Interviews & Articles

Sandy Tatum's influence on golf immeasurable

2011-11-03T07:48:00.000-07:00

Tatum's influence on golf immeasurable

By john reid

Daily News Staff Writer

Posted: 11/02/2011 10:23:13 PM PDT

Updated: 11/02/2011 10:23:15 PM PDT

Sandy Tatum, class of '42 at Stanford, is a large reason TPC Harding Park Golf Course in San Francisco is hosting this week's Charles Schwab Cup Championship. Tatum played in 40 city golf championships at Harding Park as one of the Bay Area's top amateur golfers.

"I came back and took a look at Harding Park and realized it was turning into a weed patch," Tatum said. "I couldn't bear that thought. I'm a friend of Chuck Schwab's. I said to Chuck, 'Somehow, we need to try to save it. The only way to save it is to get the tour involved.'"

Schwab talked to PGA Commissioner Tim Finchem about bringing an event to Harding Park.

"Chuck arranged a dinner with Tim Finchem, Chuck and I," Tatum said. "I explained to Tim what I thought was available here. I thought the Tour would be passing up an opportunity if they didn't come here because it's one of the best markets in the whole country. He told me at that dinner if his guys confirm what I was telling him about Harding Park, he'd be on board. That got it going."

Tatum, now 91, was part of two NCAA championship teams while at Stanford (1941 | 1942). He won the individual title his senior season at Notre Dame Golf Course in South Bend, Ind.

1942 National Champoinship Team - click to enlarge

"It was more than exciting," Tatum said. "It was mind-boggling. I played well for a lot of years, but I never thought I could be that good. In that particular setting, I was. Playing golf at Stanford was one of the most important elements in that whole experience. The golf course, golf coach Eddie Twiggs, the players, the whole scene was added dimensions to that experience."

Frank Donovan "Sandy" Tatum Jr. chose Stanford after being influenced by his older brother, Don, who had attended Stanford before him.

"Stanford experience was the answer to a dream," Sandy Tatum said. "I had some exposure to the place because of my brother. He was eight years older. I told myself, 'I'm going to set my sights on Stanford. If I could just get there, I'd have that dream realized.' And it was. Those four years were the most effectively important years of my life. It also matters to me to see how much that institution has developed. It has been amazing."

Tatum, an engineering major, was in the Navy three years during World War II. When he was stationed in Arizona, Tatum befriended Stanford golf great Lawson Little, class of '34.

"They dealt with me in a remarkable way," Tatum said. "They sent me to the University of Arizona for an indoctrination program. I was there for two months. The place was wonderful. One of the guys there was Lawson Little. We played an exhibition match for the Red Cross. That's how my Navy career started."

Tatum was transferred to the University of Michigan, where he got a nine-month crash course in Naval architecture.

"It was fascinating," Tatum said. "There was a great golf course there, so I played a fair amount of golf. They then sent me to the San Francisco Naval Shipyard where they put me in charge of ship modeling and repair. The admiral there was a golf nut. So I played a lot of golf during the war. I don't deserve to be identified as a war hero."

Tatum went to law school after he got out of the Navy, abstaining from going professional as a golfer.

"It never occurred to me to go pro," Tatum said. "It wasn't that I didn't think I could play that well. The life they led didn't appeal to me. I started practicing at a small firm and we did everything. I loved it."

Tatum, still practicing law after 62 years in the profession, has stayed connected to golf in various ways. Tatum served as president of the United States Golf Association from 1978 to 1980. He was on the USGA executive committee from 1972 to 1980. Tatum was involved in the design and development of The Links at Spanish Bay golf course in Pebble Beach. He codesigned Lockeford Springs Golf Course in Lodi and Mount Shasta Resort in Mount Shasta.

After 55 years living in San Francisco, Tatum and his wife, Barbara, moved to Hyatt Residence near the Stanford Shopping Center.

"I told my wife, we're going off to the sunset in real style," Tatum said.

When he finds time, Tatum plays some golf.

"I'm so grateful to be out there swinging at it, I could get down on my knees and weep," he said.

