Book Review: “The Golf 100”, by Michael Arkrush ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆

Michael Arkrush is a sportswriter with more than a dozen books to his credit, but one who was unfamiliar to me before this title came to my attention. His previous books have focused largely on either boxing, basketball, or coaching. He does have four previous books concerning golf, but I have only read one: Getting Up and Down: My 60 Years in Golf – an autobiography of Ken Venturi that he cowrote with Venturi, and it wasn’t until I looked up his back list that I realized that he was associated with that title.

From the first page of The Golf 100 I realized that I had been missing out. Arkrush is a writer with a casual but effective voice who writes with a touch of bantering humor.

The Golf 100, by Michael Arkrush, is full to the brim with informative
biographical sketches about one hundred of the top golfers of all time.

He set himself quite a job – as the author himself acknowledges, ranking the Top 100 golfers of all time is not so much a tough task as an impossible one, and the content of this book is sure to elicit plenty of questions and disagreement over drinks at the 19th Hole of any golf course frequented by literarily or historically inclined golfers (1).

There’s no arguing, in my mind, with the Top 10 (though if he hadn’t ranked Ben Hogan within the Top 5 I might have found myself firing off a strongly worded letter…), or even the Top 20. The further down the list one goes the more room there is for argument, but in reality, the further down the list you go the less it matters – if you are prepared to argue about the relative placement of Leo Diegel and Harold Hilton in the list of the Top 100 Golfers of All Time you should probably look for a different hobby.

Many of the names found in the bottom fifty places of the list may be unfamiliar to all but very dedicated students of the game’s history – some of the names were vaguely known to me but I couldn’t have told you much about their accomplishments before reading this book. And therein lies the raison d’être of Mr Arkrush’s efforts – the value in this books lies less in the actual ranking of golfers than it does in identifying the lesser-known personalities on the list and giving a quick sketch of their careers and accomplishments.

Quick sketch is the operative word here. The author gets through the list of 100 names in a little over 350 pages. Most of the listings range in length from three to a little over four pages; Tiger Woods rates six and a bit, and Jack Nicklaus, eight pages. Frankly there’s sometimes not a lot to say about the golfers in the lower ranks, but there is value in what the author does include, for example: John McDermott, #100, the 1911 U.S. Open winner, suffered a breakdown a few years later and spent most of his life in mental institutions; or Larry Nelson, #89, a self-taught golfer who hadn’t even picked up a club before he turned 21, taking up the game after returning from a tour as an infantry squad leader in Viet Nam. Nelson won the 1983 U.S. Open at Oakmont, closing with two under-par rounds and clinching the win over Tom Watson with a 60-foot putt that must have looked a lot like the putt that recently clinched the 2025 U.S. Open for J.J. Spaun.

Argue as you might about their places on the list, every golfer in this book deserves mention, and each has an interesting story attached to their name.

I could quibble over the structure of many of the short biographical sketches that make up this book; Arkrush sometimes shows a disorienting tendency to work through events that occurred later in the subject’s career, then jump back to formative events from their early life. He also sometimes skims over details that beg for another sentence or two of explanation and then leaves the reader hanging – for example, he mentions that Bay Area golf star Juli Inkster borrowed clubs from Patti Sheehan to play, and win, the 1981 U.S. Women’s Amateur (her second of three in a row), but doesn’t mention why. A bit of research (maybe a phone call?) and a couple of lines added to that section could have added a neat little anecdote to the story.

So, this book isn’t perfect, but it is really, really good, standing up on its own and also as a gateway to further reading for the history-minded golfer whose interest is piqued by the short sketches it presents; the three-page bibliography is a good start on further exploration for the curious reader. Father’s Day may have come and gone already this year, but for the golfer with a late-in-the-year birthday, or as a Christmas gift, this book is a serious contender for the gift list.

1) Given the opportunity, I would like to have a talk with Arkrush about the non-inclusion of Bay Area pro George Archer, the 1969 Masters winner who struggled with a learning impairment that left him unable to read any but the simplest sentences; he could only write his own name.

A look back at a classic by Michael Bamberger, “Men in Green” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Just today I learned that one of my favorite golf writers, Michael Bamberger, has a new book coming out in March. The new book, The Ball in the Air, is being described as “an exhilarating love letter to the amateur game as it’s played—and lived—by the rest of us.” I am going to do my best to get hold of a copy of the new book to read and review here at Will o'the Glen on Golf, but in the meantime I would like to post a review that I wrote for his 2015 release Men in Green, posted to my former online outlet, Examiner.com, which went dark in 2016 (taking four years of my content with it, unfortunately.)

So here it is, my review of Michael Bamberger’s 2015 book, Men in Green:

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One night at dinner during the 2012 Ryder Cup matches at Medinah Golf Club outside Chicago, Michael Bamberger, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, wrote down a two-column list naming 18 Americans – 17 men and one woman – who are legends in the world of golf. All 18 are associated with the game in the period from the mid-1950s through the 1970s, the years when golf was maturing into the big-money sport it has become. Out of that list came a quest, of sorts; a plan to track down as many of those 18 as he could and ask them a few simple questions – “What was it like?”, “Who did you hang with?”, “How does then look to you now?”

Drawn to golf in the late 1970s as a teenager growing up in a small town on Long Island, Bamberger’s formative years in the game were populated by the names on that list he drew up in Chicago: Palmer, Nicklaus, Watson, Venturi, Crenshaw – just to name a few. So, inspired by the baseball classic The Boys of Summer, Bamberger took up the challenge posed by his list of names, crisscrossing the United States over the next couple of years to talk to as many of the “legends” as he could. 

Out of his travels came the book Men in Green, in my opinion one of the finest works of golf-related non-fiction to be published in many years. His quest led him down paths he never anticipated traveling when he began, raising questions he couldn’t have known would arise, and from those paths and out of those questions came revelations about the names on the list, and himself, that will resonate with readers who grew up in the game in those years, as Bamberger did. 

