Chasing Greatness

by Adam Lazarus

  The Seagulls basketball team was where Schlee stood out most. Although not a good shooter, he dominated the paint because of his leaping ability and penchant for diving for loose balls and sacrificing his body. Overly aggressive (without starting fights or getting thrown out of the game), he inspired teammates with his all-out effort. “[It was] just the same way he played golf ... going way too hard and oftentimes out of control,” Maine recalled.

  Many of his teammates loved Schlee for his fiery spirit. Teachers, town officials, and many Seaside High students detested him for that same reason.

  Often arrogant, he delighted in “putting down” and verbally abusing others, especially those who were not good athletes or simply got in his way. He claimed to be dyslexic, but he certainly had a sharp wit. “He didn’t do much kiddin’,” recalled Ray Sigurdson, a tough-skinned acquaintance who joined the marines after high school. Once, when Schlee finally defeated an older archnemesis, Ralph Diechter, in northern Oregon’s premier match-play tournament, Schlee publicly taunted and humiliated him.

  There was more to Schlee than the simple immaturity of his arrogance; most people around town knew him as a troublemaker, a liar, and a petty thief. He threw stones and broke all of the streetlamps on one of the town’s main streets, and even tried to kill a rare, protected bird with a string of golf shots. A disrespectful wiseass in school, he taunted fellow students and generally made life miserable for teachers and coaches.

  Never suspended, Schlee banked on school officials to cut him slack because he contributed so much to the varsity sports teams. And he was smart and devious enough to know the limits of what he could get away with.

  But not always. On one occasion, the school principal, fed up with Schlee’s classroom antics and tired of hearing complaints from teachers, persuaded a group of school toughs to grab Schlee, blindfold him, and force him to fish banana peels out of a toilet with his mouth. (Fifty years later, former and current school officials still successfully campaign to keep Schlee out of the high school’s sports hall of fame.)

  Schlee was most infamous around town as a thief. He would shake down the paperboy when he was short of cash, and regularly siphon gas from lumber trucks to fuel the souped-up hot rod he raced late at night, James Dean style. Seaside’s police chief knew of Schlee’s transgressions and stashed officers in various locations to catch him in the act. They never caught him, a source of great embarrassment to the town’s police chief: Schlee was dating his daughter at the time.

  Schlee mostly stole golf equipment, both on and off the Seaside course. He swiped golf balls from the bags of those he caddied for, and from the shed where Charlie Cartwright stored thousands of them. He used them to sharpen his game, sell them to Seaside duffers, or sell them to nearby Gearhart’s pro shop.

  Charlie suspected his de facto son, but never caught him in the act. And Charlie’s easygoing nature, his personal sympathy for Schlee, and his hopes that the troubled teen might have a golf future caused him to overlook the thefts. Even when Schlee’s excuses were obvious lies, he received no more than a slight reprimand. In the end, Schlee came to believe he could get away with anything. “I was a pretty bad actor as a kid,” he admitted years later.

  Although he made a few bucks from selling his stolen merchandise—and like many juvenile delinquents, enjoyed the thrill of the crime—Schtee needed an endless supply of balls to prepare for his imminent career as a professional golfer. He loved to close out summer days at Seaside by driving balls down the fairways and into the brush at twilight, with no intention of retrieving them.

  Anything not tied down, including clubs and other golf equipment, was not safe around Schlee. If he saw a club he felt would improve his game, he simply took it. Visits to fancier clubs than Seaside and Gearhart (usually to play in sanctioned junior or amateur tournaments) meant a prime opportunity to steal. After making his way into the bag room, he took whatever he wanted and was never caught in the act. He did the same in the pro shop. Years later, Seasiders who heard tour professional Johnny Pott’s complaint that Schlee stole his shoes knew the tale was no joke.

