But the romance is gone for the 2004 Open, starting Thursday at Shinnecock Hills. Thousands of items imprinted with the Shinnecock logo featuring an American Indian in full headdress will be sold this week, but nearly all of the century-old ties between the club and the tribe have been severed.
Their relationship began to splinter in November 1999 when Peter Smith, a Shinnecock who had succeeded his father, Elmer, as course superintendent, was relieved of his duties. A grounds crew that once included up to 10 members of the tribe that occupies a reservation barely a mile away now includes only two Shinnecocks on a crew of about two dozen, according to tribal sources. Another 10 to 15 Shinnecocks still caddie but are not employed by the club and receive no benefits.
If not for a last-minute deal forged in the past three weeks by the U.S. Golf Association to locate up to four hospitality tents on the reservation, there would have been no tribal involvement in the business of the 104th Open. Lance Gumbs, chairman of the board of trustees of Shinnecock nation, said the tribe would like to conduct an opening ceremony, but that has been rejected by the club.
"We asked the USGA if we could do an honor song and a prayer song to open the tournament, but the club didn't want it because of a land issue going on," Gumbs said, referring to the possibility of some tribe members pursuing a legal claim to land on which the golf club and Southampton College rest.
"We thought they would welcome the people who built the golf course and manned it for most of their 100-year history. The course is in our name. It would have gone a long way toward repairing the damage. I want to make it clear we're not upset with the USGA. We worked out our differences with the USGA. It's the club itself."
Greg Deger, general manager at Shinnecock Hills, declined to comment on the circumstances surrounding Smith's departure, the number of Shinnecocks still employed on the grounds crew and on the tribe's negotiations for a piece of the 2004 Open pie and its offer to stage an opening ceremony.
The land that ties
From the time Shinnecock Hills Golf Club was founded in 1891 by industrialist William K. Vanderbilt, Duncan Cryder, Edward S. Mead and Samuel Parrish, the course and the Shinnecock people were bound together by their ties to the 80-acre parcel of land that was purchased for $2,500. Architect Willie Davis hired 150 members of the nearby Shinnecock tribe to clear the land and scrape out the original 12-hole course by hand. It later was expanded to 18 holes, measuring 4,423 yards.
According to Davis' written account of the construction process: "The place was dotted with Indian burial mounds, and we left some of these intact in front of the greens. We scraped out some of the others and made sand traps."
The course became one of five founding members of the USGA and served as host for both the second U.S. Open and the U.S. Amateur in 1896. The pros entered in the Open at first refused to play because the field included two Shinnecock Hills caddies, Oscar Bunn, who was a full-blooded Shinnecock, and John Shippen, an African-American whose father served as pastor of the Presbyterian church on the reservation.
Theodore Havemeyer, the first president of the USGA, told the pros that the Open would be played even if Bunn and Shippen were the only ones in the field. The other 30 players agreed to their inclusion.
Shippen shot 78-81-159 to finish fifth behind James Foulis. Shippen later married a Shinnecock woman. She died and Shippen's next wife was also a Shinnecock. He became assistant pro at the club before moving up to head pro at Maidstone Golf Club in East Hampton.
For generation after generation, Shinnecock Hills employed members of the tribe to care for the course. To the Rev. Michael Smith, current pastor of the Shinnecock Presbyterian Church, the exclusive club served as the playground of his youth. His father worked on the grounds crew on and off starting in 1946 until he became superintendent in 1956. Smith recalls romping in secret places in the woods in the evenings while his father moved the old system of irrigation pipes from hole to hole.
A new superintendent
When Elmer Smith died of a massive heart attack in 1980, a local physician named Carver Livingston, who was head of the greens committee at Shinnecock Hills, made a unilateral decision to appoint Peter Smith, the third of four Smith brothers, to succeed his father as superintendent. Steven Smith, the second oldest brother, was named foreman.
"Dr. Livingston simply said, 'This is how it's going to be,'" Rev. Smith recalled. "I'm standing there when he did it by the 13th green. I said, 'I'm the oldest brother. Give me a little bit of consideration.' He said, 'You already have your vocation. You just need to pray for all of them.'
"He was Dad's boss at the golf course, but more importantly, he was Dad's friend. He told us it was a blessing our father passed the way he did. It was quick, a massive coronary. He told us he couldn't have permitted him to go back to the course and work [with his heart condition]. He said, 'Your father would have died of a broken heart, and it would have broken my heart because I would have to be the one to tell him.'"
Elmer Frances Smith was a beloved figure at Shinnecock Hills. As the Rev. Smith put it: "He walked with royalty, and it didn't faze him. He treated winos on the reservation with the same dignity that he treated the DuPonts and the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts. There were no pretenses. He was kind of like the golf course. What you see is what you get."
Rev. Smith remembers his father having trouble with a new Ford automobile he purchased. When he had to send it back to the dealer to repair the same problem a third time, he lost patience.
Relationships cemented
"Henry Ford II happened to be a member at the course, so my father went to him and said, 'Look, I'm trying to get this car fixed,'" Rev. Smith said. "Henry gets on the phone, calls the dealership and says, 'Fix the car, and send me the bill. Anytime Elmer brings the car down, I want it fixed and running, and I want the bill sent to me.'"