In keeping with his position in the game “The King”, Arnold Palmer, opens and closes Bamberger’s physical and temporal journey through the landscape of golf’s mid-20th-century heyday. Along the way, Bamberger checks in with the next-biggest name from the period, Jack Nicklaus, as well as Tom Watson, Ken Venturi (just weeks before his death), Hale Irwin, and Curtis Strange – all names off the “Living Legends” side of his original list. Accompanying him on many of these visits is his friend, and a name off the “Secret Legends” side of the roster, Mike Donald, a long-time PGA Tour and Champions Tour pro. Donald is a veteran of the Tours whose biggest claim to fame among the golfing public is his narrow loss to Hale Irwin in the 1990 U.S. Open.

The strength of Men in Green, aside from the depth that comes from Bamberger’s whole-hearted investment in the game of golf, is the intimate, personal-history glimpses it affords the reader, glimpses into the PGA Tour in the Palmer-Nicklaus-Watson era – pre-Tiger – and the interconnections between the players, caddies, golf writers, and even officials, of those times. 

This was an era when the PGA Tour chartered airline flights to carry players and their families from tournament to tournament, when there was more of a family atmosphere than there is now, yet still some hints of the old rough-and-tumble Tour. The world of the PGA Tour wasn’t as corporate as it is nowadays – there were no entourages of swing coaches, short-game gurus, mental-game seers, and publicists, and many players were still driving from one tournament to the next. There was still something of a Mad Men-like sensibility to the times – a pretty woman was a “good-looking broad” (according to none other than Arnie himself!) and the players’ after-hours entertainment might include drinks with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, or Sammy Davis, Jr.

The beating heart of Men in Green, and the part of the book which has left an enduring impression on me, is the interwoven tale of Arnold Palmer and Ken Venturi. Remembered now more for his 35-year career in the broadcast booth with CBS Sports than for his playing days, Venturi was a promising young amateur in the mid-1950s, a native San Franciscan of Irish ancestry who nevertheless identified more with the Italian-American heritage of his stepfather, Fred Venturi, longtime manager of the pro shop at San Francisco’s Harding Park golf course.

Bitter disappointment at the Masters tournament, the ultimate golf venue of the ultimate gentleman-amateur golfer, Bob Jones, led Venturi to abandon his oft-declared plans to maintain a career as an amateur, like Jones, and not turn professional. The best-known of Venturi’s disappointments at Augusta National came in the 1958 Masters, the result of a controversial ruling involving Arnold Palmer, who was playing with Venturi when it happened.

The repercussions of that rules controversy, along with the fallout from harsh statements Venturi made to the press after a final-round 80 at the 1956 Masters, rippled down through the years, and Venturi watched as Arnold Palmer ascended to a position in the golf world, albeit as a professional, that he had aspired to. It becomes apparent, through Bamberger’s accounts of interviews with Venturi, that the revered elder statesman of the game was a very bitter man for much of his life, and somewhat given to embellishing recollections of past events to his advantage.

Connections abound between not only the big names, the “Living Legends” on Bamberger’s list, but between the less well-known “Secret Legends” whose stories weave in and out of the narrative. Serendipitous discoveries turn up at every corner, in conversations with an old-time Tour caddy, Adolphus “Golf Ball” Hull; retired CBS Sports producer Chuck Will; and even a couple of ex-Tour wives: Conni Venturi (Ken’s first wife), and Polly Crenshaw Price, another first wife – Ben Crenshaw’s ex.

The title, the cover illustration, and the release date (April 7, 2015 – two days before play began at the 78th Masters Tournament), tend to give the impression that the book is a look back at past Masters champions. That’s a fine subject, and five of the names on Bamberger’s list are past champions of the event, but this book is so much more than that. Men in Green is a look back to the formative years of the current state of the game, by a man who was growing up in the game, and with the game, in those same years. There is nostalgia and revelation in equal parts, all tempered by the love of golf that shaped the author’s life in so many ways.

Golf fans will know Michael Bamberger from his 20-year career at Sports Illustrated, and perhaps from his earlier books To The Linksland and This Golfing Life, also non-fiction travelogues through the landscapes of golf and life. A few years ago Bamberger teamed up with his friend and fellow SI staff writer Alan Shipnuck for the fiction hit The Swinger, but it is the insight and emotion he brings to his non-fiction works that is his strength, and the reason why every fan of the game of golf should read Men in Green.

Ben Hogan owns a unique Ryder Cup record that may never be equaled

While the eyes of the golf world are focused on the Ryder Cup this week, I thought that it would be fun to pull away from the drama of the current year’s events to take a look at some Ryder Cup history, and ask a question. What constitutes the “best” record in the Ryder Cup? Is it the most wins, or the most points scored over time? Or is it a perfect record, unblemished by losses, or even halves? And if it is the latter, who has achieved such a record?

Well, I can tell you that only one man has, and I’m willing to bet that most golfers, if asked who that man was, would guess and toss out names like Nicklaus, Palmer, or Woods from the American side; or Faldo, Ballesteros, or Montgomerie from the GBI/European side—but they’d be wrong.

That man is Ben Hogan.

Ben Hogan at the 1967 Ryder Cup awards ceremony
Credit: PGA of America via Getty Images    Copyright: PGA of America

Hogan is not a name that comes up much in conversations about the Ryder Cup these days, but it should. The American players who are most strongly associated with the biennial competition include Jack Nicklaus, Paul Azinger, and Phil Mickelson; on the GBI/European side you’ll hear about Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Colin Montgomerie, and Ian Poulter. Ben Hogan didn’t play in as many Ryder Cups as those big names, or score as many points, but he has one distinction that none of the rest of them can match: he was undefeated, both as a player and as a captain.

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The 1947 Ryder Cup marked the return of the event to the world stage for the first time since 1937, and Ben Hogan’s first appearance in the event, as a playing captain—he remains the only man to have been chosen to captain the American squad without having played on a previous team. Foursomes and singles were the only matches that were contested in those days, and Hogan played in only one match, teaming up with good friend Jimmy Demaret in a foursomes match against Jimmy Adams and Max Faulkner, defeating the GBI duo 2-up.

