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#261 – London Journal #22 – Last Hand at the Empire, Preface – Last Round at Montserrat
I once had the ambition to be the last person to play a round of golf on the island of Montserrat. This probably strikes you as a bizarre ambition, but it significantly affected my writing career and explains, in part, why I spent Sunday, September 16 in London with Ty Stewart, Director of Sponsorship and Marketing for the World Series of Poker.
Sunday was Final Table Day at the Main Event of the first World Series of Poker-Europe. I was with Ty almost every minute of that day and night, from when he came downstairs for breakfast in the lobby of the Hampshire on Leicester Square, to when we ate cold McDonalds hamburgers in the basement of the Hampshire sixteen hours later and he excused himself to go to bed. Stewart rarely stood still for more than a minute and the experience took me to every part of the Empire Casino, including the counting room and a place Stewart called “the hole.” We also found ourselves in a basement poker game, on the London Underground running into Robert and Cate Williamson, at Harrods at closing time with an armful of silver platters, and in a predictably awful London McDonalds at 2:30 in the morning.
But the story starts more than a decade ago, on a tiny island a half a world away.
Back in 1995, I was interested in becoming a writer. Already in my mid-thirties and a successful securities attorney, I could not abide modest goals. When I noted the bizarre architecture of a men’s restroom at LaGuardia, I submitted it to THE NEW YORKER. I wrote about a man who accidentally becomes a pitcher for the Cleveland Indians; that went to PLAYBOY. (Both were instantly rejected.) My heroes were Truman Capote, Hunter Thompson, George Plimpton, James Stewart, and Bob Woodward. Al Alvarez and Anthony Holden too. I wanted to create on a giant canvas, and forget about paying dues.
The eruption of a three-centuries dormant volcano on the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat that summer grabbed my attention and fueled my imagination. Though Montserrat was a real-life island paradise, claimed by Christopher Columbus for Spain on his second voyage to the New World, it had never pandered to the tourism dollar. Other than a recording studio owned by Beatles producer George Martin (which hosted Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, the Police, and Elton John), the fate of Montserrat was of little consequence to anyone but its 12,000 inhabitants.
After the Soufriere Hills volcano on the southeast side of the island, dormant since the early 1600s, erupted on July 18, 1995, the crisis was inevitable but it developed in slow motion. The lava-flow, ash, and mudslides were sure to engulf the capital, Plymouth, and at least the southern half of the island. A few people moved out of what became known as “the exclusion zone” to the north, but almost everyone else evacuated Montserrat altogether.
Having golfed at numerous Caribbean resorts, I was curious what kind of golf this island had. It turned out they had one course, the Montserrat Golf Club. It had just 9 holes, but each hole had multiple tees, so players could make two circuits and play a complete round. I saw pictures of the course, in which it looked simple, beautiful, and natural. Nature, in fact, was reclaiming it in its entirety.
I made contact with someone who worked in the pro shop. The course was not open for play but it was as yet undamaged. The employee was the last one left and he was soon to leave. But he sent me a score card and admitted that no one would stop me if I simply walked on, teed up, and started playing.
“Suit yourself, man.”
I even figured out a couple ways to get to Montserrat if the State Department prohibited U.S. citizens from traveling there. I thought playing the last round at Montserrat before volcanic ash and mudslides destroyed the course (and maybe the entire island) forever was a brilliant idea. I could use the assignment to report on the unbelievable circumstance of a country disappearing from the face of the earth. I could even preserve a small piece of golf history, and further what was at the time one of my passions, the relationship between golf and its natural surroundings.
There was just one problem: I couldn’t find a magazine remotely interested in underwriting such a boondoggle. I had no contacts and no credentials, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was devastated.
Born from that failed dream was the idea that my years as a writer should be spent pursuing unique things to see, or unique places to see the things other people see without REALLY seeing. I wanted – and still want – to be the best communicator I could be, but I wanted to stake my writing career on BEING THERE.
Wherever “there” is.
There is no shortage of reporting at the end of a big poker tournament. For it to be worth my time and talent – and my employer’s money – I needed to report from a unique place. I wanted the best seat in the house, and I wanted to see it as its inhabitant saw it. For the World Series of Poker, that meant watching from the perspective of just two men: World Series of Poker Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack and Director of Sponsorship and Marketing Ty Stewart.
