Righting a Wronged Reputation

(Bristol's greatest golfer)

It is the weekend of the Masters Golf Tournament, a perfect time for this article.

As for the subtitle, I can name many qualified candidates. I will begin with three of the most “naturally talented” Bristol golfers I ever saw play.

Bob Zeiger was the golf coach at Bristol Tennessee High School for over half a century. The “Zeig” could hit it a country mile. And pretty doggone straight too. Most of Zeig’s best birdies, however, were not made on a golf course. They were made over a long career of unselfishly building character in young people through the game of golf and his teaching in a public school classroom.

Jay Vandeventer’s pre-adult golfing career was filled with win after win. He went on to a wonderful collegiate career at the University of Tennessee and even played professional golf. A remarkable survivor of brain surgery to remove a tumor, Jay now makes his birdies raising a beautiful family.

Sherrill Flick may be at the top of my list as far as “pure golfing talent”. But Sherrill basically never played competitive golf again after high school. Instead, he went on to make most of his birdies away from the golf course … giving back to his community and church in countless, humble ways over his lifetime. I know. Because I saw it firsthand. Both on and off the course.

Some may say I could even name myself as a possible candidate. I won five individual Tennessee state golf championships at various levels by age twenty-one. I was also a High School All-American. My career, however, was far too brief. And much like the three previously named candidates, my best scores were made off the golf course. I spent most of my life striving to inspire Bristol’s elementary school children and Bristol Jail inmates as a teacher.

Of course, there are many other great Bristol golfers I could rightly name here for consideration. Some are “old timers”, long laid in the grave - Bill Hunt and Ken “Doc” Messorole, to name just two. (I hope my golfing friends forgive me for not naming all the worthy candidates here, as space in this article is obviously limited.)

In the long pantheon of Bristol’s greatest golfers, however, there is one name that ultimately stands head and shoulders above all others.

And that would be none other than the name of Jay Baumgardner. I venture that very few Bristol natives who ever got to play golf with Jay will disagree with such a choice.

I could go on to list all the many tournaments won by Jay - and the reader would understand why he is most deserving of the crown. His list of wins is almost endless … at the local, state, and national level - over one hundred tournaments altogether.

But instead of throwing a lot of numbers toward the reader, I will share a personal story or two. Stories forever trump numbers in helping us see people “for who they really are”.

To say that Jay was an intensely tough competitor is an understatement. Some who played golf with him even went so far as to claim he played golf with too much “gamesmanship”. The accusation I heard most often regarding Jay was regarding his “intentional slow play”, supposedly as a prickly way as to disrupt and annoy his fellow competitors. All these accusations eventually accumulated to gain Jay somewhat of an unsavory reputation, particularly among those who never got to know “the man behind the game”, as did I.

Let me tell you about how I came to know a very “different” Jay Baumgardner … much kinder and much more caring than his sometimes infamous on-the-golf-course reputation belied.

I was only sixteen when Jay was thirty-nine. He and I were playing head to head against each other in a local summertime tournament, the old Steele Creek Open. We were standing on a tee box, both of us tied for the lead, way ahead of the rest of the field, with only a few holes left to play.

Jay leaned over, put his arm around me, and whispered into my ear, “Benjie, I am trying my darndest to beat you today. But I almost hate to do it. You are truly such a nice young man and I am so proud of you. I also love your dad too. I think the world of him. But don’t you dare tell anybody I ever said any of this. It’ll ruin my reputation.” Then he winked and walked away.

Later on that summer, Jay called up my dad and asked if I could meet him at a local practice putting green. Jay asked that we be left alone, with no one else around, so he could teach me how to become an even better chipper of the golf ball.

This extremely selfless and sportsmanlike offer came from the most intensely competitive golfer I ever knew - a man who was always trying to beat me (and everybody else God ever allowed to breath) on the golf course.

Yet Jay sought to make me better, just out of kindness toward me. (I recently recounted this episode to Jay’s oldest son. He had never known a thing about it. His father had evidently long kept this good deed entirely to himself. As he likely did many such deeds. It was just Jay’s way.)

Of course, Jay refused to categorize his sincere and honorable effort to go out of his way to help me as a “good deed'“. When I thanked him for helping me, Jay looked at me and said, “Benjie, I’m only helping you because if you get better at golf, it means I have to get better to beat you - and I like getting better.” Then he winked.

Now there may have been a bit of truth to that statement, but I knew full well the main reason he helped me; Jay Baumgardner was not only Bristol’s best golfer, he was also one of our town’s best men. I know. Because I saw both of those attributes displayed in action firsthand.

Before Jay left me that day, he turned to me and said (along with a wink of course), “Now, Ben, don’t you dare tell anybody I was trying to help you. It’ll ruin my reputation.”

I went on to play head-to-head against Jay many times. I came to see that Jay actually seemed to somewhat relish his reputation on the golf course as sometimes “going too far with gamesmanship”. It seemed to me that he even thrived on it, ingeniously using it as a springboard to play his best golf.

Whatever was the reason for his seeming to “hang on” to his reputation as a gamesman, I am proud to write here and now that Jay Baumgardner was not only indisputably Bristol’s greatest golfer ever, he was also a wonderful father to his four children who loved him dearly, a true friend to many, and an honorable good man.