Halloween Horror Stories - Golf With Jay Delsing

Jay Delsing spent 25 years on the PGA Tour and is a lifetime member of the PGA Tour and PGA of America. Now he provides his unique perspective as a golfer and network broadcaster. It's time to go On The Range with Jay Delsing.

On The Range is brought to you by the Gateway section of the PGA. Hey, good morning. This is Golf with Jay Delsing. I'm your host, Jay Perley, and sitting a chair next to me. Meet, what's that like? I just blew in.

I'll be blowing right back out. We've formatted a show like Around the Golf. The first segment is called the On The Range segment and it's brought to you by the Gateway section of the PGA.

You know, John, these guys do so much for the game of golf, not only here in the Gateway section, all over the place. When you were growing up in the various cities that you grew up in, Chicago and Detroit and all of these different places, there was always, and it was a little different when we were kids because the pro was the man. Why did that change, I wonder? It's the financial dynamics of the country clubs where they had club managers now and they basically realized that the pros were probably making a little more money than they should have, which probably wasn't right, but that's what they did. But why in so many cases, and not all, did they lose their authority around the club? I can see why they lost the money.

I think you're right about that. So when the money stopped going away, they stopped getting guys that could play. And now you get guys that might be good managers or younger kids that'll work for less money. And so you don't have, I mean, playing with the pro when I was a kid was like a tremendous honor. Yeah, they were kind of the president of the club almost, the CEO. You're the man, you're the chairman of the board sort of thing, and you get to play golf with them. Now, some of the pros can't play as well as some of the best members at the club.

Yeah, I guess it's completely different. We kind of grew up watching that change. And I can remember through my life, through the career, through being involved with golf, I watched it and I was aware of the change. And I always thought it was a little bit unfortunate personally. Yeah, I'm with you. It lost a little bit of the flair, and I kind of like it when there's that guy that's in charge of a lot of that stuff. There's more of a direction. And I'm okay that somebody's in charge of all that kind of stuff, especially when they really knew what the heck they were doing.

Yeah, no kidding. And so there's 300 men and women in our section. Just want to thank them. Thanks for doing what you do. Thanks for helping us with our golf experience. Thanks for putting in those 12 hours behind the scenes, all that hard work.

Those men and women are great. Pearl, what do we got on social media? What's up with the social stuff? We got anything to report? Nope. Perfect.

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Give them a call. Alright, so Pearl, we kind of have a little bit of a grab bag show for this week, which I think it's kind of fun and fitting for this time of year. And fitting for this show. Yeah, well of course it's fitting for this show because we're loose with the details, we're super loose with the facts, and we're just super loose.

That's all there is to it. Maybe we should be a little tighter, but we're not. So, we're kind of in that part of the golf year that is, you know, it's the wraparound season, so we're in 2021, kind of playing for 2022. And they're playing some of the lesser known events that I'll call on the tour. We talked about a couple shows ago, while we talked about the PGA Tour has created this cast system with different tournaments and things that are, you know, the majors leading the way at the upper end of the food chain. And then you have the World Golf Championships, and then you have some of these events.

But the importance and what you see is kind of fun. We saw Rory just whip some ass last week and claim his 20th PGA Tour victory, which is just terrific. And we saw Ricky Fowler hop back into the scene, which I thought was really, I'm a huge Ricky fan, I don't know about you.

Absolutely. How do you not like Ricky? But there's another guy, as we talked about with DeChambeau, that people love to start kind of chipping away at and beating up. You know, for the longest time, he couldn't win the big one. Well, then he won one of the all-time great wins at TPC when he had phenomenal shot after phenomenal shot.

It was just so much fun, so he obviously showed that he can stand in there under the toughest of circumstances. But here's a guy that's gotten married, things have changed, he had a huge run, and so he hasn't played fantastic. And everybody wants to come up with reasons of, well, he's not trying hard enough, he's not focused on that.

Well, guess what? He's doing what he wants to do. He's also got a gazillion dollars in the bank, and now apparently maybe he's going to focus a little bit more on the game. I think instead of people chipping away at him that he didn't win and, oh, this is the X amount of time that he's been leading after 54 holes and didn't win.

What about the fact that he hasn't even contended for a while, he's made that comeback. And if you know the game, in most cases, this is part of the process. Oh, absolutely. What is it like? How many people have been in that dark hole and been able to keep fighting to get their way out? How many people? Some of them you've never heard of their names again, so let's keep that in mind. Some have stayed there and fought for a long time, popped up once in a while, some come back a little bit, some come back all the way. You know, one of my favorites on that, and again, it's the golf with Jade Elsie show, so I'm only close on this, but about how many tournaments did Jack Nicklaus win?

Oh man, that's a great question. It's about 70. Okay, I'll go with that. How many times did he come in second? Well, I know he had 19 seconds in majors. I know that for sure. Not for sure, but you know what I'm saying.

But I know you're close for sure. Uh huh, right, sort of for sure. So I didn't know that, but he had about the same number of seconds as he did first, and then if you start adding up his thirds, fourths, and fifths, there are a lot more than his firsts. So did he choke all those times, Jay? Is Jack really a choker?

