Ken Bowden has edited the annual Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship editions of The Majors of Golf magazines since 1989. He is presently at work on a book entitled How to Look and Act Like a Golfer – Even if Your Game Stinks!. Jack Nicklaus, nicknamed “The Golden Bear”, is widely regarded as the most accomplished professional golfer of all time, winning a total of 18 career major championships while producing 19 second place and 9 third place finishes in major events on the PGA Tour over a span of 25 years.

Teeing Off

Players, Techniques, Characters, Experiences, & Reflections from a Lifetime Inside Golf

By Ken Bowden

Triumph Books

Copyright © 2008 Ken Bowden
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60078-075-2

Contents

Foreword by Jack Nicklaus,
Introduction,
Part I: Players,
1. My Greatest of the Greats,
2. Interviewing the “Wee Ice Mon”,
3. Hogan at Work,
4. The Nicklaus Psyche — The Man,
5. The Nicklaus Psyche — The Golfer,
6. The Bear Up Close and Personal,
7. “Only a Game”,
8. Golf’s Ultimate Pro,
9. The Greatest Round Ever Played?,
10. Golf’s First Great Non-Brit or Yankee,
11. Señor Magical Mercurial,
12. “It Was Genius”,
13. Good for the Kidneys,
14. Mr. Generosity,
15. No More Great Rivalries?,
16. “The Stupid Nature of the Idiot Game”,
17. Major Championship Quiz,
Part II: Technique,
18. At Last!,
19. A Form of Masochism!,
20. Searching for Golf’s Holy Grail,
21. Working with Britain’s “Doctor Golf”,
22. “Mighty Mouse”,
23. “One and Indivisible”,
24. The Secret,
25. Published Instruction: Gold or Garbage?,
26. “Once You’ve Had ‘Em, You’ve Got ‘Em!”,
27. Great Pupils Sure Help,
28. My Best-Ever (Temporary!) Swing Fix,
29. Power,
30. Improving,
31. On “Gimmes”,
32. “It’s Like Sex, Old Boy”,
33. Too Difficult?,
Part III: Characters,
34. “Let the Bugger Go!”,
35. Stars: “Proximity Breeds Disenchantment”,
36. A Literary Genius’s Darker Side,
37. Working with Mr. Roberts,
38. “Like Stalin Ruled Russia”,
39. Ultimate Devotion,
40. Mr. Roberts Signs Off,
41. Characters or Jackasses?,
42. 007,
43. Scottish Loopers,
44. Churchill on Golf,
45. “Well, If You Were to …”,
46. “Just Too Damn Frustrating!”,
Part IV: Experiences,
47. Whine at Your Peril,
48. Touches of Scotland,
49. Premonition,
50. Memorial Highs … and Lows,
51. Showbiz Golf,
52. Coming to America,
53. Conning an English Rose,
Part V: Reflections,
54. “To Hell with ‘Em!”,
55. Absurd Penalties,
56. Married to the Game,
57. Golf’s Battle of the Sexes,
58. Treat ‘Em Right,
59. “Sandbaggers”,
60. “Vanity” Handicaps,
61. The Equality Quest,
62. Racism in Golf,
63. All about Money?,
64. Dream Living?,
65. Beware Politics,
66. Golf Club Discipline,
67. Carts,
68. Masters Course Bad for Golf?,
69. Overboard U.S. Open Setups — Boring!,
70. Tour Golf’s Darker Sides,
71. “Team Spirit”,
72. Media Mauling,
73. “Lip-Flap”,
74. Golfer Speak,
75. The Joys of “Spectating”,
76. Equipment Cost and Confusion,
77. Bomb and Gouging Versus Powder-Puffing,
78. Unimportant,
79. No D-Average Golfers Allowed,
80. Why So Popular,
About the Author,

CHAPTER 1

My Greatest of the Greats

Primarily, I suppose, because golf has been played so long (certifiably at least 600 years in one form or another), pretty much everyone earning a stipend by scribbling about it eventually becomes a golf historian to a greater or lesser degree. And, the deeper they get into that element of the gig, the more strong-minded I have found the majority become about who have been the greatest of the great players.

Being no different from my colleagues in that regard, it seemed appropriate to open this wide-ranging miscellany of a book — from what some of my family regards as a seriously misspent life! — with my own personal best-of-the best list.

Of course, the better my colleagues know the lore, the more certain I am that they will disagree. Which, to save even more late-night bar squabbling down the road, is why my 13 are presented in alphabetical rather than any attempt at a ranking order. (“You chicken!” I can hear already.)

