Considering the highs we had been having, the final round’s 84-degrees of nearly windless sunshine should have been a reprieve, but for some reason it felt rather warm at the Dunes. Perhaps it was due to the relatively calm trade winds, which were barely cooling the 6,841-yard Robin Nelson-designed Maui Open venue all weekend long—who knows.
The 2014 event gave golfers their best chance to score well at the Dunes, which is statistically Maui’ most-difficult golf courses, from the black tees, for the bogey golfer. (The Dunes has the highest USGA Slope Rating of any golf course on Maui, from the tips.)
But for most, however, there were higher not lower scores.
Maui Golf Shop owner, Clif Council, said he 3-putted most of the course, and we indeed saw some of the better players having trouble getting the ball into the cup. Nor were a good number of other players we encountered.
Local restauranteur, Dickie Moon of TS Restaurants, was also not a happy camper over his pair of 81s as we chatted with him briefly while he loaded his clubs into his car. Given Dickie’s grimness, you wouldn’t have known that his fellow competitor and West Side car pool mate, Ed Beslow, actually won the Senior Division (71-72-143)—the two played in moments earlier—by four shots over his closest pursuer, pro Dean Prince.
Even the ordinarily steady TJ Kua, a contender in the Championship Flight’s final pairing, must of been feeling the ‘heat’ after he left his greenside pitch a little short on the par 3 No. 8 hole, and then three-putted from less than 20-feet.
In fact, I don’t recall seeing too many smiles out there, and I have been around this event for a good number of years… almost two decades, in fact. It just seemed that most were just miserable, dragging themselves around, shoulders and postures slumped. Quite the spectacle, and indicative of a wider problem that has beleaguered the sport for some time… I’ll call it ‘crybabyitus’, a symptom of extreme ungratefulness.
Marie and I shuffled our golf cart as quietly along the fairways as we could. I shot as many pictures as possible, getting some great action. Our goal was to try and catch as many of the golfers as possible, since they probably never get a change to be photographed in action.
“Ahhh, can I make a suggestion,” one golfer told me with a clearly annoyed tone in his voice. He was shooing me away, and straining to do it without revealing his obvious content. He is a regular in these events. A tough guy with a mean streak. Marie and I just high-tailed it away, sad that we couldn’t get a nice shot of our friend, Peter Rice, but it was such a chilly exchange (not the first for me with the lucky beneficiary). I felt bad that poor Marie had to endure the chill factor. She can’t understand why the pros don’t have a lick of mahalo in their bloodstreams. “They think their all Tiger, and that in not sneering at us, they figure they are doing us a favor,” I explained. “Unbelievable,” she quipped. I had to let it go. ‘Maybe,’ I thought to myself quietly, ‘one day these guys will see beyond themselves and realize we have been supporting them all along. Maybe,’ I fantasized to myself, ‘they’ll actually appreciate us one day….’
I told her not to worry. “Heaven knows it can be distracting for a golfer to have a cart near them, plus a photographer,” I said, knowing full-well that the nasty player we had just encountered is so small he couldn’t help but blame us for what would soon amount to a double-bogey on practically the easiest hole on the course.
Ironically, everyone playing in or working the event was riding a golf cart, and everyone was in everyone else’s line or way! It’s just the nature of the beast! But the fugly hacker in nice duds couldn’t help himself. The blame, for his failure today, rested upon us.
Nope, the temperature might have been a ‘cool’ 84-degrees, and the winds might have been down, but something was sizzling out there, and it can only be described as the gray matter that must’ve been simmering away.
But the staff and volunteers at the Dunes, all gathered together in honor of their esteemed golfing guests, showed nothing other than smiles and kindness from every perspective. Here is a group of people who work at a golf course that is quite the text, has some of Maui’s trickiest and most cunning golf holes, and yet they struggle to draw the visitor because they are located inland. Funny thing is, the land they are on is actually the Kahului isthmus, the old sand dune terrain that was left behind as the two volcanoes of Maui rose above sea level. The Dunes is actually going to be underwater one day, and for many ages before that happens, it will be a true links. For now, however, it rests on linksland.
The folks at the Dunes are mainly locals who live in the immediate vicinity. Most older locals remember the Maui Open before it capsized under the stress of the vacuum caused when its longtime steward, Charlie Aruda, had called it quits. For 17-years Charlie has cajoled and nudged, every so gently, a sponsor base of just a handful of businesses, like Damian Farias’ Maui Toyota, to help cover the $10,000 purse the Aloha Section PGA members wanted Charlie to drum up in order to make it worth their time.
