Admission into the pantheon of all-time athletic greats is a hard thing to come by. It is reserved for the few who transcended the game, those who took their sport and remade it in their own image. Some punched their ticket through years of consistent brilliance. Ruth. Jordan. Gretzky. Pele. Others joined the ranks through a single moment of athletic magnificence so staggering as to make God Himself feel as if He had just been punched in the stomach with His own perfection. These moments are rare. They are the moments and games where a single man subjects all of history, art, and civilization to his own will through a small, usually round ball. Chamberlain’s 100-point game. Mays’ World Series basket catch. Vinatieri’s Super Bowl kicks. But this list would be incomplete without one man and one moment. A man whose greatness was so great that his face would be on the currency of the Athletic Pantheon, if they were to use currency. The man is “Worldwide” Wes Goldman. The moment is his epic drive that conquered Niagara Falls with a mere golf ball. We remember, and we reflect.
SAL LOMBARDI, AGENT
So I’m bangin’ this chick, right? I mean, really just blowin’ her back out. And in the middle of it she looks back at me and says, ‘Do you think he can do it? Do you think Wes can do it?’ What am I supposed to do? So I tell her to turn back around before I cut her dental package. She was my secretary. But that was how much Wes captivated the country. No, fuck the country. Wes captivated the world. This guy’s an Orthodox Jew getting fan mail from Palestine. I mean, everyone wanted to see if he could do it, if man could really hit a golf ball over a big fuckin’ waterfall.
BERT CANNON, GOLF HISTORIAN
In terms of natural ability, there’s never been a better golfer than Wes Goldman. He was the complete package. Perfect swing, great accuracy. In his prime, he could do things with a nine-iron that no man should ever be able to do. I remember going to Augusta as a kid and watching Ben Hogan hit the ball. Now there was a ball striker! But you watch the tape on Wes, and he was better. And it was all so effortless. If there was anyone born to put on the khakis and play golf, it was Wes Goldman. And he proved it with that shot over Niagara.
When he booked the whole Niagara Falls thing, Wes was looking for a way to jump into that megastar category. I mean, he was big, we’d just won the British a few months before, with Van de Velde blowing it on the eighteenth and everything, but he wasn’t Arnold Palmer big. He wasn’t Jack Nicklaus big. And Wes wanted that. So he has his agent start gettin’ him some endorsements and things like that. I think we did a commercial for Kent’s Carpetland and some Nerf golf club before Wes gets a call from this promoter, this guy Reilly.
SAL LOMBARDI, AGENT
Paddy Reilly! That fuckin’ Mick. Seriously though, I did a lotta business with Paddy. He was into the spectacle of the thing, the type of shit you could only get away with if you had a pair. And he had himself a PAIR. I helped him set up the NASCAR race around the world and the Holyfield/Kangaroo boxing exhibition in Tiananmen Square. What a tragedy that was. The point is, when Paddy Reilly calls, you pick up the phone. And so he calls lookin’ to do somethin’ with Wes. He said he saw somethin’ in him after the British Open. I mean, who couldn’t. The kid was talented. Plus he had the looks of a goddamn runway model. Paddy wanted to turn him into a golfing Elvis. He had it all laid out by the time I talked to him. Ten swings, ten shots at history. One million for Wes just for showin’ up and ten if he could actually make it over the Falls. He had sponsors lined up, TV contracts, everything. He was gonna turn it into the biggest media circus since the JFK assassination. Honestly, I didn’t think Wes would go for it, though. I made a lotta promises about that Nerf campaign that never came true, and that fuckin’ caddy of his was always in his ear, tellin’ him to cut out the distractions. But he flipped when I told him about it. First thing he said was “I better get my ass to the driving range.” That kid was a fuckin’ champion.