He blew it 70% of the time when he had a chance. Is that a choker? Right. That just makes me crazy, and all it says when people talk about that, write about that, is they don't really understand the game.

Pearl, 100%. I was thinking about this the other day. I was watching Joe's volleyball game at senior night at Nerex. It was really fun.

They honored the seniors and everything. And there was a little boy, he couldn't have been three years old, and his parents were sitting next to me. And I like to kind of sit by myself, and they kind of moved over here because there was some room. And this little kid was running all over the place, right, and learning to run and falling down. And I thought, you know what's so interesting about life? We get in this old age and these mindsets where we've listened to either lousy stuff, and we get discouraged, and we get pissed off, and we get frustrated.

Could you imagine if you were one and a half or however old this kid was, and every time you fell down because you were learning to run, you got pissed, and you stopped trying? Hey, Meat, there's a little something coming out about Jay's age here now that he's turned 61, and he's kind of got a little bit of the angry old man trying to get past that. Is that what I'm hearing? No, I'm talking about good attitudes here. No, I know you are. I know, I know. But I mean, think about that. Could you imagine if you were a little kid and because you didn't know how to walk, you got pissed at yourself? Well, that's why you want to be around little kids, and that's why you want to be around younger people, to see some of that, the times where how are they approaching, you know, life. And a three-year-old tends to approach it just about the way the rest of us should.

It's wide open, it's a smile on their face, and they, you know, they fall and get hurt, and then they shake it off, they cry a little bit, and they get back up and do it all over again. I got to tell you a quick story if we have time. We got time for a grandson story? Oh, sure. So, my son-in-law and grandson- Turn his mic off, Meat. Last, last, last, last. You guys are killing me. I'll save it for later. Go ahead. No. No, you're not going to hear it now.

I'm talking about him. Oh, good. It worked, Meat. Way to go.

No, so when I think about that, though, Pearl, one of the things that we've talked about this so many times about playing on tour and life in your business life, the ability to get back up, the ability for Ricky Fowler to go, hey, look at his beautiful wife, and say, hey, let's start a family. Let's bag this. I got $25 million in the bank. I did a nice job.

I'm early middle 30s. Let's just buy a couple houses. I got enough money to live the rest of our life for. Uh-uh.

No. You've got more drive than that, and he's such a great player. Anyway, you were pumped that he's had a spark of maybe a little bit of a comeback, getting some confidence back.

I certainly felt the exact same way. And in the intro, you've got the guy who was kind of maybe emotionally not devastated, but pretty much whacked from the Ryder Cup, Rory. He's kind of said to himself, I think, and he's said as much on TV, kind of looked in the mirror and said, you know, I need to get this thing going again. So you get that guy with a little spark, and you're trying to make it come back at the same time, and Rory turns it on. I'm not sure it matters who Rory's playing against. If Rory turns it on, who's really going to just stop him in his tracks?

I agree, Pearl. Is there anybody, though? No.

No. He's got a different gear. He doesn't show it often, but one of the things Philly Mick was talking to the young studs, the Justin Thomases, and the guys, the Shoflays and Cantlays, and they were, the guys were saying this. I've said this on the show before. They're like, oh, man, you're so lucky, Phil. You got to take on Tiger in his prime.

I wish I had the chance. Phil looked at him and was like, no, you don't. How many events does Phil win if Tiger doesn't show up? It could have been an unbelievable number, but it didn't happen that way, right?

No. I mean, Tiger's got, what, 82? And Philly Mick's got 45. Well, and, you know, that's what we were going to talk a little bit about, too, is when you run up against that guy, you know, we talked about Lester, John Lester last show, you know, as certain, to say the least, the level of intimidation of just a gamer, of that guy, a competitor, you run up against that guy that, you know, hopefully you don't know and feel this way, but they can beat you, probably going to beat you. Tiger, you knew was going to beat you. And we watched Tiger take people like Colin Montgomery, Davis Love, some of those people.

Craig Norman. And just kind of go, yeah, I know you were number one, but actually you might be two, but it's not close anymore to number one. Exactly. Absolutely. And when you know that, you and I played against guys like that in high school basketball.

You obviously did on the tour, et cetera. That's a tough feeling in your gut. When you're up against that. We got to talk about that more on the front nine. Folks, we'll be right back. This is Golf with Jay Delsing. This is Paul Leisinger, and you're listening to Golf with Jay Delsing. I want to thank the Gateway section of the PGA of America for supporting the Golf with Jay Delsing show. There are over 300 men and women PGA professionals in over 100 golf facilities in the greater St. Louis area supporting us. They're experts in the game. They know the business of golf. And at this point in time, this pandemic, the golf courses are jammed.

These folks are working 10, 12-hour days and just doing great stuff and really appreciate them. Every time you pull up to a public course or a private course, a driving range, there's a really good chance that that facility is run by a member of our section. Some of the examples of the programs that are run by these PGA professionals and the Gateway PGA section include PGA Reach, Drive Chip and Putt, PGA Hope, and the PGA Junior League.

To learn more about the Gateway PGA, go to gatewaypga.org. To find a local PGA professional coach for your next session, go to pga.com. The PGA, growing this game we love. Marcon Appliance Parts Company needs to recognize the sponsors, staff and volunteers who made the inaugural Ascension Charity Classic in St. Louis a huge success. Without the tireless effort of hundreds of dedicated people this past year, this PGA Champions Tour event could not have achieved the success it did.

