The Real McCoy

Manchester by the Sea’s Bob McCoy is golf’s true Odysseus – surviving the world’s top-100 courses in 100 days - and still loving the game more than ever

By Chad Konecky

In a way, we all have former Harvard University hockey star Bobby Cleary and Dedham Country Club member Dusty Burke to thank for the passion Manchester by the Sea’s Bob McCoy, Jr. possesses for golf. A passion which, in turn, will enrich everyone’s golf experience once McCoy gets around to publishing his account of playing the world’s top 100 golf courses in 100 days.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. This story starts with the Crimson and the frozen pond.

It seems McCoy, a Greater Boston League All-Star as a 5-11, 175-pound blueliner at Melrose High, was determined to attend Dartmouth College back in 1957. Yet whatever the then-collegian Cleary impressed upon McCoy during a winter weekend visit to Cambridge that year turned the tide.

McCoy, who helped Melrose to the New England title as a junior in ’56, went on to play at Harvard and graduated from the business school. That’s where Burke comes in. As manager of student employment at Harvard, Burke took McCoy under his wing and got him interested in blowing off M.B.A.-candidate steam by thwacking golf balls in the athletic fields behind Harvard Stadium.

Forty years later, those two gents are as important a driving force as any behind McCoy’s status as one of the world’s foremost experts on the best golf courses on this planet. If not for Cleary, McCoy is likely skiing in Hanover and never meets Burke. A reversal of fortune that never came to pass and for that, Burke will be eternally grateful.

“Bob is a very thoughtful and accurate and careful logger of history,” says Burke, now 77, noting that McCoy is currently working on a book about the architecture of top-rated courses. “When he plays a course, he meets with the people who know about the design and history and the unique culture of the particular club he’s playing. Bob possesses a wonderful catalogue that may not exist anywhere else.”

The core of that database is McCoy’s modern-day Odyssey from April of 1996 to August of 1997 – a 15-month process of planning and executing the playing of 57 U. S. courses and 43 foreign courses in 100 days.

Astonishing, really.

McCoy, 65, first completed the U. S. Top 100 in 1984, becoming the third player to have done it at that time. He became the second player to complete the World Top 100 in 1988 and the first to have played all of the courses on both lists, but it took him years to accomplish.

Then, in November of 1988, while Continent-hopping to complete the Top 100, a Japanese golf journalist asked him what he might do for an encore.

“I casually said I was going to play them in 100 consecutive days,” recalls McCoy, a seasonal resident of Naples, Florida, and a 10-handicap. “But I kept thinking about this off-handed comment and I made up my mind in ’96. After that, it sort of took on a life of its own.”

McCoy’s journey required extraordinary logistical coordination. Not the least of which were financial considerations. A British Airways round-the-world special business class fare ($10,800) became the principal mode of transportation (A ticket agent in Wellington, New Zealand, leafing through its pages, finally asked McCoy where he was not going). The domestic flights cost an additional $3,500 and McCoy used his own car for three major U.S sections of the trip.

Fortunately, McCoy is, well, reasonably liquid. As the owner and operator of McCoy Power Reports (MPR), he publishes nine formal reports a year, plus some interim reports, on worldwide market shares for electric power generating equipment and services. It’s a $100 billion-a-year industry, McCoy dominates his niche and his paying customer base includes such companies as GE, Siemens (Germany), ABB (Switzerland), GEC Alsthom (France and England), and Mitsubishi (Japan).

The final itinerary for McCoy’s trip was a single-spaced, seven-page spreadsheet of 150 contact names along with 250 phone and fax numbers. His travel bag weighed in at 62 pounds.

On 45 of his odyssey’s private courses, McCoy had to play with a member. On another 30 private courses, he was able to play at certain times without a member, mostly in the UK and Australia, but a “proper introduction” was required.

There were eight resort courses and three public-access courses on the docket, while Shadow Creek in Las Vegas falls into what McCoy calls the “other” category, because if you’re not a friend of the owner, you’ve got to fork over a $1,000 greens fee. The rest were private courses where McCoy was not required to play with a member.

McCoy tried to play as many of the U.S. courses as possible during their optimum weather season, prompting a southern swing first and a northern tour last. The schedule started with the southeastern part of the U.S. (as well as the Dominican Republic), followed by the rest of the southern and western parts of the country (along with Mexico). San Francisco became the embarkation point for Japan, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

Then came the British Isles and Ireland, followed by Portugal, Spain and France. The northern states and Canada came last, which circumvented many multi-round member-guest tournaments in the U.S., traditionally held in June. In the end, 16 doubleheaders became part of the itinerary to accommodate the 100-day limit.