  John Schlee’s charmed life as a petty thief ended abruptly during the summer of 1957, a few months after his high school graduation. Despite scouting from Oregon State, Schlee did not intend to go to college. He made no plans for the future and played golf endlessly. With his game steadily improving, he set his sights on the PGA tour; a high-profile amateur win might entice sponsors or convince a prominent club to make him an assistant professional. Schlee had tried for several years but failed to win the state’s second-most-prestigious match-play tournament, the Oregon Coast Open, in nearby Astoria. As the summer came to an end, he and one of his former teammates set out to win the state’s leading match-play tournament, the Southern Oregon Open, several hundred miles away in Medford.

  Needing money to pay for travel and housing during both practice rounds and the event, Schlee sneaked into Charlie Cartwright’s shed and stole hundreds of brand-new golf balls. He then drove to the Gearhart golf course and somehow persuaded the skeptical pro to buy them. With cash in his pocket and more than enough golf balls to play with, Schlee and his friend drove to Medford for the open—at the aptly named Rogue Valley Country Club—and began preparing for their first-round matches.

  Charlie Cartwright discovered the heist the next morning. He didn’t suspect Schlee (only because so many balls were stolen) and reported the theft to the Seaside police chief, who conferred with his counterpart in Gearhart. Questioning of the Gearhart pro made it clear that Schlee had stolen the balls.

  The state police were dispatched to Medford, where they found Schlee practicing on the course. They promptly arrested him, snapped on handcuffs, and marched him off the course, befuddling the other contestants. Schlee spent the night in Seaside’s jail. The next morning, the police chief asked Charlie Cartwright to come down to the station and make out a formal complaint.

  When he learned that Schlee was the culprit, Cartwright would not file the complaint. This infuriated the Seaside police chief, especially since Schlee had recently broken up with his daughter. Although Charlie was disappointed that Schlee had so blatantly betrayed his trust, he knew that the grand-theft charge would mean substantial jail time. In an informal arrangement (not uncommon during the 1950s), Schlee escaped incarceration by agreeing to join the military.

  SEASIDERS—THOSE WHO WEREN’T OVERJOYED BY his departure from their community—could hardly believe the news of Schlee’s enlistment.

  “A whole lot of people were saying, like, ‘What, Jack in the military? Good luck!”’ Neal Maine recalled. “He was a plenty bright guy; it wasn’t like he got in trouble because he wasn’t smart enough to figure it out.”

  Whether by choice or because his drill sergeants noticed his outstanding leaping ability, Schlee was assigned to paratrooper school after basic training. Although paratroopers were among the army’s elite, the schooling requirement was relatively short. Schlee, however, spent most of his time at Fort Bragg playing golf at the base’s two excellent courses. Several months in the military did little to soften the conceited, impish, occasionally malicious ways that had defined him in Seaside.

  On the golf course, the long-driving Schlee wouldn’t bother to wait for the group ahead to complete holes, and he swung away regardless. He hardly cared that the groups he sprayed were often comprised of the wives of Fort Bragg’s flag officers, including the wife of the base’s top general. And rather than show remorse on one occasion when he nearly beaned the general’s wife, Schlee chastised her for getting in his way! Very soon, those in charge of Schlee’s destiny again decided it was time for him to leave town, as rapidly as possible.

  Still, with military golf more popular than ever, thanks to a golf-obsessed commander in chief, Schlee’s fairway transgressions may have impressed as many as they upset. No one could deny Schlee’s disciplined power and overall talent. At a time when golfer/soldiers were at a premium—tike Lee Trevino and Orville Moody,
who dominated the armed services’ golf teams in the Pacific theater—Fort Bragg’s officers knew that Schlee would be a great asset to the army’s golf team.

  By the spring of 1958, after spending just a few months with the paratroopers, Schlee was transferred to West Point. Officially, Private John Schlee’s role was to work as an assistant mail clerk; he would also serve as a part-time lifeguard, golf instructor, and member of the “honor guard.” But his primary mission at West Point—which boasted arguably the finest military golf course in the nation—was to help the army golf team win. As he wrote to his parents, “I don’t know how I was lucky enough to be picked for this.”

  “[Except] for being in uniform, he would hardly know he’s in the army,” reported the Seaside newspaper. “Accommodations are several cuts above the army barracks he has encountered before, and he has time enough in the evenings to keep up with his golf game.”

