Golf stories seem to get better with age

Mark Twain is often cited as the source of the quote: “Golf is a good walk spoiled.” 

He was a wise man; I couldn’t agree more.

My best round of golf in North Carolina was the time I got to drive the beverage cart at a Boone Area Chamber of Commerce benefit tournament played at Linville Ridge Country Club in Avery County.

 

My worst round of golf in North Carolina was the time I had to sub in for a player who didn’t show up at a Boone Area Chamber of Commerce benefit tournament played at Hound Ears Club in Watauga County. I ran out of balls by the 8th hole.

I felt better after reading about a golfing experience involving Fred Raphael, the entrepreneurial promoter who came up with the idea of televising a “Legends of Golf” competition in the late 1970s.

Raphael was a marketing guy and had never played golf. He decided he’d better take up the game, so there he was at Pine Valley Golf Club, a difficult, exclusive layout in New Jersey.

Counting whiffs, lost balls and every other penalty, I shot 154,” Raphael said. “It’s a good thing (golfer) Gene Sarazen had given me a lot of golf balls.”

 

What Raphael didn’t know was that the balls he had been given were British undersized balls that were not authorized for U.S. courses.

 

“A couple of weeks later, the member who got me on at Pine Valley called to say the club president sent out a letter saying 28 illegal British balls were found in the rough and that anyone caught playing the illegal balls would be kicked out of the club,” Raphael said.

“What should I tell him?” the member asked Raphael.

“Tell him to keep looking,” Raphael said. “There are four more out there.”

Then, there’s the poster displayed at a golf club in Liverpool, England, that summarizes the objective of the game: “Swat the ball as far as you can…and if you find it on the same day, you have won.”

An article in Golf Digest in 2009, authored by Bill Fields of Pinehurst, N.C., said today’s PGA Champions Tour began to form “on a soggy April Day in 1979 at Onion Creek Country Club in Austin, Texas.

 

The notion of a senior tour took flight, Fields said, during a dramatic, emotionally charged six-hole, nationally televised playoff between the doubles team of Julius Boros-Roberto De Vicenzo versus Tommy Bolt-Art Wall Jr. in Fred Raphael’s “Legends of Golf.”

Boros (above) and De Vincenzo

They competitors range in age from 55 to 63, and the action “overflowed with stellar shots and counterpunches,” Fields said, convincing people that “a second act for the sport’s aging champions was a good idea.” About 5,000 people came out to the course to watch and marvel at the old goats’ shot-making abilities.

Bolt (above) and Wall

 

One pro golfer who noticed in 1979 was Bob Goalby. He had amassed 11 PGA titles over the course of his career between 1958-71. (His first victory came at the 1958 Greater Greensboro (N.C.) Open, and his sole Major Tournament win came in 1968 at The Masters.)

Goalby was the ringleader who put together a small group of PGA players who were “past their prime” to formulate a plan for a “senior tour.” Key participants were Boros, Bolt, Sam Snead, Gardner Dickinson, Dan January and Dan Sikes.

“I was optimistic,” Goalby said. “I remember saying, ‘We’re going to have a senior tour someday. The public is going to find a place for Arnold (Palmer) to play.’” 

(Palmer was approaching his 50th birthday on Sept. 10, 1979.)