Carter Francis missed the cut in last week’s HealthOne Colorado Senior Open, but he left the tournament feeling a considerable weight had been lifted off his shoulders.
About six weeks ago, a very detailed and vivid dream about a tournament held in 1978 led the Mullen High School graduate to try to clear his conscience after more than three decades.
Carter Francis, who back then was better known as Jay, competed in the 1978 CGA Junior Stroke Play Championship at what was then known as HeatherRidge Country Club. And he was in contention for the title. But the playing partner who kept Francis’ scorecard in the final round had Francis shooting one shot lower than he actually did.
Even though he had suspicions at the time that the total was incorrect, Francis just signed the card as it was and handed it in. And based on the scorecard he turned in, Francis tied for second place in the event with his best friend, Mike Leonard, three strokes behind champion Randy White.
The whole episode bothered Francis periodically over the years — including that same day on a long drive home — but never so much as it did about 5 o’clock one morning in late July this summer.
“I had a dream, I woke up, and it bothered me to death,” Francis (pictured) said last week during the Colorado Senior Open. “In hindsight, if I would have known it was going to be a 900-pound gorilla waking me up at 5 in the morning 34 years after the fact, I would have done something. But you’re young and stupid and don’t know any better.”
However, as Francis learned later as a recovering alcoholic at Alcoholics Anonymous, the key is to “do the next right thing.”
In Francis’ case, that involved writing an e-mail to the CGA, explaining what had happened — dream and all — and owning up to what he’d done, or hadn’t done, 34 years ago.
“It’s time to do the right thing, and officially disqualify myself, and have my name removed from any official record of that event, if any remains at all,” Francis wrote in the e-mail. “I’m coming to play in the Colorado Senior Open in August from my home here in Scottsdale, Az., and really look forward to it. I have plenty of friends and family still living up there, and the chance to play in front of them really excites me. Now I can finally do it with a clear conscience.”
CGA executive director Ed Mate, who replied to Francis’ e-mail, was impressed that someone would try to make things right after all these years.
“That’s the great thing about golf: It’s a game of integrity where a person is his or her own referee,” Mate said later. “We’ve all been in a situation where we’ve debated the morality of taking a certain action. It’s a cool thing what this guy did after all these years. It would have been easy to let it go.”
Francis is now 51 years old, and he’s been a golf professional since 1989, mainly teaching the game. And that was part of the issue; he’s taken pride in teaching kids the rules, but back at this tournament when he was a 17-year-old, he didn’t live up to golf’s high standards. Even in the hours after the tournament, when he became certain he signed for a score a stroke lower than he shot, he couldn’t bring himself to call and disqualify himself.
“‘I’m 17 years old, and if I call them now, they’re all going to think that I cheated.’ That’s what I thought,” Francis remembered. “I’m scared. So I said to myself, ‘I’m going to make sure I’m vigilant about keeping my score and following the rules. … I’ve gone 30 years of my life and never had a rules infraction. The rules are the rules, they’re there for a reason, and if you get penalized, you get penalized. You’ve got to step up and take it.
“When I had that dream and I woke up, I’m like, ‘I’ve had it with this. This has been hanging on me for long enough. I’m doing something even if they laugh or they don’t have records of that.’ It wasn’t like I won, but I did finish second. So I wanted to do the right thing.”
A link on the CGA web site to the 1978 Junior Stroke Play takes readers to a PDF that includes a large newspaper photo of White holding the championship trophy, and a list of final scores from the tournament. And sure enough, there’s “Jay Francis 74-75-73–222.” Also at that 222 figure in the championship flight was his good friend Leonard, who would go on to earn an Evans Caddie Scholarship at the University of Colorado. For the PDF link, CLICK HERE.