WALTER HAGEN (American, 1892–1969)

The most slashing swinger and dashing personality of the greats, “the Haig” rose from caddying to win two U.S. and four British Opens, plus a longtime-record five PGA Championships (eventually tied by Jack Nicklaus), four of them consecutively. Those and his many other victories were driven by a combination of swashbuckling, nerve, remarkable recovery skills (with the putter especially), and an almost infallible ability to intimidate his opponents. For instance, the dean of golf writers during his time, Bernard Darwin, wrote of him: “His demeanor towards his opponents, although entirely correct, had yet a certain suppressed truculence; he exhibited so supreme a confidence that they could not get it out of their minds and could not live against it.” Also known as “Sir Walter” for his ever-elegant appearance, best-of-everything lifestyle, and highly placed pals — he knew the Duke of Windsor well enough to call him “Eddie” — Hagen contributed more than any other champion to raising the image, social status, and living standards of golf professionals, both across and beyond America, the latter through several world exhibition tours. This he achieved by never treating himself nor allowing others to treat him in anything less than a first-class fashion. A quicksilver talker, perhaps his two most famous lines were, “I don’t want to be a millionaire, just want to live like one;” and “Don’t forget to smell the flowers along the way.”

BEN HOGAN (American, 1912–1997)

“The Hawk” received more help with his technique early on than is generally known, mostly from fellow tour pro and lifelong friend Henry Picard. But for the greater part of his career — in huge contrast to today’s stars with their personal instructors — Hogan famously “dug it out of the dirt,” to use his classic expression for developing his game, alone and unaided. In which regard he was the most intensive experimenter/ practicer of the great champions, ending with a quick, handsy, flat, laid-off, anti-hook swing that produced perhaps the most consistently fine shot-making in history. Hogan, throughout his peak competitive years, stoically fought the painful and debilitating aftereffects of a 1940 car/bus crash that almost killed him while driving home to Texas from California with his wife, Valerie, whom he saved from injury by throwing himself across her body a couple of seconds before impact. The greatest achievement of his late-developing career was winning the Masters, U.S. Open, and British Open in 1953 — three of his nine major championship victories. The few people who achieved closeness to him had little doubt that his deeply introverted and relentlessly steely persona derived from parental psychological characteristics plus childhood trauma, and particularly his father’s suicide within the family home when Ben was nine.

ROBERT “BOB/BOBBY” TYRE JONES JR. (American, 1902–1971)

Beyond dispute, golf’s all-time greatest amateur. Bob, as he preferred to be called, won 13 of the game’s premier championships of his era over a seven-year period, comprised of four U.S. Opens (1923, 1926, 1929, 1930), five U.S. Amateurs (1924, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1930), three British Opens (1926, 1927, 1930), and one British Amateur (1930) — the 1930 victories comprising a still unmatched single-calendar-year “Grand Slam.” Immediately thereafter, with “nothing left to prove,” and stressed to his physical and mental limits by the pressures of top tournament play, he retired at age 28 to study and then practice law in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. As a youth, Jones exhibited and was criticized for fits of anger when failing to meet his perfectionistic goals, but had disciplined himself to externally hide his naturally fiery temper by the time he attained his peak. In maturity, his good looks, modesty, courtliness, intelligence, articulacy, and literacy contributed to his becoming a national idol by the time he cofounded Augusta National Golf Club with friend Clifford Roberts during the Great Depression, followed by the creation of what became the Masters in 1934. Sadly, in his early fifties Jones began to suffer from a muscular illness known as syringomyelia that eventually left him horrifically crippled and in constant pain, yet he retained his sharp intellect and interpersonal gracefulness almost until his death in 1971.

BYRON NELSON (American, 1912–2006)

Remarked the minister at “Lord Byron’s” funeral, attended by almost 2,500 friends and admirers: “We can debate over which man was the greatest golfer, but there is no debate over which golfer was the greatest man.” Nelson, who died at age 94, was indisputably golf’s all-time consistently straightest hitter of a golf ball with every club, but the above epiphany drew from his personal qualities, most notably degrees of modesty, amiability, empathy, and devoutness extremely rare if not unique among professional athletes. As a player, the lanky Texan is credited with being the originator of the key elements of the modern golf swing, meaning more leg/body than hand/wrist-oriented. Despite his immense talent, Nelson competed intensively for the shortest time of all the greats (1932–1946), quitting fulltime tournament play in order to fulfill his longtime dream of becoming a Texas rancher. Although the owner of two Masters and a pair of PGA Championship titles, plus a U.S. Open, he will best be remembered for the one golf record that many believe will never be beaten — 11 straight tour victories out of his total of 18 wins in 1945 (and won by an average of 6.67 strokes).

