Men in Green

by Michael Bamberger

  In Hogan’s day, a guy had a better chance of fixing himself when things were going wrong because, to borrow a phrase, he owned his swing. I’m sure this sounds comically quaint to any youngsters who have made it this far, but this is what Billy believes. You want to get better? Billy will give you the fundamentals. His brothers will, too. The rest is up to you. The flight of your shots will tell you what you need to know. I asked Billy once what he liked best about golf. He said, “The ball in the air.”

  That Billy is a member of a clan known as the Harmon Brothers is a meaningless designation in most places, but in certain golf circles it is like saying you’re golf royalty. There were four Harmon brothers, all golf pros: Butch, Craig, Dick, and Billy. (And two sisters, not in the biz.) Their father was the winner of the 1948 Masters and the last club pro to win a major tournament. Claude Harmon could flat-out play. For pure talent, of the four sons, Billy was the closest to him.

  Claude won his Masters when he stopped off in Augusta while driving from what was then his winter job, at Seminole in South Florida, to his main job, at Winged Foot in Westchester, New York. Later Claude was lured west to Thunderbird, which, like the other clubs where he worked, was an enclave of the rich and the super-rich. The Harmon kids were always surrounded by wealth, even though it stopped at their front door.

  Butch taught Greg Norman in his prime, which was why Earl brought Tiger to Butch in ’93, when Tiger was seventeen. Butch and Tiger worked together through 2004, when their relationship suffocated under the weight of their collective egos. The breakup did not serve either man well, but you can imagine how thin the air was on their mountaintop.

  Craig Harmon, the second oldest of the four sons, was the head pro at Oak Hill, site of various major events, for decades. The third brother, the late Dick Harmon, was a beloved club pro in Houston. Billy, batting cleanup, was for years the ne’er-do-well son, a born golfer who, in his early twenties, lost his desire to beat his opponents. It was the early 1970s, he was at San Jose State, and smoking weed just seemed like so much more fun. Butch had made it to the show as a player. Billy got there as a caddie.

  He was available to work for Mike at the 1990 Masters because Jay Haas wasn’t in the tournament. It was a week when Mike actually allowed a caddie to advise him, which was remarkable, because few players in the history of professional golf could have wanted less from a caddie than Mike.

  But Billy was different. He was steeped in the game and its people. He knew Augusta. He had played it. He had caddied for Jay there. He had been in groups with Jay’s uncle, Bob Goalby, who won the ’68 Masters when De Vicenzo did not. He had heard Craig Wood, the ’41 Masters winner and Claude’s predecessor at Winged Foot, talk about the course. And his father. And Hogan himself. Mike had reasons to trust Billy.

  Reading a twenty-foot birdie putt on the fifth hole in the first round of their Masters, Billy said to Mike, “I know it looks like it goes left, but it actually goes right.” Mike didn’t see it but he took Billy’s insight on faith. You can guess the outcome.

  Later, Mike stood over his ball on the par-three twelfth hole with a 7-iron in his hands. He was already six under par.

  “Is it a big one?” Mike said as he made a final waggle.

  “Not really,” Billy said as Mike made his backswing.

  It’s insane for a player and caddie to be discussing a shot during a swing. But they were oddly in synch. Mike’s shot on twelve finished about a foot from the hole and he kicked it in for his third two of the round.

  That put him at seven under. After twelve holes, he had made seven birdies and five pars. He made pars on thirteen and fourteen and a birdie on fifteen and three pars to finish.

  His card:

  454 232 443

  342 544 344

  That score, 64, was one short of tying the course record and came on a day when there were only four scores under 70. Mike, in his first round at his first Masters, was the first-round leader by two shots. In his post-round interviews, he praised and thanked Billy. When he shot a second-round 82, with a triple on the last, he answered every question from reporters and put it all on himself.

  Billy has caddied in dozens of majors, in Ryder Cups, on many Sunday afternoons with funny-money riches up for grabs. He’s been in team rooms and scoring trailers and locker rooms all over the world. He’s hung out with Tiger, Shark, Phil, Fred. He once ate dinner with Hogan at his parents’ house. (His father asked, “How do you want your steak, Ben?” Hogan said, “I’ll grill it myself.”) But it was obvious that his week with Mike was one of his best ever. Sixty-four, eighty-two, whatever. They were partners.

