Cochiti

As we drove past Cochiti Lake I turned to Palmer and said, “If I didn’t know better I’d say those were bodies down there on the beach.”

Palmer kept his eyes on the road and said, “Those are bodies, paleface.”

I took another look and despite it being a half hour before sunrise and us traveling at 60 mph, Palmer was right, there were a half-dozen people spread-eagled on the western shore of the lake.

Palmer continued, “The results of a Friday night with too much firewater.”

We were driving through the sacred ancestral lands of the Cochiti Pueblo on our way to an early tee time at one of New Mexico’s tribal golf courses.  It was the late 1980s, more than a decade before Indian Casinos became commonplace in the state.  The Robert Trent Jones designed course at Cochiti was one of the first pueblo-owned golf courses in the southwest.  It was set into the red and orange hues of the Jemez Mountains amid creeks and ponds.  It had quickly gained attention as challenging to play, visually spectacular and was rated among the 25 best public courses in America. 

Photo from CochitiGolfClub.com

The golf course was one surviving piece of a major Cochiti Pueblo development project that went tits up in 1984.  Cochiti residents and Council Members shared conflicting thoughts regarding the course.  All nineteen pueblos in the state were desperately in need of revenue to combat third-world conditions and shocking rates of alcoholism, obesity, teenage pregnancy and unemployment.  The course at Cochiti brings in the bulk of the pueblo’s revenue but many still see it as a sacrilege.  Golf to many tribe elders is a well-heeled white man’s game and viewed as a frivolous intrusion on what little of their sovereignty remains.

However, that sovereignty does include land and water rights, the two most critical ingredients for building a golf course.  Roy Montoya, former Santa Ana Pueblo Administrator said, “We were looking for something where white people would come, spend their money and leave.”  Golf came before casinos because there wasn’t a fifteen-year-long legal and political struggle required to get started.

When we arrived at the course, Palmer pulled into the parking area and we walked up to the clubhouse to check in.  Everyone working there, be it the pro shop, the starter’s desk, the restaurant or the greens keepers, all were Native American.  Perfectly logical I grant you but a new experience for me.  The starter informed us that one of the employees would join us for the first half of our round.  He wanted to get in nine holes before his shift started later that morning.

The fellow’s name was Ted who was a good player but his focus quickly turned to Palmer.  Palmer had played golf since he was a kid, was on the golf team in college and was still quite good at it.  Palmer played the entire time smoking a pipe which never left his mouth unless it was to refill and light the bowl.  Driving, chipping or putting, the pipe stayed in place.  I have never seen anyone else do this on TV or at any course I’ve ever played.  In addition to this Palmer was continually replacing the golf ball he was playing with.  He had brought along a sack of cheap discolored balls that had been collected when he was still in high school during a promotion by local service stations.  Most of the balls had a corporate logo on them from Humble, Sun Oil or Phillips 66 that was badly faded.

When Palmer became less than pleased with the result of a shot, he would pickup the offending ball, stare at it and then toss it into the brush.  He’d then look at me sitting in the cart and say, “That one’s a goner.  Toss me another one of those gas station balls.”  I’d toss him a replacement which he would examine closely and then remark something like, “Just what this shot calls for, a Sunoco Special.”  When we finished the first nine holes, despite the pipe and the silly balls, Palmer was one under par.  Ted although totally fascinated by Palmer, said it was time for him to go to work so we exchanged pleasantries and Palmer and I started on the back nine.    

We were sitting in the cart on the tee for the 16^th hole when Palmer looked down the fairway and said, “This doesn’t look good, better grab a club.”  What concerned Palmer were two golf carts coming toward us at full speed, each with four Native Americans hanging on, half of them shirtless but all appearing to be looking forward to something with great anticipation.

Because Palmer never stops talking about New Mexico, I was aware of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.  For two weeks runners travelled among the pueblos with a knotted rope each day.  The knots representing the number of days remaining until the lid was to come off.  When the knots were gone, 2,500 pueblo warriors staged the first successful overthrow of the Spanish by Native Americans.  They pushed the priests and colonists all the way back to El Paso.

While I was trying to decide between a 4-iron and a putter, Palmer held a pow wow with the eight tribespeople.  It turns out they knew Ted and he had suggested they ride out and watch Palmer swing a club.  Palmer, not wanting to disappoint, rummaged through the sack for a ball.  This made me nervous because I knew there were a few balls in there with “Mohawk” stamped on them.  Palmer found one that had no logo but was inscribed “The Centurion.”  The 16^th hole was a 195-yard par three, and Palmer put the Centurion safely on the green.  Then one of the eight stepped forward and asked if he could give it a try.  He had brought his own ball but wanted to try Palmer’s 5-iron.

I suddenly caught on – this was their guy!  Mano a mano, duel in the dessert and all that.  You could tell he was a player just by how he gripped the club and lined up the shot.  He swung, the ball soared, came down on the green and stopped slightly closer to the hole than Palmer’s ball.  He returned the club to Palmer, said thanks graciously, and the two carts sped off amid a handful of war hoops.

Notah Begay III is the only full-blooded Native American to play on the Professional Golf Association Tour.  He was a three-time All-American at Stanford where he and Tiger Woods were members of the school’s collegiate championship team in 1994.  Begay won four professional tournaments and now works as an analyst on the Golf Channel.  He grew up in Albuquerque and his family is from the San Felipe and Isleta Pueblos.  He would have been around seventeen years of age the day Palmer and I played at Cochiti.  I’ve often wondered if he was their guy.