Wally Goodwin to retire after 67 years in coaching

2011-06-03T11:10:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note --- Wally Goodwin coached Stanford for 23 years winning the national championship in 1994. He recruited and coached Tiger Woods, Casey Martin, Notah Begay, head coach Conrad Ray, Joel Kribel among many other stars from Stanford proud golfing tradition. A 5-part video interview of Wally produced by Stanford men's golf can be found at http://www.stanfordmensgolf.org/video-Goodwin.htm.

The following Article by Tom Milstead in the Buffalo Bulletin, June 1, 2011 --- http://www.buffalobulletin.com/articles/2011/06/01/sports/doc4de56536a772f992920766.txt

Wally Goodwin’s life has been about new beginnings.

The 2010 Wyoming Sports Hall of Fame inductee coached golf and basketball at eight schools during his career, which began in 1960. At every school he went to he was tasked with either building or rebuilding a program. He specialized in wiping the dust off of tarnished championship banners and building programs into national powers. Now, after 47 years of creating and resurrecting, Goodwin has decided to rest.

He has left behind the whirlwind lifestyle of a college coach, the constant recruiting and fundraising, and retired to a small house on the former Rafter Y Dude Ranch in Story, a property his family owned since 1921 until his son, Putter, sold it earlier this year.

“When I think back about my life in athletics, I don’t think any other coach has ever had the same kind of life that I had,” he said. “Everything turned out good. There was always an excitement to go to the next place.”

That excitement to see the next place fueled Goodwin throughout his career. After playing on the PGA tour in 1959, Goodwin began coaching basketball at a high school in Colorado. After a stint at a prep school in Ohio and a spell as the athletic director at Robert Louis Stevenson School in California, he became an assistant basketball coach at Stetson University in Florida. His time at Stetson was his first brush with major college athletics. While there, he coached against Larry Bird’s Indiana State teams as well as other major programs like Ohio State and Michigan. He coached at Stetson for three years, but in 1981 he got the call that would shape the rest of his career.

“A dear friend of mine became the director of athletics at Northwestern and he called me up the next day to see if I’d come out there and start their golf program,” Goodwin said. “I said ‘yeah, I’ll give it a shot.’”

The decision to coach golf turned out to be one of the most important of his career. Goodwin’s impact at Northwestern was immediate. After starting from scratch, Goodwin recruited Jim Benepe from Sheridan and made him into an all-American. The future PGA Rookie of the Year was Goodwin's first important recruit, but he certainly wouldn’t be his last.

“We started from scratch and had some all-Americans,” Goodwin said. “We had some good teams.

“Then Stanford called up.”

It was at Stanford that Goodwin would make his name. He turned a once-proud program that had fallen on hard times into a national powerhouse during his 13-year stint. He recruited the best players in the country to play for the Cardinal, including players that are now household names.

He brought in players like Notah Begay, an eventual PGA tour mainstay, Casey Martin, who famously sued the PGA in order to use a golf cart during tour events because his right leg was crippled at birth, and Tiger Woods. Goodwin constructed a diverse unit at Stanford, and he made history.

Goodwin was named the national coach of the year in 1992 and 1994. In 1994, the year before Woods came to Stanford, Goodwin led the Cardinal to the NCAA Division I men’s golf championship. His team defeated Texas on their home course to claim Stanford’s first championship since 1953.

“That would be the peak of it,” Goodwin said. “It was a thrilling thing to have happen. I was so proud of the guys. This is Texas. We were in their territory. All of their fans were there.

“The alumni and boosters at Stanford had signs up all over my office and everything. It was a great time for the university.”

In 1995, Woods joined the team. Goodwin had first heard of Tiger when Woods was 13. After seeing him in Sports Illustrated’s Faces in the Crowd feature, Goodwin wrote Woods a letter that planted Stanford in the young man’s head. Years later, when Tiger was a senior in high school, he remembered it.

“I looked at this kid and I thought ‘what a smile,’” Goodwin said of his first impression of Tiger. “This kid is different. There was something different there. So I wrote him a letter. It has become a really famous letter. It was to just let him know who I was, and if he was interested in going to Stanford to write me a note and let me know and I’d follow him and see where it goes. He writes back this letter. It’s a perfect letter. I mean perfect. His handwriting was great. He had capitals, punctuation; every sentence had a verb in it. It was great.”

Goodwin recalled having pizza with Woods when the young golfer informed him of his decision to attend Standford.

