For the grandson of the founder of the world’s most important amateur team golf event, the Walker Cup, I think that’s probably entirely fitting, and as it ought to be. I couldn’t agree with him more.
As I write this, the current White House occupant, Bill Clinton, might like nothing better than to simply slip off and play a round of golf somewhere. It would probably do him a world of good, too.
Clinton is a nice man and fine golf partner. Without question, he’s the best ball-striker of any president I’ve known. The first time we played together was several years ago in the summer of 1993 when I was invited to the White House to receive a National Sports Award as one of the so-called Great Ones along with Wilma Rudolph, Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Ted Williams, and representing Arthur Ashe, his widow, Jeanne.
President Clinton nearly brought tears to my eyes when he remarked at the presentation that one reason he wanted to be president was for the “perks”—and that presenting the award to Arnold Palmer was one of the biggest perks of his career.
When we played that time—and later again at the Hope tournament with Gerald Ford and George Bush—I was pleased to discover in Clinton a golfer who really loves the game and will get after the ball with great concentration and heart. He’s got a big swing that can send the ball a long way, and a surprisingly gentle touch around the greens.
I’m happy to report that he also has a deft sense of humor, which is definitely what you need if you plan to stay sane while playing golf or, I suspect, serving as president.
Once, we found ourselves alone together back on a tee in a chute of trees. I watched as President Clinton teed it up, addressed his ball, and then took a mighty swing that sent a screaming fade hopelessly into the woods. I suggested he reload and try another shot. He smiled at me sheepishly.
“Hell, Arnie, I’m glad those reporters aren’t back here to see that,” he quipped good-naturedly, already re-teeing his ball. “They’d have me drifting to the right!”
Playing golf with presidents is merely one of many job perks the game of golf has presented me over the past four decades, and I’m proud to say that each of these men made me feel as if the contributions I’ve made to the game, whatever they may be, begin and end with inspiring young people—or at least the young at heart—to take up the game.
If that’s true, it’s perhaps because, almost from the beginning of our relationship at Augusta and later elsewhere, President Eisenhower constantly conveyed to me his deep concern about the welfare and lives of America’s young people. It was a theme he returned to at every turn.
The old general who had sent men who were scarcely more than boys onto Normandy’s beaches in defense of liberty was determined to make me aware of the valuable service I could perform as a role model to thousands of young people. In a tumultuous period of time that would soon begin to devalue such traditional notions, President Eisenhower believed fervently in the power of heroes to transform lives—and he spared no opportunity to remind me that I had the rare opportunity to be such a hero. If that’s true, as we used to say on the streets back in Youngstown, it took one to know one.
Now approaching the age he was when we first met, I find myself thinking a lot these days about what a tremendous influence Dwight David Eisenhower had on my life. Like millions of Americans, I really liked Ike, though I would never have dared call him that. You wouldn’t be off the mark to say I even loved him like a second father.
So it’s no surprise that I was deeply thrilled and moved almost beyond words to be invited to address a joint session of Congress on the 100th anniversary of his birth, March 27, 1990.
Winnie and Doc fretted for days about what I should say in my speech, and Doc even thoughtfully worked up a beautiful tribute speech for me to read. They knew far too well how I hated reading from prepared texts, though, and in the end I simply took Doc’s prepared notes, added some of my own, and jotted down a few highlights I wanted to touch upon. Amusingly, shortly before I was called to the podium on the floor of the House, I was asked by congressional aides for a copy of my speech—so Congress could read along and copies could be given to the press.
I blushed a bit and explained that I really didn’t have much to give them and, in fact, didn’t really know what I was going to say—until I said it. I don’t know if that rattled them or not, but it probably proves why I would ultimately have been a terrible politician. At any rate, I gave the speech, spoke from the heart about a man I loved like a second father, and I guess it was pretty good after all. Congress gave me—or should I say President Eisenhower—a standing ovation, and I had to wipe away a few tears.
