Tools

They play for money and hardware, for bragging rights or for keeps. Some have a code of honor, some a code in which they converse.

But regardless of how seriously the state’s well-traveled golfers take the game, their annual trips, are above all, about friendship.

Bruce Poynter and his friends have known each other since high school in Little Rock in the 1970s and have made the Arkansas Razorbacks’ football trip to Ole Miss every other autumn the centerpiece of their annual golf reunion.

When the Hogs play the Rebels at Oxford, Miss., Poynter and his group of eight to 10 hit the course at Kirkwood National in nearby Holly Springs, Miss., and also take in the famed on-campus tailgate scene in The Grove on the Ole Miss campus before Arkansas’ showdown with the Rebels.

And if things go south for the Razorbacks, out come the golf grips, code for “let’s get the heck back to the course.”

“Two years ago they kicked our tail,” said Poynter, manager of Jonesboro-based Lenders Title Co., as he recalled the Rebels’ 30-17 victory in Oxford in 2009. “So we’re all sitting in the stands. We all have a little signal that we do to each other. We pretend we’re gripping a golf club.

“About the middle of the third quarter a few of us start doing the hand signal of holding a golf club. Once we knew that game was over, we raced out of there, and we go get in as many holes as we can.”

And who can blame them?

“As you get older, events in life — you get married, you get kids, your job — take you away,” Poynter said. “It gives us enough time together to visit with each other and find out how everybody is doing, including their golf swings.”

When the football schedule doesn’t cooperate, Poynter’s group will play anywhere from Texarkana to Hot Springs to Memphis. When at Kirkwood, which features rental cabins on the par-72, 18-hole course, they will get in three days of golf, including a skins game, wrapped around a cookout and football.

Light wagering helps make things a little more interesting.

“Sunday is usually like a championship round,” Poynter said. “We kind of handicap Sunday based on what happened Friday and Saturday.”

Things get more competitive as Jim Jones and Rob Owens carry out their yearlong battle for the “Coveted Hooded Merganser Award.”

When Jones, president of the Little Rock investment banking firm Crews & Associates, and Owens, first vice president/corporate trading at Crews, play each other throughout the year, they count birdies. The player with the most in head-to-head competition reaps the trophy, named both for a type of small, fast-flying duck and the hooded iron shots both men frequently need to escape the woods.

“We’re bad,” Owens said. “That’s why the mergansers are coveted.”

Jones and Owens have sampled some of the nation’s finer courses, such as Pebble Beach, but for them it is less about the trip and more about the competition.

“We are not snobs,” Jones said. “We’ll play Pebble Beach, we’ll play First Tee, we’ll play War Memorial.”

Jones hits longer off the tee and is a better long putter, while Owens has the better short game and has notched some of his birdies on chip-ins, the two say. Yet they are evenly matched, 14 handicaps, and it shows in their competition.

The trophy has changed hands three times in five years; there are no “gimme” putts (one championship was decided by a missed two-footer on New Year’s Eve); weather has never washed out a competition and a hole-in-one, of which there has been one, counts as two mergansers.

Crews head trader Leo Wilcox establishes the betting line based on the upcoming birdie count, and this year’s total is a combined 52. Jones held a 3-0 lead as of Feb. 3.

“One reason we will play together is no one else will play with us,” Jones said jokingly after setting up a Saturday tee time while the outside temperature hovered near freezing.

Arkansas Automobile Dealers Association President Dennis Jungmeyer and his buddies take their annual “Razorback Golfe” competition so seriously they appointed group member Andy Davis the resident “golf Nazi.”

But then, when you’re traveling to such hallowed places as St. Andrews in Scotland and Pebble Beach in California, you need someone to keep order.

Since 1983, Jungmeyer has joined auto dealers, other businessmen and assorted members of the Arkansas Legislature on excursions to Mexico, Scotland, England, Canada and some of the United States’ top resorts.

The group of 12 to 16, with Davis setting pairings and enforcing rules, plays a four-man best ball at $10 a person. On their 2009 trip to Scotland, the group startled the tradition-bound St. Andrews caddies with the American custom of improving one’s lie.

The caddies quickly called off their own wagering.

