Happy 25th Anniversary, John Smith!

It was 25 years ago this very day, cold and blowing in New England, a Nor’easter having dumped a foot of snow on the field at Foxborough Stadium. The Englishman was the kicker for the New England Patriots, and broke a sloppy, scoreless duel with a snowplow-aided field goal late in the fourth quarter. Final Score—Patriots 3, Dolphins 0.
Smith was assisted that afternoon by an ex-con named Mark Henderson, out on work release, who veered his snowplow over to the hash-mark, clearing the snow (although not the ice, as Smith told me recently) so he could make the game-winning kick.
Dolphin’s coach Don Shula was livid at the “home field advantage,” and has always referred to it as the most galling moment of his coaching career. The upshot is that he and Smith became friends, and the former kicker, who now spends part of the year in his home in Hilton Head’s Sea Pines Resort, gave Shula an “action photo” of the infamous kick when he retired as the Dolphins coach. Smith lives on the recently-redesigned Heron Point Golf Course, which was a benign resort offering called Sea Marsh before Pete Dye ratcheted up the difficulty factor this autumn. With the water and sand lurking everywhere, lack of precision is a pain-inducing experience on Smith’s neighborhood golf course, though probably not as excruciating as what his accurate kicking leg did to Shula’s Dolphin squad a quarter-century ago today.