When Arnie Met Winnie

WHEN ARNIE MET WINNIE

And golf has never been the same – by William Kelly

Arnold Palmer recently dedicated a park to his late wife Winnie, granting her wish that the land remain undeveloped, and epitomizing a love story that continues to enamor the game of golf. (1)

When and where they met became an historic occasion, and their adventures together on the U.S. PGA golf tour, which attracted millions of new fans to the game, added an everlasting love story to the legacy of the game.

The time and place are set in stone – September 1954 – at Shawnee-on-Delaware, Fred Waring’s Pocono, Pennsylvania resort (2), but it was social circumstances and the state of the game of golf at the time that would create a situation that would change the nature of the game forever.

Three local players with strong ties to Jersey Shore were there at the time - Howard Everett, a great amateur, and Atlantic City / Mays Landing Country Club professionals Stan Dudas and Ron Ward, each giving a unique perspective to the situation.

Howard Everett worked at Shawnee as a publicist for Fred Waring, a big band leader whose popular radio show featured the orchestra playing live from his resort, Shawnee-on-the Delaware. Waring’s annual golf tournament was the social event of the season, and it was Everett’s job to make it a success, but nobody could have predicted what transpired.

Howard Everett is a throwback to another era when the best players were amateurs, and he knew Palmer from playing against him in match play during the 1948 Pennsylvania Amateur (Everett defeated Palmer, lost to Art Wall).

"I invited Palmer to Shawnee before he won the Amateur," Everett recalled in an interview shortly before he died. Palmer later acknowledged that he had previously declined invitations to Fred Waring’s tournament because he couldn’t afford to go, but after winning the national amateur championship, and having a steady job selling paint, he made Shawnee his first tournament as the new champion.

"And that’s when he met Winnie," said Everett, "and so I was in the thick of the beginning of that romance. But the story goes back much further than that. It all goes back to Atlantic City."

Everett was known for playing out of Manufacturers Hanover club in suburban Philadelphia, but he lived in a house next to the old practice fairway at the Atlantic City Country Club, and was close friends with club owner Leo Fraser.

In 1950 Bucky Worsham was the pro at Atlantic City, and Arnold Palmer was a seaman stationed at the Cape May Coast Guard base, not far away.

Palmer had been close friends with Bucky’s younger brother Buddy Worsham, who came from a family of fine golfers (Brother Lew won the 1947 U.S.Open). Arnie and Buddy Worsham both went to Wake Forest on golf scholarships and were roommates, but when Buddy died suddenly in a car accident, Palmer quit school and enlisted in the Coast Guard.

While stationed at Cape May, Palmer laid out his first course (3) and played at a number of Jersey Shore courses, including the Wildwood Country Club, Somers Point-Ocean City (now Greate Bay) and Atlantic City Country Club, where Bucky Worsham, the older brother of his late best friend, was the pro.

At Atlantic City Palmer played in the annual Sonny Fraser tournament, a popular mid-amateur event (won by Sonny Fraser, Dr. Cary Middlecoff, Julious Boros, et al.) that Everett had won a record six times.

As Howard Everett said, it all goes back to Atlantic City.

ATLANTIC CITY & SHAWNEE

There was always a strong affinity between the Atlantic City Country Club and Shawnee. The Shawnee amateurs played Atlantic City every year. They put up a memorial plaque and planted a tree out by the front door of the club next to the trolley bell. And at the end of the Tap Room, above the bay window that overlooks the course, there is an old, brown panoramic photo of the old Shawnee.

While Atlantic City was built in 1897, Shawnee was built a decade later in 1907, the first course designed by famed golf course architect A.W. Tillinghast, one of the players with the group that coined the term "birdie" at Atlantic City, and one of the most prolific and influential of the early American golf course designers.

Shawnee is a dramatic 27 hole course, with 24 of the holes on an island on the Delaware River. The Buckwood Inn was built a few years after the course was laid out, making it a popular resort, and in 1913 Shawnee was the host of one of the most famous golf tournaments in the country, which attracted most of the U.S. Open field.

Johnny McDermott, the two-time defending U.S. Open champion was the 20 year old Atlantic City Country Club pro, the first native born American and at 19, the youngest and still the youngest to have ever won the U.S. Open national golf championship. The tournament at Shawnee was held a week before the 1913 U.S. Open, which that year was at the Country Club at Brookline, Massachusetts.

McDermott and all the top golfers played in the Buckwood tournament, which McDermott won handily, defeating Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, arguably the two greatest golfers to ever play the game, by eight strokes. McDermott then gave a speech and promised that the U.S. Open trophy would not leave the country that year. That speech, which reporters wired around the world, put golf on the front page of every newspaper in the country and English speaking world, and set up the "Greatest Game Ever Played," won by local Brookline amateur Francis Ouimet. (4)

That game sparked a letter promoting the idea of creating a professional golf association. This letter was cited by Rodman Wanamaker in his remarks at the 1938 PGA Championship at Shawnee (won by local pro Paul Runyan over Sam Snead), (5) and for whom the PGA Champion Wanamaker Trophy is named after.

In 1943 longtime Shawnee owner C.C. Worthington sold the Buckwood Inn and the golf course to big band leader Fred Waring, who renamed it the Shawnee Inn. (6)

FRED WARING AND STAN DUDAS

That’s where Stan Dudas comes in. Dudas, another witness to when Arnie met Winnie, quit school in the ninth grade and left his Simpson, Pennsylvania coal mining hometown an aimless runaway, until he was picked up hitchhiking by Fred Warring.

Warring talked Dudas into going with him to Shawnee, where Dudas started out working as a bus boy in the dining room but quickly gravitated to the pro shop. There he earned tips for cleaning clubs and learned lessons in golf and life from Harry Obitz, the pro at the time, and his assistant Spec Hannon. Spec had been a caddy for Walter Hagen and Harry and Spec taught Dudas to play golf. After a few years Fred Warring thought he was good and sent young Dudas, then only seventeen, out on the winter pro tour, paying his way.

"I was young, the first time I was on my own," recalled Dudas, who passed away in March.(7)"I was with great guys – Jimmy Demaret, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, the top players on the tour at the time. Demaret was a real colorful character and we got to be buddies right away."

Of course Jimmy Demaret was the last guy you wanted your seventeen year old to pal around with. As the first three-time Masters champion with 31 PGA tour wins, Demaret was also one of the most flamboyant players to ever play the game. Although he broke the scoring record at the 1948 US Open and still lost to fellow Texan Ben Hogan, Demaret was best known as a flashy dresser and the life of the tour party for over twenty years. (8) So it’s a matter of opinion on how much Jimmy Demaret helped or hurt Stan Dudas on the tour.

