Brian Yoder grew up playing the Inverness Club, the historic Donald Ross course in Toledo, Ohio. He attended Ohio State University. He was nearing graduation with a degree in turfgrass management when he decided that there were just too many hurdles to overcome as a golf course superintendent, such as members, committees and Mother Nature. He decided to go back to school earn a degree in landscape architecture after conversations with Tom and George Fazio. Yoder began working for Arthur Hills in 1990, and has collaborated on Bay Harbor Golf Club near Petoskey, Michigan; Longaberger Golf Club in Hanover, Ohio; The Creek Course at Fiddler’s Creek in Naples, Florida; Chaska Town Course in Chaska, Minnesota; and Palencia in St. Augustine.

My day began as usual with my early-morning departure from my Mexican hotel. I made my way down to the beach to board the fishing boat that took me across the beautiful Bay of La Paz to our sandy, dune-laden golf site on EI Magote.

Considering our golf course site was typically dry as a bone 364 days out of the year, one tended to get quite thirsty walking around in the desert-like conditions. So when I finished my daylong site visit I boarded my Panga and returned to the mainland. Later that night, I got cleaned up and met one of my amigos at a local cantina for dinner and drinks: freshly caught fish and mucho bottles of cold cervezas.

After dinner we decided to drop by one of the local bars located behind the Malecón strip to continue our thirst-quenching venture. We threw back a few more cervezas and, when it was time to head back to my hotel, the most bizarre day of my life started!

I was walking back to my hotel just after midnight when I decided to cut through the vacant lot of an old building being prepped for demolition. After all the beers, nature called, rather insistently. I looked around and didn’t see anyone so I relieved myself. But just as I finished, I noticed a figure approaching me and yelling something in Spanish. Fearing the worst, I started running toward my hotel.

Cow tracks in the Mexican sand next to a Par 3 – 261 yds.

Looking back, out of the corner of my eye I saw that the figure was a man in a dark cap, khaki pants, boots, and a white shirt with the word “Policía” emblazoned on it. I felt it prudent, out of respect for the law, to stop running and see what the police officer wanted.

The cop approached me and then grabbed me by the back of my belt. He pulled me by my britches back toward the scene of the crime. While the policeman did this, I became scared to death that he was going to arrest me and haul me off to a Mexican jail! I was having flashbacks of the old movie Midnight Express, in which an American was thrown in prison for years.

When we reached the wall of the old building, he pointed at the puddle, and I acknowledged that the wet spot was mine. I was just about sure he was going to take me to jail... until he asked me to give him money. In my naiveté, I hadn’t realized that bribery in Mexico was the norm.

“How much?” I asked him.

“Two hundred pesos,” he answered.

Since that was roughly twenty U.S. dollars, I told the policeman I didn’t have any cash on me, but explained that I could go to the ATM machine at the bank, which was only a couple of blocks from the old building.

He escorted me to the bank, still by the seat of my pants, and we both entered the small ATM area connected to the main lobby entrance of the bank. I inserted my debit card and entered my PIN number to start the transaction, but the officer reached around me and pushed the cancellation button.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He only pointed to the keypad and nodded for me to continue. I reentered the card and, as I typed in my PIN number. He let me continue this time, and two hundred pesos came out of the ATM machine. I gladly turned over the money to him. To me, the equivalent of $20 was well worth it to avoid jail and make the officer go away. But he didn’t go away.

“Do you have any drugs?” he asked me.

“No! No drugs.” “Drugs?” “No drugs,” I insisted.

The shores of El Magote from a Par 3 – 165 yds.

The policeman then pushed me up against a car and motioned for me to assume the position. He then started going through all my pockets, examined my cell phone, looked inside my shoes, and finally rifled through my wallet! At last, he handed everything back to me and motioned for me to move along. I felt very lucky that I was able to pay this guy off for only twenty bucks and that he didn’t throw me in the jail.

Later that morning there was a knock on my hotel room door. Standing in the corridor was a man wearing a hotel shirt. He was holding my debit card.

“Are you Brian Yoder?”

I nodded.

“This card was found on the street in front of the hotel,” he said, and handed me the debit card.

The last time I’d seen my card was when I used it to pay off the cop. I was sure I remembered sticking it back in my wallet. I thanked the hotel man for returning the card. Finally, some good luck. I closed the door and got dressed for my site visit. I packed up all my belongings and headed back to the site.

After the site visit I was getting ready to depart La Paz and drive to Cabo and catch a flight back to the U.S. I figured I’d better get some cash for the road, so I went back to the bank to withdraw some travel money. I inserted my card, entered my PIN, and requested a small amount, but was denied. I tried it several more times but had the same result: denied, denied, denied. I immediately called my credit card company to find out what the problem was.

“Mr. Yoder, you’re over your limit on cash withdrawals,” the customer service representative told me. “My computer shows you used your card ten times between one o’clock and three o’clock a.m. The exact total you withdrew was $ 2,617.35.”

I called my friends at the real estate office immediately, and they contacted their friends at the Justice Department and related my story. The Justice Department officials told my amigos to have me write down exactly what happened and to send it to them when I got back to the states. My amigos then lent me enough cash to get home. I was very grateful for that.

When I got back home I was on the phone for hours and hours with my credit card company and my bank explaining to their fraud departments what had happened. I went round and round between my bank and the credit card company for a solid month before we figured out that it was the bank’s responsibility. It came down to the fact that it was indeed bank fraud and that there was no way the bank should have allowed more than $300 to be withdrawn in a twenty-four-hour period. I was covered! Thank God!

The bank sent me ten separate claim forms, one for each withdrawal. I filled out each form and attached my signed Spanish affidavit from the La Paz Policia. I mailed them all in to the bank’s fraud department for their review and on December fifteenth or thereabouts, the bank sent me a letter saying they would cover it and the monies would be redeposited back into my account.

I am still working on our golf course project in La Paz and frequently go down the same street where my “crime” took place. The funny thing is, the building I peed on has since been razed, all except for the historical exterior facade, which was saved!

The above excerpt is from Chapter 118 of Secrets of the Great Golf Course Architects by Michael Patrick Shiels. To order your copy of Secrets, click here or call ASGCA at 262-786-5960.