“It’s not the money, it’s the bragging rights in the club afterwards,” Jungmeyer said. “Everybody that goes knows what the rules are. Andy picks the teams, and if you argue with Andy, the next year you probably won’t be going.

“We go in a night early and then we’ll golf for four days in the morning. We can call play-overs but that’s up to the individual.”

Here are some more of Jungmeyer’s tips for making sure each trip is a success.

Know Where You Are

Jungmeyer and his fellow golfers have had the good fortune to play Scotland’s historic St. Andrews Golf Course, one of the sites of the British Open and a place generally regarded as the birthplace of golf.

While Americans are known for playing fast and loose with the rules, any rules, that’s not always a wise thing to do when golfing internationally, said Jungmeyer, who has made three trips to Scotland and one to Ireland, among other places.

“Foreigners take the game a little more seriously than we do,” Jungmeyer said.

Especially at St. Andrews, from which the Royal & Ancient Club governs the rules of golf everywhere in the world but the U.S.

The by-the-book caddies frown on the American institution of improving one’s lie, Jungmeyer said.

“The first time we went to Scotland, guys started bumping their balls a little bit and improving our lie and the caddies almost left us,” Jungmeyer said. “The caddies were placing bets on the bag they carried. As soon as they saw somebody knocking a ball away from a bush or something, all bets were off.”

Get Help for International Outings

When trying to book a golf trip overseas, it helps to get help.

Jungmeyer pointed out the waiting list for tee times at places such as historic St. Andrews and other noted Scottish courses like Muirfield have used a lottery known as a “ballot.”

Neither is a guarantee a golfer will get onto the course.

Jungmeyer said going through an international destination service provider helps guarantee a golfer won’t spend $3,000 to get all the way to St. Andrews and never play it.

“With destination services, you’re going to have a tee time,” Jungmeyer said.

Be a Flexible Traveler

Flights get canceled, and with security checks and the wait for connections, it is sometimes better to drive, Jungmeyer said.

There was a time when groups like Jungmeyer’s could get a group rate for airfare. Now he urges people to take advantage of frequent-flyer miles and travel at their own convenience.

“The travel is so much different now because at one time you could get group travel, and we’ve almost quit doing that because of frequent-flyer miles,” Jungmeyer said. "You just get there because it’s more and more difficult [to fly]. I’ve got guys who will drive to Milwaukee because of the hassles of air.

“I think scheduling flexibility is the first thing.”

Jungmeyer recalled the time a hurricane wiped out a planned trip to Florida and within 36 hours the group of 16 rebooked to Palm Springs, Calif., where the temperature was 110 degrees.

“They warned us not to leave our golf clubs in the trunk because our handles would melt,” Jungmeyer said. “We got our golf in, but it wasn’t the most comfortable trip.”

Do Your Homework

You simply can’t believe a brochure, Jungmeyer said, and he recommends a golfer do as much research as he can on his own.

That’s how Jungmeyer discovered one of his favorite destinations, Lake Geneva, Wis.

“If you do your homework, there are great package deals where you could play golf courses as good as there are in America, that have wonderful facilities,” Jungmeyer said. “All our guys like either condos or individual suites or so forth, which are always under $2,000. Normally they’re closer to $1,500 and $1,600.”

Jungmeyer said it shouldn’t be about the name of the course or its location. It should be about the quality of the course, the cost and the amenities.

“Last time we went to Pebble Beach, and we played four courses there, I think our greens fees were $450.

“So we have decided there is some excellent golf at very affordable prices. Because we would rather play a golf course that we really enjoy than one with those prices.”

Watch the Weather

Jungmeyer said booking golf trips in the offseason, during the fall and winter, can result in more agreeable rates, but one must be careful where one ends up.

“We went to Mexico in August,” Jungmeyer said. “You don’t want to do that.”

Then there are golfers like Jim Jones and Rob Owens, both with the investment banking firm Crews and Associates, who carry out their yearlong, head-to-head competition for the “Coveted Hooded Merganser Award” in any kind of weather.

For cold-weather golf, Owens recommends layering, beginning with a long-sleeved, Under Armor shirt or something similar, a standard golf or polo shirt and a sleeveless vest.

“It’s just about layers,” Owens said.