There were plenty of old relics peering out of the bay window of the R & A boozer overlooking the Old Course. It was business as usual at St Andrews apart from the minor inconvenience of the Dunhill Cup. Never mind, there were security guards at either end of the sacred establishment to ensure that the riff raff didn't linger unnecessarily in front of the building and upset the members.
It was in this "no man's land" that I bumped into Danny Goodman. He, like me, was peering in the window, wondering if he was observing statues at the R & A version of Madame Tussaud's. No, there was life within. We both saw a "statue" stretch laboriously across a mahogany table to dilute his gin with another dash of tonic.
To those not familiar with eccentric golfers of the early '80s, Danny was the original in that category. With a swing that a 12 handicapper would disown and an approach to the game that bemused caddies, fellow players and officials alike, Danny kept everyone on tour guessing about his next move.
He was once sighted in the Frankfurter golf club car park placing his golf bag delicately on the ground behind his car, calmly installing himself in the driver's seat and reversing over the errant clubs. He eased forward and repeated the process just to make sure that they could take no future part in an unsatisfactory round.
Danny "fluked" his way into the British Open in 1980 at Muirfield. He qualified at Lufness with a first round 64 followed by a 79; fortunately the wind that second day "would have blown a dog off a chain" and he secured a place in the biggest event of his career to that point.
A couple of rounds in the high 80s in the Championship proper dented his notions of golf at the top, but the experience inspired him enough to go to the Tour school at the end of the year. He had forgotten to send the entry form, however, which meant he had to wait until the following year to try and prove himself at La Manga. When he finally got there he found himself in a play-off for last spot with two other hopefuls. Danny hit the fairway, the others found the trees. They parred the hole, he bogeyed it with a sandwedge in his hand for his second to the par four. Another pained expression fills Danny's face as he recounts the heartache of it. As we move away from the R & A window Danny offers me one from his 20 pack. Not that unusual you would think, only this is not a pack of cigarettes, this is a pack of incense sticks. After I decline, he sticks one in his mouth revealing a reddened tongue which matches an already smeared lower lip. "The Francos won't let me smoke them in the room," he informs me, so he's got to steal every opportunity that he can to light up. These days Danny has got a mysterious liaison with the Paraguayan brothers, Carlos and Angel Franco. It took me a fair amount of time in my conversation with him to realise that he was referring to Angel Franco, Danny's translation of the elder Franco brother's name had me guessing for some time. "Onjel" was the more talented of the two, according to Mr Goodman. I quickly realised that Danny was not linked to the Francos as a translator, so what was the connection?
Back in 1984 when the limitations of Danny's golf game were beginning to hit home on the European tour, there was a rogue lawyer back in New York trying to deny Danny his inheritance. Danny's father had died and his lawyer was left in charge of dishing out the spoils. The battle over money and the decline of an already shakey golf game saw Danny back in Albany for the next seven years "on the phone, smoking cigarettes, trying to get what was rightfully mine". He reckoned he had smoked enough cigarettes in those seven years for a lifetime, thus the incense.
During the litigation years of the late '80s, Danny decided to take a break in Bogota, Colombia. He took his beer gut and golf game south to see if he still had some "action on the track". He was then, by his own admission, at best a three handicapper.
He ran into Angel Franco at the Colombian Open, where his talent became apparent to Danny. He persuaded Angel to go to America and try for his Tour card there. Angel ended up playing the Nike Tour. A bad business deal in Paraguay involving a "Chinaman and a golf course development back home saw Onjel's game slide from A plus to B minus, with F putting. Onjel hasn't holed a putt in seven years," says Danny, drawing heavily on the last of his incense stick.
Meanwhile "his (Angel's) younger brother Carlos is too lazy to go to the practice green for 10 minutes after a round to try to improve his big weakness. If he did he would win the Masters and the US Open in the same year," according to Danny.
After years in Albany "dying a slow death" Danny realises that "it's life on the road for me". He looks back again to his glory days with the clubs, his final round in the last group in the Canadian Open with Nick Price and various other brushes with the world's best. "I hadn't got the stage presence, I wasn't stage-worthy. I could get into a contending position in a tournament but I knew I didn't really belong," he admits. He found an old warehouse in Albany, set up a net inside and tried desperately to keep his game in shape during the long cold winters of litigation, but "indoor practice told too many lies", it was a hopeless substitute for the real thing. So, these days, Danny clings to his golf dreams through Angel and Carlos Franco. From player, to litigant, to author (there was talk of a book being penned about his seven-year inheritance battle), to Franco babysitter, to manager, to caddie, it looks like Danny has covered all aspects of Tour life.
He loves it and, if it involves caddying sometimes, that does not worry him.
I left Danny in St Andrews looking for the Victoria bar where he had a meeting with the manager concerning a Ray Davies (of The Kinks) revival night for the week of the Open 2000, which Danny would like to host. He started singing Harry Chapin songs to me as we approached our parting point in town. Well, the cat's in the cradle all right and Danny's back on the road.
Of course there are no more characters like him left playing on tour: I'm not sure if there are even any caddies left with the Goodman free spirit. What a setting for such a character to reappear on the golf scene. Was that an apparition I saw touring the sandstoned streets of St Andrews trailing clouds of incense in his wake or was that really Danny Goodman?