The winner in golf is the person with the lowest score. But the big winner of this event is the people and communities of need in the St. Louis area and the tremendous boost to the St. Louis economy as a whole. Well played by everyone who put in the time to make this a wonderful event. It's great to live in your community.

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This is Marie Davila. Come be our guest. Thank you, St. Louis, for making the first annual Ascension charity classic presented by Emerson a record breaking success. The golf was incredible.

Your enthusiasm unmatched. And the only thing that will last longer than the memories is the impact you've made on North St. Louis County charities. To our sponsors, volunteers and fans, thank you for welcoming golf's greatest legends and bringing professional golf back to St. Louis with record attendance.

See you next year at the Ascension charity classic. I want to give a shout out to my friend Colin Burnt over at the Dean team of Kirkwood. Folks, if you're looking for any sort of vehicle, I know it says Volkswagen of Kirkwood. Colin has a parking lot full of new and used cars.

I was just over there the other day. I bought a used VW Passat for my daughter, Joe, who just totaled it in an accident. She texted me, by the way, and said, Dad, I tapped a car in front of me. She tapped it so well that the car is totaled. Anyway, I talked to Colin, and he is working out a new vehicle for us.

But we went over and looked. There is a huge selection of cars over there. My buddy, Pearly, that does his show with me had bought a used Toyota truck from Colin and just loved the service and loved the vehicle.

314-966-0303. This is like dealing with family over there. These are great people. Colin is there.

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Visit their website at PowersInsurance.com. Grab your clubs. We're heading to the Front 9 on Golf with Jay Delsing. The Front 9 is brought to you by the Ascension Charity Classic. Hey, welcome back. This is Golf with Jay Delsing. I'm your host, Jay. I got Pearly with me and we are headed to the Front 9 that is brought to you by the Ascension Charity Classic 2022.

Wow, hard to even say. This is going to be another great year. Norwood will deliver. And the Ascension Charity group will be bigger and better than it was last year. Probably can't wait for that to happen. It is going to be, hopefully this will be a staple on the PGA Tour Champions event and calendar, I mean. And we'll get all the best players again coming to St. Louis.

How does that determine, Jay? How do they re-up for, what, they have three years left? They have three years left. When do they re-up for if they're going to moor? Is that with two years to go or do they wait until the end?

No, everybody does it different, kind of different paces. And they've already mentioned it before and they already mentioned wanting to keep this stability around. I think with COVID and some of the uncertainty in the marketplace, I think they probably, I don't think they've necessarily backed off of the stance.

I think there's just some other things that are probably a little more pressing for them to handle. And so that's, I think that's where we are. But I want to give the tip of the cap segment. Typically it's in the, on the range segment, but we got, we got Gavin a little bit over there. The tip of the cap is brought to you by the Dean team of Kirkwood.

314-966-0303. That's Colin Burt. He sold you your car. He sold me the car that my daughter Jo totaled. And we're working on a few other things. The tip of the cap this week is brought to you by my friends at Dean team of Kirkwood.

314-966-0303. We are, I am tipping my cap, Jon, to all of these charitable organizations. Specifically the folks last week that got, were the beneficiaries for the money that we raised.

The PGA Tour, or PGA Reach, sorry, PGA Reach. The first T. But then Marygrove, Boys and Girls Club of St. Louis, and the Urban League. There are a lot, those are a lot of volunteer driven organizations. There's a lot of people spending a lot of their personal time. A lot of, those, those, those places are run so much on donations and, and how people can contribute to, to help them. They run on donations for sure because they have to keep going and they run on passion and an awful lot of love. My wife formed one years ago and it's just amazing the amount of effort.

But you know what, it's, it's also a lot of fun and passion to them. So good for all of them. That's a great one to tip your cap to, Jay. So we're, we're tipping the cap and thanks Colin and Brandy over at the Dean team of Kirkwood.

314-966-0303. Colin's got any sort of car you want. I know it's, I bought a Volkswagen from him. Pearly, you've got a big Toyota Tundra truck. And besides that, he's a great guy to deal with. They were, they were fantastic to deal with.

And yes, I love my truck. All right. So we were, we were talking about Tiger. We were talking about, John, watching the way the modern day player plays and watching and playing the old modern game. But when I was on tour, you know, I never played with anybody that I didn't, couldn't do what they did. I might not have been as consistent. I might not have done it in a clutch, whatever, whatever.

But until Tiger takes that two iron off the sea level deck at Pebble Beach and wings that thing a million miles up in the air from 275 yards and lands it softly on the back of the 18th green, is that's when I knew Houston, we have a problem. You know, it'd be interesting to find out from a Colin Montgomery, from a Davis Love, from a, all the other guys that he kind of brought to their knees. What was the moment where their brains went from that dogged, determined, competitive guy that didn't let other people quote, get in their head, under their skin, whatever the case is to, wow, I can remember a Colin Montgomery coming off.

Now, obviously I wasn't there there, but relative to the watching it on TV. And he talked about pre, pre round. Hey, Tiger's great player, but he's just a guy. He's just a human.

