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Ever since Young Tom Morris drove a gutta percha ball along bumpy fairways and through gorse and heather – so tough that sheep sharpened their teeth on it – to win his first British Open in 1868, people have debated who is the greatest champion of them all.
Jack Nicklaus, who chipped 18 major titles into his trophy cabinet and finished runner-up 19 times out of the 50 he played in?
Tiger Woods, the greatest player of this generation and who is still chasing that record with 14 already in his bag?
Slammin’ Sammy Snead, a slick swinger who fashioned his first club from a maple tree branch and was still shooting and beating all comers in his sixties?
Gary Player, who famously said, “the harder I practise the luckier I get” while lifting nine major crowns and who owned the same sort of true grit that western movie hero John Wayne had?
Ben Hogan, who survived a life-threatening car crash during a stellar career and still came close to completing the Grand Slam in the same year?
Byron Nelson, who won 11 tournaments in a row on the US PGA Tour and 18 of the 32 he played that season?
Walter Hagen, another of the golfing greats, who won 11 majors and advised players to remember to “smell the flowers” along the way?
Fans of other sports may say, “Who cares?”
Golf does lag behind sports such as rugby union and cricket and of course, AFL and rugby league in the land of Oz, but it does have its moments. Particularly so in the major tournaments, the British Open, the US Masters, the US Open and the US PGA.
I wasn’t born when Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded for playing golf, but if that does not capture one’s attention nothing will.
Golf also has its lighter moments. Simon Hobday, whom I had the pleasure of playing with in a pro-am, told me that he had visited a hypnotist in an attempt to win the British Open. “He got me to believe I was the best putter in the world,” said Hobday.
Well, how did it go? “I played badly,” he replied, “but I still thought I was the best putter in the world.”
Hobday had a wonderful sense of humour. This story is probably apocryphal, but funny. Standing in a pub in Britain, Hobday was said to have stripped down with only his underpants and a beer in hand.
While his drinking mates chuckled, the bartender was worried. “At least put on your underpants,” he implored. So Hobday did and put them on his head.
Another golfer with a great sense of humour was Lee Trevino. A one tournament, when play was called off because of lightning, Trevino cheekily held his iron iron – one of he most difficult clubs to play – and pointed it at the sky.
“Not even God can hit a one-iron,” he said.
Another character I met when writing about golf was Ben Wright. An Englishman, Wright eventually joined the CBS staff who covered the Masters showpiece each year. His accent proved popular with viewers but his comments about lesbians on the LPGA Tour landed him in deeper trouble than the Augusta hazards.
Saying that lesbians on the tour hurt its image and that women could not play golf because their tits got in the way cost him his job with CBS. There was no way he would have got off ‘Scotch-free’ after making these remarks to a reporter during a few drinks after a tournament.
Who’s the greatest golfer ever? That’s an impossible question to answer considering the different eras. As a child in short pants, I watched Peter Thomson, who won five British Open Claret Jugs, playing against Bobby Locke in South Africa. I later watched several British Open winners, including Dai Rees and John Panton, play exhibition matches on my home course in the seaside town of East London.
During the years I wrote golf stories, I watched all of the stars from Arnold Palmer, Nicklaus, Player to Seve Ballesteros and others.
I once had the pleasure of playing a round of golf with my boyhood hero Locke, a winner of four British Opens, before he teed up in the Legends of Golf Classic at Sun City, a South African gambling resort set in the Pilansberg mountains.
Well past his heyday, Locke pitched up at the first tee clad in a white shirt, Troon tie tucked in and wearing his trademark plus fours. It was about 40 years after I had first watched him play.
He called me “master” and I addressed him as “Mr Locke”. We played 18 holes and I took Bobby, his wife and daughter for dinner afterwards. In my many years of writing about golf that was the highlight of my career. Locke died a few years later and when he did he still held the record for the biggest winning margin on the US PGA Tour, finishing 16 strokes ahead if the field in a tournament.
We have so many talented golfers now, with Irish whizzkid Rory McIlroy leading the pack. I am no Nostradamus and have no crystal ball, so the best-ever player remains and open question.
What I do know is that “it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got that swing” – the truest words ever spoken.