“He said ‘hey coach, I’ve got something to show you.’ He reaches under his chair and he pulls out a Nevada-Las Vegas golf hat and puts it on,” Goodwin said. “I said ‘hey you little twerp.’ You wouldn’t have asked me to come down here if you were going to go to Vegas. I can’t understand why you’d want to go there anyway. You wouldn’t have me down for dinner for that, you’d have your father call me on the phone. He said ‘relax, coach.’ Then he reaches down and pulls out an Arizona State golf hat. I said ‘Tiger, if that’s as close as you’ve come to making up your mind I’ve got to go. I have to get back to Stanford.’ He stopped me and put on a Stanford hat and said ‘coach, I’m with you.’”

Goodwin said having Woods at Stanford brought an incredible amount of interest to the team. Before Tiger, Stanford golf tournaments were nearly deserted.

“Before he came, the spectators there would six or seven sets of parent and two or three girlfriends that come with puppy dogs. That was it,” Goodwin said. “Tiger comes to college and there are hundreds of people. It was totally out of control.”

The team would go on to finish second in 1995 after losing a playoff with Oklahoma State. Woods went on to win the 1996 individual championship before going pro the year after.

Despite all of Tiger’s success, Goodwin doesn’t talk about him any differently than he does any of his former players. One of the players he most admired was Martin, who Goodwin defended against PGA legend and Stanford alum Tom Watson, who spoke out against Martin during his trial against the PGA.

“Here is a crippled guy that, since birth, has done the maximum he could do with his body,” Goodwin said. “He played on the tour, which was his lifelong dream. I remember going through the trial because that case went clear to the top. I was down in Tucson at the time and the judge in the trial made arrangements to talk to me on the phone.

“There will never be another one. I told Tom Watson, ‘hey, what if he was your son?’ He didn’t have an answer and he had a different attitude about the whole thing.”

Martin, who is now the head coach at the University of Oregon, said he enjoyed playing for Goodwin, but the relationship between coach and player was the real highlight of playing for Wally at Stanford.

“I think relationships are the most important thing,” Martin said. “I think those relationships you forge in golf are going to last. A trophy gets kind of dusty. I think this is probably his life lesson: that relational victories are probably better than victories on the golf course.

“I think he showed that you could be really competitive and really good but you don’t have to be a jerk to do it. He showed that you could be a kind person and still be successful, and that has always stuck with me because Wally was secretly very competitive. He cared for other people and he put up other people first a lot.”

At his ranch in Story, Goodwin’s office isn’t filled with trophies. He admits winning tournaments was fun, but like Martin, his real treasures are the relationships he formed during his years in golf. According to Goodwin, he wants his legacy to be athletes who followed him into coaching instead of players who became professionals.

“I’ve got three guys that played for me that are now college coaches. That shows you not necessarily what kind of players they were, but what kind of guys they are. They’re entrusted with the lives of all the kids that play for them and they’re all doing a great job.”

Goodwin retired from Stanford in 2000. It was his first try at living on his family’s ranch and it didn’t take long for Goodwin to realize he had a few more years left on the course. He served as the head coach for Northern Colorado from 2003 to 2007 before finally settling down to a simpler life in Story.

“There was something definitely missing in my life. I was bored here in the wintertime. The minute it came up I knew it was the thing to do. I was so busy down there I was going out of my mind.”

Goodwin maintains that this time, he has found whatever he was missing and that his retirement is final. Martin, on the other hand, isn’t sure Goodwin can handle being 100 percent retired.

“I don’t think so,” Martin said. “I think he’ll have to get out and do something. I don’t see him as sitting in a ranch and whiling away the hours. I think he’ll want to be involved, maybe not coaching, but be involved in some capacity around college sports. I know he loves sports. We really hit if off because we talked basketball and football all the time. I think he probably wants to be around that to some degree. Probably in the summer time he’ll be up there and I guess in the winter time he’ll sneak down to Stanford or somewhere to be closer to the action.”

But Goodwin doesn’t see coaching golf in his horizon. He said that what he wants to go fishing, maybe play a few rounds at the Buffalo Golf Club and watch the Colorado Rockies play at night. This time, he says he is really done.

