US Open: Do you taste the rum, Fernando?

'If you don’t know how to make The Country Club's special libation, you’re not going to last here very long' 

Fernando Figueroa, The Country Club locker room manager in Brookline, prepares another of his Fernando specials

GOLF courses across the world offer an Arnold Palmer – a mixture of iced tea and lemonade the King made famous and eventually commercialised. 

But only The Country Club has the Fernando.

Unlike Palmer, Fernando Figueroa isn’t famous beyond the TCC campus at Brookline, Massachusetts. But his name will be remembered here as long as Francis Ouimet thanks to a post-round libation that is hard to beat after a long day playing golf – or tennis or curling or skating or shooting skeet for that matter.

“A Fernando is the first thing you learn how to make,” said Patrick Laxton, the assistant general manager at The Country Club. “If you've never bartended before or you are a long-standing bartender, they make you learn the Fernando before they teach you anything else when you bartend here. If you don’t know that, you’re not going to last here very long.” 

How Brookline’s most popular drink came to be known by the name of the club’s locker room attendant (now manager) is a story in itself.

The sweet rum cocktail was once a forgettable item on the TCC drink menu until Figueroa started tinkering with the recipe about 30 years ago. A native of Guatemala, he was clueless about alcohol when he started working in the club’s locker room building.

“I didn't know anything from gin, vodka or rum or even the names of beers,” said Figueroa, who doesn’t drink himself, but he has a good nose for spirits and learned to differentiate the various drinks by smell.

He did, however, know that nobody enjoyed drinking the rum float he was taught how to mix.

“This drink, I gotta tell the story about it, this drink was made with Bacardi rum, sweet and sour mix, a touch of simple syrup, soda water and Goslings (rum) on top,” Figueroa said. “But at that time, nobody liked it. They was asking for it but not many people will like it.” 

Fernando started experimenting with the various ingredients at his disposal. He switched the Bacardi to a sweeter Mount Gay rum and started making his own sour mix with a little egg white in it (to make it frothier and richer) and followed the rest of the rum float recipe as he was taught, shaking it together before adding the Goslings on top.

But it still wasn’t quite right.

“The members like the strong taste of rum in the beginning but Goslings doesn't have that taste and I change it to Myers’s Rum,” he said of the finishing ingredient that goes along with a garnish of cherry and orange slice.

“As soon as you taste it, you feel the heat.

“And when I present this drink to the members, it was a big hit.” 

Now the rum float was something the members came to treasure. Two of its most diehard fans went on a golf trip to Scotland in 1995 as guests of another club. While the Scots were boasting of a signature drink its membership enjoyed, the TCC gentlemen weren’t fully impressed.

“They say, ‘This is a good drink but nothing is compared with the Fernando,’” Figueroa tells. “They ask, ‘What is the Fernando?’ They say whenever you come to The Country Club, we're going to give you a taste on that.

“And in around the fall of ’95, a group of members came from that country club (in Scotland) and another one from England. And they told me, ‘Fernando we need that you prepare some of those drinks to these guys.’ And I prepare for them, and my God it was a big hit with these gentlemen.” 

And thus, Fernando’s rum float became simply the “Fernando.” 

“They travel everywhere and they spread the word,” Fernando said. “They tell me, ‘Fernando, we're going to make famous this drink because it's a great drink.’ 

And that's how they changed to my name. And I feel very proud. That's how that drink was born, and now that has become the drink of The Country Club. You know the tradition is friendly with all the members and I feel so proud to be part of that.” 

Fernando still doesn’t drink his creation, however.

“Actually, I try it, but I'm not a big drinker,” he said. “The members say, ‘Fernando, how could you possibly don't drink it?’ For me, one drink and I start shaking around.” 

Laxton said the club serves roughly 6,000 Fernandos a year. In the annual Squirrels Tournament at the club, the most Fernandos served in one day was 530.

The Fernando isn’t offered on the concession menu at this week’s U.S. Open.

“Well, this drink is for the club,” he said. “In the recipe, it's no secret. The secret is how you make it. You know, when you make it with passion, a drink, and for people you care about it, that is the secret.”