Marty Schottenheimer once circumvented legendary Royal Troon golf secretary James Montgomerie, father of PGA and European tour star Colin Montgomerie, to get a tee time for himself and two team executives.
Also, in a friendly invitational golf event, Schottenheimer literally willed his ball over a creek and onto the green when he refused to lay up like everyone else.
“The ball looked like it was on a trajectory to land dead square in the middle of the creek,” former Browns executive vice president/administration Jim Bailey said Tuesday. “And Marty goes running up the fairway yelling, ‘Get over, you S.O.B!’ And it cleared! It was like the ball responded to him.”
The former NFL coach Schottenheimer, who passed away Monday at age 77 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, had that effect on people as well. The Browns have been to the playoffs 12 times since 1970 and four of those appearances came under Schottenheimer, including two consecutive AFC Championship games in 1986 and ‘87. He also coached the Kansas City Chiefs, San Diego Chargers and Washington Redskins.
Those who worked with Schottenheimer in Cleveland saw the true measure of his competitiveness when he was away from the team’s Baldwin Wallace headquarters.
Bailey laughed through a long story about Schottenheimer getting an offseason gig at a clinic in England on how to coach American football and negotiating a golf trip to Scotland as part of the deal.
He’d twice taken his assistants to coach in the Senior Bowl in Hawaii, a perk given to the staff that lost the AFC Championship. So Schottenheimer decided Bailey and Executive Vice President of Football Operations Ernie Accorsi would go with him to Scotland.
“I’m a bad golfer, Ernie’s a good golfer and of course Marty was not going to let a golf ball beat him,” Bailey, now retired, said in a phone interview from Denver.
Bailey belonged to a club at the time and said the golf pro offered to call ahead and set things up, but Schottenheimer insisted they were all set.
Choice morning tee times were already taken, but darkness doesn’t fall during the summer in Scotland until 11 p.m. Bailey learned just what “all set” meant in Schottenheimer’s world.
Bailey said they would get up early in the morning, Schottenheimer would put on a coat and tie, and they would drive to the course they wanted to play that day.
“Marty would go in and talk to the pro and say, ‘I’m Marty Schottenheimer, head coach of the Cleveland Browns.’ He had this whole routine lined up and he’d talk our way onto the golf course,” Bailey said.
The plan didn’t work at Troon.
“We go to Troon and the pro said, ‘I just sell golf balls, you’ve got to talk to the golf secretary,’” Bailey said. “We walk in, there’s this huge man with mutton chop sideburns, blue blazer with red lapels, glasses down on his nose. Marty goes through his whole routine and the guy looks down at his book and runs his finger down that thing and looks up and says, ‘No.’ It was Colin Montgomerie’s father.”
Of course, the stubborn Schottenheimer was undeterred by the elder Montgomerie, who worked at Troon for nearly 60 years, presided over two British Opens and eventually became the club’s president.
The trio drove into the village to seek out a shopkeeper Schottenheimer had played with at Sharon Golf Club in Sharon Center, Ohio, during the man’s buddy trip to the United States.
“He goes in and gets the shopkeeper to take us out as his guests to play at Troon,” Bailey said. “And as we walked by Mr. Montgomerie, Marty thumbed his nose at him.”
The threesome also played St. Andrews, Western Gailes and Prestwick, the site of the first British Open.
“It was kind of a ratty place and the caddies seemed a little sketchy,” Bailey said of Prestwick. “About the second hole, Ernie comes over and says, ‘Hey, those guys are rifling through our bags.’ Every third hole one of us didn’t play, we stayed with the caddies to protect our stuff.”
Bailey said he last saw Schottenheimer at former Browns owner Art Modell’s funeral in 2012. But as Schottenheimer’s family released word last week that the former Browns coach had been moved to hospice, stories came flooding back for Bailey.
He chuckled over the “friendly invitational” held by a friend of Bailey’s in the insurance business that Schottenheimer was determined to win, how the ball responded to his urging and made over the creek.
But for Bailey, the Scotland trip remains his favorite time with Schottenheimer, even if Bailey saw little of Schottenheimer on the course.
“I’d be trying to hack my way out of the gorse and I’d look up and I’d see Ernie’s head sticking out of a pot bunker and Marty would be on the green lining up his putt,” Bailey said. “We never played a shot together other than the tee shot.”
Marla Ridenour is a columnist for the Akron Beacon-Journal, part of the USA Today Network. She can be reached at mridenour@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MRidenourABJ.
[listicle id=778068524]