Masters Friday Club

In response to my “major opus”, as I arrogantly, but playfully, called it, I received several months later a delightful letter referencing not my oh-so charming  and exciting writing style but rather a detailed inquiry about a description of the history of the Ozone Club on the back cover which I had included as an after-thought, really, amending what my fellow Ozone Club member, Carl Berlinger, had substantially penned.

“My luncheon club,” said Mark, “would like to host you at our April gathering to speak at our formal business luncheon, on the Thursday of a once-a-year golfing “shambles game”, followed by a Texas barbecue that afternoon with prizes awarded afterward watching the Friday round of the Masters on TV.”  (Thus the name of the luncheon club, “Masters Friday Club”).

“…And, of course, you would like me to talk about my match with Billy Tennant?”  I confidently asked.

Long pause.

“Well, yes……” Mark replied, hesitatingly.  And then the infamous word, “BUT, we also thought you might speak to us about how the Ozone Club was formed, what its by-laws and mission statement are, in effect how our MFC can accomplish what your Ozone Club has accomplished.”

And so, deflated and still relegated to a status of “amateur author,” I had to confess that I had plagiarized from Carl’s pen the 350 page History of The Ozone Club which he and my father had recently completed.  I humbly offered to see if Carl might be interested in telling Ozone’s history (with me along for the ride) to his luncheon group.  Perhaps Mark wouldn’t mind inviting us to play along as guests in his Friday neighborhood golf event?

Little did either of us know what a chrestomathy of American golfing history and almost daily current correspondence and future dreams and plans was about to be unleashed.

The luncheon at their “Club” – a private room of Papa’s Steak House just outside of Houston’s city limits managed and owned (we thought at the time) by fellow member, Don Vrba – was, indeed, spiffy and as un-Quakerly with its menu, prices and ambiance as any venue the Ozone Club had ever frequented!  But all thirteen members of the luncheon club were so friendly and inviting (even though Carl and I had established right from the get-go that our handicaps were double-digit, while they had only one among them in double-digits – thank goodness for Greg Watkins!).

When Mike Gandolfo rang us to order with his offer of a “blessing” before we were seated, I saw my opening.  “Gentlemen,” I interrupted, a bit nervously. “We also convene each meal we have together in the Ozone Club, as we have always done twelve times a year for the past 107 years, with a blessing, and I would like to presume on our host’s indulgence by offering our standard prayer.”

After a surprising nod of affirmation the self-installed High Priest of the Southern Baptists gave me the floor to explain how a “Quaker blessing” worked, and, low and behold, we all held hands and prayed silently.  The tone was set, the roles were assigned, the curtain rose, the lights went on and the play commenced.  It was an “opening night” hit right from the get-go, and each performance has been better than the one before, with far better play-writers and scripts and venues.  Mark and I have since become just bystanders.

Carl was the star with occasional (i.e. frequent,) interruptions by me as we explained Ozone’s:

• Mission:  A “Golfing Society”; not a luncheon/dinner club.

• By-Laws:  None ever written.

• Membership Criteria:  Originally, Quaker membership, but now only “Quakerly.”

• Officer Hierarchy, Tenure, and Authority:   The President “runs the show” for three years with input of varying description, jurisdiction and effectiveness from those members he alone has selected, typically to include a Captain (as President, I had just created that role with the installation of Carl Berlinger), a Secretary, a Statistician, and a Treasurer.  All others “have no standing”.

• Scoring, Selection of Trophies, and Determination of Winners:  All determined by the President and his team each term.

• Succession of Officers:  The succeeding President is selected solely by the then sitting President; all other posts are filled or not by the succeeding President, of course with “Quakerly” consultation as he deems appropriate.

• Maintenance of Protocol, Traditions, and Record Keeping:  All the responsibility of the President.

The response from our new F(f)riends was instantaneous, unanimous, and overwhelming.  “We want to be like The Ozone Club,” they resolved.  “How do we do it?”

