Chasing Greatness

by Adam Lazarus

  In March 1969, Time magazine’s cover—under a banner reading “Astrology and the New Cult of the Occult”—featured a celestial-bound portrait of Carroll Righter, the widely syndicated “astrologer to the stars” (including Grace Kelly and Joan Fontaine) and the de facto leader of the era’s popular astrology movement.

  “Isn’t astrology just a fad, and a rather absurd one at that?” wrote the article’s author. “Certainly. But it is also something more. The number of Americans who have found astrology fun, or fascinating, or campy, or worthy of serious study, or a source of substitute faith, have turned the fad into a phenomenon.”

  In addition to alerting readers about yet another revolution among America’s youth, Time attempted to profile its followers. “They’re interested in astrology because they’ve found the material things failing them, and they’re trying to find their souls.... Preposterous as it may be, the astrology cult suggests a deep longing for some order in the universe—an order denied by modern science and philosophy.”

  He was writing about people like John Schlee.

  Schlee boarded the astrology bandwagon earlier than most; by the late 1960s, he was reading his horoscope religiously. Sometimes, Righter’s horoscopes seemed personally written to redirect Schlee’s self-centered, combative ways.

  Your Horoscope: Sunday, June 1, 1969: Show much consideration for persons dwelling with you and clear up any quarrels tactfully. Make harmony the keynote. Take it easy tonight at your own home and have fun.

  Whether or not Schlee took this horoscope to heart, he spent that June first preparing for the thirty-six-hole U.S. Open sectional qualifier in Dallas. After his prolonged slump and loss of sponsorship, this qualifier could demonstrate that he still belonged on tour.

  Schlee had good reason for optimism. Emotionally, he felt grounded, thanks to both a happy second marriage and his devoted study of the stars. On the golf course, he was buoyed by having the greatest U.S. Open player of all time—Hogan averaged better than third place in ten consecutive appearances—enthusiastically in his corner. The brash optimism of Schlee’s high school, military, and collegiate days was finally resurfacing.

  In one of their early training sessions, when Hogan asked Schlee what his goals were, his response was that he wanted to win five consecutive U.S. Opens and finish among the top-ten all-time money earners. According to Tom Bertrand, Hogan replied, “That’s very admirable, John, but let’s see if we can get you ready to make the cut at the L.A. Open next week.”

  In “one of the strongest sectional qualifying fields in Dallas history” assembled that year—including former Masters champion Jack Burke Jr., tour star Doug Sanders, U.S. Open single-round record holder Rives McBee, as well as Texas prodigy Ben Crenshaw—Sehtee was the only man to break 70 in the morning round at Dallas Athletic Club’s Blue Course, firing a three under 68. Later that day—a few hours after Arnold Palmer, embarrassingly, had been forced to compete in his first U.S. Open qualifier in nearly two decades at the Youghiogheny Country Club in McKeesport, Pennsylvania—Schtee posted another fine round, a two under 69. His five-under total earned him a coveted spot in the U.S. Open, and was the most subpar qualifying score posted throughout the nation. The combination of a great score and the fact that it came on the precise day of his thirtieth birthday earned a headline in several national sports pages, including the New York Times.

  Schlee was a Gemini. According to the zodiac chart, Geminis enter the world beneath the twin stars Castor and Pollux. These twin sons of Zeus—one mortal, one immortal—are frequently depicted as battling each other; the perpetual conflict is said to render Gemini “maddeningly inconsistent.”

  Traditionally, a person’s birth month is supposed to be fruitful. That year, 1969, it certainly was for John Schlee.

  Two weeks after the qualifier, he drove south to Houston for the U.S. Open, held at Champions Golf Club. And while best remembered for the breakthrough performance of another army man (Sergeant Orville Moody), the 1969 Open was also a watershed moment in Schlee’s career: He made his first cut in a major championship. That same week, the PGA also approved a new financial sponsor for Schlee. A pair of New Jersey businessmen had read about Schlee’s struggles in the New York Times and offered him a fabulous arrangement: They would cover his travel, food, and lodging expenses but take only ten percent of his winnings. Castor and Pollux were certainly watching over Schlee that June.