Well, he was trying to figure out, I don't, by the end of the round, this guy might not be human because I didn't beat him and I should never be able to beat him. And Davis Love had a similar situation and Davis was one of the top dogs for a long time. And all of a sudden just went like the top spots taken. What about, what about Norman?

Tiger supplanted Norman as world number one. And it's one of the reasons why Norman doesn't like him so much because it was unceremoniously in your face. I'm the new kid in town. Move over.

It wasn't like, Hey, thanks for being here. And it's like, and, and I, what, what was one of the comments I heard? Someone said, it's Greg Norman. He says, yeah, but he's no Tiger Woods. How'd that go over with Greg? Oh, not like, not well. Okay. So let's bring it more down to our level and, and maybe a little bit more of our audience level.

So maybe a different sport then if you didn't feel that way in golf, that, that was a huge advantage that you didn't feel that way in golf. I probably should have though. I was going to bring that up, but that's another one of those awareness things meet. I don't know what the hell. Yeah. Awareness is a really good thing.

Sometimes most of the time until it's not. What about a different sport or what about a different situation or is that how you roll that you don't, that is how you roll. I can look at your eye right now. Oh my God, John, I'm playing in high school basketball. You know, I'm six foot five now. I was probably six, three, six, three and a half.

I grew a little bit once. I still got the couch and I'm playing center down at St. Louis shoe high. And I'm who are our arch rival.

The DeSmet has got Steve Stepanovich at seven foot tall. I mean, I could barely touch his elbow and I'll never forget this. I mean, it was like, I'm trying to figure out how we're going to win this game. We had a really good season my senior year. I think we were probably like 21, 22 and six and three of those losses came to DeSmet. So we're playing them and we've got a good season going on and there's a lot of hype. Like the U high can beat DeSmet at this game. Right. And I'm thinking, how are we going to do this? Because you know what it's like trying to shoot over a seven footer. Anyway.

Don't. Right. So the tip goes, guess who loses the tip? Of course.

And down comes DeSmet. Well, they pass it out to, they called him steepo at the time. They pass it out to steepo and he's like just outside the free throw line extended. And do you remember in the day, probably did the shake and bake with the ball between your legs and did the shake and bake and then started to dribble, drivel.

He did the shake and bake on me, which didn't shake or bake me because he's was, was probably the only guy on the court slower than I was in that regard. And he went to shoot a jumper from about 14 feet out, Pearl. And the ball was just right in front of my face. I just knocked it out of his hands, went down, laid it in, got fouled and got a three point play.

We are up three, three nothing. You should have stopped on the spot. And he's careening downhill from there, Pearl, because this man backed into me with elbows a blazing the rest of the game and pummeled my ass. Not, not just injured me. He trampled me. So is the three pointer worth it? Yeah, I think so. I think we lost by about 20, but John, he backed into me and you know, at seven feet, I'm weighing all of 180 pounds.

He's weighing 260. And I was like, I'm trying to foul him. I can't even foul him, you know, turn around and try to punch him, do anything. It was, you know, that's when your competitive juices come in and you're really not sure what the hell is going on until it's over. You're like, thank God that's over. Well, I think it's interesting because I think one of the key things when you tell that story that was the problem is there really wasn't a plan because how do we do this?

So you go into this battle and there's not. I had a similar situation my senior year and I'm up against Tim Ondrej who ends up going to play for Notre Dame. He's 6'9", outweighs me by 40, 50 pounds.

I'm 6'3". But we did have a plan, a very specific plan, and we had actually had a plan for the whole year relative to being tough, being in shape and stuff like that. So ironically, I should have felt, oh no, what are we going to do? Because by the way, the team you played for, our school had never beaten in its history. So there's a lot of reasons I should have felt there was no chance.

Didn't have an inkling of that. It was one of the first times in my life that I kind of identified the importance of a plan of the routine that we had. And the coach said early in the year, you're going to be the best condition and you will be physically the toughest and mentally the toughest in the state. Now none of us knew what the heck that meant, but we knew what it meant by the end of the season because we were. And I did the thing to him that unfortunately yours did to you, and I physically beat him pretty bad. And I'm surprised I didn't get kicked out of the game.

But we ended up winning the game and going on to the next game in the state. But there's been plenty of times when I've walked into situations, I don't have the plan. And so that was that, it's that sinking feeling. And I mean, for me, it's just kind of this, it's almost a physical drain and a mental confusion.

Oh man, then you get the fear kicking in. But Pearl, we had a plan, it just didn't work. We were going to try to back in and not get, you know, they could throw the ball up to him, but if we had him kind of sandwiched in, well hell, he just passed it over.

You know, when somebody's opened and there's a lay in and we're like, how slow is this game going? I mean, we just got our butts kicked. But he actually, Sipanovich got drafted number two overall in the NBA behind Ralph Sampson. Wow. I'm sure he remembers that game. Not at all.

Not at all. All right, that's going to be enough for this and enough of our basketball talk. But we'll be back on the, where are we? We're going to the back nine. This is Golf with Jay Delsing.

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Get the protection and the peace of mind you deserve. Thank you, St. Louis, for making the first annual Ascension Charity Classic presented by Emerson a record breaking success. The golf was incredible.