Returning to Shawnee to work every summer, Stan Dudas was a young, but major player in the golf game at Shawnee when Arnold Palmer arrived to play in this special tournament.

PALMER AT THE YOUNG MASTERS - "FRED WARING’S ANNUAL SHINDIG"

As Howard Everett recalled, "At the time I was working publicity for Fred Warring at Shawnee-on- Delaware, as they called it, and I had invited Arnie ahead of time, to participate in this tournament that Warring called the Young Masters. I had invited him before he won the U.S. Amateur, and Fred Warring kidded me and said that since he won the championship he probably wouldn’t come to our tournament. I said not only would he come, but he was bringing his boss (Cleveland paint dealer Bill Wehnes) and his boss’ wife, and I told him who they were."

After winning the national amateur Palmer said he intended to stay an amateur, like Ouimet and Everett, and looked forward to playing in the next Walker Cup in England.

In his autobiography, A Golfer's Life (9) Palmer wrote that he hadn’t decided to turn pro, even after winning the U.S. Amateur. "I like selling paint," Palmer said, "I have no intention of turning professional. I am very happy and my new title automatically puts me on the Walker Cup team."

"At the moment I said this, I really meant it. With a six-month apprenticeship required by the PGA Tour, a period during which you could take no official prize money, I simply couldn’t imagine how I could make a living on the tour. So I pointed out that the Walker Cup would be contested in England the next spring and I couldn’t wait to go there. I also note that my next golfing goal was the British Amateur crown."

"They say lightning never strikes the same spot twice, but my tale is proof that it sometimes can strike you again when you least expect it to. In this case, lighting of a very different nature struck me within days of hoisting the Amateur trophy. My words – to say nothing of the direction of my life – abruptly changed."

"Mother hadn’t been back home in Latrobe for more than a few days when she got a phone call from Fred Waring, the celebrated bandleader of the Pennsylvanians, inviting me to play in his annual golf tournament, the Waite Memorial, at Shawnee-on-Delaware. Fred had invited me to his annual golf shindig before, but I could never afford to go. Now that I was the new National Amateur champion I was more anxious to go, but I’d been away from my job so much of the summer I felt bad asking Bill Wehnes for yet another week off."

"Bill solved the problem by telling me, ‘...we’ll all drive down there.’"

Besides publicists Howard Everett and Stan Dudas, Ron Ward was another young golf pro at Shawnee who would later become the pro at Atlantic City and Wildwood Country Clubs, and is now at Mays Landing Country Club.

Ward recalls, "...I got to Shawnee on June 2nd of 1952, and I left there about the middle of October, 1960, and then I became the pro at Atlantic City, April 1st, 1961," so Ward was new at Shawnee when Palmer arrived.

Ward recalled that, "Howard Everett was kind of a general manager. Fred Waring liked him. I always said that Howard Everett was one of the original Arnold Palmers, because as an amateur he was really good, and he was a good looking guy, and he could really wack the hell out of that ball."

As for how Arnie met Winnie, Ward says, "Here’s what happened. Arnold Palmer was working for a guy named Bill Wehnes, who was in the paint business. And Bill used to come to Shanwnee with his beautiful wife. Palmer worked for Bill as a paint seller. So Bill came to Shawnee, and Fred Waring had this big invitational tournament that always started the day after Labor Day. So Bill Wehnes wanted to bring Arnold to play and he had him entered in the tournament, but then Arnold won the U.S. Amateur at the Detroit Country Club on that Saturday, increasing interest in the tournament at Shawnee the following week."

"So anyway, Arnie wins the national amateur out of the blue," recalls Ward. "He wasn’t expected to win it, he wasn’t favored like Tiger Woods was, but he won the national championship and then comes to play this little tournament at Shawnee."

As Ward recalls the situation, "Fred Warning, who owned the place, had a daughter named Dixie, and Dixie’s buddy was Winnie Walzer. The Walzer family liked to hang around the club but they didn’t play golf. Mr. Walzer sold food, and him and Mr. Waring became friends. So that’s what Winnie was doing there. She used to hang around the pool a lot. I never did see her on the golf course, but she was a cute little girl."

At first Palmer drifted towards the other young players, including Stan Dudas and Ronnie Ward, but as Ward recalls, "There were these cute girls around – Fred’s daughter Dixie was a cuttie pie, and her friend Winnie was as cute as a bell," and it was Winnie Walzer who caught Palmer’s eye and got his attention.

Palmer remembers the moment quite clearly. "The tournament festivities began over Labor Day weekend. We arrived on Monday and checked into the Shawnee Inn, a beautiful rustic lodge abuzz with tournament activities. I immediately went out on the golf course to play a practice round, and as I was coming back into the inn I saw a couple of pretty girls coming down the stairway that led to the main lobby. One of them was Dixie Waring, Fred’s daughter. But it was the quieter, prettier, dark-haired one that really caught my eye. She had smoky good looks, and her demeanor had a clear sheen of class."

As Stan Dudas recalled it, they played some golf and then mingled around the club until at some point Palmer just blurted out, "Who is That girl?," obviously speaking about Winnie Walzer.

"When Arnie met Winnie, it was love at first sight," said Everett, but there still had to be formal introductions.

"Fred had a secretary, Cora Ballard, who was good at things like that," said Ward, "and she probably introduced them formally."

That’s how Palmer remembers it, describing Waring’s longtime secretary, Cora Ballard as "a whisky-voiced redhead," who "paused and introduced me to the two girls she was chaperoning for the week, the tournament’s official ‘hostesses,’ and I shook hands with Winifred Walzer."

"What I guess I failed to notice, smitten as I was with her, was that almost everybody around us save (her father) Shube Walzer (who was back home in Coopersburg, by the way) was shamelessly promoting the match – and all these years later it amuses me how many people claim they had the critical hand in bringing us together."

"If you don’t have anything to do," Palmer said to her, ‘why don’t you come out and watch the golf.’"

"Perhaps I will," she replied with a smile.

"I think I learned she and Dixie Waring were old chums from Shawnee, and I must have been thinking Winnie must be a rich girl from Philadelphia’s Main Line. She was so refined and polished. Little did I know she was really from the village of Coopersburg, just outside Bethlehem, and though her father, Shube, was successful enough in the canned foods business to afford a summer cottage at Shawnee, the Walzers were by no means wealthy in the sense of Philadelphia wealth. She only hobnobbed with girls from the Main Line. Winnie was nineteen, studying interior design at Brown University’s affiliated design school at Pembroke College, aiming to be an interior decorator. Unbeknownst to me she was a veteran of Shawnee’s social swirl and had even dated some of the most eligible bachelor golfers, including my old adversary Harvie Ward."