JACK NICKLAUS (American, 1940–)

With 18 major championship victories — 20 if you count his two U.S. Amateurs — 73 American PGA Tour wins, eight Champions (formerly Senior) Tour major titles, 113 professional victories worldwide, and receipt of just about every important award and honor golf offers, the “Golden Bear,” as I write, remains almost universally acclaimed as the greatest golfer of all time. His professional major victories comprise a record six Masters, a record-tying four U.S. Opens, three British Opens, and a record-tying five PGA Championships over a 25-year span (1962–1986). In his early pro years Nicklaus’s bulkiness, sartorial stylelessness, intensity of concentration and focus, and seemingly at times cold-blooded dethroning of everyone’s then–golf hero, Arnold Palmer, cost him fan appreciation, despite his ever more dominating play. The path to his present immense level of popularity and respect was jump-started by early 1970s weight loss and other appearance changes, plus an ever warmer appreciation of and response to fans and the media. His renowned devotion to his large family, always his top priority, plus age-exacerbated physical challenges, led to his retirement from regular tournament play at the 2006 British Open at his beloved St. Andrews, where holing a lengthy birdie putt on the 18th green crowned a highly emotional farewell. But ever-increasing course-design activities — as of this writing he had more than 300 courses in play worldwide, with another 100-plus under construction or contract — ensure his continuing prominence and popularity in the game.

ARNOLD PALMER (American, 1929–)

Inarguably, the most popular golf champion of all time, as connoted by his sobriquet, “The King,” and the number, ardor, and loyalty of his fans — “Arnie’s Army” — even as his playing powers waned with age. Other contributors to what at times appeared almost to be a form of love for the man were his ever-discernable enormous passion for and commitment to the game, his on-course facial expressiveness and uninhibited body language, his off-course friendliness and openness, and his peerless contribution to golf’s greatest worldwide boom as it’s premier player in the late 1950s and early 1960s, both in the flesh and through the relatively new medium of television. Inspired, taught, and relentlessly disciplined and motivated by a tough ex-steelworker-turned-club-pro father known as Deke, the powerfully built Palmer’s style of play at its peak featured muscling shots and attacking holes with a degree of fearlessness and brio unmatched by either his predecessors or successors. Much trouble resulted, but the excitement of his often seemingly magical ability to surmount it — especially via super-bold putting — underlaid much of his appeal. Topping Palmer’s long list of achievements were four Masters wins, a legendary U.S. Open title, and his 1961 and 1962 triumphs in the event that his participation almost single-handedly rejuvenated: the British Open.

GARY PLAYER (South African, 1935–)

The third member of the famed “Big Three,” with Palmer and Nicklaus, the, by comparison, diminutive South African was the first great golfer to train for the game like an Olympic athlete. Combined with immense ambition and unshakable resolution, his superb physical conditioning contributed to nine majors victories, comprised of three Masters, a U.S. Open, three British Opens, and two PGA Championships, making him one of only five golfers — and the only non-American — to capture all four of the world’s premier golf titles. Among his other records is most tournaments played in most countries, for which he claims to have traveled more miles than any athlete in history — some 15 million and counting. Following six victories in Senior Tour majors when the fifties-and-up circuit went by that name, “Laddie,” as many of his peers like to call him, remained competitive in his seventies on the Champions Tour. The father of six and designer of 200-plus courses worldwide, Player, when at home in South Africa, is a successful farmer and a champion horse-breeder, in addition to heading a foundation and operating a school serving needy children.

GENE SARAZEN (American, 1902–1999)

His father, a deeply religious Italian carpenter, was highly averse to his son becoming a golf professional, but “Eugenio Saraceni” did so after contracting pleurisy and being urged to quit apprenticeship with his dad for less strenuous work (he changed his birth name because he thought it sounded too much like a concert violinist). Short but muscular, scrappy, opinionated,and ever positive in outlook, with an unorthodox grip, a self-taught, sturdy, no-frills swing, and for most of his career an impatient “attack-everything” attitude, Sarazen was the first player to win all four of golf’s “majors” — the U.S. Open (1922, 1932), the PGA Championship (1922, 1923, 1933), the British Open (1932), and the Masters (1935) — the others being Hogan, Nicklaus, Player, and Tiger Woods. Sarazen’s most famed single achievement was winning his Masters in a playoff following execution of “the shot heard around the world,” a holed-out 4 wood in the final round for a double-eagle deuce at the par-5 15th hole. Sarazen farmed on the side in his later years but relished the longest career of all the greats, extending from the 1920 U.S. Open at age 18 to the 1973 British Open at Royal Troon, where, age 71, he aced the infamous “Postage Stamp” 8th hole with a crisp 5-iron shot.