“I’ve built memories, I’ve built satisfaction and a little bit of money,” he said. “I’m sure there are going to be days when I get a little bit restless and there are going to be days when I have a hell of a time. I think I’m prepared to go into both of those kinds of days. Nancy and I have a great life together. We don’t have any questions about our lives or how they’re going. Our lives just go. I think we’re both content.”

Story by Tom Milstead, tom@buffalobulletin.com.

David Chung Video --- My Stanford Story

2011-04-07T12:05:00.000-07:00

Jim Young, Senior Assistant Athletic Director/Communications and Media Relations

Editor's Note: "My Stanford Story" is a continuing series on GoStanford.com intended to profile select Stanford student-athletes and their extraordinary accomplishments on and off the playing fields. Video work by Bud Anderson, Director of Creative Video Services.
April 5, 2011 STANFORD, Calif.

As a young boy growing up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, David Chung fondly remembers playing golf with his father, Christian, early in the morning on Masters Sunday, then hurrying home to watch the final round of the tournament he and thousands of other junior golfers his age could only dream of playing in one day.

He remembers the 1997 Masters, when a 21-year old Tiger Woods, just a few years removed from Stanford, won his first green jacket with a record-setting score of 270 (-18), earning a 12-stroke victory over Tom Kite.

In 2006, David and his father made the three and a half hour drive down the I-70 from Fayetteville to attend their first Masters together as patrons. The experience left him awestruck.
"Every blade of grass is perfect," said Chung. "You can't help not to get caught up in the history and prestige of Augusta National. It gave me chills."

Fast forward to August of 2010 when Chung, now firmly established as one of the top amateur players in the world, stood on the first tee at Chambers Bay Golf Course prior to his match against Ben Ahn in the semifinals of the United States Amateur Men's Championship. A victory not only would secure a spot in the 36-hole championship match, but would assure the winner a spot in the Masters.

After closing out Ahn on the 18th hole to earn a 1-up victory, this one time child prodigy who was introduced to the game by riding around in a golf cart with his father at the age of four, had seen one of his golfing dreams come true. David Chung had earned a spot in the field at the Masters.

"I think I was more nervous before that match than the finals, knowing a trip to Augusta was a possibility," remembers Chung.

As one of this year's participants, David was afforded the opportunity to play Augusta National for the first time over winter break.

"It was December 27 and there was only one other group on the entire course, so I had the course all to myself," recalls Chung, who was accompanied by his father. "Driving down Magnolia Lane for the first time was a special experience I will never forget. We purposely slowed down so we could savor every minute of the drive."

Once on the course, it didn't take Chung long to realize he more than had his work cut out for him.
"I didn't realize how difficult the course is to walk because every approach shot appears to be uphill. The temperature was in the mid-40's and the course felt like it played 8,000 yards. I thought it was the longest golf course I've ever played and the greens are so demanding."

As one of this year's participants, David was afforded the opportunity to play Augusta National for the first time over winter break.

"It was December 27 and there was only one other group on the entire course, so I had the course all to myself," recalls Chung, who was accompanied by his father. "Driving down Magnolia Lane for the first time was a special experience I will never forget. We purposely slowed down so we could savor every minute of the drive."

Once on the course, it didn't take Chung long to realize he more than had his work cut out for him.
"I didn't realize how difficult the course is to walk because every approach shot appears to be uphill. The temperature was in the mid-40's and the course felt like it played 8,000 yards. I thought it was the longest golf course I've ever played and the greens are so demanding."

He managed to sneak in another practice round at Augusta on March 25 prior to Stanford's appearance in the Linger Longer Invitational, which was held in nearby Greensboro, Ga. After the tournament, he chose to travel straight to Augusta with his family to begin preparing for his first Masters in earnest.

"I am certainly glad that I was able to spend some time here before tournament week," said Chung, who is bunking in the Crow's Nest above the famed Augusta National Clubhouse, with the other amateurs who are in this year's field.
"There is no other place in the world like the National, with its mystique and history. J.J. Weaver, one of the head professionals at Augusta, said amateurs need to visit this place as often as possible before the event to get rid of some of that "awe" factor. I'm hoping my extra time here will help me concentrate on my game."

Chung, who will be paired with 1988 Masters champion Sandy Lyle and Alex Cejka of Germany in the first two rounds, thinks the ability to drive the ball well will be one of his many keys to success this week. He will also rely heavily on a longtime Augusta caddy, known as "Rowdy" to guide him around the course.