Your enthusiasm unmatched. And the only thing that will last longer than the memories is the impact you've made on North St. Louis County charities to our sponsors, volunteers and fans. Thank you for welcoming golf's greatest legends and bringing professional golf back to St. Louis with record attendance.

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We're halfway there. It's time for the Back Nine on Golf with Jay Delsing. The Back Nine is brought to you by Fogelbach Agency with Farmers Insurance. Hey, welcome back. This is Golf with Jay Delsing. I'm your host, Jay. Pearly's with me.

Brad Barnes. He's taking good care of us here at ESPN Studios. And we are headed to the Back Nine that's brought to you by Ed Fogelbach and the Fogelbach Agency with Farmers. 314-398-0101. He's your insurance guy. If you need him, give Ed a call and he will help you today.

He is in his family working in that agency. So this happens to be our holiday. Hello. Our Halloween edition. Pearl, we're going right to Golf Horror Stories.

What do you got? Golf Horror Stories. Well, there's several names we could talk about. We've talked about Ian Baker Finch, Hunter Mahan, Chip Beck. Some folks like that where it just kind of went away. They kind of ghosted.

They kind of turned into a ghost. Anthony Kim. Probably the biggest name to walk away from the game injury wise. Put all this money on the table. We could talk about that a little bit. Just remarkable. So you want to talk about that?

The kind of ghosts and then horror stories of being on the golf course. Let's just give a little background to Anthony Kim. Anthony Kim, I think, stopped playing at 29 years old. He was an absolute bonafide star. Hadn't quite lived up to the super superstar level that we thought he would.

But hell, he won three or four or five tournaments on the tour. He made over $12 million. He wound up hurting his thumb and walked away because he decided to pull the parachute, pull the cord on the $10 million insurance disability policy that only gets reneged if he plays on tour one more time.

Oh my gosh. I would just hope that, I don't want to hope that his thumb's terrible, but I'm hoping he really can't play because what a missed opportunity for, I mean, $10 million is a lot of money, but he already made a bunch. He's going to make a whole, whole, whole, whole bunch more. And I'm not sure, why do you say he didn't quite hit the pinnacle or wasn't super stardom? I mean, he was Ryder Cuppery and won tournaments.

What was missing from your perspective? Maybe 29, he wasn't there yet. Yeah, exactly. I think probably just a little more of that consistency, just a little more of him being there that often. He had a, as I recall, a really, really super low period, which is not all that unusual. But, you know, they were thinking that he was, you know, going to knock off, you know, a tournament or two or three every year.

And he was so fun to watch, Jake, because he was almost like a street fighter type of a guy. No question. He just attacked the golf course and played the game differently, which always kind of piques our interest, right? Because we like that guy that tries something different and not being the proverbial regular tour pro type of guy. Really, there's no regulars out there, but I mean, you know what I'm talking about.

So I think that's unfortunate. What about your buddy, Ian Baker Finch? What kind of went on with that story? So number five in the world had just won the British Open and was really trying to get a little longer off the tee. Beautiful hands around the green. Great wedge player. Wonderful putter. And went to see David Leadbetter to try to lengthen his swing, to get a little more length off the tee and wound up never playing again.

Really. For the most part, I'll never forget playing in the 95 British Open and I'm watching this throng of people. I'm on the inward half going down number 15.

He's on the outward half going down number three. You know how those fairways are adjacent down there and I see this from a distance. I see this player in Caddy break away from this massive crowd. It was Baker Finch, Norman and Arnold Palmer. Wow. And there were just millions of people out there.

It seemed like there was probably 20, 30,000 following him. And Finchy starts walking across the green in the distance and coming across our fairway. He's driven it on number three up against the fence to the left on 15 all the way across our fairway.

It's 85, 90 yards away from the fairway. Wow. And I said, Finchy, what the hell are you doing, bud? And he said, mate, let me just put it to you this way.

Best drive of the day. Wow. Because on the first hole at St. Andrews, he hit it out of bounds. He can't do it.

Where is that? Left. Like? Remember he said his hat blew off? He said his hat blew off. After he hit it or before he hit it? Before he hit it. It kind of distracted him. And that's too bad because super, super nice guy. How about Hunter Mahon?

What's going on there? I'm not really sure with Hunter. Because he's, again, a rider-cupper. Yep.

Very, very consistent. But you know what, Pearl? Certain people, you know, the age thing hits different golfers at different times. And so, you know, Hunter's on the backside of 40 now.

Well, now. But, I mean, there was a drop-off multiple years ago from, again, a rider-cub. I wonder because he had a tough time at one of the rider-cubs coming down the stretch. I wonder if it was something like that. That was the one that our buddy Corey Pavan was the captain.

And, yeah, he kind of laid the sod over a basic little chip out in front of, pitch out in front of the last hole and made his bogey. And, I mean, that's not exactly why we lost that rider-cub. No. I wonder if it's things like that. You know, you hear prizefighters. Leonard said, once upon a time, when he first got knocked down, he's like, what is this? I've never been knocked down before.

