Redefine Success
The Great Stogie Springs Invitational– Palm Beach, 1987
In the sweltering July haze of 1987, the members of Stogie Springs Country Club (membership requirement: net worth north of $12 million and the ability to smoke a Partagás Serie D No. 4 without coughing like a tubercular spaniel) gathered for what was billed as “The Annual Chairman’s Cup Invitational.” Everyone knew what it really was: the one weekend a year when the wives went to The Breakers for spa treatments and the husbands pretended the 18th green was still sacred ground instead of a velvet-carpeted knocking shop.
Enter Veronica “Ronnie” Vandermeer-Phipps, 36, former Miss Junior Orange Bowl 1970, current wife of Thaddeus Phipps III (heir to the Phipps Pantyhose fortune and owner of the loudest set of plus-fours east of the Intracoastal). Ronnie had discovered, quite by accident, that if you leaned over to read a putt in a Lilly Pulitzer wrap dress with the top three buttons “forgotten,” most men between 45 and 72 would suddenly develop the short-game yips so violently they’d three-putt from six feet.
That Saturday she arrived at the par-3 12th—“Stogie’s Signature Devil’s Anus”—wearing nothing but a peach golf visor, a single strand of South Sea pearls the size of small limes, and a smile that could peel lacquer off a 1958 Chris-Craft. In her hand: a 5-iron she wielded like a scepter. Strapped across her back like a caddy’s nightmare: a monogrammed Louis Vuitton golf bag containing only one other club… a 60° lob wedge she affectionately called “The Homewrecker.”
The first victim was Chauncey “Choo-Choo” Witherspoon, 58, whose prostate was roughly the size and shape of a Titleist 384. He was addressing a delicate 82-yard pitch when Ronnie sauntered up, bent at the waist to “examine the grain,” and whispered,
“Chauncey, darling, is that a Wilson Staff in your pocket or are you just happy the pin is cut back-left?”
Choo-Choo’s follow-through disintegrated into something resembling a man trying to swat a bee while having a coronary. The ball squirted sideways, caromed off the beverage cart, struck the beverage-cart girl’s left buttock, and finally came to rest in the pond where it was immediately eaten by a particularly judgmental koi. Choo-Choo dropped to one knee—not to propose, but because his blood pressure had achieved orbital velocity.
Next up: Senator Harlan T. “Bucky” Beaumont, D-Florida, 64, infamous for filibustering the 1986 Tax Reform Act while wearing seersucker and sipping a Harvey Wallbanger. Bucky was attempting a delicate bump-and-run from just off the front fringe when Ronnie appeared behind him, pressed her entire front side against his back, reached around, and “adjusted” his grip.
“Bucky, sugar,” she purred, lips brushing his ear, “you’re choking down on that putter like it owes you alimony. Loosen up. Let the shaft do the work.”
The senator’s stroke was so violent he nearly performed an involuntary forward press straight into the cup. The Titleist rocketed over the green, cleared the bunker, struck the flagstick like a .22 slug, and dropped—miraculously—into the hole for what the official scorer reluctantly marked down as a “4 (ground under repair + emotional distress).” Bucky turned the color of a boiled shrimp, muttered something about needing to call his page, and speed-walked toward the halfway house.
By the turn, word had spread faster than a herpes outbreak at the Bath & Racquet Club. Caddies were taking side bets on whose wife would file first. The beverage-cart girl had unionized the staff for hazard pay. And Ronnie—now down to just the visor, the pearls, and a thin sheen of cocoa-butter sunscreen—was keeping score on the back of a cocktail napkin:
Thad Phipps III: currently hiding in the men’s grill pretending to read Forbes
Club pro Eduardo “Fast Eddie” Maldonado: already three holes-in-one behind the beverage cart
The club’s ancient greens chairman, Reginald “Reggie” Farnsworth IV: lying face-down in the azaleas muttering “forgive me Hortense” to his long-dead wife
The pièce de résistance came on the 18th. Thaddeus himself—red-faced, scotch-sweating, wearing a visor so small it looked like a yarmulke—marched out to confront his wife. The gallery (now roughly 47 men in pastel slacks and four horrified wives who’d returned early from the spa) formed a semicircle.
“Veronica!” Thad bellowed. “This is a gentleman's game!”
Ronnie turned, one hip cocked, 7-iron resting on her shoulder like a rifle.
“Darling,” she said sweetly, “if this were a gentleman’s game, you wouldn’t be able to see my areolas from the tee box.”
She then proceeded to hit the most majestic 165-yard 7-iron of her life—pure contact, towering draw, one hop, and straight into the cup for an albatross 2 on the par-5 finishing hole. The crowd gasped. Thad’s martini glass slipped from his fingers and shattered on the cart path. Somewhere in the distance, a bald eagle screamed—either in approval or existential terror.
As the sun dipped into the Atlantic and the last of the Cuban cigars were lit, Ronnie Vandermeer-Phipps walked off the 18th green, pearls swinging, hips rolling, 5-iron still in hand.
She paused at the scorer’s table, signed her card with a flourish, and wrote in the comments section:
“Net: priceless. Gross: delicious.”
Then she climbed into Fast Eddie’s golf cart, tossed the visor into the azaleas, and disappeared toward the service road with the club pro, two cases of Dom Pérignon, and the entire supply of Titleist 384 DTs.
The Stogie Springs Adulteress Open of 1987 was never officially recorded in the club annals.
But every Fourth of July weekend thereafter, when the wind is just right and the humidity hits 88%, old members swear they can still hear the faint clink of pearls… and the unmistakable sound of a grown man three-putting from six inches while whimpering.
Fore.
