Stanley and Perry Win Today

On the regular PGA Tour today, Kyle Stanley broke his winners’ circle drought to capture the Quicken Loans Invitational at Potomac TPC, Maryland. He sunk a five foot par putt on the first extra hole of a playoff, which was the 18th hole, to defeat Charles Howell III. Both players had shot a four under par 66 round today for a total 272.

It was Stanley’s second win on the big stage. His first win was the 2012 Phoenix Open, near where I live. I had been expecting more from Stanley, who has the length and a good golf swing. But by May, 2015, he had slipped miserably to 683rd ranking in the world.

Howell had just recovered from nine weeks of inactivity due to a rib muscle injury. The television announcer said it was Howell’s 15th second place or tie for second on the big Tour. I know about that sort of history, both that painful physical injury and the emotional injury of being bridesmaid. I had seventeen of those on the regular and senior Tours combined.

And speaking of the senior tour–whose players have been renamed champions (Champions Tour) since the end of the 1990s, although the USGA doesn’t seem to think so–56 year-old Kenny Perry won the 38th Senior U.S. Open at the Salem Country Club in Peabody, Massachusetts. He shot 68 for a 16 under par 264, breaking the final tally record by three strokes. He defeated second place finisher Kirk Triplett by two strokes. It was Perry’s second Senior U.S. Open victory.

Kenny Perry has been a late bloomer, although he hadn’t won on the Champions Tour for two years. This was his 20th win on the two Tours since he turned 40 years of age. He’s always been a long hitter and a streaky putter. But it seems in his older age his putting nerves got better while many of his colleagues usually got the shakes from Old Father Time.

BTW, Salem Country Club, established in 1895, is known for being designed by Donald Ross. Many golfers think he is the best golf course designer America has ever had. I’ve played Salem Country Club. It is a tight layout. Much of it was chiseled out of a dense forest. The day I played the track, I was surprised when they told me it is considered to be one of Ross’ best golf courses. I’ve played a few of them, especially Pinehurst No. 2. Still, at Salem Country Club you don’t have to go on a witch hunt in traversing those grounds chasing your little white pellet.

Salem Village, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was the non-hallowed grounds where, in 1692, the famous, very theological, Colonial preacher Cotton Mather administered the conviction of, and sat on his white steed overseeing the hanging of, fourteen women and five men for allegedly practicing witchcraft and wizardry, respectively.

The court accepted the false witness of young, orphan, servant girls who, due to an unbridled imagination, feigned demon possession by screaming, claiming they were pinched, etc. They said it was due to spells cast upon them by the accused. Seventeen year old lead witness Elizabeth Hubbard experienced trances. The court accepted all of this as “spectral evidence.” Such phenomena were not peculiar to the early colonists; it had first become widespread in Europe.

I’ve read some of this horrible history and some of Mather’s theology as well. In MHO, some of the latter is horrible too, especially regarding Mather’s projections about the second coming of Christ. Mather was a historist on Bible prophecy. He predicted three successive, near dates when Jesus would return. Mather lived to see that it didn’t happen on all three of those dates. He must have been a hard-headed guy. Mather wrote massive tomes on theology. He even was considered abroad as an intellectual.

You’d think that after a man had predicted when Jesus would return, and that fellow lived to see it didn’t happen, that he would give up such an enterprise merely due to embarrassment. But then later, New York Baptist preacher and farmer William Miller tried twice. But after his second failure, he soon died a broken man. But not Mather.

When current U.S. President Donald Trump describes the ongoing Russia probe into our election last year that is being led by special counsel and former FBI Director Robert Mueller, Trump often calls it “a witch hunt.” He likely refers this 1692 ghastly episode in early America’s history.

Salem, Mass., surprisingly doesn’t shun its morbid past to this day. Instead, its police cars have witch logos. And the Salem High School athletic teams are named “Witches.” Their playing field is named Gallows Hill because it is located right where the alleged witches and wizards were hanged. Salem is a coastal town that attracts tourists. Guess what its most popular event of the year is for tourists. Well, of course, Halloween.