So, whatever their version of being knocked down is, it's tough to get up from some of that. All of a sudden, there's a whole new dynamic in the game that you're like, well, wait a second. I don't know how to deal with that.

That hasn't happened before. Pearl, in terms of horror stories, nothing sticks out in my mind more than John Von Devel and what happened at Carnoustie at the British Open. Nothing sticks out in my mind. But is there anything in your mind where you watch this, or even, I mean, me playing the Ascension Charity Classic and getting the shanks in the middle of the second round is my personal lowest that I've felt on the golf course. And I've been low. I've been lower than some rocks that I've... Yeah, there was just a different, there was a different level of low.

We talked about it a little bit. And as your friend in Caddy, it was heartbreaking. So there's no escaping, which I guess would be the horror, right? Isn't it the horror of those dreams when somebody's chasing you and you can't get away, you can't run fast? See, and I don't ever have any of those things. I've had those a couple of times. My wife has them like twice a week.

Oh my gosh, I don't have those. So when you think of what is stuff that you've, I mean, Jim Nelford could call the Hale-Erwin victory at the Pebble Beach thing a horror story because Hale duck hooks this ball into the Pacific Ocean and somehow it ricochets out into the fairway. He makes birdie on that late 18th hole and then beats him in a playoff.

So sorry about not knowing the name here, but I'm thinking you're going to remember his name because he was a buddy of yours coming down the stretch. He's got a chance to win. He says on national TV, this is just, this is, this is just, this is what it's all about. It's so fantastic. Then what happened? He laid the sod over his five iron in the middle of the lake on 18th at Doral, the blue monster. So this is what it's all about. He looked right at the camera, said, this is what it's all about. Goes through his routine and laid the cheese right over it. Ball didn't go.

He was trying to go 190 yards and went 70. So another one. And you played with this gentleman and it was nice to see him playing again after he's been real sick with COVID. Markelle Kaveckia coming down in the war on the shore, coming down in the, in the Ryder Cup. Oh my gosh, were you working that Ryder Cup?

No, no, I was not. That was 92, I think, Pearl, at the war of the shore. Dave Stockton was the, but they were grinding. They were going.

They had, they had kind of everything that they wanted. And then you got a guy who was kind of known to just be, he's just going to hit his cut and it's going to just be fine and nothing bothers this guy. And then all of a sudden, shake your positive, shake your positive. And that was tough for him. That was tough for him.

Remember? He left the team and had tears and yeah, oh man. That's when you start thinking about this, what about Greg Norman's Masters collapse when he's five strokes up and yeah, but it happened with his buddy Faldo. So I'm sure it didn't bother him that much.

That's true. At least he probably took a little solace in the fact that Nick won another green jacket. Oh my gosh. What about Scott Hoke missing that little tiny potty. Remind me. Do you realize what happened there?

No, that's why I know you can remind me, but tell me. They're in a playoff. Scott Hoke is in a playoff with Sir Nick Faldo and let's just say, Sir Nick is not everybody's favorite. Let's just say that.

We'll just suffice it at that. And Scott gets up on the 10th hole, because you're not Augusta, they turn you right over to number 10 and you start your playoff there. And he's got 18 inches to win the Masters and misses it. And you know what bothered most people was that he missed it so Faldo gets the win. Exactly. And I've heard some pretty good players out there through the years, obviously not going to name any names, went like, had that not happened, you wouldn't know who Sir Nick Faldo is. Exactly. But it did happen. And it isn't that how it's interesting. Exactly.

And Nick's won, what Nick won, five majors? Yeah. Yep. Pretty amazing. Yep. That's interesting. I've heard that so many times. Had it not been for Scott Hoke missing that two-footer, you may not have ever heard of Sir Nick.

So I had multiple horror stories and personals. We got to hold on to them because we're going to get those on the 19th hole. All right.

Welcome back. This is Golf with Jay Delsing. Marcon Appliance Parts Company needs to recognize the sponsors, staff, and volunteers who made the inaugural Ascension Charity Classic in St. Louis a huge success. Without the tireless effort of hundreds of dedicated people this past year, this PGA Champions Tour event could not have achieved the success it did.

The winner in golf is the person with the lowest score. But the big winner of this event is the people and communities of need in the St. Louis area and the tremendous boost to the St. Louis economy as a whole. Well played by everyone who put in the time to make this a wonderful event. It's great to live in your community.

Marcon Appliance Parts Company is based in St. Louis, Missouri, and is the largest distributor of major appliance parts in North America and a proud distributor of General Electric Parts. Hey, guys. I know you've heard golf is booming, and it really is. There are more people playing golf today than ever before.

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He wants to help you with your game, and he'll show you around. This is Jay Delsing, and our Gateway PGA Spotlight this week is my personal shout-out to these men and women that are spending their golf season here in St. Louis is coming to a close. Unfortunately the weather's gonna get colder, but from, gosh, April to November, these men and women have been logging massive amounts of hours behind the scenes doing so many great things for we golfers to enhance our experience, and I just want to thank them. Jason Marsinek is the new director of golf over at Norwood Hills, and we just hired Brandon Smith, so we have Smitty now as our head professional at Norwood, and a huge shout-out to Norwood and the staff for getting such a, it's like a dream team over there with great people, and the Norwood membership has got to greatly benefit. I know we've had Jerry Tucker, I'm sorry, we've had Mike Tucker on the spotlight, and there's some great stuff happening at Bell Reef that the BMW tournament is coming to St. Louis in 2026, and there's rumblings about the President's Cup coming to Bell Reef in 2030.

