We Found Him!

Despite stiff competition, Angelo Spagnolo is the worst of America's Worst Avid Golfers

By Peter Andrews

June 2008

Arms and the man I sing, who forced by fate, To play golf all day and come home late. Sliced and hooked along the Atlantic shore, Long labors both by trap and green he bore. To win the greenish coat, a sixty-six he made on just one hole; And his caddie was sore afraid.

(With profound apologies to Publius Vergilius Maro, who never saw anything like it in his life.)

Well, that was some kind of shootout deserving of a bit of epic verse. And if Virgil is spinning softly in his grave, you can imagine what the trouble spirit of Harry Vardon is doing along about now. GOLF DIGEST's search for America's Worst Avid Golfer finally came to an end on the treacherous confines of the Tournament Players Club in Ponte Vedra, F.L., and when the final stroke was tallied the name of Angelo Spagnolo led all the rest. In a tight match that could have gone a number of ways right up until the 17th hole, Angelo pulled himself together and squeaked past his nearest opponent by 49 shots. It was the kind of garrison finish of which sports legends are made.

It wasn't easy. The extent of Angelo's prowess was tested to the full by three fine challengers. Out of some 627 nominations the final four shook down to Jack Pulford, a restaurant owner from Moline, I.L.; Joel Mosser, a stock broker from Aurora, C.O.; Kelly Ireland, an attorney from Tyler, T.X., and Angelo, a grocery store manager from Fayette City, P.A. Four men from different parts of the country bound by a sense of sportsmanship and an abiding love for the game of golf matched only by their inability to play it. Together, they compiled in one afternoon a set of statistics that are likely to stand for as long as people keep score:

They had a combined score of 836.

They made 17 whiffs, put 102 balls in the water and were assessed 124 penalty strokes.

They hit no greens in regulation scoring no pars, one bogey, eight double-bogeys and 63 "others."

Angelo took a 66 on the par-3 17th water hole. After that, he admitted, "the wheels came off a little" and he took a 22 on the 18th for a grand total of 257.

Angelo's final score equaled the tour-record-low 72-hole score of 257 set by Mike Souchak in 1955.

If Angelo had played in that tournament, he would have missed the second-day cut by the 14th hole of the first day, when he still had 111 shots more to play.

All in all, it was quite a day.

The Practice Round

What had started out as a lark six months before when their friends and partners had first nominated them as possible Worst Avid Golfers (WAGs), turned serious on the afternoon of June 18, 1985. To stimulate actual tournament playing conditions, GOLF DIGEST had arranged for the contestants to play a practice round; following that, they underwent the ritual flogging known as the pre-tournament press conference.

Joel flopped in a chair and began by saying, "I have just had a very difficult day. I shot 146 plus two Xs, and I only have one golf ball left." Kelly also seemed stunned by the difficulty of TPC. "I've never seen anything so hard in my life," he said. "On the 11th (529-yard, par-5) I used every club in my bag and was hitting 24 before I got on the fairway."

All four were convinced they would shoot better tomorrow -- in fact, they all shot worse -- and all were determined to come in with the lowest score. "If I wanted to become notorious," said Jack Puliford, "I'd sneak past the guards at the White House. I'm here to be the best...(pause)...of the worst." They all agreed that something around 140 should be good enough to win the next day and the conference broke up.

Afterward, I chatted with Joel for a while. He is a quite man, who loves golf the way a wino loves muscatel. He knows it's nothing but trouble for him, but he can't get enough of it. "It isn't always a picnic to play as badly as I do," he said. "But it's the guys I play with who make it fun. All my regular foursome from Colorado have come down here just to cheer me on. Can you imagine that? We have a terrific time. We go away in the winter to some place warm and then we go to the prettiest part of town, which is always the golf course and we play. Why shouldn't I love the game?"

Joel had to stick around for a television interview with a local station in Colorado. While he was nervously waiting for the camera to pan in on him, one of his regular foursome slips behind and starts to depants him. The tournament pressure is building.

That evening, our GOLFDIGEST instructional brain trust tried to analyze the contenders' swings:

Angelo gives a new dimension to the word "deliberate." He settles slowly, slowly down in his stance like a nesting chicken and just as the egg is about to drop he lashes quickly at the ball, sending his woods arching straight into the air while his irons rarely get more than shoulder high. One pro said, "His grip is too strong, his stance is too closed and his visor is too low."