The last time Winnie and I saw the president was Valentine’s Day, 1969. We arrived at Walter Reed Hospital about ten-thirty that morning and were taken to the VIP floor, where we were offered coffee and heart-shaped cookies.
Mamie wasn’t there—she was attending a scheduled Heart Association luncheon, ever the good foot soldier—but we had spoken to her earlier. She explained to us that Valentine’s Day was the anniversary of their engagement, the day President Eisenhower presented her his West Point ring. She reminded us, unnecessarily, with emotion tinging her voice, that she was still his valentine.
We found President Eisenhower sitting up in bed, thinner but pink-faced and smiling, glasses on and a history book in hand. The second he saw us coming, he put aside the book. He seized Winnie and gave her a hearty smooch on the cheek, while reaching out to grab my hand and squeeze it vigorously. The man still had a field general’s grip.
“Gosh, it’s great to see you kids,” he said to us, clearly excited that we’d come. “Sit down and talk to me.”
So we did. We sat and talked as we always did, about this and that, politics and golf, Nixon and war, history and family, and invariably young people—particularly the campus unrest and drug culture that were beginning to spread like a cancer over American society. This really worried him. On a happier note, though, he talked fondly about his grandchildren and wanted to hear about my latest adventures on the Tour. He inquired about Peggy and Amy and wanted to know if I’d quit smoking off the golf course yet.
Far too soon, a nurse appeared and politely informed us it was time to leave. The president had pills to take and needed time to rest.
We stood. He kissed Winnie again and we once more clasped hands. Beaming at us as always, he assured us that the next time we saw him, which would be soon, it would be back home at his farm in Gettysburg.
With tears welling in my own eyes, I told Winnie on the way out that I hoped he was right. But it was the last time we saw D.D.E.
CHAPTER NINE
Cherry Hills
A week after winning the 1960 Masters and playing my first round of golf with President Eisenhower, Sports Illustrated declared that an “authentic and unforgettable hero” had emerged in the pines at Augusta National, and Life weighed in with the verdict that I had replaced Hogan and Snead as the brightest star of the golf world.
What a wonderful moment it was for me, in some ways the fulfillment of my wildest childhood dreams. To have the press writing such breathtaking things about my exploits, to have people suddenly treating me as if I really was the best player of my generation—all I can say is, thank God I had Winnie and Pap and the folks back home to keep me humble. Even my Pap, though, was uncharacteristically moved to admit I’d done “pretty well” down in Augusta.
He knew better than anyone, though, that in my eyes the job was only partially done. My sights were set on the next big prize in golf, the United States Open Championship. The preeminent golf championship in the world was being contested that year at Cherry Hills in Denver, a course I knew a little bit about thanks to President Eisenhower, who happened to be a member there. President Eisenhower loved the course and predicted that I would do pretty well there. After nearly winning the Houston Classic, I didn’t even worry too much about the mini-”slump” my game fell into during the month-long run-up to the Open. With reporters and photographer
s constantly underfoot both at Latrobe and on the road, I suppose the distractions of success took their toll on my ability to remain properly focused—a pattern that would increasingly become a problem for me in the coming years.
I played in my first Open championship at Oakmont in 1953, while still an amateur, firing 162 to miss the cut. I missed again in 1954 but finally finished the complete seventy-two holes at Olympic in 1955, the year Jack Fleck pulled off his miracle finish to beat Ben Hogan out of a record fifth Open trophy. I tied that year for twenty-first, so at least I was heading in the right direction. The next year, at Oak Hill, I was actually a threat for a while to Cary Middlecoff, before tapering off to seventh. After failing to make the cut at Inverness, I was never a factor at Southern Hills. The next year at Winged Foot, I finally made a decent run at the championship, but a weak finish, a 74, left me in fifth place.