BARNABY J. HUDSON, SPORTSWRITER
It was really unprecedented, this type of exhibition, not just for a golfer but for any athlete. This was on another level. Man vs. Nature. It was the ultimate battle. And in the middle of it all we had Wes, a rocket ship ready to take off into the upper stratosphere of stardom. The media hype was incredible. It seemed like every week we were seeing a new Wes commercial, or Wes on a different talk show, or Wes on the cover of another magazine. This was about the time we started calling him “Worldwide” Wes, after he said he wanted his celebrity to span the globe in Rolling Stone. Well, he got what he wanted. I remember I went to Thailand for surgery about six weeks before the event, and just walking the streets of Bangkok, you couldn’t avoid the “Wes vs. Niagara: Blood Feud” posters plastered everywhere. But I’ll tell ya, Wes was built for it. I mean, physically, I don’t think there was any golfer who could’ve even attempted to challenge those mighty falls. We have a very different view of him now, but when he was younger Wes had tree trunks for legs and pythons for arms. He could’ve played in the NFL, he got drafted by Cleveland, actually, but he said that he looked better in khakis than in spandex.
FUZZY SLIPPERS, CADDY
I wanted no part of any of it. Look, the golfer/caddy relationship is a close one that you can’t understand till you’re part of it. I gave Wes advice about everything, not just club selection. I told him, “Wes, the only thing that’s gonna come out of this is you’re gonna embarrass yourself and you’re gonna screw up your swing.” It was over 400 yards across the Falls at the shortest point, and the longest I’d ever seen Wes drive a ball was about 360, at the Buick Open a couple years earlier. And that was a monster drive. But he just took my words as disrespect, like I was doubting him. He said he was gonna do it whether I was with him or not. So I went with him.
MICHELLE GOLDMAN-DALY, EX-WIFE
I met Wes on the PGA Tour, in Milwaukee. It was his first year on tour, and I was one of the girls who held up the “QUIET” signs while the players are teeing off.
I gave him a pat on the back after he shanked one into the woods, and nine months later our son Dexter was born. That was five years before the Niagara Falls thing. Our marriage probably wasn’t the healthiest relationship, but we gutted it out longer than my parents thought we would. The first few years were pretty chaotic, with the baby and Wes being on the road all the time. It kicked up a notch after he won the British Open, but that was nothing compared to the Niagara Falls thing. I really didn’t want him to do it. Life was crazy enough as it was, you know, without the constant media attention. Plus, the closer we got to the event, the less time he spent at home. I don’t know how many times he tried to answer my questions with some free stuff he got from going on Letterman or something. You could tell the spotlight was starting to change him.
BARNABY J. HUDSON, SPORTSWRITER
So we get up to Niagara a week before the show starts, and it’s a complete zoo. I mean, we were on the New York side of the border, but I’m not exaggerating when I say that this was the closest thing to a Canadian Mardi Gras that we’ll ever see. Just Molson and denim jackets everywhere. They didn’t just come from Canada though, they came from all over. I met people from Germany, Italy, Japan, Brazil, you name it. And that’s not even mentioning the Jews. It was like they had their own holy trinity now to compete with the Christians: Hank Greenberg, Sandy Koufax, and Wes Goldman. They were rolling in by the synagogue. Plus, the place was swarming with paparazzi and media types because of all the celebrities who showed up. I’d compare it to the Super Bowl, but it was bigger than the Super Bowl. Wes vs. the Waterfall was like if Ali fought Frazier at D-Day while Rosa Parks drove by in a bus. Times ten.
FUZZY SLIPPERS, CADDY
We arrived at Niagara three weeks early to have a training camp, of sorts. I wanted Wes to get used to the weather and away from the distractions at home. It seemed like the media rounds were really straining things with Michelle. I figured we’d go to Niagara and be able to face the Falls before we actually faced them. Completely backfired. While I’m trying to rebuild his swing from scratch, with no regard for anything but power, and breaking every caddy rule in the book, Wes is going out every night and getting plastered with some Mounties. He came back one morning on a horse who he insisted come with us to practice every day. I give him credit, though. He partied at night, but he came to work in the morning. He’d hit balls at the driving range for hours while me and Pegasus watched and gave advice. By our second week of training, we basically knew what the Falls had to offer. The winds were unpredictable, so we decided that Wes would have to drive the ball at least 420-430 yards to be safe. But he would be hitting from a raised platform, which gave him a little leeway. Basically, he had to hit the ball longer than anyone had ever hit it in an unpredictable environment with the world looking on. We threw the book out and forgot everything we knew about golf. This was about brute strength, leverage, and luck. We tried all sorts of crazy swings and stances before we came up with the one that worked. We called it the modified Happy Gilmore, where Wes would line up a little behind the ball, take one step forward, bend the knees, and let ‘er rip. It looked a little bit like a baseball player digging a low fastball out of the dirt and driving it. But it was successful, and we were getting consistent 400 yard drives off of it. The other 20-30 yards we kissed up to God, hoping He’d give us a strong gust of wind or two.