Played at Portland Golf Club, in Portland, Oregon, the 1947 event was marked by controversy that came at playing captain Hogan from both sides. First, American player Vic Ghezzi, perhaps disgruntled by the serial disappointment of having been selected for three consecutive Ryder Cups that were cancelled by the war—19391, 1941, and 1943—complained that he had been discriminated against by Hogan when the captain eliminated from consideration for qualification the results of several invitational events in which Ghezzi had finished well.[i]

Second, Ghezzi also accused Hogan of pressuring tournaments to ease restrictions on the alteration of grooves on wedges, an infraction that Ghezzi had been accused of earlier that year, an accusation that was reported in the press. It is possible that these reports encouraged GBI captain Henry Cotton in alleging that the Americans were using clubs with illegal grooves. This accusation came to naught when Captain Hogan allowed the Americans’ clubs to be inspected, and all were found to be legal and conforming.

****************

Hogan’s next appearance in the Ryder Cup came in 1949 as a non-playing captain—the youngest, to this day, in the history of the event. Just seven-and-a-half months after the February, 1949 head-on collision with a Greyhound bus that had come close to claiming his life, Hogan led a nine-man team consisting of four veterans; Sam Snead, Jimmy Demaret, Lloyd Mangrum, and Dutch Harrison, and five rookies; Skip Alexander, Bob Hamilton, Chick Harbert, Clayton Heafner, and Johnny Palmer, against a 10-man GBI squad of eight veterans and two rookies.

The event was again marked by some controversy, on two counts: First, Hogan reopened old wounds from the 1947 Ryder Cup when he leveled charges, on the night before play was to begin, that some of the British players were using irons with grooves that were deeper than were allowed by the rules. Unlike Henry Cotton’s accusation in 1947, the charges were found to have some merit: Jock Ballantyne, the head pro of the host club, Ganton Golf Club in Yorkshire, reportedly stayed up half the night grinding the faces of several sets of clubs to bring the grooves into conformance.

Second, the U.S. team brought along their own provisions, including fresh butter and eggs, half a dozen Virginia hams, thirty pounds of bacon, and some six hundred pounds of Texas sirloin steaks, to a United Kingdom that was still subject to wartime food rationing. The furor surrounding this culinary affront died down when Hogan offered to share the American bounty with the host team.

This was still in the era of foursomes and singles matches only, and while the GBI squad led 3-1 at the end of the Friday foursomes, the U.S. team rallied back in the Saturday singles, winning six of the eight matches to post an overall winning record of 7 and 5.

****************

Hogan returned to Ryder Cup play in 1951 as a team member. Though thankfully unmarked by controversy, the 1951 event did score an oddity— play was split between Friday (foursomes) and Sunday (singles) so that participants and spectators (presumably) could attend a college football game on Saturday in nearby Chapel Hill, where home team North Carolina hosted the visiting Tennessee Volunteers.

The U.S. team went out to a 3–1 lead in the Friday foursome matches, Hogan and good friend Jimmy Demaret teaming up once again and defeating the GBI duo of Fred Day and Ken Bousfield, 5 & 4.

Despite their strong play on Friday (the three matches they won went 5 & 3, 5 & 4, 5 & 4), the American Ryder Cup squad stayed in Pinehurst and practiced on Saturday, while the visiting GBI squad attended the American football game (and likely wondered at the name, given that only one member of the team ever touches the ball with his foot.) The visiting team, Tennessee, won in a rout, 27–0, but any hopes of foreshadowing for the GBI Ryder Cup squad was crushed during Sunday’s singles matches.

The U.S. team dominated the Sunday singles, 6-1-1, adding 6½ points to their Friday total for a 9½–2½ trouncing of the GBI squad. Hogan, playing in his first, and only, Ryder Cup singles match, defeated Britain’s Charlie Ward 3 & 2. It was to be the last Ryder Cup point he ever scored.

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Hogan didn’t return to the Ryder Cup until 1967, when he took the U.S. squad down the road to Champions Golf Club in Houston, Texas as a non-playing captain.

Not taking it any easier on his team than he ever had on himself, Hogan imposed a 10:30 pm. curfew and early practice sessions on his squad of five veterans and five rookies.

It was evident, however, that Hogan had confidence in his team. At the opening night dinner, after GBI squad captain Dai Rees, a loquacious Welshman, waxed lyrical (and overlong) about the virtues of each of his players in his introductory remarks, Hogan kept his speech short and sweet. After introducing each player by name only, and with his entire team standing, Hogan said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the U.S. Ryder Cup Team—the finest golfers in the world.” 

There was noticeable friction between Hogan and one of his players, though: Arnold Palmer. The two had always had a frosty relationship, and a couple of incidents during the 1967 Ryder Cup only deepened the permafrost.

In an interesting move that would form the basis of the one question I would most like to ask Mr Hogan, given the chance, he opted for his team to play the smaller (1.62-inch diameter) British ball, as was the option in those days.[ii] The decision to play the smaller ball led to a bit of internal controversy between Hogan and Palmer. Details of the exchange vary, but allegedly when Palmer, who had obviously forgotten to practice with the 1.62-inch ball, asked Hogan if he had brought any, Hogan snapped back, “Did you remember to bring your clubs?”[iii]

Of course, it probably hadn’t helped things that Palmer had shown up a couple of days late for practice rounds, and then took a few members of the GBI squad up for a ride in the Rockwell Jet Commander aircraft that he had bought the year before.[iv] After climbing to 8,000 feet and rolling the aircraft, Palmer circled dangerously low over the golf course on final approach before landing. Billy Casper was on the course at the time, and later recalled that when Palmer flew over in the jet, with his wheels down, he was so low that, “I could have hit a wedge over that plane.” Tournament host and Champions Club co-founder Jimmy Demaret quipped, “The only time I’ve ever seen a plane fly under the eaves of a clubhouse.”[v]

The stunt earned Palmer a letter of severe reprimand from the Federal Aviation Administration, and a rebuke from Hogan.

After Palmer and partner Gardner Dickinson won their Friday foursomes matches 2 & 1 over the Anglo/Irish duo of Peter Alliss and Christy O’Connor in the morning, and 5 & 4 over another Anglo/Irish pairing, Malcolm Gregson and Hugh Boyle in the afternoon, Palmer was sat out in the morning for the Saturday fourball (better-ball) matches, a 1963 addition to the Ryder Cup format. This is often seen as a slight against Palmer, who agreed in public with his captain’s decision, and later admitted in private that he was a bit tired.[vi] Julius Boros, who had 14 PGA Tour wins to his credit by this time, and two U.S. Open wins (1952, 1963) also sat out Saturday morning after playing morning and afternoon on Friday.

