By the time we arrived at the first tee of Winged Foot’s West Course, word had spread. It was early on a Tuesday and the golf course was deserted except for the groundskeeping crew when the mowers started arriving around us.
“Hey, Coach!”
“How you doing, Coach?”
“Great to see you, Coach.”
It was amazing. Don Shula, the man of the people, waved affably and moved slowly around the circle of workers descending from their vehicles. In no hurry, he said hello to all the strangers, making them feel like family. The warm feeling surrounding us was palpable.
A week earlier I had been invited by two good friends who were CBS executives to round out this foursome for 36 holes of golf at historic Winged Foot, located in Mamaroneck, New York.
“Then we’ll head back to my house for a barbecue,” said the one friend who had a home near Shula on Fisher Island in Miami.
I found Shula, who died Monday at age 90, to be reserved and friendly — nothing like the taskmaster I had read about.
For the first nine holes, we talked about everything and nothing. I knew his son, Dave, very peripherally. Dave Shula had played football at Dartmouth when I was an orthopedic resident at the school and as a group, the orthopedic doctors were the team physicians, staffing the practices, clinics and games. It was easy to see the coach’s oldest son was special. I was not surprised when he became an NFL head coach himself at the tender age of 32 — one year younger than his Hall of Fame father was when he was named coach of the then-Baltimore Colts in 1963.
Throughout the first nine holes, shouts of “Hi, Coach!” across fairways were common and gleeful.
On the 10th tee, a golf cart came careening into our foursome and an effusive Lee Trevino bounded forward with a “Hey, Coach! Mind if I join you for nine holes?” Trevino was practicing in the relative obscurity of Winged Foot in preparation for a Senior PGA Tour event in New Jersey starting the next day.
Ironically, he knew everyone in our foursome. Even I knew Lee from several TV interviews we had done in the past during the Sammy Davis Greater Hartford Open — now the Traveler’s Championship — regarding his experience with chronic back pain after being struck by lightning on the golf course at the Western Open in 1975.
Trevino had also married a Hartford-area woman he had met over the many years he supported the tournament. Trevino left as we broke for lunch, citing other commitments, and the 18 holes on the East Course went by in a blur.
The Star's Alec White interviews Adia Barnes and Salvo Coppa from Arizona women's basketball on the death of Kobe Bryant. Barnes first met Bryant in 1999 and Coppa knew Kobe's father from coaching overseas.
The highlight of the day for me was the barbecue. As my two friends grilled steaks, I was left to commiserate with Shula about the 1962 Detroit Lions.
I was a young boy discovering the wonder of sports at the time, but I knew everything there was to know about that glorious time in Detroit football. To my surprise, Coach Shula opened up in delight as he recalled his first big job as a defensive coordinator for the Lions at the age of 30.
Later I realized that the man who won more football games as a head coach than anyone else enjoyed reveling in the times gone by.
We talked about Alex Karras, Dick LeBeau, Yale Lary and a patient of my father’s — Lions captain Joe Schmidt. We rehashed every detail of the Thanksgiving Day football game against the invincible Green Bay Packers, watched by President Kennedy and what seemed to be the entire country back when football on Thanksgiving was a unique phenomenon.
I was a boy again, and in that conversation more than 20 years ago, Coach Shula seemed to reflect on when he was a questionable hire from the college ranks.
We had a moment together, sharing a time when we were both young and untested; when life stretched out before us, its triumphs and disappointments only vague shadows on America’s shimmering horizon.