I was forced, finally, to bring out the wet blanket.  “You must first have years of fumbling around with 200 years of religious and family history.  We didn’t set out to be who/what we are today.  We just evolved into it.  And you will, too.  Your group is fine, BUT you must have a purpose beyond just a ‘business lunch.’  With so many good golfers why not follow the Ozone Club’s model of 10 or 12 golf outings, always augmented by a meal. The Ozone Club had the added advantage, I have always thought, of sharing a religion as equally unstructured and un-codified as our organization list above implies, but having a meal together, ‘checking in’ with each other’s family and business life, was not dissimilar to the inclusion of Holy Communion or the Lord’s Supper in non-Quaker worship.  The Quakers have always had a ‘tradition’ of having a meal together as part of their worship, and The Ozone Club has always had a meal together as part of their golfing activity.  While it’s a bit of a stretch in today’s secular world, I think that a meal, with a silent grace, is a reminder to us all that there is more to our gathering than ‘just a game of golf’.”

Don Vrba presents Walter Smedley III the Champions Green jacket

As Providence would have it, Carl and I had a fabulous time with our new F(f)riends, culminated in my fortuitous victory of the entire day’s activity, aborted only by my early departure Friday late afternoon before the Winner’s Circle presentation!  As has become MFC’s signature style, Murdock, Vrba, Heisman (I’ve always called Heiser, “Heisman”) later that summer made a special visit to Philadelphia to bestow the winner’s Green Jacket on me as well as to meet the son of the Founder of The Ozone Club, holding court at Penncrest Farm among all the memories and pictures and trophies and golfing artifacts dating back to the 1890s.

With just a hint of suggestion from me a day or two earlier, in front of these three golfing scions of the West, Dad went to his library and took down the “Comfort Cup,” Ozone’s low-gross prize that his father had won and retired in 1907, after having won it in three separate years since Ozone’s founding in January 1901.  As was his way, Dad bestowed the Bowl with an impromptu speech, but a speech, nevertheless, to Mark and his pals as agents for MFC, to play golf for it “as they would determine” when they had established their new mission for their existing club, the MFC.

A Deed of Gift, from the Smedley Family to MFC, was written and presented along with the newly polished trophy itself to MFC’s first season-long Champion, Craig Heiser, that following golfing season (2008).  It has been played for every year in succession since then on their way to at least their 100th Anniversary in 2108!

Since that first visit in 2008, the Ozone members have hosted and have been hosted in Philadelphia, Houston, Florida, Pine Valley, Yale, and Long Island, including, besides Captain Carl, Don Ashley, Bill Nicholson, Tim Kent, Frank McGill, Bill Giese, Rob Peskin, Tom Lee, Bob Roche, Joe Strode and Tom Balderston.  Of special note, Ellen Berlinger has made the pilgrimage to Houston for many years and has won the coveted MFC Trophy played for on Masters Friday itself.

Walter Smedley, III
President, Ozone Club, 2009 – 2011
MFC Champion, 2008

** The History of the Ozone Club is entitled “Down the Fairway and in the Rough with the Ozone Club,” the first volume of which was published in hard cover in 1927, the same year that Bobby Jones wrote his book, “Down the Fairway.” Coincidence ? 🍷

*** Chrestomathy – Leave it to Smeds to use a word very few have heard before! 

A chrestomathy (/krɛˈstɒməθi/ kreh-STOM-ə-thee; from the Ancient Greek χρηστομάθεια “desire of learning” = χρηστός “useful” + μανθάνω “learn”) is a collection of selected literary passages (usually from a single author); a selection of literary passages from a foreign language assembled for studying the language; or a text in various languages, used especially as an aid in learning a subject.

In philology or in the study of literature, it is a type of reader which presents a sequence of example texts, selected to demonstrate the development of language or literary style. It is different from an anthology because of its didactic purpose.