Imagine being an aspiring baseball player who, instead of going to the local diamond to practice hitting, took BP every day at Yankee Stadium. Substitute golf for baseball, and that’s what Jeff Klauk experienced growing up in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

Klauk’s father, Fred, was the superintendent at the TPC Sawgrass from 1986 until 2008, allowing Jeff the chance to hang around the course and practice with the PGA Tour pros who called the place home.

“We’d watch them do their thing and play with the guys,” said Klauk, who joined them on tour in 2008. “They helped more than they could imagine.”
Still living in the area, Klauk, 32, provides his perspective on what it has to offer.
COURSES
Obviously, I’ve got to recommend the Stadium and Valley courses at TPC Sawgrass (left). Even if I didn’t have the family connection, they’d be near the top of my list. The Stadium course will test every part of your game. You don’t get too many let-up shots. The last three holes with that amphitheater setting get all the attention, but I enjoy the whole back nine. The Valley, meanwhile, doesn’t get the publicity it deserves. I played it a lot as a kid growing up. It’s more forgiving off the tee, but it’s challenging as well.

Another very good course is The Palencia Club. It’s an Arthur Hills design near the World Golf Village in St. Augustine. A few of the holes are along the intercoastal area. You can’t see a lot of the houses on the golf course. It’s kept very natural looking. It’s just a fun course to play.

It’s a private club, but if you can find a way to play it, I also recommend Timuquana CC. It’s an old Donald Ross course, one of the gems of Jacksonville. It winds through some nice big pine trees. You can see the St. Johns River from the golf shop. It’s a wonderful spot.

DON’T MISS
The World Golf Hall of Fame is a great place to visit (see page 17) particularly if you’re stuck on a rainy day. You can always go around St. Augustine. The historic district has the Old Town Trolley Tour that can help you explore the area. There’s Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth and Fort Matanzas, two pretty neat places with lots of history, among the sites you can see. Meanwhile, Amelia Island is only 50 minutes north of Jacksonville. There’s lots of stuff to do there if you’re traveling with your spouse or your family.

Two other places worth seeing are the Jacksonville Zoo (2) and the St. Augustine Alligator Farm. They’re both very kid-friendly. I’ll admit, I get a kick out of seeing the big ol’ gators and crocodiles.

KLAUK’S FAVORITES
Dining: Pusser’s Bar and Grille is a neat place that serves Caribbean foods. It’s not far from TPC Sawgrass, too, if that’s where you’re playing golf. Same with Brucci’s. It’s a pretty cool place that my dad absolutely loves. It’s got very good pizza and beer and is pretty low-key.
Places to Stay:Marriott at Sawgrass is very nice, but the best place to stay is the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club (3). It’s probably the best in terms of customer service in the Jacksonville area. They’ve spent a lot of money on the facility. You can stay at the lodge, and they’ve got two golf courses, the Ocean and the Lagoon. They also have a great spa there if you’re traveling with someone who isn’t playing golf. Plus, it’s right near the beach.

The shot wasn’t heard round the world, but the reverberations are still being felt some two decades later.

From the right rough on the 16th hole at the TPC-Eagle Trace in Coral Springs, Fl., 26-year-old Mark Calcavecchia “gashed a shot out of the hay” with his Ping Eye 2 8-iron that landed on a peninsula green and sucked back. Calc went on to win the 1987 Honda Classic, and become the poster child for a war on square grooves and trigger a trial that Karsten Manufacturing eventually won against the PGA Tour.

Twenty-two years later, the Eye 2 has reared its ugly clubhead, triggering “Groovegate” and a debate that continues to rage at this week’s Northern Trust Open. Calcavecchia is nowhere in sight, but his presence was felt as Scott McCarron and Phil Mickelson hugged it out after lawsuits were threatened, the tour’s commissioner was huddling with a Solheim in hopes of finding an accord (Tim Finchem and John Solheim replacing Deane Beman and Karsten Solheim); and just for old time’s sake, Fred Couples was contemplating throwing the same Eye 2 in his bag that he used around the same time Calcavecchia was causing such an uproar.

Len Decof, the attorney who represented Karsten, was getting calls. All we need in this flashback is Austin Powers as the narrator, or Calcavecchia coming back at age 49 to remind us that nothing’s really changed.

“I caused the whole groove controversy,” Calcavecchia said from his West Coast home in Phoenix earlier this week. “Tom Watson and Jack Nicklaus went crazy and that was the whole start of it. Now [the equipment companies] go through millions of dollars in retooling [irons for tour players], they grandfather in the grooves that [caused the controversy] in the first place.”

Calcavecchia opened the season at the Sony Open with an Eye 2 sand wedge and L wedge that Ping made for him with legal grooves. He swapped out one of his old Beryllium L wedges made in 1987 for the Bob Hope, but the greens were overly receptive at Torrey Pines so he switched back. Both times he missed the cut. “The greens were already soft. The last thing you needed was too much juice,” Calcavecchia said. “You don’t want a boatload of spin. Believe me, if I didn’t use the new grooves, I would have been sucking back balls 50 feet at Torrey Pines.”

Disgusted with his play, Calcavecchia decided to skip the Northern Trust Open and the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Had he played, he would have used the approved wedges — and not because of the accusations that players exercising the Eye 2 loophole were “cheating,” or at the very least, not living up to the spirit of the rules.

The Eye 2, once his trusty weapon, was hard to figure.

“You’d get hellacious juice on one shot,” Calcavecchia said. “You’d jam the next one because you don’t want to be 10 feet short again.”

Calcavecchia knew Mickelson was just being Mickelson, trying to prove a point more than he was gaining a competitive advantage.

“That’s Phil,” Calcavecchia said. “No, he’s not cheating. He’s going along with the rule, whoever made the rule. I don’t think it’s cheating. On the other hand, it’s a stupid rule. You’re still allowed to use the juiciest, squarest grooves ever made, which makes no sense to me.”

At the same time he could relate to what Mickelson was going through before “proving his point” and taking the Eye2 out of his Callaway bag.

“People looked at me like I was straight cheating,” Calcavecchia said. “They made me the bad guy.”