Weekend Wisdom: State-by-State of the Art

by Victor Williams

Just when the first pangs of golf burnout sneak into my gut — surely there’s gotta be a more relaxing way to relax, rare birdies be damned — along comes a couple like Jim and Pat Pollard.

out, me) a surprising golf legacy in the form of hundreds of photos and a painstakingly kept list of each course she played over 40 years, Jim called one day to offer up his own story of love for the game. Or should we say friendly obsession. He and Pat, who got married more than 54 years ago in Hilmar, Calif. — a farming town off Central California’s Highway 99, best known for its cheese factory — and still live in nearby Stevinson, might be the only couple in America who have played golf in all 50 states.

No doubt there are hundreds of single men or women who’ve pulled it off (that’s why they’re single), but to stick with it as husband and wife, rolling through America with the weapons in the trunk and the next tee box somewhere down the line, and not kill each other along the way ... that’s gotta be true love.

It just sort of happened. It wasn’t part of their wedding vows — “to have and hold, through snowman and shank, over three-jacks and OB stakes and water hazards, ’til double-bogey death do us part.” In fact, Pat didn’t take up the game until they’d been hitched a quarter-century, and Jim pulled out the sticks maybe once a year.

“My wife took up golf in 1976,” Jim says. “I was a dairyman then, and the local guys had one big tournament at Turlock Country Club. It wasn’t that big of a deal. I had a set a clubs and would play here and there. They finally put a little course in Hilmar. It was good for a few years, then would go under and come back under another name, and now it’s under again.”

Pat must have seen golf widowdom coming. She expressed interest in learning the game, so Jim bought her a set of lessons from Turlock pro George Buzzini. “I told her she had to finish all of them,” Jim says. “Golf is a tough game, and you can get discouraged. Let’s face it, the teacher you go to when you first plunk the money down, if that person is good, the chances of you takin’ up golf are good. But if that person doesn’t spur you on, you’re dead in the water.” Buzzini lit the fire under Pat, and not long thereafter the Pollards’ epic quest began at Wawona Golf Course in Yosemite National Park.

“[It’s] our first love,” Jim writes in Part 1 of a Golfing the States diary he keeps to chronicle the couple’s nationwide travels. “It runs through the meadows and the tall pines. President Teddy Roosevelt once played it. You will almost always see deer on the course and sometimes beaver in the creek that runs through the first three holes.”

Jim and Pat both camped in Yosemite as kids, and Jim’s dad would drop him off at Wawona to fish the creek. “I got bit by the golf bug. I’d find golf balls along the creek and they tried to kick me out, but I’d stay. One day an old guy asked me to caddy for him, and I asked ‘What’s that?’ So I carried his bag for him. After the years went by, that’s one of the first courses we played when Pat started playing.”

Then they flew to Hawaii for their 25th anniversary, and it’s been their second love ever since, and another example of their traveling-golfer M.O. — to find “out of the way” courses where they “wouldn’t hold anybody up.” That first trip found them at Sea Mountain Golf Course on the Big Island, near South Point and Pulaluu Black Sand Beach. Their playing partner? A jungle bird who took up residence in their cart.

They’ve been back to Hawaii several times since — the Kohala Coast, Maui, Kauai — playing high-end resort tracks and locals’ hideaways. “We could write a book on all the beautiful things we have seen and done on the islands,” Jim says.

Next came Glenbrook on Lake Tahoe’s Nevada side in 1978, followed by four straight years of tearing up and down the Golden State, racking up any logo’d gear they could find, from hats and ballmarkers to embroidered patches and balls (today their ball collection has just four omissions, including two courses that have since gone OB, as in out of biz). Somewhere along the line they joined the Worldmark vacation club and became model members, traveling enough to build up bonus weeks that allowed them to plan vacations around the planting and harvest seasons back home.

By 1992, they’d played 200 courses in five states — California, Nevada, Hawaii, Arizona and Washington — and several in Europe during a visit to their son in Switzerland. Through the rest of the decade, they racked up 11 more states and 100 more courses. This was getting serious.

“We came up with a 50-50-500 plan,” Jim writes. “By the time we’re married 50 years, we’d play in all 50 states and 500 courses.”

They set out in the spring of 1999, beginning with a trip to Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Maryland. “We kind of had a rough idea where we were gonna go, and along that path, if we heard there’s a course there, we’d play it because it was convenient,” Jim says. “We’d play it and move on. And we’re not going down the freeway; we’re going down the back roads. That’s how we travel. We shy away from the metropolitan areas.”