  • • •

  Billy loved Goalby. Jay Haas’s Uncle Bob. Golf does not produce men like Bob Goalby anymore. He was a central figure when the players broke away from the PGA of America in 1968 and formed the PGA Tour. The breakup was made formal by a vote at the Atlantic City Country Club. Arnold once told me how he was a proud supporter of player emancipation, but Bob had a different take on Arnold in this period, telling me once that Arnold was “sitting on the fence” on the whole question of the split. In Goalby’s version, as the years passed and the independent PGA Tour became a thriving entity, Arnold had turned himself into one of the ringleaders, along with Goalby, Doug Ford, Tommy Jacobs, and Gardner Dickinson. Old men and their war stories.

  On the eighteenth hole of the Sunday round of the ’68 Masters, Goalby found himself standing over the most significant four-foot putt of his life. If he made it, he would be in at eleven under par for the tournament, which would tie him with the leader in the clubhouse, De Vicenzo. A tie would mean an eighteen-hole Monday playoff. Billy told us about the little pep talk Bob gave himself before attempting that four-footer: “Step up there like a man, you choking son of a bitch, and knock this motherfucker in the hole.” In it went.

  As it turned out, there was no Monday playoff. Shortly after Goalby holed out, it was revealed that De Vicenzo had signed for a 66 instead of the 65 he actually shot. Cliff Roberts and Bobby Jones conferred in Jones’s cabin. The rule book was clear. When a player signs for a score higher than he actually makes, he is required to take that higher score. Rule 38, Paragraph 3. The 66 De Vicenzo signed for left him at ten under. Goalby’s four-footer turned out to be for the win.

  Mike repeated Goalby’s choking-dog quote, savoring each word.

  Billy said, “What do you think the golf therapists would say about that?”

  The golf therapists would not have been able to handle Mike at any point in his career. Scores of 64 followed by 82 in your first Masters are not business as usual, and something beyond the phrases peak performance and comfort zone must explain them. Mike had done something similar in his first U.S. Open, in ’84 at Winged Foot, Claude Harmon still around as pro emeritus. His opening-round score was 68, which tied him for the lead with Jim Thorpe, Hubert Green, and Hale Irwin. He followed with a 78. Not as dramatic as 64-82. Still. In his first U.S. Open and his first Masters, after one round, nobody shot a score lower than Mike.

  Mike used only one ball during his 64, which was rare in those days because the ball that pros played then, with its balata cover, was soft and scuffed easily. Balata balls actually went out of round. But Mike’s ball was on a hot streak, he was catching it squarely, and he was not hitting it very often. Billy suggested he stay with it, and he did. When Mike came off the final green, he gave his mother a hug and his game ball and invited her to join him in the press building.

  Mike was the first-day story. Everybody wrote him up. In the Friday papers, one story described Mike’s mother, Pearle, who had worked for years as a waitress, taking a cigarette break as Mike climbed the hill to the eighteenth green. Another had a quote from Mike’s father, Bill, a mechanic, from somewhere during the back nine: “Let’s hope he doesn’t wake up.” There was a story with a reference to Mike’s brother, Pete, wearing a yellow hat marked with the words MIKE’S MOB. In USA Today, Steve Hershey described Mike as “a grinder, but one of the most person
able guys on Tour.” In his story for Friday’s paper, Hershey led with Mike giving his Titleist to his mother. He quoted Mike with expert precision: “ ‘This was the round of my life,’ Donald, 34, said, his voice catching. ‘I played a lot of rounds when I was a kid pretending I was at Augusta, but I never shot this good.’ ” You have to admire how Hershey faithfully recorded Mike’s grammar and the unobtrusive way he captured Mike’s emotion.

  There was a little box at the bottom of the story, giving basic biographical information about Mike, like you might see on the back of a baseball card. His height, his weight, his tour earnings, other factoids: “Has lived with parents in Hollywood, Fla., since age 3. Got his own apartment three months ago.” Later, when they played together on Sunday, Lee Trevino said to Mike, “Your parents must be so proud.” Thirty-four, with a place of his own.