BARNABY J. HUDSON, SPORTSWRITER
We were in the locker room with Wes a couple hours before the show started. It wasn’t even really a locker room, they just converted the men’s bathroom at the visitor’s center. It was me, Norman Mailer, and a local guy there for writers, but Mailer had to be dragged out ‘cause he took a swing at Sal Lombardi for wearing the same hat as him. Other than that, Paddy Reilly was over in the corner with a couple people making sure the crowds and everything were under control. Fuzz was there, swarmin’ around Wes and getting’ progressively more pissed off ‘cause of all the people packed into this cramped bathroom. I think at one point he locked himself and Wes inside the handicapped stall. Wes was loose, though, he didn’t even let his wife bother him. He just had her kicked out a few minutes after Mailer.
MICHELLE GOLDMAN-DALY, EX-WIFE
I don’t even know why I showed up because I don’t think he said three words to me the entire trip. He wouldn’t even let me and Dexter stay with him while he was training. Him talking about how he’s too focused to be any good, how he’s doing it for us. Too focused. Yeah, too focused on getting’ hammered in Montreal with some no-good Canuck strippers. I heard the whispers while I was out and about, I speak a little French . Anyways, I watched the thing from a bar in Buffalo with Mr. Mailer, since I guess we were both too fussy to stay around Wes. Norman was a perfect gentleman.
SAL LOMBARDI, AGENT
Fuck Norm Mailer! I woulda knocked that son of a bitch’s teeth out, the hack.
FUZZY SLIPPERS, CADDY
Of course I was pissed about the locker room situation. That was no way to prepare for hitting a ball over Niagara Falls. It should’ve just been me and Wes in there, it always should’ve been just us. While I’m trying to keep him loose, you got Michelle nagging in his ear, Paddy Reilly yelling at his yes men in the corner, and Mailer and Sal having a pissing contest in the middle of the room. So I just sat Wes down on the john in the handicapped stall and locked the door. We start going over strategy. I tell him, Wes, you have to do this in the first five swings. Five swings, that’s it. You’re gonna be too tired after that, so let’s get this over with quick and get the hell out of here. My face is about six inches away from his, and its like he’s looking right through me. So I say, Wes, what’s the deal? He looks me in the eye and says, “Fuzz, I’m sauced.” You believe it? This mope wakes up and decides to help himself to the mini bar in his room! So I punched him in the mouth, and for two reasons. One, I had to try and get him back to his senses, and two, I was pissed off. That’s why when you watch the thing on TV you can see a little swelling around his jaw. But yeah, I was pretty heated. I didn’t even notice the crowds when we were walking out because I was trying to write my letter of resignation on the back of a scorecard. I should’ve, too.
EXCERPT FROM TRANSCRIPT OF TELEVISION BROADCAST
LEON WOLLASTON: Hello everybody, I’m Leon Wollaston here with my partner Chuck Atlas. And the moment we’ve all been waiting for is finally here. After months of hype, Wes Goldman, the handsome up-and-comer known as much for his Nerf commercials as for capturing the British Open title a few months ago, will finally challenge the tyrant of the Canadian border, the Niagara Falls. Chuck?
CHUCK ATLAS: Leon, after possibly thousands of years of standing uncontested in the North American wilderness, the Falls of Niagara will finally have a worthy challenger. People have tried to go over the Falls in barrels for centuries, but none till now have been wise enough to try and go across it with a golf ball.
LW: You’re exactly right Chuck and let’s take a look at our potential hero tonight. With one swing, he’s going down in the history books. Can Wes Goldman handle it?
