Having sped past the World Golf Hall of Fame countless times en route to the Players' Championship at Ponte Vedra near Jacksonville, Florida, I finally took the exit for it off Interstate 95 last week at St Augustine about 20 miles south of Jacksonville.
I had allotted myself Saturday morning to peruse the Golf museum of America as my player 'had given' me the weekend off.
Like most events in America you have ample opportunity to consume and spend before you get to the main attraction. The World Golf Village is circumnavigated rather than directly approached from the east coast Interstate. You drive for miles around the whole venue before you actually get to park your car. When you do, you have the opportunity to visit the Golf shop, the Caddie Shack or Sam Snead's tavern before you get near the entrance. You may also putt and chip on the world putting green before you start to absorb the extensive collection of artefacts and memorabilia inside the building.
Of course you have to side-step a statue of Old Tom Morris before you get to the ticket booth.
The exhibit, open now for nearly six years, is packed with information on the game of golf. But being a modern museum it uses a lot of video as a way of imparting that knowledge to its guests. On entering the exhibit you are immediately exposed to the amount of collaborators involved in the Hall of Fame. From the PGA Tour to the National Golf Course Owners' Association there are a wide range of interests covered in the extensive display.
A 10-minute video showing the pain and the glory of professional tournament golf starts the visitor off before they are cast back to what they refer to as the front nine, which covers the birth of the game in Scotland and in America.
As I passed by a bag of Callaway clubs with Annika Sorenstam's name on it and trading cards of her in a display case then past a replica of the club that Alan Shephard used for his shot in space in 1971, I was worried about the sincerity of the place. Once you get upstairs to the front nine, the healthy balance between historical artefacts and simple video history seems level.
Perhaps the replica of the Swilcan Burn bridge is a bit tacky but the act of Scottish Parliament banning the playing of football and golf back in 1457 was certainly a reminder that the persimmon driver is a relatively recent part of golf history despite it seeming very dated.
Apart from the usual display of old niblicks and mashies, the section on the birth of the game in North America back in the late 1800s is something that us Europeans would not have much access to at home. There are pictures of the traditional old clubs like Shinnecock Hill founded in 1891, which, of course, is the venue for the US Open later this year.
There is a classic collection of Ben Hogan photos taken at the 1959 US Open at Winged Foot by the renowned Jules Alexander. I was fascinated to see one photo of Ben where the first hole, par four, measured 442 yards. Who said that the courses were relatively short back then? The photo was a true picture of the era, Hogan was drawing deeply on a cigarette, his caddie was black, there was no yardage book in sight.
One of the first steel shafts in the game was patented back in 1894. The R and A waited till 1929 to approve it. Bobby Jones looked resplendent on the front cover of Time magazine in 1930 as the quadrilateral champion winning the British Open, the US Open , the British Amateur and the US Open that year. Jones's words of wisdom are dotted around the room, "the essence of good form is simplicity" and the profound "Golf is usually played with outward appearance of great dignity. It is, nevertheless, a game of considerable passion - either of the explosive type or that which burns inwardly and sears to the soul". As a caddie I must try to remember Bobby's words when the next person asks me what these pros are really like.
Moving towards the end of the "front nine" I got to the cabinets of some of those inducted into the Hall of Fame. The Bauer sisters, Alice and Marlene, looked like the glamour girls of women's golf in the 1940s. Marlene Bauer Haegge won numerous events between the 1940s and the 1970s and was a founder of the LPGA.
Bernhard Langer's cabinet has a variety of photos and artefacts including some of his anti-yip putters , which rest beside his quote: "I take encouragement from those rare days when I don't four putt".
There is a pair of skis and of course a Bible indicating the influences and interests of his life. As I moved through the "back nine" or modern era of the game, I was able to see a live scoreboard of the Players' Championship, taking place just up the road.
There is a painting of Nick Price and his deceased caddie Jeff 'Squeeky' Medlen at their US PGA victory. Also a running video in Price's section tells you that his most desired fourball would be his late father, Winston Churchill and one of the pioneers of his country of birth, Zimbabwe, Frederic Courtney Salou.
General Dwight D Eisenhower's blue gas-cart is stationed at about the 15th hole, it looks rather like Del Boy Trotter's car out of Only Fools and Horses. Such was the president's enthusiasm for the game that he had a practice bunker and putting green built in the White House gardens in 1952.
He played over 800 rounds of golf in his eight years as US President. "The little White House" was built for him as a residence when he came to play at Augusta National. His best score there was 79 as an 18 handicapper.
There is a large area devoted to Byron Nelson and his achievements. Ben Hogan has a room devoted to his feats, including a wonderful photograph of him at his ticker-tape parade in New York City in honour of his accomplishments in 1953.
My favourite section, given my profession, was the caddie area, which strangely enough was not outside the main building .
There are photos of the Masters caddies. James 'Pookie' Harrison , Wayne 'Hicky' Haws , Tommy 'Burnt Biscuits' Bennet and Willie Lee 'Pappy' Stokes, who caddied for Masters champions, Claude Harmon in 1948, Ben Hogan in 1951 and 1953 and Jack Burke Jr in 1956. The 46-year tradition of local caddies only ended in 1983 when the pros were permitted to bring their tour caddies with them for the Masters .
At Augusta, as a caddie you wanted to be known as a "Stabber" which meant that you could pull clubs that went right to the heart of the game. There is an abundance of stabbers in today's caddie shack, many of them less than noble, stabbing into the backs of their colleagues.
There are copies of caddie manuals printed by the Western Golf Association. Including one titled Recruiting and Retaining your Caddies and The Way of a Caddie with a Man.
Unfortunately, they were not accessible for reading. There were replicas of the soil under a USGA approved green, a rules section and a simulator which allowed you to hit shots on whatever hole in the world you could think of.
I wished I had not the time to go and visit such a place when the Fifth Major was taking place up the road and as a caddie I would have preferred to be contending there. A Saturday rambling around the World Golf Hall of Fame is a worthy trip for the golf enthusiast with a free couple of hours to spare in north east Florida .