  Pearle was the source for that homeboy bit. She had enjoyed her own powwow with the writers after the round. That was when she let out that Mike had lived at home through age thirty-four. It wasn’t any sort of secret on tour. Mike was on the road about forty weeks a year, he wasn’t married, and the other twelve weeks he lived at home. It was part of his financial success, a big part. More to the point, it allowed him to lead his arrested-development, golf-bum life. One day he counted sixty-two golf shirts on the floor of his bedroom.

  The personal information in the USA Today sports section would have had no impact except that it also appeared on the front page of the paper, in a big story with a big picture: the lunch-bucket pro, age thirty-four, who was leading the Masters and still living with Mom and Dad. Mike’s life had been defined for the world to see.

  That Page 1 story included telling quotes from Pearle, including “Mike will never get married. He’s married to golf.” There were other nuggets that Mike’s girlfriend, at home in Mississippi, was not keen to read. This was before Golf Channel, before the Internet, at a time when a front-page story in USA Today had a wide, wide reach. That morning Mike went from being a largely anonymous touring pro, winner of one tour event that had concluded on a Monday, to public property.

  His Friday-afternoon tee time was 2:21, the last of the day. He was paired with John Huston, another journeyman. That morning Mike went to a department store in a mall on the outskirts of Augusta and bought a pair of new pants so he would look “half decent” (his phrase) for a round that would surely get on TV. He drove to the golf course with his parents in a tournament-issued Cadillac. Mike was embarrassed by the USA Today front-page story. His girlfriend was, too. How did that story look to her friends?

  Mike and his parents drove down Magnolia Lane, the grand driveway that leads from the commercial sprawl of Augusta’s Washington Road to the genteel calm of the Augusta National clubhouse. When they arrived in the players’ parking lot, Mike took his white Wilson Staff tour bag out of the cavernous trunk and said to his mother, “If I play good again today, and they want to do more interviews, I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t talk about my personal life.”

  Mike’s mother said, “What do you mean by that?”

  Mike said, “Well, you didn’t have to tell them about me living at home and being married to golf.”

  That was what had set off Mike’s girlfriend in Mississippi. Pearle wasn’t worried about that. She didn’t approve of her. She didn’t approve of any of her three sons’ girlfriends, except for the one Pete had married. Mike was her pride and joy, and that day when Mike shot 64 had been one of the great days of her life.

  “You know what? I’ll just go home,” she said. “I can’t do anything right. I shouldn’t have come in the first place.” She was close to hysterical.

  This is Mike’s memory of a Friday in April 1990. He revisits it often. His mother died nine months later, and Mike regretted what he had said. Pearle Donald’s Thursday had been out of a dream. Mike wishes he had left it alone.

  The session in the parking lot was not the ideal warm-up for his second round. Mike missed a thirty-inch par putt on the crusty first green. On the second, Mike was looking at a downhill six-footer for birdie, and Billy’s advice was to lag it, so fast was the putt. Mike needed three putts from two yards.

  Mike was one of the top sixty players in the world at that point, easily. A bad second-day score, with nerves clanging and all the rest, might have been 75. Not 82. His new status as public person, and all that it entailed, had to figure in that second-round blowup. Fame, in a fifteen-minute dosage or otherwise, is a funny thing.

  As for the 64, something has to explain that, too. A round when everything went right. Mike had raised his game to the circumstance, and that’s not the norm. On that Thursday in Augusta, aided and abetted by Billy Harmon, Mike “built a score,” as he likes to say. He had a partner (Billy Harmon). He was playing for others (Mike’s Mob). The day was right there to be seized. You could say that every day is there to be seized, but the truth is that most days just come and go. This day was different. “It was magical,” Mike said. Not a sentence you’ll hear often from him.

  Nick Faldo won that year in a playoff over Raymond Floyd. Ken Venturi called it for CBS. Mike’s good friend Bill Britton finished in a tie for seventh. Mike was near the bottom of the finishers. He made $3,900 for the week. He spent nearly $6,000, including his Sunday-night tab at the Holiday Inn-Augusta bar.

