Castle Rock – A simple question hangs over the ninth fairway like a Phil Mickelson drive:
“Can you explain the modified Stableford point system?”
For a second, the only sound is a hint of breeze swishing the needles of a nearby pine. Then, Noel Anderson smiles under his sunglasses and takes a healthy whack.
“Yeah, like a double eagle is 7, and what, an eagle is 5. A birdie …,” Anderson said with a slight hitch, “is 3. A par is plus-1 and then bogey is minus-1. That’s my understanding, and I’ve been coming here every year for the past 10 years.”
Wrong. Right. Wrong. Wrong. Right.
Two decades after Stableford made The International the PGA Tour’s most mathematically macho stop – where a plus-40 fattens wallets and a minus-1 flattens egos – some fans remain flummoxed by the format and many players couldn’t pick Frank Stableford out of a police lineup.
“Was Stableford a guy?” asked Chris Riley, who has earned $621,400 in six International appearances. “I didn’t even know that.”
And don’t look for clarity inside Castle Pines’ sumptuous clubhouse. While tournament honchos tout the rare flavor of their modified Stableford setup, the man who hatched the points system argued: “It’s not anything like Stableford. Stableford is a game they play in Europe.
“The press put that name on it,” added Jimmy Vickers, brother of International founder Jack Vickers. In truth, Jimmy Vickers’ scheme was borrowed from a gambling game he used to play in Kansas City called “birdie-bogey,” then it was tweaked and tightened.
“You could name it a lot of things,” he said. “Somebody said, ‘Call it the Vickers.’ But I thought that was a little preposterous.”
This much is clear: The fog of Stableford cloaks parts of three centuries.
For years, historians believed Frank Stableford, a former army surgeon with a waxed mustache and an 8 handicap, invented his revolutionary scoring system during a 1931 fit of frustration. It came on the second fairway of the Wallasey Golf Club in England, they said, where winds from Irish Sea typically swat down tee shots. Knowing an otherwise pretty golf score could be muddied by one or two ugly holes, Stableford ached to replace traditional stroke play with a gentler format.
Under his positive spin, golfers earned points: 4 for eagle, 3 for birdie, 2 for par, 1 for bogey. Facing anything worse, golfers could simply grab their ball and stroll to the next tee box. The soothing idea took root and spread to clubs across Europe.
Wallasey still bills itself as the “home of Stableford,” and his portrait hangs in the clubhouse: fierce blue eyes above one of his trademark bright bow ties.
But about 15 years ago, British golf writer Peter Corrigan discovered an 1898 newspaper story that proved Stableford actually unveiled his points system at the Glamorganshire Golf Club in Wales. For a time, the battle to claim Stableford turned nasty; then both clubs decided to essentially share custody.
Today, the Brits remain just as protective.
“Stableford enables you to play quicker, of course, anathema to most Americans, because once the possibility of scoring points at a hole has disappeared, the ball goes into the pocket,” golf historian and British journalist David Davies said. “It is not played in the U.S., for whatever reasons, and it is not played at Castle Pines either, where it has been modified out of all recognition.”
Jimmy Vickers, of course, has no argument with that.
In sketching out his system, he insisted a double bogey be scored as a minus-3 to punish mental mistakes. Pars are worth zero, “otherwise the scoreboard gets too high, like you’re watching a basketball game,” he said. And double eagles are worth 8 points, sparking risky shots yet “giving golfers a chance to choke – and get over it.”
“When you get an opportunity, whether it’s a short iron or a good putt for birdie, I think you’re just a little more aggressive here,” said Tom Pernice Jr., who won The International in 2001.
“It’s fun. I think the players enjoy this once a year. It adds a different excitement, which I think we need. We have a lot of golf going on, and something different every now and then is good for TV, spectators and players.”
Bill Briggs can be reached at 303-820-1720 or bbriggs@denverpost.com.
