Golf Characters | Where Have They Gone?

The 99th PGA Championship is being played at Quail Hollow, a beautiful golf course in suburban Charlotte, North Carolina.  At one time, I played a lot of golf.  And when I say a lot, I mean a lot.  I watched it.  I studied it.  I played it.  My late wife Marie were members at Lake Spivey Golf Club, and would play there at least once a week.  In those days, I got off work at 2:30 pm.  I would make sure I had all of my chores at home taken care of, and at least three, sometimes five days a week I would leave work and head straight to Spivey to practice, take a lesson or walk nine holes.  I was obsessed.  However, over time, I came to realize that I was never going to be good enough other than to win a few bets.  I shot 80 twice, but never could break that barrier.  I scored a hole-in-one as Sapphire Valley in 2012.  So, while I still love the game, I don’t spend anywhere near the amount of time and money on it as I once did.  That being said, I stood with my wife on the Swilcan Bridge in the eighteenth fairway of The Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland.  I have been to The Mountain Top.

As I said, I used to watch golf pretty much every weekend.  There’s a big problem with professional golf today.  TV golf ratings are plummeting, and the PGA Tour is having a cow because it believes nobody is watching because Tiger Woods isn’t playing anymore.  I don’t think that’s the case at all.  I think it’s because golf is boring.  Granted, the game doesn’t translate well to TV unless you play it.  But I’m talking about professional golf in general.  It’s boring, and the reason is simple.  It’s because there aren’t any characters in golf anymore.  Back in the day, before it was on TV all the time and had it’s own channel, golf was loaded with characters.  Tommy Bolt was nicknamed Terrible Tommy because of his temper and his propensity to throw clubs.  I don’t mean just tossing them back onto the bag and muttering a few F-Bombs.  I mean helicoptering them down the fairway.  Once, after a particularly poor tee shot, Tommy launched his driver into a nearby lake.  Immediately realizing what he had done, he jumped into the lake to find the driver, but a kid had beaten him to it and emerged with the offending club.  Tommy begged the kid to give him the driver back, but the kid was having none of it and ran off, with Tommy in hot pursuit.  Seeing something like that would be the price of admission alone.

Chi-Chi Rodriguez and Lee Trevino were two pros that understood that not only golf, but all of professional sports, is show business.  Chi-Chi would wield his putter like a sword after holing a putt.  Or, he would run up and throw his hat over the hole, then lift the brim up and peek in to make sure the ball was still in the hole.  I read an interview with Chi-Chi once, and he said, “if your clubs are acting up, go out and buy a set of new ones.  Bring them home and take them out of the box in front of your old ones.  Then, put the old clubs in the closet for three months.  I’ll guarantee when you take them out of the closet, they won’t act up anymore.”  He also was asked how he stayed in such great shape.  He said he did a hundred sit ups a day, an hundred pushups and drank two scotches before he went to bed each night because, “alcohol is the only thing bacteria can’t live in.”  I’d love to hear Tiger say something like that about his workouts.  Usually when he’s asked a question like that, he just glares at the commentator.  As a matter of fact when he’s asked anything, he usually just glares at the commentator.  The hilarity is killing me.  Speaking of which, Tiger may have been the greatest golfer of his time, but every time he talks I can’t help but think of that guy in Beverly Hills Cop that told Eddie Murphy, “We’re not going to fall for the banana in the tailpipe.”

Lee Trevino is a legend of golf, and not just because of his major titles and that splay footed, flat, inside to out swing.  He was a true showman who knew how to play to the galleries.  “At the first U.S. Open I played in, I told jokes and nobody laughed,” he once said.  “Then I won the thing.  I came back the next year and told the same jokes and everybody laughed like hell.”  He also is famous for saying, “Pressure?  There ain’t no pressure out here.  This is gravy.  Pressure is standing over a putt for fifty dollars with only five in your pocket.”  He would hustle at the Dallas golf courses by playing the entire round with a quart Dr. Pepper bottle.  He would throw the ball up and hit it like a baseball.  Then he putted with the thin neck.  Try throwing a golf ball up and hitting it with a bottle sometime.  I would hazard a guess you couldn’t even hit it, let alone hustle golfers using conventional equipment.  

Wearing a safari helmet and carrying a hatchet, Lee threw a rubber snake at Jack Nicklaus on the first tee of a playoff at the 1971 U.S. Open.  I’m trying to imagine someone throwing a rubber snake at Tiger Woods today.  He’d probably get ran off of the Tour.

The last true character in golf was John Daly.  The stories about Long John are legion.  You never know what you are going to get with Daly, and that’s what makes him so much fun to watch.  He may shoot a 65, or dunk five balls in the water on the way to an 18 on a par 5.  A self taught genius, he drank a lot, played the guitar, smoked like a fiend, hit drives off of the tops of beer cans and tees in the mouth of trusting TV commentators lying on the ground.  Completely impatient, in disgust he slapped balls back onto greens while they were still moving, said exactly what was on his mind to the press and gambled away millions.  Every spring during Masters Week, he sets up tent in the parking lot of Hooters on Washington Road down the street from Augusta National, hawking souvenirs and signing autographs.  Now THAT’S a character!  He also possesses a brilliant short game and has won two Majors and eighteen times as a professional.    

The players today are all like cookie cutters.  Since the Tour is all exempt now, there are no Monday qualifiers.  So nobody has to finish a tournament and drive all night to the next stop and tee it up with no sleep and try to play their way into the tournament.  Nobody sleeps in their cars or in bunkers.  I read an article once on this particular subject, and an anonymous pro said, “These guys out here are completely coddled.  Most of them can’t get out of bed in the morning, tie their shoes, take a pee and go to the range without first calling their swing coach, sports psychiatrist and agent.  There’s a lot of people getting rich off of these guys.”  And it’s true.  Trevino said of swing coaches, “When I find one of them that can beat me, then I’ll listen.”  Too bad Tiger didn’t take that approach.

Nobody works on their own equipment anymore.  Greg Norman played with a sand wedge he’d had since he was sixteen, and would bend it to different degrees as needed.  Same with Arnold Palmer.  Arnie would grip his own clubs and grind his own irons and as he saw fit.  Nowadays, equipment trucks follow the tour and if a player breaks, bends or just doesn’t get along with a club, he goes to the equipment trailer and they give him another one.  They all have sponsors, from equipment to apparel, automobiles to financial institutions, sports drinks to golf equipment and on and on.  The days of players having to barnstorm in the off season and play exhibitions, open new golf courses or work out of a club as a Touring Pro are over.  Their agents wouldn’t let them, anyway.  Not enough money.  Besides, a player can play for five or six years making cuts and finishing in the middle of the pack and be set for the rest of his and his kid’s lives. 

But, I will continue to watch.  I’ll check the leader boards on Monday morning and see who won.  Master’s Week will always be a National Holiday, as far as I am concerned.  And, I’ll continue to tee it up.  I’ll bust my little 250 yard drives from the Senior Tees.  Then, I’ll climb in my cart and take off to try and find where it landed… Still Cruisin’!  –J.