Saturday afternoon saw the two rested players, Palmer and Boros, paired up against Scotsman George Will and Irishman Hugh Boyle in a hard-fought match. The American pair were 4-down at the turn, and battled back to a 1-up win that was the closest U.S. victory of the afternoon.

The Sunday singles matches were dominated by Captain Hogan’s American players 5–3 in the morning and 5½ –2½ in the afternoon, for an overall score of USA–23 ½, GBI–8 ½.

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Ben Hogan’s record of three Ryder Cup wins doesn’t sound too impressive compared to the points totals toted up by some modern-day players, but his opportunities to rack up points was limited by the war years, and by the fact that his Ryder Cup playing days came before the addition of a day of fourball matches between foursome and singles. In one category, though, he stands out above all others: he is the only man whose Ryder Cup record, both as a player and a captain, has that pair of zeroes after the win count: 3–0–0. 

Ben Hogan – undefeated.

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[i] Dodson, James; Ben Hogan: An American Life, pg. 213

[ii] The Montreal Gazette; October 20, 1967 

[iii] Sampson, Curt; Hogan, pg. 229

[iv] https://www.arnoldpalmer.com/aviation

[v] Dodson, James; Ben Hogan: An American Life, pg. 475

[vi] Feherty, David & Frank, James A.; David Feherty’s Totally Subjective History of the Ryder Cup, pg. 146

Book Review: “Arnie, Seve, and a Fleck of Golf History”, by Bill Fields ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

If you have an interest in the history of the game of golf beyond the current headlines of the PGA Tour, one of the people whose work you should read is Bill Fields. Fields, a former senior writer at Golf World magazine, is a four-time winner of the Golf Writers Association of America’s annual writing contest whose work has also appeared in Golf Digest and the New York Times.

Fields’ 2014 book, Arnie, Seve, and a Fleck of Golf History, is a condensed master course in “How to write about golf”. Of course, the best golf writing isn’t about the score or who won, or what clubs they used—it’s about the people in the game, winners or also-rans, and their journeys to achievement. Fields is a master at identifying and illuminating the essence of the story he’s telling, with tremendous empathy for the people involved, and he has a poetic flair for a well-turned phrase that makes his prose a joy to read.

Drawn from his 30-year body of work, the individual articles which make up the book are segregated into sections on the greats of the game—individual men and women who stand tall in the annals of golf; great championships—competitions that defined turning points or significant moments in golf history; and underdogs—characters from the rich history of golf, some champions, some just obscure names in the agate, who are nevertheless part of the rich weave of the tapestry that is the history of the greatest game.

Some of the people you’ll read about in this book are Harry Vardon, the great English champion to whom 95% of the golfers in the world pay homage every time they pick up a club—he invented (or at least popularized) the overlapping grip; John J. McDermott, still the youngest man ever to win the United States Open, in 1911, at the age of 19 years, 10 months—a great champion who repeated the win the following year, becoming the first to complete the tournament under par, and who faded away into mental illness and obscurity; and Glenna Collett Vare—one of the great champions of the early years of women’s golf in the United States, a woman who combined marriage and motherhood with the accomplishments of a champion golfer.

Fields writes with compassion and understanding, whatever the subject, from well-known incidents like Arnold Palmer’s well-known meltdown in the 1966 U. S. Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, to footnotes in golf history such as the first 55 recorded in an eighteen-hole round of golf—and still the only one in a competitive round—a 16-under carded by a little-known Texas pro named Homero Blancas, on an oilfield course in the flatlands of east Texas.

With a foreword by a man who is simultaneously a great champion of the game, and an avid student of its history, Ben Crenshaw, Arnie, Seve, and a Fleck of Golf History is a must-read for anyone with an interest in the history of the people and events of the game of golf.

A legend shares her wisdom at local U.S. Women’s Open qualifier

Much was made in golf-related social and traditional media a couple of weeks ago when the news broke that Juli Inkster—LPGA legend, multiple major winner, and three-time Solheim Cup captain—had entered the April 26th U.S. Women’s Open qualifying tournament at Half Moon Bay Golf Links.

Juli Inkster watches the flight of her tee shot at the par-four 8th hole of the Half Moon Bay Golf Links Old Course in the second round of a qualifying tournament for the 2021 USGA U.S. Women’s Open. (photo by Gary K. McCormick)

A Bay Area local, Inkster grew up in Santa Cruz, played college golf at San Jose State University, and lives in Los Altos Hills with her husband, Brian, who is the Director of Golf at Los Altos Golf and Country Club. Since home is just 40 minutes down the Peninsula from the Olympic Club in San Francisco, where the 2021 U.S. Women’s Open will be held in early June, she decided to take a shot at qualifying for the event. 

“I’m probably an idiot for trying,” said 60-year-old Inkster, “but I think I would be disappointed in myself if I didn’t because it’s so close to home.”

She hasn’t played in a U.S. Women’s Open since 2015, when she finished T15 after four consecutive missed cuts in the event, but has two victories in the tournament to her credit, in 1999 and 2002, as well as four other top 10 finishes since 1988.

Inkster was by far the, uh, most experienced player in the field at the Half Moon Bay qualifier, and was paired with two of the youngest players in the event: Kiara Romero, a 15-year-old high school freshman from San Jose who was the 2019 – 2020 Junior Tour of Northern California Girls’ Player of the Year; and 16-year-old Harper Clementz of San Francisco, a sophomore at San Francisco University High School and a Junior Merit member at the Olympic Club who aspires to a career as a NASA Flight Director.

Thirty-six holes of golf on a challenging and hilly course like the Old Course at Half Moon Bay Golf Links is a real test, and Juli was very encouraging to her two young playing partners throughout the long day. The holes at the Old Course at Half Moon Bay Golf Links, a 1973 Arnold Palmer and Francis Duane design, are a banquet of uneven lies, strategic bunkering, and subtly contoured greens. Add to that mixture the fatigue of a long day—36 holes of golf with (as it turned out) only 15 minutes between rounds, the changing conditions that necessarily accompany a day of golf that stretches from an 8:20 a.m. tee time to nearly 6:30 p.m.—and even golfers with twice the experience of Kiara Romero and Harper Clementz will find the going tough.