CA: Well Leon, when you look at Wes Goldman, what do you see? You see a young man full of composure and an unnatural confidence for his age. This kid’s got ice water running through his veins. That’s one important factor he’s got going for him. The other is that he’s an absolute monster with a driver in his hand. I mean, he’s always been long off the tee, but we spoke with his caddy Fuzzy Slippers the other day and he said that Wes has been consistently hitting 400 yards.
LW: Well, he’s gonna need every bit of that and more. Now let’s go to our Papa John’s® Tale of the Tape. Better ingredients. Better pizza. Papa John’s™. First up, we’ve got Wes Goldman. Six-foot-three, two hundred and five pounds soaking wet, he was a women’s studies major at the University of Phoenix. Strengths: Enormous power off the tee and a never-say-die attitude. Weaknesses: Get this Chuck, he says his biggest weakness is his wife and five-year-old son Dexter.
CA: Rooting for Wes Goldman is like rooting for America!
LW: And in the other corner, we’ve got the beast of the Northeast, Niagara Falls. Strengths: A relentless water flow that crushes everything in its path and a wingspan that stretches over 400 yards. Weaknesses: Experts say the waterfall is most susceptible to air attacks and, like the rest of nature, the indomitable will of man.
CA: Should be a great matchup.
LW: Well that’s all from us at the Chevy Pre-Game Show. We’ll be back after these messages for the showdown, brought to you by Colt 45. Colt 45 Malt Liquor, works every time. Wes v. Waterfall, next!
BERT CANNON, HISTORIAN
The crowd was overwhelming. I remember my father taking me to see Lindbergh land in Paris, and that was nothing compared to the crowd that gathered at Niagara that day. And it was raining, too! I think the final tally was about 50,000 solid around the platform Wes was hitting off of, another 30,000 on the Canadian side, hoping to catch a piece of history, and at least 10,000 at the base of the falls and in kayaks in the water below. And when Wes comes out from the visitor’s center, they made a little red carpet over to the platform, every one of them erupts. It was almost a religious experience watching him walk down that path with everyone reacting around him. They were practically throwing palms at his feet! Finally, he gets to the platform, which is about ten feet high, and he’s soaking it all in at this point. These are his people, he’s like Moses giving the law on Mt. Sinai. But then, while he’s hamming it up, Fuzzy taps him on the shoulder and hands him his instrument, the driver. It’s time to go to work. Fuzz places one of the orange balls on the tee, orange so they could see them a bit better through the fog, and backs away.
BARNABY J. HUDSON, SPORTSWRITER
Wes takes a few practice swings and steps up to the tee. And they were some weird swings, too. He looked like he was going for the knockout blow in a pillow fight. But he steps up to the tee, and the crowd goes completely silent. You could’ve heard a mouse fart in that environment. So he takes his first cut, and boom, shanks it hard left. The crowd seemed kind of confused, like they hadn’t considered that Wes wouldn’t make it on his first swing. So Fuzz walks up to him before his next swing, whispers a few words in his ear, pats him on the butt, and goes back over to where he’s standing next to Sal Lombardi, whom he gives a nice pat to as well. Wes walks back up to the tee, does his awkward pillow-fight swing, and absolutely crushes it. As soon as he makes contact the crowd goes nuts, and the ball looks good. Or we think it looks good, because no one could see a goddamn thing through the fog over the falls. A few seconds pass, and we hear a roar erupt down below. Someone in a kayak had fished the ball out of the water. Disappointed faces all around. Now its time for swing number three.
FUZZY SLIPPERS, CADDY
Before the second swing, I gave Wes some advice that my father, Moldy Slippers, gave to me when I was first starting out in the caddying business. He sat me on his knee one day and said, “Fuzz, a golf ball is like a woman, you can treat her one of two ways. You can treat her like a lady and finesse her and buy her flowers and call her by her name. A lot of women are into that, and so is the golf ball when you gotta putt her or chip her. You can also treat her like a tramp, and that’s for when you gotta put your foot down and tell it like it is. Not too many women are into that, but sometimes its necessary, like when you’re trying to reach the green in 2 on a par 5. Remember that, son, and use it.” So I go up there and tell this to Wes, and then I tell him, “Wes, now’s not the time to be wining and dining this gal. If she doesn’t want to cross these waterfalls, well you make her cross these waterfalls. That ball’s your tramp, champ.” And then I gave him a firm pat on the ass and walked away. That advice has never steered me wrong. The proof is in the pudding. And the pudding was on that last shot.