But almost from the beginning, 1960 had a different feel about it. My confidence level had never been so high, my desire to go out and play the golf course so intense. Cherry Hills stretched 7,004 yards, but because of the added distance a ball would carry on a course that is located 5,280 feet above sea level, some believed Hogan’s twelve-year-old tournament record of 276 might be in jeopardy. If the plus side of the equation was that a ball flew anywhere from ten to fifteen yards farther in that thinner atmosphere, the downside was that the decreased oxygen supply could sap your strength in no time flat. As a result, Hogan himself developed headaches and carried his own canister of oxygen with a breathing apparatus, and the sponsoring USGA arranged for similar supplies of oxygen to be made available to players at special facilities set up around the course. Something like forty players took advantage of these unusual arrangements.
Despite my surging confidence, I was in trouble from the opening swing, but breathing wasn’t my problem. During two practice rounds, I’d driven the first green, a downhill par 4 measuring just 318 yards on the card, and I made up my mind to go for the putting surface in every round. Unfortunately, I pushed my first tee shot and the ball bounced into a small stream, Little Dry Creek, as it was fittingly called. The USGA had arranged to have water pumped energetically through the ditch, however, and by the time I arrived on the scene, frowning at my poor fortune, the stream had swept my ball farther down the hill toward the green. I remember commenting in jest to Joe Dey, the USGA’s meticulous executive director and the rules official on the scene, that I would just “wait and follow my ball down the creek until it stops and take a drop there.”
Joe clearly didn’t think that was proper—or particularly amusing. After a bit of confusion determining where my ball had crossed the margin of the hazard, a spot was determined and I took a drop with a one-stroke penalty. My next shot glanced off a tree, and my fourth attempt flew over the green. I chipped five feet short of the hole for my fifth, then sank the putt for a nice fat opening double-bogey six.
You could have fried an egg on my forehead at that moment. I was so furious with myself for blowing a hole I clearly should have birdied. As we walked to the next tee, I remember hitching up my trousers and having a sharp exchange with my caddie. Bob Blair, who often carried for me, had somehow engineered the assignment to my bag (in those days, the USGA assigned caddies, who were mostly from the host club or local area, at random to players beforehand)—and I still don’t think I want to know what kind of maneuver Bob pulled off to get on my bag. I don’t remember what Bob had said that got my dander up, but whatever it was it even caught the attention of my playing partners, Jack Fleck and Cary Middlecoff. I was obviously steamed, and I stayed that way. Several factors contributed to that.
Perhaps due to the thinner air, play was much slower than the normal slow pace of an Open, and it didn’t help matters that Fleck and Middlecoff, Open champions both, were two of the most deliberate players on tour. They could sometimes seemingly anguish over the ball for a small eternity before pulling the trigger on a shot. That habit was anathema to my style of play—once I’d made up my mind what I needed or wanted to do, which was usually pretty quickly, the last thing I wanted to do was stand around and think about it some more. It was better, in my view, to make the shot believing it would work and deal with the consequences if it didn’t.
In any case, the three of us wound our way tediously around the golf course over the next five hours. I had several moments when my putting stroke failed and my frustration deepened. I was fortunate to finish the opening round with a one-over 72, a respectable score that placed me four strokes behind leader Mike Souchak. Afterward, my friendly nemesis Bob Drum growled at me to summarize the round, and I reflected that I felt “wobbly and scrambling” all day long and never found my pace. Cary Middlecoff used those same words to describe my round when he wrote about our trio’s frustrating escapades for his hometown newspaper. What I didn’t come right out and say was that by my calculations the poky play of my partners had cost me four strokes on the round, because anytime I wasn’t moving forward on a golf course my nervousness and anxiety level increased twofold and my scoring usually paid the price. That day, the agonizing pace of play seemed even too much for Cary. He could manage only a painful 77 for his afternoon’s labors.
Of course, the real trophy for loss of composure under pressure that day went to Tommy Bolt, who in a rage of frustration flung his driver into the pond in front of the 18th tee after knocking two balls into the water, clearing the head of an astonished Claude Harmon by either inches or yards, depending on which account of the famous incident you choose to accept.