Throughout the day Inkster was welcoming and encouraging to her two young playing partners, congratulating them on good shots (of which there were many) even as she concentrated on her own game. At the end of her round the girls took pictures with Juli, and Harper showed her a signed glove that she had brought with her – a glove that Juli gave her at the 2015 ANA Inspiration, which Harper’s parents took her to see when she was just getting into the game.

Unfortunately there was no fairytale ending to the day. Inkster finished 11 strokes out of a qualifying spot (three qualified out of a field of 73), and Kiara Romero, who possesses a swing that is so long and fluid that it begs to be set to music, actually bested her by three stokes—all in the final round. I’m sure that both Harper and Kiara will carry memories of this day with them throughout their lives in golf.

The gold medalist on the day was Benicia’s Kathleen Scavo, who recently concluded her college golf career at the University of Oregon and has embarked on a professional golf career, playing on the Symetra Tour. Second and third places, respectively, were claimed by Kelly Tan, an LPGA player originally from Malaysia, and another Bay Area native, Lucy Li, who won this qualifying event in 2014, when she became the youngest player to have ever qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open.

“The Golf Round I’ll Never Forget”, by Matt Adams ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️☆

Matt Adams, the author of The Golf Round I’ll Never Forget, has a great reputation as an interviewer, and before I got my hands on a review copy of this volume I assumed that I would be reading interviews, or at least some interview content, from fifty champion golfers. (If a little alarm bell went off in your head when you read the word “assumed” in the previous sentence, you get a gold ⭐️.)

The subtitle of this book—Fifty of Golf’s Biggest Stars Recall Their Finest Moments—gives the impression that the players whose “finest moments” are recounted here were interviewed for this volume, but alas, this turn out not to be the case. The chapters draw on previously published material which includes quotes from the players involved, but that’s the extent of it. That caveat aside, this is a nicely curated compendium of memorable golf rounds which any avid golfer would find interesting.

The book is divided into six chapters, collecting anecdotes into such classifications as “History In The Making”,which includes Gene Sarazen’s eagle on the 15th hole of Augusta National in the final round of the 1935 Masters; Johnny Miller’s record-setting 63 in the fourth round of the 1973 U.S. Open at Oakmont; and Al Geiberger’s groundbreaking 59 in the second round of the old Memphis Classic in 1977. (Little-known fact: Geiberger used the same ball for the entire round, almost unheard of in the days of the wound balata ball.)

Among the other sections are “Big Shots and Defining Moments”, with the story behind Hal Sutton’s famous “Be the right club!”call at the 2000 Players Championship; “Great Comebacks”, which includes the story of Arnold Palmer’s legendary come-from-behind victory in the 1960 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills, and more. Most of the stories included in the book will be familiar, at least in outline, to golfers with a sense of history, though a few are less well-known, and all the more welcome additions to the book for that. For example, how many of us are familiar with Kathy Whitworth’s record-setting victory in the 1965 Titleholder’s Championship?

A few shortcuts are taken in some of the stories—for example, Arnold Palmer’s bogey on the 16th hole in the fourth round of the 1966 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club, a key factor in Palmer’s eventual loss to Billy Casper in a Monday playoff, is skimmed over as just another bogey—but each section includes anecdotes and background that will make for fresh reading, even for knowledgeable golf fans.

Presented in a handsome full-color 9" × 11" paperback format, with plenty of photos, The Golf Round I’ll Never Forget makes a nice gift for the golfer in your life—or for yourself.

Who’s chasing history at the 2020 PGA Championship?

The circumstances under which the 2020 PGA Championship is being played—a global pandemic, no spectators on course, a timeframe reversal back to its usual August time slot, and a first-time appearance at an iconic San Francisco venue—are enough to afford the event a highlighted spot in the golf history books. Beyond those circumstances, though, there are three players in the field this week who are chasing history above and beyond a single major championship victory: Tiger Woods, Brooks Koepka and Jordan Spieth.

(Image © 2020 Christian Petersen/PGA of America)

Coming into the tournament Woods stands on the threshold of an all-time wins record with the possibility of breaking his tie with Sam Snead at 82 total victories, and maybe even more significant than that, a win in San Francisco this weekend would bring him one step closer to equaling Jack Nicklaus’ major victories record.

Woods tied Snead’s long-standing record of 82 PGA Tour victories in grand fashion in 2019 when he recorded his fifth Masters win after a 14-year drought in the event; the 2019 Masters chop also moved Woods one step closer to sharing the top step on the all-time major-victories podium with Jack Nicklaus, marking his 15th major victory—three less than Nicklaus, with 18; and four more than Walter Hagen, who with 11 majors is the only other member of the double-digit-wins club in professional majors. A win this week would also elevate Woods to the top step of the “PGA Championship wins” podium, which he would share with Nicklaus and Hagen.

Another player who will be spotlighted this week for the potential of an historic achievement is Brooks “Mr Majors” Koepka. With two consecutive PGA Championship victories in his pocket, Koepka is going for a hat trick this week, and while not a record, a win at Harding Park would make him only the second player, after Walter Hagen, to take the PGA Championship title three years running.

Hagen, by the way, was PGA champion four years running, 1924 – 1927, after having won it in 1921. The cup awarded to the winner, the Wanamaker Trophy, mysteriously disappeared after his 1927 victory at Cedar Crest Country Club, in Dallas; Hagen claimed that he gave it to a cabbie to deliver to his hotel. Leo Diegel, who won the PGA Championship in ’28 and ’29; and Tommy Armour, the 1930 champ, had to make do with a firm handshake and a smile from then-PGA president Alex Pirie.

The trophy resurfaced in the fall of 1930, a few months after that year’s event, when workers clearing a warehouse in Detroit found the massive silver cup in a trunk. The owner of the warehouse? The Walter Hagen Company. Hmmm…

Last but not least comes Jordan Spieth, who is chasing probably the most elusive of the potential records that are in the mix this week on the shores of Lake Merced—the Career Grand Slam.