"I don’t think I saw her at the dinner that was held that evening, but I was pleased when I glanced over the next afternoon and saw her watching from the edge of the eleventh fairway. Years later I learned that was purely an accident – she was really en route to watch her ‘Uncle Fred’ Waring play golf. Fred, who was in the foursome directly behind mine, was deeply fond of Winnie and almost jealously protective of her. Anyway, I sauntered over and asked if she ‘planned to tag along’ and made small talk with her and wondered if she would be interesting in sitting with me at the dinner dance scheduled for later that evening. She said she would, and I went on about my business with a new spring in my step."

"Winnie, I began to learn that night, was unlike any girl I ever met, not just pretty and comfortable in almost any social situation, but also smart, well traveled (she’d just come home from a big European trip), engagingly independent minded, even something of a would-be social rebel. The only girl in a close-knit Moravian family that included two brothers and a host of boy cousins, she had a grandfather who was a minister and uncles who were college professors. She had grown up absorbing the blows from baseball games and kick-the-can with her male cousins, but also kept her father’s books from an early age. She had pluck and ambition, and she didn’t suffer vain or pretentious fools easily. Her mother, Mary, was something of a sweet social butterfly who may have entertained hopes that Winifred would become a proper debutante in due course, but feisty Winnie Walzer wanted none of that…..We became inseparable for the rest of the week,…"

The electricity between Arnie and Winnie didn’t go unnoticed and even played into the odds on the tournament.

"Arnie’s walking around holding Winnie’s hand, and I’m betting against him in the tournament," recalls Ward, "because my boss the golf Harry Obits always said, ‘Don’t mix girls and golf.’ So during the tournament I bet against Arnie. But he could hold Winnie’s hand and still beat everybody, and he won it."

"Nobody had to bring us together or promote the match," notes Palmer. "By Friday night my amateur partner, Tommy Sheehan, and I were leading the tournament, but more important, I was completely taken with Winnie Walzer and a plan was forming in my brain."

Palmer: "But that first evening at the dinner dance she got a taste of the unexpected impact sudden ‘fame’ can have on a young man’s life. I happened to be dancing with an older golf professional’s wife when she suddenly seized my shoulder and whispered damply into my ear, "Take me away from all this. Let’s me and you run away together!’"

"The poor women sounded desperate – and frighteningly serious. She had four children and a swell husband, and she scared the daylights out of me. So I slunk back to the table. After a while, I told Winnie what had happened, and she laughed. That was another thing I loved about Winnie Walzer, her robust and infectious laugh. She had a no-nonsense, down-to-earth way of placing everything in perspective, I was discovering, including alcohol-fueled dance floor confessions from older women. What I didn’t know then was that, despite our wonderful week of intimate conversation about family and golf and life in general, typically held after my rounds in the club bar where underage Winnie could sip her favorite Fitzgerald Old Fashions, come Friday night my beautiful escort was watching me go through the buffet line with more than casual interest…."

"At the dinner, I reached under the table and took her hand and said, ‘What would you think if I asked you to get married.?’"

"The question appeared to startle her, though only for a second or two. ‘Well, I don’t know. This is so sudden. Can I have a day to think about it?’ she replied."

"‘Not too long,’ I said to her. ‘I have places to go.’"

"I told her my grand plan: we would get married in the spring and use the Walker Cup tournament as our honeymoon. She assured me that her mother and aunts would love that romantic plan – as they did. She told me her father would probably grumble a lot but would eventually come around because he wanted his only daughter to be happy. For such a crack judge of character, she either overestimated her father’s capacity to appreciate romance or underestimated his contempt for unconventional suitors for his daughter. As it turned out, the last thing Shube Walzer wanted was his daughter marrying a golf bum, which is pretty much what he thought of all the tournament golfers in those days."

Winnie’s brother Marty Walzer recalls that Saturday in 1954 when he noticed his parents and 19 year old sister talking in their Coopersburg, Pennsylvania home. "I was 13," he said, "old enough to know that just from the way they were talking, it was serious. The previous Tuesday night, Arnold, who had just won the United States Amateur, had met Winnie at a party for a golf tournament at Shawnee-on-the-Delaware, and now she was telling my mother and father that on Friday night Arnold had proposed to her."

"I suppose it was no surprise that word quickly leaked out about the proposal." Palmer himself recalls. "Winnie quickly informed her mother, who was happy as expected, and her mother broke the news to her father – who wasn’t remotely happy to hear about it. Shube had heard such declared intentions from his headstrong daughter before and, I think, felt love would run its course in due time. At the final presentation dinner, Fred Waring startled everybody by announcing that I wasn’t only taking the tournament trophy home from Shawnee-on-the-Delawere, but a fiancée as well."

But it wasn’t that easy. Like all young love, there was a bit of uncertainty after Palmer left Shawnee for Florida, where his father accompanied him to the Miami Open.

In Florida with his father, Deacon Palmer later said Arnie couldn’t stop thinking about that girl. As Everett explained it, "In Florida, after working and living in a hotel room for a few days the Deak said, ‘Arnie, I think you got this sewed up, so why are you so downhearted and out of sorts?’"

"And I got this from the Deacon himself, he said, ‘Dad, I will never feel right until I go back to Shawnee and see whether I want to marry that girl.’"

Palmer remembers it a little bit differently, as he recalls, "...I asked Pap to accompany me to the first event, the Miami Open...I missed the cut and was boiling mad at myself, I returned to the motel only to find a message from my old girlfriend, the Cleveland model; she was in town working and wanted to get together for a few drinks. That seemed like just the remedy I needed, so I went out and returned sometime after midnight only to find Pap waiting up for me – and as mad at me as I’ve ever seen him. Through clenched teeth he asked me where the hell I’d been and I told him truthfully – out for some drinks and a few laughs with an old friend, nothing too serious, all pretty innocent."

"’You’re engaged and you’ve got an obligation to that girl back in Pennsylvania,’ he snarled at me."

" ‘Do you love her?’ he snapped,….Then you better go get her and get married and get on with your business and quit screwing around like a college boy. Do you understand me?’ I did indeed."

"I was there working when Arnie came back to Shawnee," said Everett, "and took a lot of pictures of everyone. Stan Dudas was there, and Ronnie Ward, both later became Atlantic City pros. We played a round with Fred Warring and Palmer, and of course Winnie was there and walked the whole 18 holes with us."

But things had changed in the meantime. For one, while Palmer won the money to buy Winnie an engagement ring by playing his boss and a few friends over three rounds at Pine Valley, he suddenly decided to turn pro.