In the press tent, I was asked if I thought I was still in contention, and I wearily replied that I only hoped I would still be within four shots come Saturday afternoon. As tradition had held since 1895, the Open finished with two rounds on Open Saturday, a practice that would continue until 1965. Noting my poor start on the day, someone else wondered if, given the opportunity, I would use my driver again on the first hole, and I politely assured him I certainly would because you never could tell what could happen when you hit the green off the tee—you just might make a hole in one.
I know some observers thought that, under the circumstances, that was a foolish strategy. The course was playing a lot tougher than most had expected, and scarcely anybody was now thinking that Hogan’s record was in danger of tumbling. But I meant every word of it, and I couldn’t wait to get back to the first tee and take my revenge on the hole.
Winnie wasn’t with me in Denver. She and the girls were visiting her parents at the family’s cottage at Shawnee-on-the-Delaware, taking a breather from the rigors of tour life. I suppose it’s a little ironic that, after being on hand for virtually every important tournament I’d played in since the day we met, she would miss one some would later describe as the greatest ever—where three eras of the game collided in the persons of Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, and a young amateur named Jack Nicklaus, and I would pull off the most dramatic charge of my career.
But, of course, we had no way of knowing ahead of time how things would play out and had already decided to leave the girls (then four and two) with Winnie’s parents while we went on to the Canada Cup and the British Open at St. Andrews. The decision, from a family standpoint, made good sense.
My second circuit of the Cherry Hills course was hardly more encouraging than the first; I shot 71 and fell even further back of the hard-charging Mike Souchak, who tore around Cherry Hills in 67, setting a thirty-six-hole record of 137 in the process. I made several bold escapes from the rough and five birdies, but I failed to convert several pars at critical moments (including the par-3 12th, which I felt jinxed me all week) and was fortunate, I suppose, that my day’s total wasn’t any worse. I honestly felt I’d deserved better than the course gave me, but other observers, like the ever-downbeat Drum, said I was very lucky to finish at even par. The only good thing about losing ground to the leader was that I wouldn’t be paired with slowpokes Fleck and Middlecoff again. I must admit, the two of them nearly drove me crazy at times.
Satu
rday, the day of the double finishing rounds, dawned sunny and warm, a perfect Rocky Mountain morning, and Mike showed the first signs of cracking, finishing his morning round with a two-over 73. His score was still good enough, though, for a two-stroke lead over Julius Boros, Jerry Barber, and Dow Finsterwald. Ben Hogan, who was still the man to beat in my mind, hit all eighteen greens in that third round, as I recall, but his unpredictable putter was betraying him.
That morning, I woke up telling myself that if I was going to lose the Open, I’d do it kicking and screaming, so it didn’t surprise anybody when I pulled out my driver on the first hole and went for the green. My ball landed in the short grass just in front but then rolled into the deep collar grass around the green. I made a poor chip and needed three more shots to get down in bogey.
Not the way to start Open Saturday.
I finally got birdies at three and five, bogeyed six, birdied seven, and parred the difficult and long eighth. I had yet to par the tough uphill ninth, made another poor chip from the rough by the green, ripped off my golf glove in disgust, and holed out for a careless double-bogey six. Despite three birdies going out, I’d managed only a mediocre 36. The struggle continued on ten, where I barely got out of the bunker and had to make a dangerous twenty-foot downhiller to save par. I pulled back to even par with a birdie on 11 and—finally—managed to par the watery 12th, the par 3 that had been trouble all week long. My fifth birdie of the round came at 13, but I knew I would need at least two, possibly three, more birdies to have a reasonable chance of catching Souchak and the eight or nine others ahead of me.
Of the remaining five holes, only the 17th offered a realistic birdie opportunity. I parred 14 and 15 and went for broke on 16—making bogey instead. To compound my woes, I settled for par on the “easy” 17th and followed that up by making a bogey on the finishing hole.
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