Spieth jumpstarted his run at this career goal in 2015, his third year on the Tour, when he took home the Masters and the U.S. Open titles and served notice that the others were within his grasp with a T4 finish in the British Open at St Andrews, and solo second, three strokes back of Jason Day, in the PGA at Wisconsin’s Whistling Straits.

After a T2 finish in the 2016 Masters, the result of an infamous meltdown at the 12th hole, Spieth went into something of a tailspin where the majors were concerned; he didn’t crack the Top 10 again in any of the Big Four until the British in 2017, where he edged the majorless Matt Kuchar for the win at Royal Birkdale.

Since that time, however, Spieth has sputtered. His record in the majors in the interim ranges from a third-place finish in the 2018 Masters to a T65 at last year’s U.S. Open, just down the coast from Harding Park at Pebble Beach Golf Links, with only two other top-ten finishes in that time. He hasn’t won a regular PGA Tour event since the 2017 Travelers Championship, and is 12-for-49 for top-10 finishes since 2018.

Still—coming to the shores of Lake Merced for the first West Coast PGA Championship since Sahalee, in the Seattle area, in 1998; and the first in California since the 1977 event at Pebble Beach Golf Links; and with Masters, U.S. Open, and British Open titles to his credit, the 27-year-old Dallas native has his sights set on the tournament he needs to win to put that last notch in his tally stick.

“It’s probably the No. 1 goal in the game of golf for me right now…. I’d love to be able to hold all four trophies, and this is the one that comes in the way right now.”

– Jordan Spieth 

Spieth is already keeping company with some pretty big names, men who lack just one of the four majors in their CVs —

• Walter Hagen, Masters
• Lee Trevino, Masters
• Tommy Armour, Masters
• Sam Snead, U.S. Open
• Phil Mickelson, U.S. Open
• Byron Nelson, British Open
• Tom Watson, PGA Championship
• Arnold Palmer, PGA Championship

—and a win this week at Harding Park will vault him into even more illustrious company, that of the five men who have claimed each of golf’s major titles at least once: Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, and Gene Sarazen.

Review: “Sports Makes You Type Faster”, by Dan Jenkins ⭐️⭐️⭐️-1/2

Uneven offering from the dean of living American sportswriters

It can be difficult to see someone you have admired for decades – a parent or other relative, an athlete, or a writer or performer whose work you have enjoyed – start to decline, losing the powers of mind and body that were the reasons you looked up to them. I find myself in just that position with regard to Dan Jenkins, the quick-witted dean of American sports writing; and I present as evidence his most recent book, Sports Makes You Type Faster.

Dan has always cultivated something of a curmudgeonly persona, and it was his somewhat world-weary, even cynical, outlook, and his eye for the absurd, which attracted me to his work when I first started reading his books in the mid-’80s. In the last few years, however, and in his last couple of books, the inner curmudgeon has manifested itself more and more strongly, and it comes through in full force in many of the essays which comprise his latest book. He falls back, especially in the first part of the book, on tired clichés, and geezer-esque, get-off-my-lawn-style rants against PC-ism and liberals

He has arranged the essays in the book—most of which are new, with a few warmed-over and updated pieces mixed in—into two major groups: team sports, and individual sports, working, in order, from football (pro and college), basketball, baseball, soccer, and hockey to golf (the high point of the book, in my opinion), tennis, winter sports (skiing and skating, mostly), track and field, boxing, and auto racing.

The essays range from the snarky third-person pieces he often does which are cast in the voice of a pro football owner or coach, or a pro athlete; to otherwise thoughtful essays on the state of college football or golf (the two sports where his interest mainly lies, and where he shines brightest) that are peppered with rants about the “PC crowd” and liberal professors, etc.

Dan is at his best when he tunes in to thoughtful, nostalgic reminiscence about the past. The chapter entitled, “When The Furniture Talked”, about the days of sports broadcasting in radio, is one of the finest pieces in the book. Part Two, which turns from team sports to individual sports, starts a little weak, with the golf piece “The Tour Stop”, which is a rework of a piece that appeared in his 1994 collection, Fairways and Greens (updated with current players’ names), but picks up three chapters later, with ponderings on the old days in Beware: Rascals Loose, and the following few essays in which he waxes nostalgic about Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer, and Dan’s own amazing, never-to-be-equaled run of 230 majors covered. The book continues on a pretty good run from there, as Dan gets onto the subjects of tennis, skiing, track and field, boxing—even airplane racing.

The pieces in the second half are, on the whole, gentler and more thoughtful than those in the first half. I would go so far as to say that the second half saves the book, but all in all, I will stop short of calling Sports Makes You Type Faster a must-have book, except for the most ardent Dan Jenkins aficionado. For the golf-centric reader I recommend tracking down a copy of 1994’s Fairways and Greens, a more recent collection entitled Unplayable Lies, or his classic collection of golf writing, The Dogged Victims of Inexorable Fate.

Jacobsen, Nantz, to be honored with Langley Award

Peter Jacobsen, 38-year PGA Tour pro, Champions Tour player, and CBS-TV on-air golf commentator, and Jim Nantz, lead commentator for CBS-TV golf coverage, will be honored Monday, August 20th, at the Langley Awards ceremony at  Pebble Beach Golf links.

The Langley Award is named after the late Jim Langley, the former head golf  professional at the Cypress Point Club. Born in Denver, Colorado, in 1937, Langley moved with his family to Salinas in 1942. After graduating from Salinas High School in 1955, Langley attended Cal-Berkeley on a basketball scholarship, and was a member of Cal’s 1959 NCAA Champion basketball team. Langley joined the United States Marine Corp after graduation, competing Marine Corp Reserve service in the Bay Area. A five-year stint as a PGA Tour player was followed, in 1971, by his appointment as head golf professional at Cypress Point Club, a post which he held for 34 years.

The Langley Award is presented by the Northern California PGA to men and women who are recognized as legends of the game of golf. Former recipients of the award include Langley himself, Arnold Palmer, Ken Venturi, Johnny Miller, Nancy Lopez, and Roger Maltbie. The two-day charitable event comprises a dinner and awards presentation on Monday night, followed by a charity pro-am golf tournament on Tuesday, August 21st at Pebble Beach Golf Links.

