likes playing in the tournament but it seemed secondary the way he talked about his family.

And on the final day there was Curt who seemed like a nice friendly guy on the tee box then turned into the ultra-competitive Curt as we made our way down the fairway. He talked about  how he was five strokes off the lead and needed to focus. On the first green he was lining up his putt not ready to putt yet and the rest of us were talking softly about the green. He stood up and admonished us for ruining his concentration. Are you serious?  We have to deal with this crap for five hours. One of the guys in the flight told him to lighten up. He did and the rest of the round went OK. But don’t sign me up to play with this clown again.

The way the tournament works is the 50 or so flight winners meet on Friday for the  championship. A guy named Scott Collette from Knoxville, Tenn. won the tournament in a  playoff. That is a round I will never have to worry about playing. I’ve been for 27 years and never sniffed  winning the flight. Which is OK. It’s fun just to be there and play and hear those stories.​

Steve Turcotte is editor of Inside Golf Newspaper. He can be reached at sdturcotte@comcast.net.