TELEVISION BROADCAST
LW: Goldman steps to the tee for his third swing of the night. He missed the first one badly, but really sent the second for a ride.
CA: Whatever Fuzzy Slippers said to him after that first swing, it seems to be working.
LW: The crowd falls silent…Goldman starts back, takes a step forward, and…THERE’S A DRIVE, HIGH AND DEEP, THIS COULD BE IT…AND…IT IS!! THEY’RE GOIN’ CRAZY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FALLS! THEY’RE GOIN’ CRAZY IN CANADA, FOLKS! THEY’RE GOIN’ CRAZY IN AMERICA, TOO! AND THE FANS HAVE RUSHED THE PLATFORM AND ARE MOBBING WES GOLDMAN, YOUR NEW AMERICAN HERO.
CA: What an accomplishment! Once again mankind triumphs over the natural world!
LW: Our man Charlie Jennings is down at the scene with the man of the hour. Charlie.
CHARLIE JENNINGS: Thanks Leon, I’m standing here with Wes Goldman, the new most popular man in America, and we are being mobbed by fans right now. How’s it feel, Wes?
WES GOLDMAN: Oh man, this is unbelievable, Charlie. It’s just…I can’t describe it right now.
CJ: What was going through your mind after you made contact on the third swing?
WG: Well, Fuzz came out after the second one and put my mind in the right place, and I was just trying to get my timing down on that one. After that, I definitely knew I could do it. I just wanted to put a good swing on the ball and hopefully let the wind carry me home. Charlie, I just wanna take this moment to dedicate this to all the victims of the Holyfield/Kangaroo tragedy. We miss you, baby! I’m Worldwide, baby!
STEVE JONES, GOLF FAN/HAIKU ENTHUSIAST
Wes takes a big swing
Ball lands, warms our cold hearts, says:
Drinks on me, baby!
MICHELLE GOLDMAN-DALY, EX-WIFE
I didn’t even see the third swing. We had to leave after the first one because Norman head-butted the bartender for calling one of his novels “shallow and pedantic.” We found out about what happened the next morning, since Wes’s picture was all over the papers, being mobbed by fans and floozies. I think, deep down, that I knew it already, but that was the moment I realized my marriage was probably over.
SAL LOMBARDI, AGENT
Greatest fuckin’ thing I ever seen. Beautiful swing, beautiful ball. I heard the guy who caught it auctioned it off for something like $4.5 million. What a country! That swing basically gave me and Wes a license to print our own money. What products didn’t we have? We had the lunch snacks, the action figures, the clothing line. We were worldwide, baby! Sure, the golf may have suffered after that, but you gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelette.
FUZZY SLIPPERS, CADDY
He treated that ball like his tramp, alright. That thing must have carried a good five hundred yards, at least. Looking back though, maybe I should have seen the writing on the wall when Wes wouldn’t let me in the afterparty, or validate my parking, or when he fired me two weeks later. Am I bitter? No, not really. He had made it to the big time, and I guess I just wasn’t a big time caddy. I will say this, though: Those Nerf commercials were better than any of the hundreds of other endorsements that came after Niagara. A lot better.
BERT CANNON, HISTORIAN
The Niagara Falls shot really cemented Wes Goldman’s legacy in the annals of golf lore. Sure, maybe he didn’t win too much after it, and maybe he lost a little bit of his edge after he fired Fuzzy, but he still did something that no golfer had ever done before. The fact that he took his amazing natural gifts for granted does damage his cause when you talk about the top golfers of all time, and the image of him, overweight and disinterested, plodding around the course in his later years is a picture best erased from memory. I’d rather remember him as Worldwide Wes, a young man at the peak of his powers who could do anything with a golf club. And that’s really what Wes gave to the world, a sense of hope, and a feeling that the impossible was just within reach.
Wes Goldman died fifteen years after the day at Niagara Falls from complications due to Type 2 diabetes, which he developed late in his life.
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