  With his game on the upturn and a few more dollars in his pocket, Schlee’s rebirth resumed in Cleveland. Wearing red slacks, red patent-leather shoes, and a red shirt, he exuded optimism and projected (or at least sought to project) that he belonged. Although Palmer—in the midst of his own redemptive 1969 season—was the star in late June’s Cleveland Open, Schlee again quietly outplayed the King. Teeing off in the first group on Friday morning, Schlee scored a four under 66 to forge ahead at Aurora Country Club. Only a course-record 64 by Charles Coody later that afternoon kept Schlee from leading at the halfway point. Two over par during the weekend was not good enough for him to win his first professional tournament, but Schlee earned $3,960 for fifth place, his best PGA finish in a very long time.

  “It’s great to play without money worries,” he told a Cleveland reporter that week. “I’ve really studied golf and attitudes and I’ve found you play well when you are happy, and it’s not the other way around—that you are happy when you play well. And I am happy. There aren’t many people who get to play this tour. It sure beats working. Sometimes I get up in the morning and count my blessings.”

  Schlee may not have worn bell-bottoms, tie-dyed shirts, or smoked grass, but the astrology zealot spoke like a hippie. And with the enthusiasm of a cultist, he tried to bring his fellow touring pros to his new church.

  “I’m keeping this big book,” he told a reporter in early 1971. “I’m charting all the pros on the tour. I’ve got all their birthdates and I’m working out a chart.”

  Whether or not his colleagues wanted these charts, Schlee occasionally posted them on their lockers before they were scheduled to tee off.

  Schlee may have trusted his ultimate destiny to the stars, but he still put his golf game in Ben Hogan’s hands. He worked intensely between tournaments to replicate Hogan’s arduous practice routines, and also tried to integrate Hogan’s mental and technical tips into his own game. Occasionally, he would drive thirty minutes from his Dallas home to Fort Worth to work with Hogan on the practice tee at Shady Oaks. There was no meteoric rise to stardom after the mentorship with Hogan began, and neither expected Schlee to rebuild his game overnight.

  “Mr. Hogan said it would take me three years to groove my swing,” Schlee said a few years later, “and he was right.”

  In the three full seasons that followed the “miracle” of 1969, Schlee reclaimed a respectable place on the PGA tour. In 1970, he posted four top tens, including third place in October’s Azalea Open Invitational via a final-round, course-record 62. Finishing in seventy-ninth place on the money list that season comforted Schlee: He’d returned to the top one hundred after failing to do so the previous year. And because his generous New Jersey sponsors asked for only one-tenth of the cut, his lifestyle also improved.

  Even better the next season, Schlee nearly doubled his money to place fifty-fourth in tour earnings. He earned $47,816 in 1971, over $20,000 more than his career best a year earlier. During the summer months, he and his family could now occasionally fly to tournaments and have his caddie drive the car to meet them. Schlee played best early in the season, posting top tens in three early winter/spring events. Just as important, he received his first invitation to the Masters that April and made the cut, tying for thirty-sixth place. That June, he also tied for forty-seventh in the U.S. Open at Merion.

  But the highlight of Schlee’s 1971 season may have come in late April. Schlee’s spending so many hours practicing on the Preston Trail range had convinced several club members there to provide additional financial sponsorship.

  The Dallas
club, founded in 1965 and represented by recent Masters champion Gay Brewer, didn’t really need the publicity of having a second touring pro associated with the club. One of the nation’s last all-male clubs, Preston Trail was golf-only with a vengeance: no swimming pool, no tennis courts, no elaborate banquet hall. Nor was it lacking in prominent affiliations. Well-known members included the owners of the Dallas Cowboys and Kansas City Chiefs football teams, and the founders of Lay’s potato chips and Hagar slacks.

  But the most famous member was New York Yankees slugger Mickey Mantle. When Mantle retired from baseball in 1968, he frequently brought his powerful—and dangerously unpredictable—golf swing to Preston Trail. Seeking to satisfy his competitive fire after injuries had forced his early retirement, Mantle joined the sponsoring group. In an act of encouragement and generosity, Preston Trail made Schlee a full member the next year.