SAM SNEAD (American, 1912–2002)

Golf’s all-time greatest “natural” — i.e., instinctively fluent, rhythmic, and effortless-seeming — swinger of the club, greatly aided by an exceptionally fine physique, featuring a remarkable degree of double-jointedness. He possessed an uncomplicated approach to technique, as exemplified by his comment that what he sought most to swing well was to feel “oily.” “The Slammer,” as he was nicknamed for his immense power, was born, raised, and proud to play as the Virginia “country boy” — he took great pride in beginning the game by knocking around objects with clubs made from tree limbs rather than through formal lessons. However, he was known to be vastly shrewder, or “street smart,” than he generally let on — especially with a buck or more at stake. Snead was amiable if never overflowingly friendly with people he liked because he’d found them trustworthy, but generally tight as a clam with those he didn’t. His one career gap was the U.S. Open; he came close more than once, but his game infamously collapsed each time. It was suggested by a female fan — and Snead was a great lifelong fan of the ladies — that he tied with Tommy Bolt as possessor of golf’s sexiest walk, or swagger, or strut. He was rarely seen in public — outdoors or in — without one of his “signature” straw hats, due to early and finally complete balding.

LEE TREVINO (American, 1939–)

“Supermex’s” immense popularity at his peak derived as much from possessing the most effervescent, crowd-interactive, on-course personality of the great champions as from his rags-to-riches background and superlative competitive record. Despite a seemingly unathletic physique and an entirely self-taught, highly unorthodox swing, Trevino was regarded by Jack Nicklaus as not only his toughest career opponent, but on a par with Ben Hogan as the finest shot-makers in golf history. However, of Mexican heritage and brought up in poverty in a Dallas maintenance shack, Trevino’s rugged early life forged an off-course persona the polar opposite of his relentlessly wisecracking, bubbly public demeanor — as private, serious, and reserved as perhaps only that of his ball-striking peer, Hogan. After finishing fifth in the 1967 U.S. Open at Baltusrol as a total unknown, Trevino over the next four years won two U.S. Opens from Nicklaus, including the 1971 championship in a playoff, following which he added in the next two weeks the first of his two British Open victories, plus the Canadian Open. In the prior six weeks he had won twice, placed second once, and third three times. Trevino also won two PGA Championships 10 years apart (1974, 1984). The highlight of his highly successful over-50 career was defeating Nicklaus in the 1990 Senior Open.

HARRY VARDON (British, 1870–1937)

Although not known as such in his era — the term was a far-in-the future phenomena — Vardon was the first of what today would be called a “superstar,” and he will be forever renowned for popularizing the game’s most used grip, “the overlap” (although it was first employed by a Scottish amateur named John Laidlay). Vardon used that grip, plus the then nearest thing to atechnically “modern” swing, to win a still-record six British Opens (1896, 1898, 1899, 1903, 1911, 1914) plus the 1900 U.S. Open, among hundreds of other tournaments and “challenge” matches throughout his native U.K. He also broke innumerable course records in his three lengthy tours of the U.S., rarely losing an exhibition match even against the better ball of multiple opponents, and twice finished U.S. Open runner-up. During his 1913 U.S. sojourn, his and a contemporary English star Ted Ray’s Open playoff defeat by a 19-year-old local amateur ex-caddie, Francis Ouimet, in the U.S. Open at Brookline’s The Country Club near Boston marked the end of Britain’s golf domination. That event also is regarded by many historians as the game’s single most popularizing occurrence in America until the heydays of Arnold Palmer. In 1903, shortly after repeatedly almost passing out during winning his fifth British Open, Vardon entered a sanatorium for lengthy treatment of severe tuberculosis. He eventually recovered sufficiently to capture his sixth Open eight years later, but, still a heavy pipe-smoker despite that trauma, died of cancer at age 67.

TOM WATSON (American, 1949–)

After a shaky start on the tour at the relatively advanced age of 25 — he was said to have “given away” the 1974 U.S. Open at Winged Foot with a disastrous final round, along with other tournaments — Kansan Tom Watson won 33 times on the PGA Tour, including two Masters (1977, 1981) and one U. S. Open (1982), plus a modern record–tying — with Australian Peter Thomson — five British Opens (1975, 1977, 1980, 1982, 1983). Jack Nicklaus was dramatically second or tied second in both of those Masters, as also in the 1982 U.S. Open, when Watson improbably but dramatically chipped in from heavy rough for a critical birdie at the par-3 71st hole — and also in two of the Kansan’s five British triumphs — making Watson first with Arnold Palmer then Lee Trevino one of Nicklaus’s three toughest career adversaries. On the Champions (formerly Senior) Tour, where Watson was still a factor at the time of writing, his majors wins included the PGA Senior Championship (2001), three Senior British Opens (2003, 2005, 2007), the JEN-WEN Tradition, plus two runner-ups in the U.S. Senior Open (2002, 2003). In 1971 Tom Watson graduated from Stanford University with a degree in psychology.

(Continues…)Excerpted from Teeing Off by Ken Bowden. Copyright © 2008 Ken Bowden. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books.
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