So really excited about that, but folks, just think about it this way. Maybe you live in the city, maybe you don't, maybe you live in Union or Pacific or somewhere that's a little more outskirtish, and you have just your golf course that you go to. Chances are that the guys that are hanging out there are part of this PGA of America association, and they're all working and doing things to try to enhance their golf experience. And so the year's coming to an end, I just want to give them a nice big shout-out, a thank you, thanks for being part of the show, and thanks for all you do. And another part of the Gateway section is Ozzie Smith, who just had his gala with Johnny Bench, and they had a big event over at Bell Reef, and they sold it out again.

So Ali Wells and her staff, they're just doing great stuff. So golf's in a great place right now in St. Louis, and I want to thank all those guys for being part of the show and for doing what they do. Thank you, St. Louis, for making the first annual Ascension Charity Classic presented by Emerson a record-breaking success. The golf was incredible, your enthusiasm unmatched, and the only thing that will last longer than the memories is the impact you've made on North St. Louis County charities. To our sponsors, volunteers, and fans, thank you for welcoming golf's greatest legends and bringing professional golf back to St. Louis with record attendance.

See you next year at the Ascension Charity Classic. Hey, Jay Delson here for SSM Health Physical Therapy. Do you want to have a more consistent golf swing?

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We know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. We are farmers. I'm with my buddy, Joe Scieser from USA Mortgage. Hi, Jay.

How are you? Doing great, Joe. Thanks so much for the support of the show. I really appreciate the opportunity. Congratulations. This is your third year and we're really proud to be a sponsor all three years since the very beginning. It's a great show and we look forward to it every Sunday morning.

Well thanks a bunch. Tell us just a little bit about USA Mortgage and what you can do for people. Well USA Mortgage is a ESOP. It's an employee-owned company. So over a thousand families here in St. Louis work for the company.

So if you want an opportunity to patronize a local company, please call USA Mortgage 314-628-2015 and I'll be more than happy to sit down with you, go over your options, discuss all the different programs that are available, and give you an opportunity to support a local company. That's awesome, Joe. Thanks so much. Appreciate it, Jay. Thank you.

Grab your friends, a cold one, and pull up a chair. We're on to the 19th hole on golf with Jay Delsing. The 19th hole is brought to you by Pro-Am Golf. Hey, welcome back. This is golfer Jay Delsing.

Pearly, you still hanging in there? We got Halloween horror stories, baby. Golf Halloween horror stories. But before we do that, the 19th hole is brought to you by our friends at Pro-Am Golf. We've got to get over there and get our fitting with CJ. They have the lowest prices in town, all of the state-of-the-art equipment that we need.

We need to get ourselves over there and take a look at our clubs and see where the hell we are and where we're not. Family-owned business, been around for over 40 years. 3-1-4-6-4-7-8-0-5-4. All right, Pearl. Horror stories. Well, now I'm thinking about my personal horror stories, and there's too many of them. And then meat brings up one that we were talking about over a beer about a month ago. So I'm not even sure.

I'm a little overwhelmed right now on which one I can even tell, because now that I'm thinking about it, they're so numerous. When I think about mine and the Ascension Charity Classic and then I think about yours with the missing the tee time one, I think yours is worse. Well, it was worse because it was missing the tee time that had I played like broken 80, which I think I could have done that day, that was to get into the finals of tour school. So that was a tough miss.

So you mean basically because you missed that last round, you only had to wait another year to try again? Yeah, other than that. It wasn't that bad. It wasn't that big of a deal.

Oh my God. What was that night like for you? Was it beer?

It wasn't. It was pretty early in the morning. I had run across, I think I told you guys, run across the street in my PJs to make the phone call to confirm what time I was, which I was going to say it would be about two o'clock and I'm calling at seven o'clock in the morning. And they said, no, no, you're teeing off in 15 minutes. And I was 60 minutes away. And so I was shy, I was in shock. I went back to my room.

I laid on my bed and I don't think I started like crying, but I just like started sweating. Whimper. Well, here's part of the deal. Here's part of the deal. I've got a half dozen sponsors at the time. They're all following me, you know, in the newspaper and stuff. Right?

Cause that's, you didn't follow them back then in the newspaper. So I'm thinking now, what am I supposed to say? Oh, I missed my, I missed my tee time.

What are you, 12? You know what, you know what it was, Pearl? It's what, what I thought of during the Ascension.

You need to, you should have feigned an injury. Like you should have said, I had an epileptic seizure or something. It was something emotional and mental.

Yeah, exactly. You had, you know, something like that, some, some distant. Well, when you prepare for, cause I did, I did a pretty good job for a lot of things.

Physically was there, worked on my game, had a game plan instead of prepared for everything. I didn't prepare for missing my tee time. No.

I didn't prepare. And I, can we change the subject? I can't imagine.

Yeah, let's do, let's change the subject. I just can't imagine what that night was like. I might've just gone and found uncle Tito somewhere, you know, and just, I don't know what I would have done. I probably wouldn't have that.