The event benefits PGA HOPE (Helping Our Patriots Everywhere), a program which provides free golf lessons to disabled and able-bodied military veterans as a therapeutic tool in support of their mental, social, physical and emotional well-being. Lessons are taught by PGA Professionals who receive special training in adaptive golf teaching methods. Created in 2017, PGA HOPE is a flagship program of the NCPGA Foundation, and part of a national outreach by the PGA of America. The program has served nearly 750 veterans since 2015; it is offered at ten program sites in Northern California

Peter Jacobsen has always been known as an easygoing, fun-loving personality, both on the golf course and in the broadcast booth, but the PGA Hope program strikes a serious chord with him. Jacobsen’s father was a naval aviator who served aboard the USS Intrepid and USS Enterprise in World War II, and was awarded the Navy Cross – a fact which Jacobsen and his siblings did not discover until after their father’s death. Jacobsen is a strong supporter of programs for military personnel.

Pebble Beach Golf Links and its associated tournaments have always been favorites of Jacobsen’s, who first got to know the Monterey Peninsula region and Pebble Beach on family golf vacations as a teenager.

Jim Nantz is known to millions of television sports aficionados for broadcasting NFL football games, NCAA basketball, and PGA Tour golf, most notably the annual Masters tournament from Augusta National Golf Club. Besides his annual stint in the broadcast booth for the AT&T National Pro-Am at Pebble Beach, Nantz’s ties to the Pebble Beach run deep. He and his second wife, Courtney Richards, were married in a ceremony held on the 7th hole at Pebble Beach, and he owns a home in the area – complete with a half-scale replica of the famed par-3 in the backyard.

Another book about Arnold Palmer? (Yes, and it’s worth a look.) ★★★★☆

Books by and about Arnold Palmer are something of a mini-industry within the world of golf publishing. Even a quick search for “Arnold Palmer” on the Amazon website yields a couple dozen titles within the first few pages of search results—the man who was golf’s greatest ambassador was easily the most written-about figure in the game. In the great library of the game of golf, only Ben Hogan comes close to this level of attention, and most of those books are volumes purporting to reveal the “secret” of his phenomenal golf game.

Chris Rodell, a golf writer who was Arnold Palmer’s neighbor for 24 years, has compiled an entertaining collection of reminiscences about golf’s greatest ambassador.

The latest volume about Arnold Palmer, entitled Arnold Palmer: Homespun Stories of The King, by Chris Rodell, is a delightful read that is sure to be appreciated by fans of the man who will always be remembered as one of America’s greatest sports figures.

Arnold and golf on television came into the American consciousness at about the same time, and the American viewing audience fell in love with the ruggedly handsome young man who played golf with a swashbuckling, go-for-broke style that endeared him to viewers all over the country, and eventually the world. It was Palmer who almost singlehandedly transformed the game of golf—in the eyes of Americans, at least—from the pastime of the white-collar denizens of stuffy, exclusive country clubs to the status of the everyman (and -woman’s) game that it has always enjoyed in its birthplace—Scotland.

Palmer’s love for the game, and for the fans who adored him, translated into commercial success that kept him among the top earners in the game years after his playing days were over, and a large part of that mutual love stemmed from the hometown appeal that he exuded.

A man like Arnold Palmer could have lived virtually anywhere he wanted, and though he had homes in Orlando, Florida and La Quinta, California, in the Palm Springs area, his birthplace of Latrobe, Pennsylvania was his true home until the end of his life. As hinted at by the title, the anecdotes that make up this book are largely hometown stories told to the author by the townsfolk who knew Palmer as Deacon’s boy, the guy who stopped in at the Youngstown Grille for breakfast or the Tin Lizzy tavern for a drink, and who played much of his golf at Latrobe Country Club.

From the way he treated people, and the way that people responded to him, you might never know that Arnold Palmer was a man who had literally dined with presidents, kings, and queens; who could, and had, played golf at the most renowned and exclusive golf courses in the world (and was a part-owner of one of the best, Pebble Beach Golf Links), or that a street, the local airport, and a few other things around town in Latrobe were named after him.

Author Chris Rodell brings considerable hometown cred to the table in writing this book of reminiscences. Rodell has himself lived in Latrobe since 1992, within walking distance of Palmer’s own home. He came to know golf’s greatest legend after first meeting him in 2001, and in 2005 was hired to go through more than a dozen legal-sized boxes of magazine and newspaper clippings detailing Mr Palmer’s life as told in publications the world over, for the purpose of compiling a timeline of the great man’s career. Throughout the process, if he had a question, all he had to do was go ask Mr Palmer—not bad, huh?

It was a level of access that is unique among the dozens, if not hundreds, of journalist and writers who have interviewed Arnold Palmer over the years, and gives this book a level of authenticity that is virtually unmatched in the canon of Palmer bio’s. If you are a golfer (or even if you are not), and a fan of Arnold Palmer, you will enjoy this book. Arnold Palmer: Homespun Stories of The King is available from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and if they know what’s good for them, at your local golf shop.

An Evening with a Champion – 1966 U.S. Open Winner Billy Casper at Lake Merced Golf Club

The Lake Course at San Francisco’s Olympic Club has gained a reputation for producing come-from-behind winners whenever it hosts the U.S. Open golf tournament. The first time that the Olympic Club hosted the Open, in 1955, an unheralded municipal course pro from Iowa named Jack Fleck overtook the great Ben Hogan to tie in regulation play, and then defeated Hogan in a playoff the next day. In 1966, Arnold Palmer had a seven-stroke lead over Billy Casper going into the final round. Overly-complacent with such a large lead in hand with nine holes to play, Palmer had pressed too hard on Olympic’s back nine in pursuit of Ben Hogan’s U.S. Open scoring record. Casper made birdies while Palmer made bogies, and once again a leader was overtaken to force a playoff, and the come-from-behind player won. In this instance it was less of an upset than the Fleck vs. Hogan battle eleven years earlier – Casper had twenty-nine wins to his credit at that point, including the 1959 U.S. Open.