  Schlee certainly earned his cushy quarters and easy military assignment. In August 1958, he won the West Point Golf Championship and later that month won the first United States Army Golf Tournament, for which West Point’s detachment commander personally presented him an award. During the winter months, making creative use of his brief paratrooper training, Schlee kept limber by hanging an open parachute in the barracks and driving balls into it.

  As Schlee’s discharge date approached, West Point’s golf coach, Walt Browne, persuaded Memphis State University’s athletic department to offer Schlee a golf scholarship, funded largely by profits from the Memphis Open, a prestigious PGA tour stop. Schtee—less than two years removed from evading a grand-theft jail sentence, and having spent an eighteen-month military golf vacation—was now a full-time college student, handed four years of subsidy to prepare for a career in professional golf.

  During his freshman season at Memphis State, Schlee made the varsity and more than carried his weight on the team. He told few people about his military career—apart from acknowledging the thrill of jumping out of airplanes—and said nothing about his forced departure from Seaside or about his parents. And even when a few Seaside residents visited his dorm to see how their hometown prodigy’s career was shaping up, Schlee refused to take their calls or see them.

  Despite trying hard to hide his past, Schlee did little to change his ways. Every day at Memphis State was “wrapped around golf.” He showed little respect to authority figures and flaunted his Seaside sense of entitlement as a star athlete.

  Unlike Fort Bragg and West Point, however, Memphis State did not have its own golf course. The team did have year-round free access, in the afternoons, to different country club courses on specific weekdays. When the Tigers finished their practice, the coaches usually convinced a club member to spring for a hot dog and Coke for everyone. Naturally the boys were expected to follow a few courtesies: No hitting several balls into a green or off the tee, no extended bunker practice, no playing too slowly, and, of course, no hitting into the group in front. Most important, the players could practice only as a team, not as individuals, and they could show up to play each course only on the team’s designated day.

  John Schlee didn’t believe these rules applied to him.

  “When I was at Memphis State, we had five country clubs at our disposal [for practice], and at one time or another during my career I got us kicked off all of them,” he said later.

  Schlee refused to let anyone stand in the way of his tour destiny. He had only one dream, and he fiercely felt a right to pursue it.

  “He was probably the most self-centered, goal-directed person I’ve known in any walk of life. He was a total loner,” a college teammate observed. “I was as close to him as anybody, and you couldn’t get that close. Nothing else mattered but being the best golfer in the world.”

  Schlee’s favorite of the five available courses was the Memphis Country Club, a challenging layout only a few miles from campus. When the team practiced there, the two-time U.S. Open champion and Tennessee native Cary Middlecoff would often walk around with a club in hand, hitting an occasional shot and regularly talking with and advising the players. The club was formally closed on Mondays, but members were allowed to play if they carried their own bags.

  Although Monday was not the team’s designated day to play the Memphis Country Club, Schlee had an uncontrollable urge to do so, and one day he convinced himself it would do no one any harm if he did. He sneaked on at a distant hole location, far from the clubhouse, prepared to scam his way out of trouble if he got caught.

  Before long, Schlee was spotted on the course and called back to the clubhouse to explain what he was doing there. As a former teammate, Ken Lindsay, recounted, Schlee “was not very gracious in being caught,” trying to make his case by saying things like, “Well, hell, there’s nobody out there and I need to practice.... You got the best course out here and you ought to open your heart and let us come out here and play a little bit more often.” Not surprisingly, that explanation didn’t impress club members, who promptly revoked the team’s playing privileges for the entire school year.

  “I was there to play golf, not socialize,” Schlee said with little remorse.

  Neither was Schlee at Memphis State to study anything but golf. During his junior year, he struggled all semester in his accounting course, and one day during class he quietly asked a teammate if he would bring his books back to the dorm. The teammate couldn’t understand what Schlee meant, until he noticed that Schlee’s hands were clasped tightly over a pencil, in a golf grip. “I’ve just found something; I’ve got to go try this,” he said.

