From The Golf Archives-When Sandbagger Johnson Went Mano a Mano With Champion Lex Armour

From The Golf Archives-When Sandbagger Johnson Went Mano a Mano With Champion Lex Armour   

By Seth Garth

Normally I do not write about sports, professional or amateur since I have felt the “fix was in” on all that gambling stuff from about sixth grade onward. But this story, this tale that I read about from a clipping somebody sent me caught my attention. Now two things should be said up front-I know nothing about golf, or rather I knew nothing about golf until avid golfer Sam Lowell whom I work with here filled me about the basics so that I would understand why the outcome played out the way it did. I also do not know Robert Johnson, aka Sandbagger Johnson from the Essex Golf Club up in Vermont. (The only Robert Johnson I knew from my main professional bailiwick, cultural critic, was the legendary blues singer who sold his soul to the devil back in the 1930s down in Mississippi to get that max daddy beat he was famous for.)     

I should say now, thanks Sam, that in golf, maybe other sports too, a sandbagger is a golfer who under the handicap system which rules the roost in the game, “jacks” up his scores in order to then whip everybody’s ass when it comes money on the line time. There is more to it and if need be I will tell more but that was essentially how this Sandbagger Johnson got to even be on the same golf planet as champion golfer Lex Armour. Lex had come to the Essex club on a tour of New England courses and as part of his “pay” and performance he would go mano a mano with one of the members. Sandbagger through some machinations not disclosed got the nod. Also from the time he got notice that he would be playing Lex for one hundred dollars a hole he started jacking up that handicap (which he had been doing all along to stymie his weekend playing partners for five dollars a hole).    

The way Sam explained it to me the way it works when a champion rolls into town is that he or she has a backer, either from elsewhere or somebody from the club will put up the betting money (and presumably like all agents take a cut). In this case a guy named Steve Roberge from the club did so since he had been an on-going subject of Johnson’s sandbagging. He was dying to have Lex whip his ass. The challenger, Sandbagger here, puts up his money or has a backer as well.

Golf for who knows what reason when it was invented I think in the 19^th century is played over eighteen holes of various lengths which determine the number of strokes for somebody to get what they call a par (there is an exotic if confusing set of names for each number you score but is far too complicated to explain now). The stakes on this one were one hundred dollars a hole so either man was liable for up to eighteen hundred dollars (although if somebody lost every hole he or she should be checked into a quiet rest home for some serious help)  

Bear with me here. Lex is what is called a scratch golfer meaning his has no handicap, no, that is not right his handicap is zero. Sandbagger, and here is where it finally dawned on me that he really was a sandbagger, claimed a handicap of twenty-two which meant that he would get a one stoke bonus from Lex on fourteen holes and two strokes on four holes. So say Lex got a four on the first hole and Sandbagger got a five they would tie, if he got four he would win and six he would lose. Are you still with me, Sam had to explain it about three times before I got it right and I hope I have done so. The sandbagger part is that for most of the season he had been around a sixteen handicap which would have meant that he would not get any stokes on the two easiest holes (each golf course has its own individual system of determining from one to eighteen the hardness of the holes I guess you would call it.)    

The actual match even if I could explain it would bore the average reader and not really be germane to the cautionary tale here-don’t cheat. Sandbagger fully expected under his plan that he would beat Lex, not by much and the money didn’t matter as much as the “victory.” Let me tell you this much though Sandbagger won the first hole, then the next four were ties and the fifth hole won by Lex so he earned five hundred dollars (the way that worked was each hole was accumulated until there was a winner). It is the way that Sandbagger lost that fifth hole that matters here. He started sweating figuring that if he lost that hole he was done, couldn’t win the most money. He yanked his tee shot (first shot) into some big pond, took a penalty, yanked the next one into a sand trap couldn’t get out and wound up with an eleven. Lex parred at four. That apparently rattled Sandbagger enough that he would lose twelve hundred dollars for the day. Remember what I said above, or what Sam told me to say-don’t’ cheat.