Miracle on Hilton Head: The secret to the backyard party no one will ever forget
Surreal.
That’s the most common word used for the 2020 RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing.
Hilton Head Island’s April tradition finished this year at dusk on Father’s Day, won at a record 22-under by Webb Simpson, a father of five and owner of titles at the U.S. Open and The Players Championship.
This year, the calendar had turned to summer, and the tournament’s best-ever field scorched the course.
It will be forever remembered as that time the PGA Tour managed to play through the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic at Harbour Town. The Heritage was canceled in March and left for dead. But it came to life in June as the second event in the virus-torn tour calendar.
It will be remembered as the one played with no fans in what we call the South’s greatest cocktail party.
It was instead a yard party. A quiet yard party.
The backyard of Jack and Velma Docherty backs up to the 16th green, so close that one year player Dustin Johnson asked if he could dash in and use the restroom.
It’s so close to what has traditionally been the 17th tee box that Velma once patted Skin So Soft on the face of past champion Bernhard Langer, who was doing the “Beaufort salute” swatting no-see-ums.
It’s so close, the back porch has served as a safe haven for golfers during a rain delay, including “the shark” Greg Norman, and brothers Lanny and Bobby Wadkins.
And it’s so close that golfers often come over to take a picture with the humorous bird sculpture in the backyard.
Walter Palmer, part of the Palmer artist family that has been defining Hilton Head since the early 1960s, created the sculpture. The goofy bird is bending a left-handed club over its head. It’s called “I Love The Game.”
And like the surreal 2022 Heritage, the whimsical bird is vintage Hilton Head.
From topless to quiet
The Dochertys love the game. They love the Heritage.
But this year there were none of the typical weekend gatherings in the yard.
“We’re in our 80s,” Velma Docherty said. “I’m very conscious of the fact that we’re at risk.
“(Jack) says he’s ready to meet his Maker, but I’m not.”
She sat on a bench by the bird sculpture during the opening round and swapped stories with a neighbor.
There was the time a house next door was serving as a hospitality house for a vodka company during the tournament. A hubbub broke out among the caddies, and tournament leaders in red coats came dashing as if someone had a heart attack.
“They had topless girls over there in the pool,” Velma said.
This year, neighbor Betsy Kunkle recalled the family-oriented first Heritage on Thanksgiving weekend 1969. She has now attended all 52 of them.
When she and her late husband, Bob, brought the family down from Pittsburgh that Thanksgiving, she had secret stuff in her luggage. It was stuffed with a turkey, cauliflower and other trimmings because there were so few stores here at the time.
The Docherty’s son, Shane, stood nearby in the shade of a soaring magnolia tree, enjoying a clear view to Calibogue Sound unobstructed by skyboxes and hospitality tents.
“There’s no roar of the crowd,” he said. “No background noise of cocktail glasses and laughter.
“The background noise is the wind. The birds and the wind.”
It was surreal.
Pete Dye, RIP
Another word for the 2020 Heritage is “sizzling.”
Our golf columnist Bob Spear wrote at the outset that “the tee sheet glitters as the strongest contingent in the tournament’s 52-year history.
“The top five players in the world rankings — Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Justin Thomas and Dustin Johnson — headline the star-studded cast.”
The 114 PGA Tour winners who came found very little wind to contend with, at least until a horn blast halted play at 2:35 p.m Sunday due to lightning in the area. It lasted almost three hours, and it’s lucky there was no playoff because it finished at 8:36 p.m.
Overnight rains during the week softened the greens. The golfers were aggressive and it looked like darts night at the corner bar.
On Saturday, six golfers shot 8-under 63s. On Sunday morning, Dylan Frittelli shot a 62. Carlos Ortiz had two eagles in a single round. CBS Sports anchor Jim Nantz said on TV, which is how most of us saw the Heritage, that 35 of the 75 players to make the cut were within four strokes of the lead late Saturday. A score of 10-under was only good for 48th place.
The Lowcountry navy was in full force to drink in Sunday’s drama from the Calibogue Sound by the famed 18th hole.
But the tour players might be glad Pete Dye wasn’t here to see what they were doing. He designed the devilish course with Jack Nicklaus, and he loved it when it frustrated the big-timers.
Pete Dye died last December. The true value of his bequest to Hilton Head — a nontraditional course done for Sea Pines and Heritage founder Charles Fraser — is immeasurable. He said Harbour Town made him, and it sure made us.
If Dye saw these June scores, the players would likely come back in April to find new 20-foot mounds of dirt in the fairways.
Coronavirus
But the best word for the 2020 Heritage is “miracle.”
It was a miracle that anything like this could happen during a pandemic.
Safety required Herculean work behind the scenes by the PGA Tour, CBS Sports, and the Heritage Classic Foundation.
Still, the real world creeped in the door.
On Saturday, Justin Thomas reacted strongly after fellow tour player Nick Watney tested positive for the virus on Friday and was quarantined.
“I mean, no offense to Hilton Head, but they’re seeming to not take it very seriously,” Thomas said. “It’s an absolute zoo around here.”
Thomas was both fair and accurate. Fortunately, no other positive tests were reported.
Hilton Head was fortunate to have the tournament in 1969, and it was even more fortunate to have it in 2020.
That was a big part of the miracle. Longevity. Tradition. Experience.
Nantz, here for the 35th year of CBS’s 45-year run with the Heritage, said the players wanted to come to Hilton Head. But so did the tour.
To hear him tell it, they should have called this one the Steve Wilmot Open, named for the tournament director for 25 of his 33 years with the Heritage.
“The tour had to be comfortable going to a place where a tournament could be executed the way they wanted it to be in these trying times,” Nantz said.
“You have the framework in this community, led by Steve, who could really figure out how to run a tournament for you in a matter of hours, or days if not hours.”
So that’s how the miracle of the 2020 Heritage happened. It was saved, in a word, by heritage.
Surreal, yes.
And it gave Hilton Head one more sizzling chance to show the world that it “Loves The Game.”
This story was originally published June 21, 2020 at 8:53 PM.