  In front of Mantle—whom he played with occasionally—and his other backers, Schlee posted an opening-round 69 in May’s Byron Nelson Classic, held at Preston Trail. He scored over par the next two rounds, but then revived the faith of his supporters by shooting a Sunday 66, tied for the second-best round of the tournament.

  “I’m trying like mad to make the top-sixty list,” he said, “but I’m coming into my slump time of year. I won more money than I ever had last year [$27,678], but I still finished seventieth and remained nonexempt for this year’s tour [i.e., he still had to play in Monday qualifiers]. The spring and summer did me in. But right now I’m doing better than I ever have.”

  Just as good in 1972, Schlee nabbed three more top tens and returned to the tour’s top-sixty earners for the first time since his 1966 Rookie of the Year season. It had taken six more years than expected, but Schlee’s game and personal life appeared better than ever.

  Financially secure and well liked by many of his peers—alt admired his dogged work ethic—Schtee finally seemed to have put his troubled past behind him. He was no longer just chasing a living but chasing greatness, in the form of Palmer, Nicklaus, Trevino, and Weiskopf.

  And, on the surface, John and his second wife looked like the model tour couple, much like Tom and Jeanne Weiskopf, Bert and Cheryl Yancey, and other well-known young marrieds on the tournament trail.

  But despite his blossoming career, Schlee could never quell his inner demons or persistent womanizing; his rudeness, belligerence, and lack of concern for others repeatedly seeped through.

  His wife had to work full-time to be perfect and please her husband, and only “his way of doing things” would suffice. “You had to be on all the time,” always “perfectly dressed, perfectly groomed,” in order to sustain the impression of happiness and success that Schlee wanted to convey to his colleagues. His wife dutifully walked most rounds with her husband, including the Wednesday pro-ams, taking time between tournaments only to do the laundry on Mondays.

  And Schlee’s attention, even when he was away from the course, remained on his game. Golf was all that he truly cared about, talked about, or read about. Other people bored him, and he did his best to avoid them.

  “He wasn’t a social person,” his second wife recalled.

  Schlee sometimes stayed with friends while going from event to event. In Miami, during the Doral and Jackie Gleason tournaments, Schlee bunked for two weeks with Julia and Jim Donovan, the couple for whom he’d babysat at Memphis State—running up a huge phone bill. But Schlee and his wife mainly stayed in motels, as John felt he could not be distracted by anyone prior to or during a tournament if he was to play his best. Only during the Masters did they rent a house and socialize informally with other tour members. Apart from Brian Comstock and Rives McBee, Schlee had few close friends on tour.

  With painful regularity, John’s sharp tongue at required social events embarrassed his wife, to the point where she started avoiding them. Schlee was predictably rude and inappropriate, putting people down at the first sign of disagreement. Even those who admired Schlee professionally admitted he was regularly “over the top” and “outspoken”; he would never “shave the truth even a little bit” just to be kind. His wife constantly served as the family’s buffer, always apologizing for her husband’s “caustic behavior.”

  And when Schlee’s game suffered, his wife bore the brunt. At one tournament, Schlee did not play well on the final Sunday and, having left the public view, he “slugged” her, knocking her down, leaving her nose and face bloody. On another Sunday, while she was driving the car on the highway following a disappointing final round, she said something that upset him. He punched her hard in the face, which forced her to lose control of the wheel. Luckily, they landed safely in a deep ditch.

  Into her second marriage and with a child to protect, his former wife admitted to wearing “blinders” during the good times, even after she understood he could be “a volatile, abusive man.” But she kept her fears to herself.

  RAISED ON OREGON’S NORTHWEST COAST, a stone’s throw from the beach, Schlee was more than comfortable playing in windy, damp, cold weather and instinctively adapted to links-like course conditions. Several high points in his early career had come playing along the ocean, including his win in the 1960 Oregon Coast Open. His greatest victory to date had come in November 1965 at Q School, which was played that year in extremely damp, harsh weather along the south Florida coast.

  And the PGA event in which Schlee played most often during his professional career—largely through the influence of his distinguished amateur playing partner, Dick Chapman, a great friend of Bing Crosby—was the invitation-only Bing Crosby Pro-Am in Pebble Beach. Weather during the annual late-January event usually ranged from bad to worse at the Monterey courses.