  Schlee stood up, sidled to the aisle, and started walking toward the back door of the large classroom. The instructor asked, “Mr. Schlee, are you going somewhere?” To which Schlee responded, without breaking stride, “Hell, Professor, I’ve been waiting to get this grip for a long time, and now that I’ve got it I’m not letting up until I can try it out.” By that time, Schlee had reached the door and just kept going.

  Unlike in high school, Schlee wasn’t openly disruptive at Memphis State; he was just indifferent to academics as his mind drifted toward golf. To his teammates he could be enjoyable, telling jokes, easing the mood.

  “He was a good person to be around,” said Lindsay, his regular senior-year golfing partner. “I have no bad memories whatsoever about John.”

  Schlee also became close friends with a young couple who lived near the athletic dormitory in married-student housing. They entrusted Schlee with babysitting their infant son. Schlee treated their home as his, regularly eating meals there and sneaking in when they were away (once removing the air conditioner to gain entry) in order to sleep with a flock of coeds.

  Some shared less fond memories of John Schlee. One day during lunch in the cafeteria, he was eating a hamburger and fries when one of the football players reached over periodically to grab a few fries. Schlee already had a tumultuous relationship with the football team: He liked to hit balls dangerously close to the team’s practice facility. Schlee told the fry snatcher to stop and buy his own, but the player persisted. Finally, one last warning was issued to the player, who ignored him and attempted to snatch another fry. Schlee took a sharp fork and “absolutely stabbed him” on the back of the hand. No matter where he moved—Seaside, Fort Bragg, West Point, Memphis—Schtee whatever-it-takes attitude came with him.

  Still, Schlee impressed and fascinated his golf buddies. No one practiced longer or harder, both on and off the course, than Schlee. And with his physical strength, he hit “some of the longest drives that I had ever seen in my life,” Lindsay recalled. “John’s forearms reminded me of Arnold Palmer’s. He just had tremendous hand-arm strength.”

  Just as in high school, Schlee still hit all of his clubs very low, which gave him a tremendous advantage: The cold and wind of spring in Memphis were similar to the weather he’d experienced nine months a year while learning the game on the Oregon coast.

  For all his talent and confidence, Schlee knew that as a member of the unherald
ed Memphis State program, joining the PGA tour would not be easy.

  “In my first year at Memphis,” Schlee recalled, “I asked Dub Fondren [a well-known Memphis-area professional] to take a look at my swing. He let me practice six straight hours with every club in my bag before he said a single word. I was so tired I was ready to collapse. Finally he said, ‘John, if you want to be a good player, it’s going to take a long time.’”

  Instead of studying accounting or British literature, Schlee meticulously analyzed the basic elements of the golf swing, as defined by Ben Hogan in his 1957 classic, Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf. Hogan’s popular but exhaustively technical book became Schlee’s bible. He regularly quoted it verbatim at Memphis State as he sought to emulate Hogan’s swing positions, and encouraged his teammates to do the same.

  For Schlee, a better swing guru than Hogan did not exist. But Schlee took many Hoganisms too literally, such as, “Reverse every natural instinct and do the opposite of what you are inclined to do, and you will probably come very close to having a perfect golf swing.” Other, relatively simple ideas, Schlee morphed into extreme concepts.

  SINCE CHILDHOOD, SCHLEE HAD EMPLOYED a strong left-hand grip (i.e., the V formed by the thumb and forefinger were pointed to the right shoulder); this made him prone to hitting sharp hooks. In his book, Hogan recommended as a remedy a weaker left-hand grip, with the left thumb on top of the shaft and the V aimed at the right ear or perhaps even the chin. This grip—which produced a predictable, soft fade that he could control without sacrificing power-helped transform Hogan into a nine-time major championship winner.

  Schlee obsessively tried to implement Hogan’s grip advice, but he just could not achieve the results he hoped for. Out of frustration, he broke off the butt end of a golf club (the grip and upper part of the shaft) and asked a Memphis State athletic trainer to tape his left hand to the club in the extreme weak grip position. Although he kept his hand taped for a full month, Schlee still tended to draw the ball from right to left, despite his weak left grip.