While they were playing golf back at Shawnee, Stand Dudas suggested Palmer go to Bermuda and play in a tournament with him as an amateur, but Palmer said to Dudas, "No Stan, I’m going to turn pro." It was a startling announcement.

Palmer later explained that in order to earn enough money for an engagement ring for Winnie, he shot a remarkable 67, 69 and 68 in three rounds at Pine Valley, collecting enough money in bets from his boss and friends to buy a decent ring. But playing those three rounds at Pine Valley also gave him the confidence and the belief that he could make it on the pro tour, and the realization that he had to turn pro in order to support a family.

"It was while we were there in that ultimate golf terrarium (Pine Valley)," wrote Palmer, "that I had time to think about what Winnie and I were really up against. My salesman salary scarcely covered my own expenses, much less those of a married couple in need of a first house and possibly children in the near future…and as much as I liked the proposed scenario of a big church wedding in the spring and steaming off to England for the Walker Cup, in my heart I saw only one way for us to make it as man and wife. I would need to turn pro."

As Ron Ward points out, "Back in those days it was better to stay amateur because there wasn’t that much money in turning pro, so amateurs stayed amateurs, they didn’t turn pro."
But for a guy like Palmer, like Walter Hagan ahead of him, he could envision the ability to take his game to another level, and then take the game of golf to another level with him.

But how to break the news to Winnie? "...We met in the afternoon at the New Yorker Hotel," explains Palmer, " and – talk about a potentially bad omen – checked in just as some poor chap committed suicide by leaping from an upstairs window. A little later in the bar, still shaken, Winnie probably thought our plans were crashing too, when I informed her of my change in strategy – namely, that I’d decided to turn pro and that we should probably get married as soon as possible, certainly before the start of the new Tour season out west. England and the Walker Cup were out; the uncertain life of a Tour rookie’s bride was in."

"Her face fell, but she didn’t seem as upset as I thought she might be at this idea, though she needlessly pointed out that her father wasn’t going to like this news any better than the last."

''My mother was all for it,'' Marty Walzer said, ''but Dad had reservations. He came around eventually, but after Winnie and Arnold had their two daughters, Peggy and Amy, I remember Dad telling Arnold, 'You wait and see, you'll feel the same way I did.' ''

But at the time he was dead set against his only daughter getting married to a golf bum.

"My mother and Pap took an instant shine to Winnie when they met her the following week in Latrobe. Back in Coopersburg, the female family think tank already had big wedding plans well under way, but there was still no movement on the Shube Walzer front. Shube was tough customer, a successful businessman who loathed Roosevelt and the socially liberal policies of just about any other Democrat. Pap, on the other hand, was a strong Democrat and devoted Roosevelt man who thought the late president hung the moon. In some ways, the families hailed no just from different ends of Pennsylvania, but different ends of the planet."

So instead of getting married in a big church wedding with a reception with all their friends and family back at the country club, they eloped to Falls Church, Virginia, not far from the home of Arnold’s sister Cheech, where they were married.

As Palmer put it, "We spent our honeymoon night at a trucker’s motel off the Breezewood exit of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It wasn’t terribly romantic, and in retrospect, it makes me realize what a true gem I had found in Winifred Walzer. Here was this classy, educated, beautiful girl who risked her father’s eternal wrath and gave up her girlhood wedding dreams and goodness knows what else to follow a guy who’d never made a plugged nickel as a professional golfer."

And so they set out, hitched to a trailer, at the same time television started to broadcast tournaments. They slowly picked up Arnie’s Army, took golf to prime time and brought millions of new amateur players into the game, taking golf to another level of popularity.

And things have never been quite the same.


William Kelly is the author of Birth of the Birdie – The First 100 Years of Golf at Atlantic City Country Club, and is currently writing The Flight of the Eagleon the growth of golf in America. He can be reached at Billykelly3@gmail.com

Notes:
1) Winnie's nature preserve. http://www.arnoldpalmer.com/allarnie/wpNature.aspx
2) Shawnee Inn http://www.shawneeinn.com/default.aspx
3) Palmer’s First Course http://kellysgolfhistory.blogspot.com/2008/02/palmers-first-course-in-cape-may.html
4) The Greatest Game, not the Greatest Movie http://kellysgolfhistory.blogspot.com/2008/02/greatest-game-ever-played.html
5) Shawnee Today See: http://www.golfdigest.com/golfworld/2007/08/gw20070810stachura
6) Fred Waring bio http://www.parabrisas.com/d_waringf.php
7) Stan Dudas RIP http://kellysgolfhistory.blogspot.com/2008/02/stan-dudas-rip.html
8) Jimmy Demaret http://www.golfdigest.com/golfworld/special/masters/20000331billfields].
9) A Golfer’s Life (with James Dodson, Ballantine Books, NY, 1999)

Arnie Palmer and Bucky Worsham

Above: Arnold Palmer, Golf Coach Johnny Johnson and Buddy Worsham

Below: Arnie and Buddy

Even in 2011, when Charlie Rose asked Palmer about Wake Forest and Buddy, Palmer choked up when talking about it, over sixty years later. - BK billkelly3@gmail.com

Charlie Rose Interviews Arnold Palmer:

Arnold Palmer: Well I worked for dad on the grounds and I was in high school and I said I wanted to go to college, and he said, well, you figure it out. He said I will pay for your college but you’re going to go to St. Vincent. St. Vincent College right here. That’s about as much as I can afford, you work here, right here at home. I said, what if I can get somewhere else? And he said if I can get there, that’s your call.

So I played high school golf, I played amateur golf and I started getting officers. The offers started coming in. I was playing pretty good, won amateur tournaments as a junior, and the whole thing. I was playing in the national juniors in Los Angles, with a buddy of mine who was from Washington DC. His name was Marvin “Bud” Worsham, and his brother was Lew, the pro at Oakmont who won the Open in ’47.

That was the year we graduated. We were out there playing in the juniors. And he said, Ernie, where you going to go to college? And I said I was looking at a couple, I had some officers, I had feelers from Penn State and Pitt, and Miami, and I like the Miami because I could play golf all winter.

He said, “Hey, if I get you a scholarship will you go with me?”

And I said, where?

And he said Wake Forest.

I said, where’s that?

He said it’s in North Carolina.

And I said, that’s great, you can play golf all year.

He said if I contact them and they give you a scholarship, will you go?

I said, “You bet.”

The athletic director was a guy named Jim Weaver. Did you ever hear that name? You should, as he’s the guy who founded the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Charlie Rose: Exactly. And I grew up as you know some 30 miles from Wake Forest.