That's really not. How about, how about you, other than the Ascension, what, what have you seen or what have you experienced? What's another story or two that got you?

Oh man. I've had so many Sunday rounds that disappointed me, you know, I can't, nothing seems to jump out. I had a great record in the Q school. I think I was like, other than the fact that I had to go to it so often, which makes it not great. I think I was like six or seven.

I think every time I made it to, I went to the finals, I made it through. But I remember one time you were on national TV, out east, I'm not going to remember the name of the course. I don't think. Is that Hartford?

Hartford. Yep. Yes it was. And you bombed it on the 18th hole on national TV and drove it like past everybody for forever. One of those drives where everything clicked and I had, the day before I had like an eight iron in from 155 yards and this day I had like 82 yards.

And I can remember Ken Venturi, they were just kind of going to get ready to go off in commercial and Ken Venturi's like, look at where he's driven this ball. And then you knocked it, I think way over the green. Yeah.

Because my ball was in the divot on the downside of the field. Couldn't get to it. Nope. You know, Ken didn't bring that up, I remember.

No, nobody did brought that up. My entire family was like, what the hell happened on 18? I'm like, oh my gosh. Well, there's another time as long as we're on you.

Yeah. You come down at Pebble, was it the US Open and you were in the hunt coming down Pebble in 16? Oh man, what a finish, that's brutal. So I'm coming down, I start off my Sunday round at Pebble Beach and I'm four under after seven holes. This is in 92, Tom Kite wins a tournament. We're thinking, oh man, we get off the seventh and the wind starts blowing 45 miles an hour. Now you're, I mean, okay, so here we go and I think I double bogeyed eight, bogeyed nine and I'm... How do you play them with that much wind? So I am just, I am fighting and scratching to hang on, but all those early birdies I logged are still really good. Nobody's shooting even par and I'm still under par and I get to 16. I don't know this at the time, but you know, you get a sense you're in a good spot. If I can make three pars, which would have been monumental, parring 17 alone, but 16 wasn't that hard.

It's just not that long a hole. If I make three pars, I'm in the Masters. So I'm going to finish somewhere like eighth or fifth, whatever that was, right? And I get up on 16 and just hit a stinker, pull this stupid ball about three yards into the rough. Stupid ball. Pulled this stupid player, pulled this wonderful ball into the left rough and I had to lay up. So I chip it down into the valley, sand divot from about 48 yards. You know where I hit the next one?

I needed a fire truck to lower me down into the bunker because I hit it right under the lip of that massive bunker. You know what I made? I made a touchdown and a field and an extra point. I made seven. From a hole. Oh my gosh.

And then I got to number 17 and we're adding this up, bro. This hole is 240, I'll never forget this, it's 246 yards. The flag stick is way in the back left and the wind is blowing left to right 40 miles an hour.

And they look at my cat, he looks at me and goes, what are you going to hit? I go, I don't have a club for this shot. Cause my, you know, that was in the day, I was probably the best player on tour with one iron. I hit one iron a lot and I hit a one iron, I'm like, no, I can't get my one iron there.

So I sent it out to the right and tried to hook it back into the wind and it just stayed over to the right, but I wasn't going to wing that thing over the ocean. And I made a bogey there and then I think I parred 18 and 18 was kind of playing down and cross. It should have been an easy, and I think either par or bogeyed 18. I wound up finishing like nothing memorable.

25th was my best finish in a major, but it was so damn disappointing because I played my last three holes, like four over, and if I could have made a cut, Pearl, the last four hours of tee times on television, how many people hit the 17th green? Two. None.

None. How could you? Tom Kite hit it in the front bunker and got it up and down, which is probably the place to hit it. Who was thinking that? Tom Kite. Yep. Yep. Yep. That's when Colin Montgomery, I don't know if you remember this, he finished before the wind started blowing and got in at even par. And they were saying, this is going to be your U.S. Open champ because the court, but Kite chipped in like twice and was holding putts all over the place and just played his ass off.

Yes, he did. Tough. Brutally tough conditions. Really, really fun. Well, Halloween, baby. Time to get going.

Time to get going. So the horror story is, you know, horror kind of goes with the game. You know what I mean?

Maybe that's the issue. It's perfect to have a horror story in the 19th hole because that's what the 19th hole's for. You get a little cocktail, get yourself a nice ultra from the boys at Anheuser-Busch, and drown your sorrows and start telling those stories. I remember the time that Steve Payton and I were drowning our sorrows in the bar at Greensboro, our rookie year on the PGA Tour, and Lanny Watkins said, hey, you guys rookies were like, yeah. And he said, listen, half the guys out here don't care.

The other half wish all of the stories you're telling were twice as bad. Just get out of here. And I looked at Peter and I'm like, he can't kick us out of the bar, can he? And Peter's like, no. So we didn't leave. But anyway.

Yeah, Pearl, another show in the books. Thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing those horror stories. Yikes. We could write some books and we could still kind of use Kleenex every now and again. But me, thanks for taking great care of us and we will be back next week. The calendar turns to November next week. For more golf with Jay Delson, hit them straight St. Louis.