Such personal relationships between Shinnecocks and members of the golf club were par for the course. When Peter, who graduated from Dartmouth and also received a degree in turf management from Rutgers, became superintendent, he was celebrated as a worthy successor to his father based on the job he did preparing the course for the return of the Open in 1986 and '95. His work was praised universally by players and by USGA tournament officials.
But Rev. Smith said complaints arose within the club when members discovered his brother was serving as consultant for a course built at Connecticut's Foxwoods resort, which is owned by the Mashantucket Pequot tribe. When the decision was made to replace Peter Smith as superintendent at Shinnecock Hills, he accepted the same job at Foxwoods for a substantial increase in pay rather than an offer to remain at Shinnecock in a lesser role at the same salary. On Dec. 13, 2002, Smith died suddenly, as his father did, of a heart attack.
An unsettling exit
Tribal leader Gumbs said the way Smith's situation was handled was upsetting to the Shinnecocks. "Peter had several conversations with me," Gumbs said. "He told me he was being forced out, but they were offering him, in his words, 'a b.s. position' to appease him. He wasn't comfortable with it. The course wanted to go with a bigger name from a bigger course. They hired a guy [Mark Michaud] from Pebble Beach. That's part of the ill feelings in our community. It's like a family.
"There was no clarity to what happened. It was left ambiguously. Then, we saw other people leave, and we knew there was no [Shinnecock] connection with the land to watch over it."
As Rev. Smith sees it, his father spoiled the membership by running a low-budget operation that still produced a great course.
"We always had one of the smallest greens crews on the Island, but things got done," Smith said. "People say they were dissatisfied with the work being done between the '95 and 2004 Opens. As far as I'm concerned, that's just a smokescreen.
"There's no way of proving it, but I'm convinced they were not going to allow a person of color to conduct three of the most successful Opens in the history of the USGA. It's still a closed, good ol' boy system.
"I've said it's a low-maintenance course. It's special. The creator placed it there and, from a very personal perspective, gave my family the responsibility of nurturing it and being stewards of it. I think they did a pretty damn good job."
When Michaud was hired, Rev. Smith handed in his letter of resignation from the grounds crew. He made no accusation of bias at the time but criticized the club for its "shabby treatment" of his brother.
The club responded with a letter saying Rev. Smith didn't have his facts straight, but it gave no specific reason for his brother's dismissal. All media inquiries have received a "no comment" from Deger, who also instructed all club employees not to talk to the media on any subject.
The only member of the Smith family who still is in the golf business is the youngest brother, Joseph, who is the superintendent at Heartland, a nine-hole course in Brentwood featuring replicas of famous par-3 holes. As a tribe, the Shinnecocks, too, are virtually out of the game.
Tribal officials met with the USGA as far back as last fall, but Gumbs said nothing was resolved. They were planning to stage a protest during the tournament but decided to reach out again with the help of Southampton town councilman Dennis Suskind and Washington-based public relations consultant Gerry Gunster, who negotiated deals for three hospitality tents on Shinnecock property and a fourth tent for a celebrity party Saturday night before the final round of the tournament. The deals should net about the same as the $90,000 the tribe received in 1995 when it had VIP parking, which since has been relocated.
The USGA also agreed to include 20 Shinnecock kids in a junior golf program Tuesday at the club and to donate 200 golf balls for their future use. When the tournament ends, the tribe also will receive the plywood used for the floors of the hospitality tents, crushed gravel from the temporary roads and other useful construction material.
"These are good materials that have been used for a short time, so it made perfect sense for their needs," said Pete Bevacqua, the USGA director of the U.S. Open championship. "We want the surrounding community to be happy."
As for the Shinnecocks' request to stage an opening ceremony, "We told the Shinnecock nation that would have to be a club decision," Bevacqua said. "We don't own the property. We're guests. If there's a land ownership issue, we don't get involved. We need to emphasize the golf."
Learning the game
Several Shinnecocks learned the game and grew to love it while playing at the old links that now traverses a land they have inhabited for more than five centuries. Peter Smith had a single-digit handicap, and Michael Smith, who last played Shinnecock Hills when an older member invited him to a four-ball tournament last Labor Day, played three or four times a week when he worked on his brother's crew.
Rev. Smith recalls standing with Peter behind the ninth green in front of the Stanford White-designed clubhouse and surveying the course in the quiet of the Wednesday evening before the 1986 Open began the next day. He remembers the pride they felt, and he imagined his deceased father and former Scottish pro Charlie Thom standing there smoking cigars and feeling confident that modern pros would not shatter par on the venerable course.
"I know my father and my brother loved that golf course dearly," Rev. Smith said. "To receive that kind of treatment, they deserved something better. [Club officers] all showed up for Pete's funeral, but hey, send me flowers while I can smell them."
Lost connection
Although the timeless beauty of Shinnecock Hills endures, the descendants of the men who built it believe an important part of what made the club special has vanished since the course was rediscovered in 1986. The homey feel of their relationship with the membership has gone the way of the Model T.
"It's about change," Rev. Smith said. "Southampton is changing. The golf course membership itself is changing. For years and years and years, it was just the old-time folks. A lot of the members were old-money, and what's happening now is the newer members are new money. They don't know the history of the relationship. They might know it, but they don't appreciate it because they've never lived it.
"It's a business now. I understand that and accept it. You move on. It's a mega-business at this point."
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.