You should have because he founded the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Arnold Palmer: Well Jim Weaver, I had no idea who it was. I didn’t even know where Wake Forest was. I came home from that tournament, played another one and then got on a bus and went on a bus to Wake Forest. I’ll never Jim Weaver became one of the best friends I ever had. He was athletic director, golf coach, he did the whole thing. And that’s how I ended up at Wake Forest.

Charlie Rose: So you were there, and Bud Worsham was there, and Jim Flick was there too, was he not?

Arnold Palmer: He and I roomed together after the accident. Bud got killed in an automobile accident our senior year and my roommate then became Jim Flick.

Charlie Rose: Bud’s death had a big impact on you.

Arnold Palmer: Terrible. (Pause, choking up) He was…..(pause)….he was like a brother. We did everything, we played golf against each other, we did everything you could do… and when he got killed, it was for me about as bad as you could get. I finished the semester and I couldn’t stand it, so I decided I had to do something else, and get my mind cleared up, so joined the Coast Guard. And spent three years in the Coast Guard after that.

Charlie Rose: So you got out of the Coast Guard and you were ready to be a golfer?

Arnold Palmer: Yea. What the Coast Guard did for me in three years was as much as what Wake Forest did for me as a school. It matured me and allowed me grow up. When I went back to Wake Forest for my final year I knew then that things were better. Meaning I knew I could handle myself.

Charlie Rose: More mature.

Arnold Palmer: Exactly. I enjoyed it. I went back after school, after my senior year I went back to Cleveland to work there for the summer and that’s when things started happening, the amateur and so.....

Read the transcript of the entire interview: http://kellysgolfhistory.blogspot.com/2011/10/charlie-rose-interviews-arnold-palmer.html

Arnold Palmer's Coast Guard Days

Arnold Palmer in the Coast Guard

(See: Birth of the Birdie, p. 103 Arnold Palmer's Coast Guard Days)
Photo from U.S. Coast Guard.

Chapter 9 of Birth of the Birdie

ARNOLD PALMER'S COAST GUARD DAYS

Arnold Palmer was a relatively unknown Coast Guard enlisted man when he first visited Atlantic City Country Club, and he credits with those he played with at the time as having an effect on the eventual outcome of his career.

Palmer began playing as a youngster when his father cut off the handle of a wooden club for the three year old to play. He won his first scholastic match in 1943 and the state amateur title as a sophomore. When his friend Buddy Worsham obtained a golf scholarship to Wake Forest, Worsham convinced the coach to give Palmer a scholarship as well. While Palmer was then unknown, Worsham was from a from a family of famous golfers - his brother Lew had won the 1947 U.S. Open and Virgil "Buck" Worsham was a golf professional at the Atlantic City Country Club.

"I worked as the head pro at Atlantic City in 1951 and 1952," recalls Virgil "Buck" Worsham. "I was hired by Mr. Leo Fraser, who I met through Charlie Price, the Editor of Golf World. I came right after Sonny Fraser had died, so I never met Sonny."

According to Worsham, "Atlantic City in 1951 wasn't like what it is now. It was quite unsettled and sparsely populated along Shore Road. We used to get a lot of people from Philadelphia and New York down in the summer time when people swarmed to the beaches and boardwalk. I certainly enjoyed working for Leo Fraser. It was a nice experience, a nice place to be. We had some good players, too."

As Bucky Worsham recalls the situation, "Arnold was a room mate of my brother in college when he was killed in an automobile accident. When he joined the Coast Guard he was stationed in Cape May and he would come up and stay with me and play Atlantic City every few weeks or so. He played in a few tournaments, but he was playing so infrequently he didn't win."

In his introduction to James W. Finegan's Centennial Tribute to Golf in Philadelphia, Palmer wrote, "In 1952 and 1953, I was in the Coast Guard, stationed at Cape May, New Jersey, and was able to find time for some golf. Most of it was along the Jersey shore - Atlantic City, Cape May, Wildwood. I played quite a few rounds at Atlantic City Country Club. Leo Fraser was running Atlantic City then - I know that his sons run it today - and sometimes there were some pretty good matches against some of the better amateurs in the area."

"I remember playing against Harry Elwell," Palmer recalled, "and also against Beatle Beirne, who was from Riverton." Palmer also played other local courses, including Ocean City - Somers Point, what is now Greate Bay, where Eddie O'Donnell was the longtime professional. Today O'Donnell works as a teaching professional at the Mays Landing Country Club.

Sure he remembers Arnold Palmer. "I was sitting in the pro shop (at Ocean City - Somers Point) with Harry Elwell," O'Donnell recalls, "and this young man comes in dressed in uniform and asks for the club professional."

"That's me," Eddie replied. Palmer introduced himself. He explained that his father was a club manager at Latrobe Country Club and then looked at O'Donnell sheepishly. "Can I play, Pro?"

O'Donnell asked Palmer if he was an officer.

"No, I'm just an ordinary seaman," he replied.

"Then you can play for free," said O'Donnell.

"If he was an officer, I would have made him pay. I made all the big shots pay," recalled O'Donnell.

Palmer never called Eddie O'Donnell by his name.

It was always, "Pro," in a very respectful manner.

O'Donnell gave Palmer a locker, and he went out on the course for the first time with Harry Elwell, who as club champion, was the best golfer around and a frequent Sonny Fraser Tournament player.

Elwell played with Palmer and O'Donnell, who recalled Palmer as, "a good kid, a good golfer, but nobody ever heard of Arnold Palmer at the time. We played a number of times, and eventually he told us why he joined the Coast Guard."

"Palmer eventually played Atlantic City more than he did Somers Point," said O'Donnell, "and he and Leo Fraser became good friends."

Often seen practicing on the Atlantic City Country Club driving range, Palmer was known locally as a pretty good golfer - one of the many players who shot in the 80s. But that would change.

"He wasn't in college anymore," said O'Donnell, "he as a young amateur who was getting the experience of playing regularly with good professionals and great amateurs, so he must have learned something."

One local player Palmer played Atlantic City Country Club champion Joe Rogers, who later recalled the event to friends, including Stan Dudas. "Palmer could never beat Joe at Atlantic City," Dudas recalls, "because the wind came up and Joe knew how to chip and putt. Joe wasn't a strong player, but he could shoot par and he knew how to play the conditions there. That day he beat Palmer by a stroke or two."

In 1954 Palmer won the U.S. Amateur Championship. "What I liked about him," Eddie O'Donnell said, "was that he could have been the lead man on the Walker Cup team, but he turned that down because he wanted to turn pro."

Years later, while vacationing in Florida, Eddie and his wife Mary O'Donnell watched Palmer play an exhibition match with Sam Snead. As he walked off the green Palmer recognized O'Donnell and stopped to say hello.

"Hey Pro, how you doing?" Palmer said, before he asked about Harry Elwell, who had since passed away.