Back in the West, they found their way to Blanchard, Idaho, where they jumped across the border to play Chewelah Golf Course in Washington. By skirting borders and putting in plenty of roadwork, they managed to rack up 147 courses and 30 states in 1999 alone. They had three years to pick off the remaining 20 states and 53 courses. No. 500 came at a new residential track outside Sedona, Ariz., and their 50th state — Alaska — came not long after that, just in time for the big 5-Oh.

Jim and Pat have since gone back and filled in some must-play gaps, including a visit last year to the famed Pebble Beach Golf Links. They’d been there several times to follow Bill Murray and other celebs at the AT&T Pro-Am; one year Jim got Murray to sign a newspaper photo that shows Pollard and a buddy laughing in the gallery as Murray collects a bet after sinking a putt on No. 5. “It’s one of my favorite golf trophies,” Jim says. They finally played Pebble using an acquaintance’s company discount card. “It only cost us a couple hundred bucks. We enjoyed it. There were nice people with us — one from Michigan, one from L.A. It was a nice round of golf. But to pay that kind of money to play that course? It’s not worth it for the average guy. The only thing is to be able to say you’ve played it, to have that feather in your cap. But for the shape that course is in — they let it get a little ragged at certain times of year. But it’s a helluva lot better than 20 years ago; they’ve grassed in everything where before there was all that bare ground between the fairways.”

So now that California’s most famous links is in the bag, are the Pollards hanging up their softspikes? Not likely. “It’s all been good times,” Jim says. “I don’t really remember any real bad ones. My wife and I get along pretty good, I guess. Most people are like, ‘How the hell do you do that?’ For us it’s no problem. We’re not any good, but enjoy doing it and being out. We accept how we are and play like that.”

This summer they sneaked up to Reno to play Crystal Peak, a year-old nine-holer (“the price doesn’t match the course, and I had to move up to the senior tees,” 72-year-old Jim admits), and they’ve got more trips planned, including a stop at the “new” Harding Park in San Francisco. “I played it in the old days, but now they’ve redone it,” Jim says of the classic muni where Tiger Woods beat John Daly in the American Express Championship a year ago. “But I’ve played the nine-hole [course next door], and it’s nice, too. I love nine-hole courses. The average person won’t play them unless they’re 18 holes. But when you’re travelin’, you only have so much time. And if you’re not playing good, hey — you don’t have to suffer nine more.” FG

Bill and Pat’s Excellent Adventure

Favorite Courses from Their 50-State Journey, in Chronological Order

1. California — Wawona

2. Hawaii — Sea Mountain

3. Nevada — Glenbrook

4. Arizona — Elephant Rock

5. Washington — Chewelah

6. Colorado — Pagosa Springs

7. Idaho — Avondale

8. New Mexico — Piñon Hills

9. North Dakota — Sweetwater Creek 10. Montana — Red Lodge

11. South Dakota — Tomahawk

12. Kansas — Oakley

13. Wyoming — Valley Vu

14. Utah — Valley View

15. Nebraska — Ogalalla

16. Texas — Cielo Vista

17. Oregon — Running Y

18. Pennsylvania — Fernwood

19. Maryland — Chantilly Manor

20. New York — Lake Anne

21. Georgia — The Oaks

22. New Jersey — Blair Academy

23. Delaware — Rock Manor

24. North Carolina — Carolina Shores

25. South Carolina — Quail Creek

26. Kentucky — 76 Falls

27. Virginia — Galax

28. Tennessee — Stonehenge

29. Florida — Poinciana

30. Alabama — Goosepond Colony

31. Iowa — Guttenberg

32. Illinois — Atwood Homestead

33. Minnesota — Cedar Valley

34. Wisconsin — Christmas Mountain

35. Oklahoma — Shangri-La

36. Missouri — Point Royale

37. Arkansas — Holiday Island

38. Maine — Brighton Highlands

39. New Hampshire — Wentworth

40. Connecticut — Putnam

41. Vermont — Bradford

42. Massachusetts — Maplewood

43. Rhode Island — Country View

44. West Virginia — Woodbrier

45. Louisiana — Oak Harbor

46. Mississippi — Great Southern

47. Ohio — Hillcrest

48. Indiana — Gray Goose

49. Michigan — Whiteford Valley

50. Alaska — Moose Run