"I have to drive the ball well, no doubt about it. I'm confident with my approach shots but the key is to get in the right position, both in the fairway and on the greens, to give myself a chance."

Chung managed to play a practice round on Sunday with PGA standouts Adam Scott and Geoff Ogilvy, along with Oklahoma State standout and U.S. Amateur champion Peter Uihlein.

"For the first several holes, I was pretty nervous but they are all great guys and their easy going demeanors helped me to settle down. I am going to try to play with as many professionals as possible before the tournament begins on Thursday. Anthony Kim and I share the same swing coach so I will be practicing with him. I hope to play with Tiger, as well."
Chung mentioned Woods, who will be gunning for his fifth green jacket, gave him a welcome embrace on the putting green.

"That was pretty special."

When asked about his goals for the week, Chung plays it pretty close to the vest, saying nothing more than he will try to play his best.

Good enough - for hasn't that been the approach that got him to Augusta in the first place?

by Jim Young, Senior Assistant Athletic Director/Communications and Media Relations
Editor's Note: "My Stanford Story" is a continuing series on GoStanford.com intended to profile select Stanford student-athletes and their extraordinary accomplishments on and off the playing fields. Video work by Bud Anderson, Director of Creative Video Services.

Zack Miller on Tour --- AT & T Pebble Beach Pro-Am & Nissan Open at Riviera

2011-03-04T08:19:00.000-08:00

2007 Stanford grad Zack Miller continues his fine play increasing his money winnings to more than $300,000 on the PGA Tour. He writes about his experiences in a blog for CSNBayArea.com.

Zack Miller
PGA TOUR Professional

The last two weeks have been great golfing weeks.

Photo by CSN Bay Area

Let's start with the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. I love playing in the Monterey area. I don't make it down there from the Bay Area too often but they've got so many great courses in such close proximity. I stayed at a friend's house who lives just down the road from Pebble which was extremely convenient for me to get to the three courses that week. I played in a Pro-Am at Monterey Peninsula Country Club (MPCC) for the Boys & Girls Club of Monterey on Monday and then played the next two days at Pebble. My amateur partner was Scott McNealy, founder of Sun Microsystems and a good friend of mine who has been an avid supporter of Stanford golf for a long time now. I've gotten to know Scott and his family (Susan, Maverick, Dakota, Colt, Scout, and their dog Shelby) over the past 7 years. A great teammate for the week. The rest of the group was comprised of Joe Bramlett, my teammate for one year at Stanford and Jerry Yang, founder of Yahoo! and another great supporter of Stanford Golf. The week was shaping up for a lot of fun.

[REWIND: Points and his sidekick, Murray, win Pebble Beach]

I open opened up with even par (72) at Pebble and -1 (70) at MPCC. A few of my highlights from Pebble included chipping in twice and holing out a 56 yard shot on 18 for par after hooking my drive into the Ocean. That shot alone -- saving par and avoiding bogey or worse -- was such a huge momentum saver.

My third round at Spyglass was one to remember; it was my most solid round of the the year. I really didn't miss-hit a shot until my first bogey on the par-3 12. I made nine birdies and three bogies that day, which included being 8-under through 15 holes. A truly great ball striking round with a solid putting day to add to it. Just one of those days where everything clicked. I shot 66. It propelled me into 12th place going into the final round and earned a pairing with Hunter Mahan and Phil Mickelson at Pebble Beach! Unfortunately our Pro-Am score was not quite good enough to make it to the final day. Scott and I lost in a card-off for the final Pro-Am berth.

The only times I felt nervous that last day was at the beginning and end of the round. My caddy said, "Don't be freaked out when Phil shakes your hand and has glove his on". I only felt a little nervous when I saw him on the putting green, but once we met and announced on the first tee I felt comfortable. Both Phil and Hunter were complete gentlemen and could not have been any nicer. That goes for both their caddies as well, John wood and Bones. Bones comes over to my bag on 1 because we were waiting for the green to clear and asked what my Saint Marks Elementary golf team bag tag was all about. I said I just got it from my PE teacher from back in the the day and I guess I had just become an honorary member of the team. He just chuckled to himself.