Palmer then stayed and talked to O'Donnell, holding up the match for awhile, paying his respects to a small link in his life's chain that took him to the pinnacle of what they call the greatest game.

Arnold Palmer's First Course in Cape May

Lost But Not Forgotton

IN SEARCH OF ARNOLD PALMER’S FIRST COURSE – ONLY HE REMEMBERS

In his published memoirs “Arnold Palmer : Memories, Stories, and Memorabilia : from a Life On and Off the Course” (New York : Stewart Tabori & Chang, 2004), Arnold Palmer not only writes about his life and career in golf, but includes replica memorabilia, copies of letters, scorecards and photos that are pasted together like a scrapbook.

Most golfers know the Palmer story, of how he went to college at Wake Forest in North Carolina on scholarship with his best friend Bud Worsham, who was from a famous family of golfers, the younger brother of Lew Worsham, the golf pro at Pittsburgh’s Oakmont who won the U.S. Open.

When young Bud died suddenly in a car accident, Palmer quit school and joined the Coast Guard, which brought him to the training base in Cape May, where he stayed after training and became known locally, though playing golf infrequently.

In his book Palmer recalls, “Growing up in Western Pennsylvania, I shoveled a lot of snow and endured a lot of long, cold winters as a youngster. But the coldest I’ve ever been in my life was the winter of 1951 in Cape May, New Jersey, where I attended basic training for the Coast Guard. The wind whipping off the Delaware Bay that winter cut through me like a sword…”

One bad winter wasn’t enough to send Palmer away however. Palmer writes that during the Korean War, “…I didn’t see any combat. In fact, I didn’t get any further east than Cape May. After basic training the fine officers at our base decided I should stick around New Jersey and train other recruits. I accepted the job because I figured Cape May was a lot better than Guadalcanal and that training recruits, given what I’d just been through, would be fairly straightforward. What I didn’t expect were the ‘added duties’ that came with this assignment.”

Among the “added duties,” Palmer recalls, was the laying out and construction of his first golf course, a none-hole affair on the base. “Golf was a big-time officer sport in the Coast Guard, as was in the other branches of the service after World War II,” write Palmer, “So when the base commander found out I had been the number-one golfer at Wake Forest, I was given a new charge: design and build a nine-hole course on a flat, brick-hard, overgrown vacant field between two airstrips at the base.”

Like his first love, Palmer says he was profoundly influenced by the construction of this nine-holer. “That was the first course I ever designed, and it gave me a profound appreciation for the art of golf course architecture. There’s a heck of a lot more to it than routing holes on a topographical map. My Cape May design was even more demanding because I had to build the darn thing single-handedly. That is a lesson I think a lot of other course architects could learn: It’s one thing to have a vision. It’s quite another to move the dirt and make it happen.”

“To date, I’ve designed over three hundred golf course around the world, but I’ve never forgotten the lessons I learned from that little nine-holer in Cape May….”

“By the time I received my discharge papers from the Coast Guard, my golf game was pretty rusty. In college I had played every day. In the service I was a yeoman first class, trained recruits, built and maintained a golf course, and spent several hours a week as a life-guard at a nearby beach. Golf fell to fourth or fifth on my priority list. Even though I still loved the game and played as often as I could, the demands of my job took precedence.”

While Palmer may have been profoundly influenced by his first course, others failed to notice or even remember the course that Arnie built. William Carson, the public information officer at the Cape May Coast Guard base, who has been there since the 1970s, doesn’t recall a golf course on the base. “I checked with the facilities engineer and while we’re still looking, and will ask the base historian, we can’t come up with anything that proves or even indicates there was a golf course here. We just can’t see it.”

Although Palmer’s description is pretty precise, “…a flat, brick-hard, overgrown vacant field between two airstrips at the base,…” Carson said that they checked old maps, and “while there was a runway there in the late 1940s, there’s no indication of a golf course here, though it’s possible it’s been built on and developed. We can’t come up with anything, but we’re still searching.”

Nor do the local golfers who knew Palmer and played with him here recall him building a nine-hole golf course, though it could have been restricted to officers and men at the Coast Guard base. Ron Ward, longtime Wildwood Country Club golf pro, now at Mays Landing, was with Palmer at the Shawnee Country Club when he first me this late wife Winnie. “I’ve known Arnie since right after he got out of the Coast Guard and won the U.S. Amateur, and that’s a long time, but I don’t recall any course he designed on the Cape May base.”

Jim and Jack Byrne, who played with Palmer back in the 50s, don’t recall him building a golf course, or inviting them to play there either. “I talked to my brother,” Jim Byrne said, trying to refresh their memories back a half-century, “and we can’t recall anything like a golf course on the base.” They speculate that maybe Palmer did design and layout a course at a Coast Guard base where he was stationed, but it was somewhere else.

If not on the Cape May base, where the runways were later replaced by helicopter landing pads, perhaps Palmer laid out his course at the Cape May County Airport, where the old Navy Air Station was located, and where there is two runways and a lot of hard, flat land between them. But local historian Joe Salvatore, at the Naval Air Station Museum there, said there’s no indication there was ever a golf course there either.

While Arnold Palmer still has fond memories of designing his first golf course at the Cape May Coast Guard base, locating it today is as illusive as finding a first and lost love fifty years later. If still there, would be like finding a lost civilization in an overgrown jungle, and if located and revived would make a unique tourist and golf history attraction, but alas, the “nine-hole course built on a flat, brick-hard, overgrown vacant field, between two runways,” is lost history, and now only a fleeting vision etched in Arnie’s memory.

Bill Kelly can be reached at (609) 425-6297 or billkelly3@gmail.com

Birth of the Birdie - ACCC 1903

Birth of the Birdie Marker Old 12th Hole - Atlantic City Country Club







Birth of the Birdie - By William Kelly

Except for the whistle of a strong bay breeze, all fell quiet as Abner "Ab" Smith lined up his shot down the long twelfth fairway at the Atlantic City Country Club. It was late in the afternoon on a windy, but mild Saturday, a typical winter weekend outing for the group from suburban Philadelphia who frequented the Jersey Shore course when their home fairways were covered with snow.

Smith slowly took up is backswing, then let go with a wallop, putting the ball on the green, inches from the hole allowing for an easy putt and a one-under-par for the hole. It was such a fine shot that someone in the group was moved to say it was a "bird of a shot."

With the putt, Smith won the hole in one-under-par, and because the players were playing for a ball-a-hole, they then agreed to double the wager on a hole where a golfer who hits such a "bird of shot" wins with a one-under-par "birdie."