The pros lent the event prestige, or so it was thought, and so Charlie was the man who got that money together each year. He, the late great Glenn Arakaki, a.k.a., Kaki, and Tasty Crust owner Neil Kawaoka would gather a small army of loyal volunteers to put on what can only be described as an old-time Maui community event.
I remember the first few years I was ‘covering’ it, and how Charlie opened up his heart and the event’s doors to me and my pathetic little Minolta camera. There I was, ignorant of how little I knew about how to take a snap, while Maui News legend Wayne Tanaka was doing the real heavy lifting with his pro cam.
It was during my first Maui Open that I learned about the bag of rice, which was given to the last-place finisher. It was a festival of sorts held at the Maui Beach Hotel so that the golfers of Hawaii could converge before and after the event took place. To socialize, be merry. Tables 60-feet long running row after row filled to a tee. It was a heck of a time and, while I think what the staff at the Dunes is doing is really great, it pails in spirit and in comparison, because of the love is gone.
Charlie, who passed away on the same day as my birthday, January 15, 2o14, was an icon to many here on the Valley Isle. He was from an era where aloha really meant aloha, and people spoke softly when they were trying to teach you something, even if through clenched teeth. This island was once a true banana (or rather a pineapple) republic. People were like slaves to the plantation owners. They were tough, and had to fight to get even to the front of the line to buy meat. You can imagine the way they hit that ball around at Waiehu long before the resorts and Pukalani, Kahili, Maui Nui, the Dunes, and all the others arrived.
Golf on Maui in Charlie’s day was something I never really experienced, because even at 51 I am part of the new breed of player that has no sense of community or how things once were. People like Dot Tam Ho used to dance the night away after golf, in the Maui Country Club’s clubhouse. There were parties and social events of all kinds… everywhere; leagues were so huge here and there were even armies of people who manned the fairways during the Maui Open when it was played out, over 54, not 36-holes. The event spanned as many as seven golf courses, not one. It had twice the field. The B-Flight was bigger than today’s A-Flight, and when you played in it, there were four or five people working a real leader board on 18, putting up the latest scores, like a tour event, from the 1950s….
But alas, all of that is gone now. There is no real affinity for the amateur now. Most golfers today cannot even read well enough to get to this point of the story, where I reveal that the first Maui Open winner was an amateur, Willie Goo, and not a pro. Few will know that the event had indeed a great tradition of amateur champions. Few will know how ardent the organizers were about protecting the workingman, the weekend warrior, but they were. So much so, in fact, that they twice shuttered the event rather than cave to the demands of the PGA members, who only thought of themselves, or so it was said.
Truth be told the local pro is more of a small business owner than a golfer. They rarely get out of the pro shop to play, and when they do, most struggle to break 80. Only a lucky few are good enough to compete on any kind of tour, or are retired from having failed. Those are the ones who usually walk away with the cash.
Cash that was not easy to grub up. And Charlie did it for almost 20-years! But few knew what it took to raise that kind of cash for the event. Few knew what a labor of love the Maui Open was for Charlie, and his friends Neil and Kaki… a legacy inherited by Aruda and Kawaoka and Kaki from men like Harold Gushi and Henry ‘Pop’ Rice, even more old-school and determined to get the game the notoriety and popularity they knew it had in store for Mauians long ago. All-too-often the golf professional, who does bear the burden of labor in the game more than any, gets all the credit for promoting the game. But it’s guys like Charlie who raised the cash for those same pros, not them. He deserves his due.
I would venture to say a small handful of folks at this year’s event, probably mostly workers at the Dunes, knew Charlie and his kind. People like Leona Silva and Russ Dooge, Dean Kawabata and certainly Henry Yogi. Dodd Hessey maybe, and Jimmy Nagamine I imagine. Yep, Charlie was a product of a time that has faded away quickly. It is out with the old and in with the new. But who knows, maybe Maui’s golfing community will become a community again, and things will improve. I know Leona has tried to get Neil to come on board, but it’s hard… there are many old traditions and feelings at stake, and it is often hard to let go.
As the once-famed 2014 Maui Open drew to a close in November, I didn’t even make it to the awards ceremony. I haven’t for years. Many of the younger people playing are so consumed with themselves that there really isn’t very much to talk to them about. So, what’s the point? Charlie’s days are long gone from most people’s memories, and so are the Maui Open galleries of old—although I saw three people on No. 8, Mike and Eve Green and their son, who live on No. 9….
