Golf Buddies

Comic Foils
Wired for 220 volts in a 110-volt world, maybe KFAN’s Dan “Common Man” Cole needs a foil like Pat Foy golfing by his side thirty, forty, fifty days a year.

“If I’m a double-A personality, Foy’s probably a double-D,” says Cole of his  longtime pal Foy.

Irreverent on the air, highly caffeinated off it, Cole may be Twin Cities media’s most avid “and, yes, most shameless” advocate for the game of golf. He carries the self-anointed title of Ambassador of Minnesota Golf, a moniker bestowed on him during a trip with Foy to Palm Springs and it’s a name Cole embraces with tongue only partly in cheek.

Most of the people in Cole’s world have a moniker. It’s part of his radio-show shtick. Foy is the “World’s Greatest Irons Player” because, well, he’s a darn good irons player. Then there’s “Limo Guy,” who used to play a lot of golf with Cole and Foy, but not so much anymore because “he was bitter when [Cole] had kids,” Foy jokes.

Foy and Cole might have contrasting personalities, and Foy might play the comic foil for Cole much of the time, but the golfing buddies who knew each other growing up in Coon Rapids and have golfed together for almost fifteen years have bonds as well as differences.

Cole’s explanation: “We have similar games,” he says. “We have 5–6 handicaps—it could fluctuate to a 10–12. We both have the same sense of humor; we like to goof off when we’re playing, pretend that every putt means so much. We rarely play for money.

“I played with some guys from Keller on Saturdays and every guy says, ‘OK, what’s the game gonna be, nearies, greenies, this, that, and the other thing, which is OK. Sometimes I like playing for money, but for [Foy] and I, it’s the challenge of playing yourself and the fun of talking about how big this putt is and doing the old waving to an imaginary crowd thing.”

Foy abides Cole’s golf-course chatter, for there are benefits. Among the perks: frequent rounds at country clubs and rounds with well-known local players. Foy got to know local pro Dave Tentis through Cole, and eventually caddied for him in three PGA Championships.

“We’ve met a lot of people,” Cole says. “We go out there and have a good time and tease each other.”

Which is Foy’s entrée to offer a dig at the buddy with the radio gig. “Common,” he says, “does possess the one intangible ingredient that most of the elite local amateur players possess: that’s a two-hour-a-day job.”

Best Friends
On a summer day in 1978, two young women met each other for the first time on the grounds of White Bear Yacht Club, where they were paired together in a ladies day event. For the better part of the next three decades, Patty Barnacle and Diane Pfaffly have been inseparable.

From recreational rounds to invitationals to golf vacations—and then off the course through child care, school events, weddings, walking and bicycling together, and even Barnacle’s successful battle against breast cancer—the two have shared a bond that sisters would envy.

Pfaffly calls it “a full family” relationship. “Our kids are best friends,” she says. “They were toddlers when we met, and they became best friends. So we have gone from raising our kids together to a first marriage to homecoming dances to chaperoning together, a girls trip with the kids, every holiday together.”

“We’ve always gotten along,” Barnacle says, “and our personalities are a lot alike. We’ve always been with each other, through thick and thin.”

That doesn’t mean they walk in lockstep on the course. Barnacle, the more athletic of the two, serves on the Minnesota Women’s Golf Association board of directors and is a United States Golf Association rules official. She has two holes-in-one, one of them in a match against Pfaffly, who got two strokes on the hole and parred it to tie Barnacle. Pfaffly, on the other hand, golfs “for the social aspect,” she says. She chats up anyone within a short par-4 of her and has a propensity for telling jokes, occasionally of the off-color variety.

Geography has separated the two—Barnacle lives in Pine Springs, and Pfaffly has moved to Woodbury—yet the bond remains strong. “She’s always happy, upbeat,” Barnacle says of Pfaffly. “If we’re going through a crisis in our life, we get that out right away. We’ll cry on the first couple of holes, and we’ll talk about it and we’ll feel better, and it’s like, ‘Hey, we’re here to relax and have fun.’”