Thus began a tradition at the club, and the coining of a new term. Visitors who learned of the local "birdie" tradition took it back to their home clubs and it eventually spread around the world. It would become universal in its meaning and usage.

The term "birdie" is one word in the English language that can be traced back to the original moment in time and place when it was first used. Even the green where the celebrated first birdie occurred has been preserved for posterity. It’s the same hole where Ab Smith and is cronies made golf history, although they didn’t realize it at the time.

"It’s all well documented," assured Kenny Robinson, the long time caddymaster and pro shop manager.

That the term "birdie" is of American origin or that it was coined at the Atlantic City Country Club is undisputed, though some of the details have shifted in the sands of time.

In Country Life magazine, on September 20, 1913, famed British golf writer Bernard Darwin wrote, "It takes a day or two for the English onlooker [in the U.S.] to understand that...a ‘birdie’ is a hole done in a stroke under par."

In 1936, H.B. Martin, in his Fifty Years of American Golf, quotes Ab Smith himself, while playing a threesome, taking credit for not only hitting the ‘bird of a shot,’ but making the exclamation and suggesting it be paid double the bet, as well as calling it a "birdie."

Smith also claimed the incident occurred in 1899. According to Smith, "…my ball…came to a rest within six inches of the cup. I said, ‘that was a bird of a shot,’…. ‘I suggest that when one of us plays a hole in one under par he receives double compensation.’ The other two agreed and we began right away, just as soon as the next one came, to call it a ‘birdie.’"

Charles Price, a longtime member of the Atlantic City Country Club, who wrote about the incident in his book The World of Golf, also notched the year as 1899, and repeated a patently untrue account of Smith’s ball hitting a bird in flight.

Price, "...To...the abomination in the eyes of the British, Americans added a term of their own – ‘birdie,’ or one less than par for a hole. This expression was coined in 1899 at The Country Club of Atlantic City. It seems that one day three golfers – Ab Smith, his brother William, and George Crump, who was later to build Pine Valley about forty-five miles away – were playing together when rump hit his second shot only inches from the cup on a par-four hole after his first had struck a bird in flight."

Simultaneously," wrote Price, "the Smith brothers exclaimed that Crump’s shot was a ‘bird.’ Crump’s short putt left him one under par for the hole, and from that day the three of them referred to such a score as a ‘birdie.’ In short order, the entire membership of the club began using the term, and since, as a resort, the club had a lot of out-of-town visitors, the expression soon spread and caught the fancy of all American golfers. From ‘birdie’ there naturally followed such blasphemous Americanizations as ‘double-bogey’ and ‘eagle.’"

Atlantic City Press sports editor Ed Nichterlien wrote, "The incident that produced the term involved a four-some of William and George Crump, A. W. Tillinghast and Abner ‘Ab’ Smith. Ab hit his second shot on the second hold barely inches from the cup," related Nickerlien, "and one of the brothers remarked that he had hit a ‘bird of a shot.’ Since it enabled Ab to complete the hole in one-under-par, it was decided to call a one-under-par hole a ‘birdie,’ and to compensate the man who scored it by paying him double that hole. The term ‘eagle’ (for two under par) naturally followed, - likewise of Atlantic City coinage."

The April, 1991 issue of Golf Digest contains a story on the origin of golf terms by Jock Howard, an editor at Golf World United Kingdom: "It is entirely fitting that an out door cross-country sport such as golf should be full of imagery….It is only comparatively recently that women have had a monopoly on the term.," wrote Howard, in regards to the British custom of referring to women as ‘birds.’

Howard explained, "If you were in an exceptionally smart or accomplished person living in the Thirteenth century England your friends might refer to you as a bird. To be a bird was to be suave and sophisticated, polished and generally a good egg. Towards the end of the Nineteenth century, bird was American slang used frequently to describe a person or thing of excellence, such as, ‘He is a perfect bird of a man.’"

As for the golf term, Howard relates, "Bird was reputed to have been first used in connection with golf at the Atlantic City Country Club in New Jersey in 1903. An American called Ab Smith was playing a par 4 when he hit his second shot stiff to the hole. He turned to his partners and shouted joyfully, ‘That’s a bird of a shot!’"

Since Atlantic City became a major resort town, people came from all over America and the world to vacation, and those who played golf went to the Atlantic City Country Club, where they learned of the local tradition, picked up the term and took it with them back to their home course.

The earliest recorded published reference is believed to have been in McCleans Magazine in 1911, when it was reported, "….Lansborough followed with a bird, straight down the course about 215 yards."

It was first used in print to refer to a one-under par in the Glasgow Herald some years later: "Brown squared with a birdie three at the second."

The term "eagle," for two-under par, also has an Atlantic City Country Club origin, and first saw print in 1922.

Closest to the truth is probably A.W. Tillinghast’s version, published in the April, 1933 issue of Golf Ilustrated, thirty years after the event occurred. Tillinghast recalled that they were playing winter golf, probably on a Saturday, when his group of regulars from the ‘Quaker’ City (of Philadelphia) arrived at the Shore by train. The year was 1903.

"Now instead of playing the conventional two or four ball encounters," Tillinghast wrote, "we had drifted to the habit of all playing together if we were less than a dozen….Thus originated a sort of mob golf, which became known about the country as a ‘Philadelphia Ballsome,’ for stakes were usually a ball or two for each hole."

"It came to pass that we were playing the long twelfth hole (in the order at the time), with a keen following wind. The hole usually played as a three-shotter, but on this occasion someone got away two screamers and got home in two. As the second shot hit the green either Bill Smith or his brother Ab exclaimed: ‘That’s a bird!’."

"Immediately the other remarked that such an effort that resulted in cutting par by a stroke should be rewarded doubly, and there on the spot it was agreed that thereafter this should be done. And so it was, the exclamation of Smith, giving the name, Bird, which gradually was to become a term of the game, used wherever it is played today."

Tillinghast remembers little more than the foursome, and doesn’t know if it was George Crump or his brother Bill who made the remark.

Kenny Robinson explained that the original ‘long twelfth hole’ that Tillinghast refers to eventually became the second hole when the course was redesigned in the early 20s. In 1946, when Leo Fraser became the owner, the legendary green was kept intact as a practice green, as it is today. According to Robinson, "Leo Fraser kept the hole as it was because he recognized it as the historic site where the term birdie first originated."

Today a plaque marks the spot where Ab Smith made the first "bird of a shot," now used as the practice green.

[Originally published in Golfer’s Tee Times (Vol. 1 #1), and as Chapter 9 of the book Birth of the Birdie – The First 100 Years of Golf at the Atlantic City Country Club, by William Kelly, 1997]

You can contact Bill Kelly at: Billkelly3@gmail.com

Golf Columns - Golf History

[An earlier version of this story appeared in Irish America Magazine, Summer 2011]

When Rory McIlroy, the young Irishman blew a six stroke lead to lose the 2011 Masters, it was perceived as a lark, but when he came back and won the US Open by record margins, he was anointed the next great golf hero.

