The wolf pack

By Matt Ginella April 2009

"The game of golf is a great tell," says Ken Cates, mid-round under a comfortable desert sun. "The way people handle themselves on the golf course is a window into how they'll handle themselves in business situations. Do they help look for lost balls? Will they cheat? Will they persevere through a bad round? What kind of temper do they have? Do they throw clubs?"

Looking through the window to this male-centric excursion, you see Cates and 11 others on an inaugural buddies trip to Las Vegas--men with sprained ankles wearing floral skirts playing pink balls as they "drop the hammer" in a game of Wolf. By trip's end, there'd be no cheating but plenty of pressing and, yes, a club toss.

Their business for the next five years is a new hospital in their hometown of St. Louis. All but two of them represent various construction aspects of the five-year, $200-million project: money-men, master planners, architects, engineers and builders. Chris Cressler, one of the guys not working on the project, conceived this trip after reading about the Golf Digest Ambush--and then submitted the group's itinerary. "I had played Wolf Creek in Mesquite, Nev., last November and was blown away," Cressler recalls. "So, we decided rather quickly that Mesquite was the destination."

The golf was marked by team-work, topped shots and gag gifts. With handicaps from 6 to infinity, every player did his share of looking for lost balls. Dave Gough played through the pain of a sprained ankle that caused him to swing with a lean and walk with a limp. Perry Hirtz didn't hit one drive past the forward tees, so he was forced to finish the round playing a pink ball and wearing a $5 floral skirt. No one liked the game of Wolf more than Cates, who pressed the most bets by declaring, "I drop the hammer!"

I ambushed the group at Royal Links Golf Club in Las Vegas, where they played before driving 80 miles to Mesquite. The golf was on me, as were the coolers full of beer and, later that night, a steak-and-seafood dinner with a few bottles of wine to wash it down.

The next day wasn't a washout, but the group did play Wolf Creek on one of only five or six annual rain days in Mesquite, according to locals. Pat Gaffney let two clubs fly during the round, though it wasn't out of anger; his grips were slippery. Later that night Brent VanConia went back into his bag of gag gifts and awarded Gaffney a tube of PoliGrip.

If tells are what this group was looking for, I picked up on one: This wasn't their last golf trip.