If you've seen the September issue of GCM, you've seen the back page Reflections, where Bruce McGill ("Animal House," "Ali," "Cinderella Man") is our Reflections interview. Dressed as Walter Hagen in "The Legend of Bagger Vance," it turned out to be a nice little interview and feature, I think.
As I'll do from time to time, I'm publishing the entire conversation I had with McGill right here on the GCM blog. My questions are pared down to the bare neccesity, but McGill's responses are in their entirety.
I met McGill at the American Century Championship at Edgewood Tahoe in Lake Tahoe, Nev. McGill was playing in the Pro-Am when I introduced myself, and he invited me to join him for a few holes of golf while we conducted our interview. McGill treated me like a long-time friend, happy to answer any and all of my questions. After a few holes of golf, I had what I needed, so I thanked him for his time and let him get back to his round.
In this interview he talks about how he got into golf, how he studied Walter Hagen for his role in "The Legend of Bagger Vance," and how he has the only birdie ever on the "Bagger Vance Hole," which has been turned into a parking lot 'for rich people' since the movie. The text highlighted in bold represents the quotes that made the magazine.
GCM: How long have you been playing golf?
I started playing when I was about 30 until my father died. And it was a labor of love, I lived in New York City, I was a stage guy. And so I’d go down if I wanted to see my father, I wouldn’t go into the office. If I wanted to find him, he was on the golf course. So, I said, ‘Aw hell, I’ll play this game.’ And I don’t know how it happened or when it happened, but I just got hooked. And I had gotten away from it when I got into ocean sailing which is a whole world in itself.
GCM: What do you like about golf?
The humiliation. It’s impossible to be egotistical and continue to play. And I’m not kidding, I used to say play for humiliation, you’ll never be disappointed. But it also strips a lot of layers and the bullshit that people carry with them. Because you play a round of golf with some guys, and that’s something that’s important for business, not just the time spent, but what everyone has to go through when you miss a shot. You’re bare. You’re just naked. And you get to know who people are.
If you play with someone that’s always mad and thinks he should be playing better than he is and he’s just a pain, you don’t want to play with the guy, yeah, but you also don’t want to do business with the guy. To put it in a single word, humiliation. There’s humor there, but there’s a truth to it, too.
GCM: How’s about the beauty of being outdoors, on a course like this?
I don’t miss (the American Century Championship at Edgewood Tahoe). In fact, I’ve got my representation and everything and I said, ‘Look guys, this week in July is treated as a contractual commitment and you tell people if they need me, yes, he’s available, but he has a job from July 10 to July 17.’ And they’re both golfers, so they’re going, 'All right, OK.'
GCM: Do you know any golf course superintendents?
I do, all by first name, and I forget a lot of them. Like the guys that were around "Bagger Vance." We worked with Pete Dye’s group that built the Bagger Vance hole.
GCM: How much research did you do for the role of Walter Hagen?
Tons, but I actually knew quite a bit about him, just because I was into golf and into golf history. I think my knowledge about him gave me a real leg up in the audition. I was able to go in with my hair slicked back, and I shaved off my beard. I was out at sea when the auditions were going on.
Shaved off my beard. Got my hair slicked back. Wore some stuff from a musical I did from the 20s. Some beautiful wool white trousers like he wore, and some old fancy shoes.
I went in there, and I was so fearless, because I’d been at sea for 20 days, with 20-, 30-foot seas, and that audition was not scary. But I went in not cocky. There’s a difference between confident and cocky. That’s the essence of Hagen. He was not cocky, but he was so entertaining because he would do things like, when he had a shot that he knew he could pull off with his eyes closed, he’d walk around and stalk it, and read it and make it look tough so the others are going, 'this is a tough shot.' Then he’d pull it off. Then when he had a shot that was really really difficult, he’d walk right up and hit it. So if he missed it, nobody thought anything about it.
So I was given the job. The filmmakers, because they’d been writing it for a year, they had all this research material and we were given books and a lot of photographs. A lot of it came from the wardrobe department because there weren’t many movie pictures of Hagen’s swing because it was too early. They have some of Bobby Jones, but not Hagen. I had to work from stills. And he had a weird swing. And we decided I’d go try to emulate the Hagen swing with the sway and the turn-flip down the fairway.
It was really just a matter of getting that bubbly attitude and putting on those fine clothes. I’d just lost a lot of weight in a sailing race and then I’d lost some more weight at sea. So I was Like “Animal House” weight. And we had a good PGA master pro named Tim Mullis. He was there mostly to teach, but also to help look over you after a take to see if it was the Hagen move.
GCM: What course was this filmed at?
We shot at a bunch of different courses. The Bagger Vance hole, Tim from Pete Dye’s organization built the hole, pretty much by himself with a bulldozer. That hole has a 230-yard carry over water. It’s a 460-yard uphill par 4, and they were saying, ‘Oh, people won’t want to play it.’ It was a little rugged. It looked like the older courses. Nobody was allowed on it.
So we’re down at the range. People are telling me this hole’s not playable. It was playing a little downwind. We weren’t even supposed to be on it. But you know we've got to. So, we hit our tee balls, and I lipped out an eagle! Driver, 4 iron and lipped eagle. And the guy that built the hole said, ‘I guess it’s playable.’ So I made the birdie putt. And they tore it down to make parking for the rich people. One of your friends with the PGA got a very old picture from Golf Digest of the Bagger Vance hole, and he sent it to me with a plaque that says, “First and only birdie on the Bagger Vance Hole – Bruce McGill.”
GCM: What do you think of the technological advances that we’ve seen in golf course maintenance in the last 20 years?
You can hit different kinds of shots now. If you see these irons like these 1933 Hagens, they all had an amazingly sharp leading edge because you had to cut down through the turf. The greens were about like these fairways are then. So, you’d get guys that would putt it by popping it to get it up on top. The precision part of the game I think is much greater now. Not just the distance of the balls but the way they perform from various club faces. And its the degree of manicuring that American golfers want. And the advent of irrigation and sprinkler systems...
GCM: What do you think specifically of the conditioning we see these days?
There’s no comparison between what we used to play on. I mean, I didn’t start playing until 1980 or so. But what they used to play in terms of rough and in terms of conditioning – it was like hardpan. If it was hot and dry, you didn’t have grass. You played anyway.
In some of the great old pictures in black and white, you’d see brown, brown, brown. Well, back in the 70s and 80s before they started irrigating the British Open, sometimes you’d see St. Andrews and people would say, ‘That looks like there used to be a golf course there!’ Everything in the game is elevated and because it became a game that could make you money, that people were willing to pay to play, every asset of the game. It’s like anything: If you can add funds to it, you can improve the conditions, and I think that’s absolutely true in greenskeeping or superintending.
GCM: Anything else you’d like to throw out there to the members of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America?
Superintendents, thank you, keep it up. I’m sorry you have to get up so damn early, and I’m sorry everybody bitches about pin placements.
Long Valley, N.J.; Sept. 26, 2007 — Aspire Golf Consulting has been launched by Tim Moraghan, former director of championships agronomy for the United States Golf Association (USGA). The new company will provide a wide range of services covering all facets of the golf industry, including public, private and resort golf courses, developers, golf course architects, club management and, most importantly, golf course superintendents. 