They said he could be the greatest to ever play the game.

While McIlroy himself dismissed such talk, and argued that he still has to go out, play the game and win, the 22 year old has certainly made his mark and shined the light into the future of golf.

As he walked down the 18th fairway at Congressional, the TV flashed a list of six young golfers who won the US Open in their 20s since World War II.

The AP golf beat writer went on to note that McIlroy is the youngest to have won the US Open since Bobby Jones in 1923, when he too was 22 years old.

Meanwhile, forgotten and unhearld, John McDermott was the first American to win the US Open and he remains the youngest to have ever won, as he did it at the age of 19. And he did it nearly one hundred years to the day that McIlroy won, in June, 1911.

And like McIlroy, they said that McDermott had the potential of being the best player ever. But he would never play competitively by the time he was 22, as old as McIlroy is today.

JOHN MCDERMOTT – AMERICA’S FIRST AND FORGOTTEN GOLF HERO

British and Scottish professionals won the first sixteen US Open national golf championships from the time it first began in 1895 until 1911, when a young, spunky teenager from Philadelphia finally became the first native born American champion, and at 19 years old, still the youngest to have ever won the US Open.

McDermott first came to the public’s attention at the US Open at the Philadelphia Cricket Club the year before, when he tied Scott brothers Macdonald and Alex Smith and lost in a three way playoff. When Alex Smith tried to console the 18 year old saying, “Tough luck kid,” McDermott brashly replied, “I’ll get you next year you big lout.” And he did too.

The son of an Irish immigrant mailman, McDermott dropped out of high school to work fulltime as a caddy and golf professional at the Aronimink Golf Club, which was a few blocks from his home in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The former Aronimink caddy took his first job as the Merchantville (NJ) Golf Club pro before being hired as the professional at the prestigious Atlantic City Country Club. At “the Northfield Links,” as they called it, McDermott rented a room in a small cottage across the street (that is still there), and took the trolley to Atlantic City every morning to attend mass, after which he practiced and gave lessons. They say McDermott would spread out newspaper pages over an area as a target, and then narrow it down until he could hit a small area at will.

He was confident of victory in the 1911 Open at the Chicago Golf Club, beating two other Irish-Americans, and he won again in 1912 in Buffalo, New York, defending his title with back-to-back victories, the sign of a true champion.

McDermott also went to Europe to play, becoming the first American to break into the top ranks at the British Open. McDermott was treated with more dignity than Walter Travis, who went before him, and had his Schenectady (center shafted) putter banned by the British. Travis refused to defend his title and there was a developing animosity between the American and British golfers, which was intensified by McDermott at Shawnee in 1913.

McDermott really made his mark at the tournament at Shawnee a few weeks before the 1913 US Open when he played against Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, two of the greatest golfers to ever play the game. They routinely won the US Open whenever they came over, but didn’t play in the two Opens won by McDermott, so there was the nagging question as to whether McDermott could actually beat the best. That question was answered at Shawnee, when McDermott won the tournament outright, and defeated Vardon and Ray by eight strokes.

It wasn’t just the way McDermott won, or by how much, but afterwards, in the locker room full of reporters, when McDermott made a speech in which he promised that the US Open trophy would not be taken back across the pond. McDermott was quoted extensively in the British press, and that speech took golf off the sports pages and put it on the front pages of every major newspaper in America and the British Empire.

Although McDermott was criticized, claimed he was misquoted and apologized, the media frenzy following McDermott’s nationalistic speech created much anticipation for the 1913 US Open at the Country Club at Brookline, Massachusetts. When McDermott fell behind, it was left to Francis Ouimet, an equally young 20 year old caddy and dedicated amateur, to keep McDermott’s promise. The tournament ended in a three way tie between Ouimet and the two greatest golfers ever, and McDermott advised Ouimet to, “Pay no attention to Vardon and Ray and play your own game,” which Ouimet did in what was later called “The Greatest Game.” A photo of Ouimet getting ready to put in his final shop, with Vardon, Ray, McDermott and a huge crowd looking on, hung on the wall next to the Atlantic City CC locker room door for decades.

McDermott later went back to Europe, where he missed a train and his tee shot, and didn’t play in the tournament. Returning home by steamship, McDermott was in the barber’s chair when his ship rammed by another ship and sunk, and he survived in a lifeboat. When he finally got home, he learned that his stocks had tanked and he was broke. One morning he was found unconscious in the Atlantic City Country Club pro shop, apparently suffering a nervous breakdown, and spent the rest of his life living either with his sister in Philadelphia or local institutions. He did play on occasion however, as he did with Tim DeBaufre at Valley Forge and others, until his clubs were stolen from his sister’s car.

One club survived however. While playing with a stranger, he borrowed a club from his playing companion, and liked it, and he was allowed to keep it. In return, he gave up an old wooden mashie, saying to his incredulous playing partner, “that club helped me win two US Open championships.”

Besides his sisters, Gertrude and Alice, Atlantic City Country Club owner Leo Fraser also made sure McDermott was taken care of in his later years. Fraser invited him to visit the club and named the McDermott Room after him. In return McDermott’s sisters gave Fraser one of his US Open championship medals, valued at $40,000, which the Fraser family donated to the USGA, and is now on display at the USGA museum in Far Hills, NJ.

When the 1971 US Open was held in Philadelphia at the Merion Country Club, McDermott’s sister left him alone in the clubhouse where a young assistant pro, Bill Pappa, thought he was in the way and ordered him out of the pro shop. While Pappa, who now teaches golf at Greate Bay in Somers Point, was notified that the old man he had just kicked out of the pro shop was a two-time winner of the US Open. Arnold Palmer recognized him however, put his arm around McDermott and asked him how he was.

As it was later reported, “In 1971, Arnold Palmer, while playing the U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club, noticed a shambling old man being ejected from the lobby. Palmer recognized him as John McDermott who, in 1911, had been the first American to win the U.S. Open. Tossing out such a man wouldn’t do, decided Palmer, who shooed away club employees and escorted McDermott back inside. “They talked golfer to golfer, champion to champion,” wrote golf historian John Coyne, “and Palmer then arranged for McDermott to stay at the tournament as his special guest.”

Two months later McDermott died in his sleep at his sister’s home in Philadelphia.

John McDermott was the first American born US Open Champion in 1911 and at 19, remains the youngest to have ever won the U.S. Open.
(billkelly3@gmail.com)