It was a day to remember. A great weather day at Pebble and a pairing with two Ryder cup members who are both Top 20 in the world -- not too bad. I shot 71 (-1) and finished tied for ninth for the week, collecting my biggest pay check of the my career ($163K+). The Top 10 finish also solidified a spot for me in the L.A. Open at Riviera the following week -- a great perk since I was not going to get into the event before Pebble.

Now moving onto the L.A. Open. Riviera is a beast of a golf course. The event boasted the strongest field for a tournament I had participated in all year. For the first time, I saw guys like Louie Oosthuzien, Paul Casey, Luke Donald, and Ryo Ishikawa.

Read more: Miller: Making PGA cuts and cashing checks
Tune to SportsNet Central at 6, 10:30 and midnight on Comcast SportsNet Bay Area for more on this story

Zack Miller on Tour --- Phoenix Open and 1st two days at the Sony Open

2011-01-12T17:21:00.000-08:00

You can follow Zack's PGA Tour exploits on his blog at http://www.csnbayarea.com/pages/on_tour.

Miller: Maintaining momentum

Last week at Torrey Pines, Zack Miller joked with Tiger Woods about not being able to beat a rookie. They both shot 69 in the opening round. (Courtesy Zack Miller)

Feb. 1, 2011

GOLF PAGE

Zack Miller
PGA TOUR Professional

I am currently in Phoenix as the fourth alternate to get accepted into the Waste Management Open. Unfortunately, the prospect of getting into the event with only two days to go before the event is not looking great. It would be great to play because my game is solid right now. As a rookie, however, getting into popular events with smaller fields is just hard to come by.

I've loved the ride the PGA TOUR has given me the last three weeks. Starting in Hawaii I had some nerves walking around not knowing the majority of players or the people who are affiliated with the TOUR. I played great but left the course Friday with a sour taste in my mouth.

I went into 18 thinking a birdie would get me into the weekend. A reachable downwind par 5 was all I had left. I drove it behind a palm tree and decided to try to be aggressive when maybe if I had some experience I would chip it out and rely on my wedge game. I ended up smoking the tree dead on and it ricocheted into a bush and ended up making a bogey on the hole.

Imagine the experience -- putting out on 18 knowing that that bogey cost me over $10,000 dollars. I just wanting to get on the next flight out of Honolulu and prepare for the next event.

Read more: On Tour with Zack Miller
Tune to SportsNet Central at 6, 10:30 and midnight on Comcast SportsNet Bay Area for more on this story

CSN Bay Area is featuring Zack Miller online. Zack was an All-American at Stanford graduating in 2007. Here is the first part of Zack's experiences at the Sony Open in Hawaii:

Zack Miller
PGA TOUR Professional

I'm here in Honolulu, Hawaii for the first PGA Tour event of the season, and my first PGA Tour event ever, the Sony Open. It's amazing seeing some of the big names walking around the locker room and practice facility. My locker is next to Brian Gay and David Duval.

It is pretty popular to leave your clubs right next to your locker so I have been checking out the names on the bags and seeing what clubs are being playing with and if there is anything I've never seen before. The new hot club right now is the Taylor Made R11 driver and 3 wood. The head is painted cream white and stands out from a mile a way. You will really be able to see it on TV.

I played 7 holes with Pat Perez on Tuesday. It's amazing that this will be his 10th year on tour. He is one of the best ball strikers I've seen on the golf course. He helped me with where to hit it and what the wind usually does on certain holes, something he definitely did not have to do. But it was a really great learning experience seeing his confidence and how he attacks the holes.

The Tour set up a Pearl Harbor excursion for us; there were more family members and caddies than players, but I hung out with my old teammate Joseph Bramlett. We walked around on the USS Chafee and had the opportunity to meet four-star Admiral Bob Willard who controls the naval operations in the Pacific. A cool fact about him was that he was in Top Gun in the scene where Tom Cruise was 'flipping the bird' to the Russians while inverted. Well, the Admiral played the Russian pilot in the front seat of the other plane. TOP GUN! Awesome.

Headed to an offsite Pro-Am today to play with people who have contributed to make the Sony Open possible. I am playing Thursday with Chris Baryla and Kevin Kisner, both of whom I know well. I tee off at 1pm Thursday and 8:30am Friday.