The U.S. Open returned to the storied environs of the Olympic Club this year, for the fifth time, and these past champions returned to the Bay Area to revisit the scene of their long-ago triumphs, and to be fêted by appreciative golf enthusiasts. On the evening of Wednesday, June 13th, the night before the opening rounds of the 112th U.S. Open were to begin, one of these great champions from the past shared his recollections of those events with a roomful of golf fans – Billy Casper joined a group of the members of Lake Merced Golf Club for an evening of conversation and recollection, not only about those five eventful days in 1966 at the Olympic Club, but his entire career. I was privileged to be among Mr Casper’s audience that evening, as a guest of Lake Merced’s general manager, Donna Lowe. It was a wonderful evening with a great past champion of our game, and a fitting prelude to the competition that was to begin the following morning, less than a mile away, at the Olympic Club.

Billy Casper, 1966 United States Open champion, spoke to an attentive group at Lake Merced Golf Club on the evening of Wednesday, June 13th, 2012 – the night before the start of the 2012 United States Open at San Francisco’s Olympic Club, the site of his Open victory 46 years before. Photo credit: Sarah Reid/LMGC

As reflected in the title of his recent autobiography, The Big Three and Me, Casper languished somewhat in the shadow of the three most recognizable players of the late 1960s – Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, and Jack Nicklaus. This is quite amazing given their respective records: in the period from 1964 to 1970, Casper won 27 times on Tour to Nicklaus’ 25, and Palmer and Player’s combined 21. Casper’s victories in that six-year span included the 1966 U.S. Open, of course, and the 1970 Masters, both wins coming in playoffs. Casper acquired a reputation as something of an eccentric at the time – for instance, it was well known that he included exotic game meats such as buffalo, bear and elk in his diet; what was not so well known was that his eccentric diet came as a result of doctor’s orders to rotate different types of protein because of food allergies.

The Big Three and Me, the new autobiography of Billy Casper.

His audience learned this and much more as Mr Casper spoke that evening, sitting in the handsome dining room of the Lake Merced Golf Club’s clubhouse with the evening sun playing shadows across the 18th hole just over his shoulder. Introduced by his long-time friend, retired attorney James Parkinson (Mr Parkinson assisted Mr Casper in the production of his book), who acted as MC and prompter, Casper offered a retrospective of his life and career, with an emphasis on the events of that same week, 46 years earlier, when the U.S. Open came to the Olympic Club for the second time.

With a level of recall that is quite remarkable in a man 80 years of age, Casper related the events of that midsummer weekend nearly a half-century ago to a rapt audience. Palmer and Casper had come to the last nine holes on Sunday with Palmer in command of a 7-shot lead over Casper, and Jack Nicklaus another two shots back. As they made their way to the 10th tee, Palmer heard Casper say, “I’m going to have to play like hell just to finish second.” and responded “I’ll do everything I can to help you.” That somewhat cocky response from Palmer stiffened Casper’s resolve, and while Palmer turned his attention toward the larger goal of breaking the Hogan scoring record, and away from his fellow competitor and victory in the tournament at hand, Casper determined to do his best to do better than to “just finish second.”

With a nearly stroke-by-stroke recollection of their play over the last nine holes of Olympic’s Lake Course, Mr Casper related to the audience Palmer’s fall, and his own rise, over the closing holes of regulation play: Palmer’s duckhook into the rough at 10 for a bogey to Casper’s par, paring his lead to six; their matching pars and birdies at the 11th and 12th holes, respectively; another pull to the left by Palmer at the par-3 13th to Casper’s par – cutting Palmer’s lead to five with five holes to play. After matching pars at 14, the 15th hole changed things up – Casper was safely on in one, facing a breaking 20-foot putt for birdie, but Palmer’s over-confident try for the flag bounced off the firm, fast putting surface into the back rough. Casper rolled in his birdie putt and Palmer made bogey – a two-shot swing, and Palmer’s lead was now three, with three holes to play.

Now they came to the 16th hole, a big sweeping left-hander of a par-5 which was playing at 604 yards that day. The sixteenth hole had been a subject of conversation leading up to the beginning of play at the 2012 Open, due to a new tee box which stretched the length of the hole to a record-setting 670 yards. Though no one could have known it on that Wednesday evening before the tournament, the 16th hole was to play a part in the final result of the 2012 tournament that was similar to the part it had played in 1966.

Just as Jim Furyk was to do the Sunday following this evening’s talk, Palmer’s tee shot in 1966 went hard left off the tee. While Furyk’s tee shot ended up in the left-hand trees from a shortened tee – only 562 yards that day – Palmer’s drive from 604 ended up in the thick rough left of the fairway. He had tried for a long drawing tee shot that would get him close enough for a chance to get on in two, but he had tried too hard, and pulled it left. After two slashes at the ball with an iron, Palmer was out. His spoon (3-wood) from the fairway ended up in a greenside bunker, but he salvaged a bogey six with a blast out of the bunker and a 4-foot putt – “…the greatest six I ever made,” he called it later.

As good as Palmer’s save at 16 was, Casper had made a birdie with a conservative drive to the fairway, an advance to within a pitch-shot of the green with a spoon, and a wedge to fifteen feet. He rolled in the 15-footer for birdie and another two-shot swing – Palmer’s lead was down to a single stroke.

Stories of his life and career came easily to mind for Mr Casper – with only a little prompting from his long-time friend, and co-producer of his book, James Parkinson (seated). Photo credit: Sarah Reid/LMGC

Mr Casper recounted these events as if they had happened last week instead of nearly a half-century ago, and his audience of Lake Merced club members and guests hung on every word. He recalled how Palmer missed a seven-foot putt for par on the 17th hole, tying the tournament, and how, after matching pars at the amphitheater-like finishing hole, they finished in a dead-heat 278 after 72 holes of regulation play. The seven-stroke slide over the last nine holes seemed to have taken the wind out of Palmer’s sails, though, and Casper rolled up the victory in the 18-hole playoff the following day, carding a 1-under 69 to Palmer’s 3-over score of 73.

Two U.S. Opens at the Olympic Club, eleven years apart, two come-from-behind victories – and those of us in the audience at Lake Merced Golf Club that evening were lucky enough to hear the story of the second directly from the victor, Billy Casper. Mr Casper took a couple of questions from the audience before wrapping things up (asked if he still played as well as he used to, he said “I hit it so short now, I can hear my ball land.”), and then the evening was over – much too soon. He signed souvenir pin flags and copies of his book for audience members before leaving – mementoes of a memorable evening with a great champion.