  Billy and Mike swapped stories that Sunday night in Augusta. They laughed and cried and closed the bar. Billy’s father, the 1948 Masters champ, had died the previous summer. Mike knew his own mother’s end was coming. That week they had seen all that golf can give.

  The morning after seeing Billy, Mike and I played Cypress Point, a charming and fragrant private course on the Pacific, up the road from Pebble Beach. We were first off, as a twosome, balls in the air at half past seven. The round was some kind of reward. For what, exactly, I don’t know. Being golf bums with friends in high places, I suppose. It’s not easy, getting on Cypress Point.

  You likely know the Rolling Stones song “Gimme Shelter,” a powerful anthem that practically airlifts you to some distant street riot. It couldn’t be less golfy. But there’s a moment in it that captures for me the critical nanosecond when clubface and ball connect. That is, when they connect properly. About three minutes in, backup singer Merry Clayton, in a pleading soprano, belts out, “Ra-a-ape, murderyeah,” and Mick Jagger is so overwhelmed by the raw power of her high note that he blurts out a single “Woo!” That’s it. That woo. That’s the strike.

  Mike pured his first shot of the day, and then it was my turn. I tried to inhale on the backswing and exhale on the downswing. (Easier said than done.) Then came the click, and off my ball went into the morning gray. As you only get one chance to make a first impression, you only get one chance to start your round. My ball was in the air. If it was any good, I did not know.

  Back when drivers were made of persimmon, you could feel your most solid shots. On the best ones, you felt nothing. And you knew. With the modern titanium driver, you can miss the sweet spot by a half inch and be blissfully unaware. My ball was still rising when Mike broke the silence: “Michael! That’s beautiful.” There may have been a small measure of surprise in his tone.

  We marched out. Golf is a simple game, really. You hit a little ball, chase after it, advance it toward and finally into a distant hole using an odd set of tools, pick it out, move on. Our spectators that morning were deer so tame they seemed more like backyard pets. Mike and I got to the fifteenth tee, an itty-bitty par-three, and stood by a rail fence that keeps you from falling down a cliff and into the ocean.

  “Come on in here; I know it’s hard for you,” Mike said as he put his arm around my shoulder as posing golfers playing bucket-list rounds have done for a hundred years.

  I can’t stand it when people have more insight into me than I have into myself.

  I put my arm around Mike, and our caddie snapped a keeper.

  • • •

  The morning after our Cypress game, Mike and I said thank you in person t
o the man who had set it up, Sandy Tatum, a lion of the San Francisco bar, a thoroughly erect man in his early nineties who still played golf and paid club dues. Sandy is the golfiest person I know, but as Mike and I settled into his sleek, modern, book-lined law office in Palo Alto, I was surprised to see that it held very few nods to his avocation.

  Like Venturi, Sandy was one of the celebrated figures of San Francisco golf and, nationally, a symbol of establishment amateurism, a breed that is close to extinct. He won the NCAA individual golf title while at Stanford in 1942 and served the USGA for thirty-six years before becoming its president. In the decades after his presidency he had been a USGA adviser and counselor. For the past several decades he has been one of the game’s grand old men.

  In 1966 he was a middle-aged member at Olympic, in San Francisco, when the U.S. Open was played there. He brought his family to the opening round. The Tatums were an eightsome that morning: Sandy, with his noble nose and patrician manner; Barbara, his spirited and lovely wife; and their six children. Yes, the Tatums were practicing Catholics then. Over time, Sandy gave up the practicing part.

  “We mobilized the children, but there were the expected delays, and we arrived as Hogan was teeing off the second hole,” Sandy told us. There was a High Mass formality to his speech. “He was playing with Ken Venturi.”

  Mike and I looked at each other. With no prompting of any sort, Tatum was laying a track right on top of one of Ken’s greatest hits: Venturi playing with Hogan at Olympic in ’66. I was eager to hear how they would match.

  “Hogan’s tee shot on two practically landed where we were standing, on the left side of the fairway. He lines up that second shot, takes a final drag from his cigarette, and throws down the butt. Barbara picks it up, and later we tacked that cigarette butt on a bulletin board in our kitchen, where it remained for years until it fell apart.