  Fittingly, Schlee’s first PGA victory came with palm trees and the Pacific Ocean as the backdrop.

  Schlee first played Hawaii golf in the 1960 National Public Links Tournament at the Ala Wai Country Club in Honolulu. In his great 1966 rookie season, he competed in the second Hawaiian Open at the Waialae Country Club, just three miles from Ala Wai. While the local Hawaiian hero (and Lee Trevino’s close pal) Ted Makalena took that title, Schlee finished twenty-second. The next year—despite being mired in his two-year stump—he did even better, finishing fifteenth to earn a much-needed $1,750.

  Schlee played respectably over the next two editions of the Hawaiian Open, but when the PGA switched the tournament from autumn to February (after discontinuing it for 1970), Schlee flourished at the increasingly prestigious and popular event.

  In 1971, Schlee grabbed the lead with a first-round six under 66, one better than the headliner, Palmer. While the “unpredictable trade winds were softer than usual,” Schlee nailed all eighteen greens in regulation—a stunning rarity for him, and especially satisfying for a Hogan disciple. He finished eighth and earned $5,000, his largest payday since his runner-up at the Minnesota Golf Classic five years earlier. The following year, February 1972, he took home just under $6,000 for a sixth-place tie.

  The tournament returned once again to Waialae on February 1, 1973. With a field featuring Palmer, Trevino, and Bruce Crampton—who already had two wins during the young season—Schtee was by no means a favorite to win. Given his performances the past two years, perhaps he should have been. Aside from knowing the course so well, Schlee thrived, as his combative personality seemed to take a vacation when he traveled to Honolulu.

  “There’s something about the air here, about the people. You never see anyone getting mad. Everyone seems to be happy. I feel close to people. And that makes me happy,” he said that week. “In other places my wife follows me around every course in the country. She’s known as one of the great [course] walkers. But she’s never been on the Waialae course. Never even been out here. She spends all her time on the beach at Waikiki. And if I didn’t have to play golf for a living I’d be there with her.”

  Schlee continued to play great golf at Waialae. By the close of the third round, only his playing partner, Tom Watson, owned a better score. But Schlee liked his ch
ances on Sunday, despite trailing by four strokes. He didn’t hesitate to engage the twenty-three-year-old former psychology major from Stanford in spirited gamesmanship.

  “I think I am playing better than Watson is,” Schlee said. “He got down those three putts on the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth holes—at! over twenty feet. There’s no way he can keep that up. Nobody does.

  “Second isn’t bad, but I’d like to win.”

  On Sunday, Watson collapsed: A double-bogey seven on the thirteenth hole crushed his chances. Meanwhile, Schlee played the front nine consistently at even par before making a move on the back, scoring birdies on numbers ten, twelve, and fourteen. He came to the eighteenth tee nursing a two-stroke lead over Watson, Orville Moody, and fellow Preston Trail member Gay Brewer. With Waialae’s par-five eighteenth measuring 566 yards and a very real eagle possibility for those trailing him, Schlee still had work to do.

  From the seventy-second tee, Schlee nailed “his best drive of the day.” Caddie Bruce Forsythe stood next to Schlee on the fairway, watching him envision the next shot. In Schlee’s mind, a third person stood beside him.

  “I got to thinking, ‘Now, what would [Hogan] tell me to do in this situation?’ If it hadn’t been for him, I’d have never pulled it off. I’d have been out on the street somewhere.”

  “He was walking one step beside me all the way.”

  Schlee landed a perfect three-iron onto the putting surface. With his wife standing green-side—she made it to the course just in time, thanks to tournament sponsors, who retrieved her from the beach, where she was calmly reading a book—he two-putted for a birdie and a score of 32 on the back nine to win by two strokes. After nine maddeningly erratic years as a professional, John Schlee had finally made his mark on the PGA tour.

  Sporting a lei around his neck, he told the crowd after raising the trophy: “I owe this great moment to a lot of people—most of all my wife ... who encouraged me when the going was the roughest.”