public health of our country. Because of perestroika
and glasnost, I can now speak openly. Our entire
country is an environmental cesspool. But here, at
Nakhabino, there is one garden growing. There is
hope,” and sat down. Best speeches I ever heard.
Peltoniemi: My brother Mikko, whose handi-
cap at that time was 20, was playing in the third
flight. He ended up making a hole-in-one on the
16th hole. Flew a 5-iron straight into the hole. There
were three Russian TV stations there because it
was the first Russian Open, and they were inter-
viewing him because his hole-in-one was the most
fascinating stroke of the tournament. They asked
my brother, “Have you been playing on the Amer-
ican tour?” He said, “Yes, twice”—because he had
been with me in Florida, where we played together
two times. They asked, “How did you do?” He said,
“I won once,” because he beat me one of the two
times. They think he is a winner on the PGA Tour!
It was a very young golfing culture at that time.
We had a huge celebration in the evening, and
everybody wanted to toast vodka with Mikko. He
was carried to the hotel because he got so drunk.
The next day, he was playing in another early flight,
because his 102 was not that good a score. When he
came to the same hole, No. 16, there was one TV
crew that came to see. And he hit it to about two
inches from the hole! The TV crew said, “You did
quite well there.” My brother, fooling around a bit,
said, “Well, the wind was kind of circulating, so it
was hard to shoot.”
At the end of the day, after the tournament, they had a summary
about the tournament on TV. They said, “Best score was by the Amer-
ican Steve Schroeder...but clearly the most astonishing and the most
remarkable player was Mikko Peltoniemi, because now, another
day, he almost made hole-in-one again, and nobody else got even
close to the hole.”
Steve Schroeder, chief business officer, Robert Trent Jones II Design
(currently CEO of Poppy Hills): I’d played in two U.S. Opens, but I hadn’t
played any serious competitive golf since my last Open in 1990. At
Nakhabino, I had a good second round, something in the 60s, and
I want to say I won by 4 or 5. The night before the last round, we expe-
rienced a major rain and played the golf course in conditions that
I would describe as being along the lines of the San Francisco City
Golf Championship—which is, it doesn’t matter how hard it rains
or how wet it gets, you’re going to play on. We played that last nine
holes in this downpour, and I’ll never forget, there’s a picture of the
R&A’s Mike Bonallack hitting a bunker shot with his bucket hat on
and his tongue hanging out. You just see water and
sand going everywhere.Jones: On one of the holes, there was a group of
people picking mushrooms in the rough. Bonallack
had to make a local rule on the spot that if your ball
gets picked up by one of the mushroom hunters, you
can drop without penalty.The European PGA Tour granted the Russian Open win-
ner a spot in the Sarazen World Open field for two years.Schroeder: That was a really cool acknowledge-
ment of the magnitude of the event, which subse-
quently became part of the European Challenge
Tour. It was the lift in the wings for Russia being
acknowledged in international golf. For me, I actu-
ally made the cut my second year in the World Open
and got to play in a twosome with Fuzzy Zoeller on
Saturday.Jones: We got a golf club that was given to us by
a metallurgist who had worked in the Soviet mis-
sile program. He had taken the titanium from an
ICBM and replicated a Big Bertha and gave it to
me. I later gave it to President Clinton. He asked
me, “Bob, are you sure it’s not radioactive?” And I
said, “I have no idea.”- POSTSCRIPT
Nunn: I did go to the club once. It wasn’t during
the early stages, and Bobby wasn’t there. I just had
a chance to put my feet on the ground for maybe a
half-hour. My thoughts were that things really are
changing, because in previous eras in the Soviet
Union, anyone sponsoring such a project would be in jeopardy not
just of their work, but of paying a long-term visit to Siberia.Jones: Doing Moscow Country Club enriched my life enormously.
Was it a challenge? It challenged every aspect of my essence as a
human being. You had to call a lot of audibles. You knew what the
goal was, but how you got there was completely new.
I’ve been back a few times. In 2008, they invited Antti and me to
come back. They planted a tree in honor of my father, who’d passed
on, for his memory, and one in my name, honoring the family together.
And they gave me a medal from the charitable organization for human-
itarian service and the foreign ministry. It’s beautiful, emblazoned
with a starburst and what looks like diamonds on it. I said to my host,
“Is this real gold and diamonds?” He said, “How can you ask? Of
course, of course.” Of course, it isn’t.
Still, it’s a big deal to them and to me, too. It’s like, “You’re help-
ing the Russian people in some fashion.” It’s like a trophy of friend-
ship. It’s on my mantle, and it’s very special.<< Clockwise from bottom left: the medal gifted to Jones in
2008 by the Russian foreign ministry; a smattering of
Moscow CC’s traps and abundant tee boxes; the watery 15th;
a Red Army soldier who stepped up to the range and pulled
the trigger on opening day of the inaugural Russian Open.
The semiprivate club
currently has more
than 400 members.
More than 14,000
rounds were played
on the course in ’18.
The club hosts a
nine-hole members’
winter tournament
using red balls.
The 2018 VTB
Russian Open (Senior)
Golf Championship
on the Staysure
Tour (formerly the
European Senior Tour)
was contested on the
course. It was the
only international pro
tournament in Russia
last year.
Stay-and-play pack-
ages are available,
starting at 12,000
Russian rubles per
person, which includes
accommodation at
a 5-star hotel. Go
to mccgolf.ru and
mcc-hotel.ru for
more information.The
Moscow
CC
Today
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