So, this guy walks 1,872 holes (he built in four extra courses as a cushion, according to Burke) in all manner of terrain and weather and he’s still standing 100 days later. That also requires explanation.

“You’d think I’d have been dead tired at Day 100, but I think with all the adrenaline, I felt I could have kept going,” recalls McCoy, who spent his preteen years in Syracuse, N.Y. “As you can imagine, even when you’re playing the bottom of the world’s top 100, those are some pretty great courses, so you’re pretty charged up to play them. It wasn’t until 10 days after I got back that I felt exhausted.”

The Devil’s in the details

Since neither Golf Digest nor Golf magazine publishes a summary of golfers who’ve completed their respective Top-100 lists, McCoy does it himself. For the record, Norman Klaparda, a member of the Riviera Country Club, completed both lists in 1993, Jimmy Dunne, a member at Garden City and Seminole, as well as Bud Thompson of Cleveland, Ohio, turned the trick in 1995. Rich Hoover of York, Pennsylvania, finished the World 100 in 1997.

If nothing else, McCoy is a stickler for detail.

His daily diary entries from his trip are as edifying as they are entertaining. Paging through his 74-page summary of the journey is as good a golf read as you’ll find. As evidenced by an almost nonchalant entry about playing Augusta National, below.

Day 9 Play Augusta National Drive Augusta/Pinehurst, NC

You might think I would have been tired after walking 90 holes in the three previous days and driving 600 miles. Nothing could be further from the truth; I was all charged up with the adrenaline really flowing and felt light on my feet.

Augusta National (rated 4, designed by Alister Mackenzie and Bobby Jones in 1932) is a very private golf club and a most difficult course to which to gain playing access. I first played it in May of 1976 and again in May, 1991. It is one of my very favorite places in the world, and there I was on the first tee at 9:15 a.m. in the most perfect weather possible. On a scale of 1 to 10 it was a 12 -- no clouds, bright sun, blue sky, no wind, soft Georgia air, birds chirping. The temperature started at 65 degrees and rose to a delightful 75.

Each of our group had a caddie and we seemed to have the course to ourselves despite a fair number of players spread throughout. With great companionship in this exquisite setting, I did not want the day to end. But it did end and in a memorable way. On the par-4 400-yard seventeenth hole I have yet to unsheathe my putter during my last two rounds. In 1991, again with Buck as the host, I had holed out my second shot for an eagle two. On Day 9, my approach shot came up short of the front bunker, but off a tight lie I holed out the pitch shot for a birdie three!

After a leisurely lunch in the grill room we sadly bade goodbye to Buck, Barton and The National. Barton gave us excellent directions for the 200-mile drive northeast to Pinehurst, which involved a mixture of Interstate and back roads. We arrived at the Holiday Inn in Southern Pines at 5 p.m.. Dinner was at Applebee’s in Aberdeen (never again).

Like all of us, McCoy concedes his game has required adjustment as he gets older. He played the 100 at age 56 and he has different strengths today.

“They say you lose five yards a year when you get to my age, so distance is a challenge,” says McCoy, whose children Elizabeth, 39, and Jane, 35, were good enough to capture father-daughter tournaments they entered with their dad in their youth. “I work awfully hard on my short game. My chipping, pitching and putting. And I certainly get ample chances to since I miss so many greens.”

Moreso than birthdays, McCoy says technology has augmented his golf. At least as far as trip-planning goes. He says e-mail would have reduced the planning time of a trip like the 100 in ’97 by 75 percent.

“That trip was built on snail mail and by fax,” he says.

Does that mean he’d ever take another crack at something similar? He doesn’t rule it out.

For the moment, however, McCoy, who just last month became a full-time member at Ipswich Country Club, seems content to toggle between Manchester – where he lives with his girlfriend Elaine Perkins, who owns an antique and consignment shop in town called The Stock Exchange – and Florida. The two are former high school sweethearts who reunited six months after McCoy’s trip when Perkins read a published account of the journey and called him on a lark.

If only Helen of Troy had been a golf fan: The Greeks might have avoided 10 years of war by hiring a good PR guy and sending Odysseus to the links.