Interview with new Ass't Coach Phil Rowe, former All-American at Stanford

2010-08-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

Thanks to new Assistant Golf Coach Phil Rowe, an Englishman from Cornwall, for taking the time to provide us with a wide ranging view into his wonderful background that has combined an All-American career at Stanford with 8 years as a professional golfer on various world tours. Thanks also for his great photos.

1. Congratulations on being named the new Assistant Men's Golf Coach! Could you tell us how you heard about the opening and came to decide to pursue and then take the job?

Thank you Bob and thanks to all who have sent me kind “Welcome return to The Farm” messages. I must say that it all came about as a bit of a surprise that has not properly sunk in just yet. The support is much appreciated and I am filled with great excitement for what lies ahead.

How did I hear? Well... I always wished to maintain my connection with Stanford team news and progress. The various blogs found here on the www.stanfordmensgolf.org website have been an invaluable resource. Even so, it was not until I exchanged a few emails of encouragement with Coach Ray through the highs and lows at Chattanooga that I became aware of the Assistant Coach opening.

Things moved swiftly thereafter. Various professional and personal project contemplations in the preceding months meant that I was able to make a decision and mobilize my candidature documents rapidly.

Now I find myself honoured to be working alongside Coach Ray and some of America’s finest golfing talent.

2. It must have been a difficult decision for you and your family since it's a dramatic career change as well as a major shift from Europe to Palo Alto. Could you tell us about how you weighed the pros and cons of taking the job?

Yes, it was a difficult decision in certain respects. Of course, there’s no easy secret to weighing pros and cons in any big decision, not least when one is potentially turning ones’ back on a lifelong ambition to win major golf championships!* However, as I alluded to when speaking of my swift decision, the transition process was already underway in my case. A word of advice I picked up from George Roberts before deciding to turn pro was once again helpful: “how you get there will vary... but it is important to set out a blueprint of where you want to go”. Some significant roadblocks had therefore been negotiated when I acknowledged that my overriding desire is to put maximum contribution back into golf and that proximity to my family would become a priority in the years to come. So at the point when the job opening came along, I had already embarked on a mission to generate those conditions without depending on victory in the British Open.

*[Speaking in reference to the British Open in 2009 and just to put the part about “potentially turning ones’ back on a lifelong ambition to win major golf championships” straight... For me, it was not so much an issue of “hanging up the clubs” but recognising that golf is a game for life. Tom Watson ’71 provides us with that example in crystal. His lesson tells me that preparation (or at least leaving the door open) for opportunities down the road, is the smart option.]

Curiously, whilst we were on vacation in California earlier in 2010 and had a chance to check out new golf and campus developments, it was actually my wife who mused how being a university golf coach might be an “interesting” job prospect for me to consider one day! With that in backdrop you can imagine how I was actually pretty well tuned in to “catch the ball” as it were. In terms of a “major shift”... my accent is funny wherever I go and my wife had called the movers plus selected extravagant condos for us to live in before I even had a final interview!

3. Tell us a few things about growing up in England and how your junior golf career developed.

My grandfather, father and I in turn learned to play at The West Cornwall Golf Club. It is a course of only 5884 yards but rich in history. James Martin Barnes was born in the village of Lelant next to the course where he too was an apprentice of the game. Here is a picture of the “Long Jim” (Claret Jug in hand) homecoming shortly after he won the British Open in 1925:

He was the inaugural winner of the USPGA Championship in 1916, won it again when the tournament was held for the second time in 1919 and he won the U.S. Open Championship in 1921.

My club and county of Cornwall were on the lookout for “the next Jim Barnes” and there were many budding young candidates from my junior golfing era. Here is one of my first swings on the links course:

Success at club, county, southwest region and then eventually national level meant that I graduated through the amateur ranks to represent England Boys in the World Junior Team Championships in Japan as well as all around Europe.

Below is a picture of an England versus Spain foursomes match line up (Sergio Garcia is second from left) at the 1997 European Boys Team Championships in Slovenia:

World Junior Teams - Sergio Garcia 2nd from left

So far as school went... Generally speaking, I was inspired to work hard and maintain solid grades because I knew that getting the job done well and promptly would leave me the maximum time to spend on the golf course!

I played a lot as a junior and like many young players who end up representing their country; it was a team effort. For several years my parents took turns to transport me thirty to forty thousand miles around the British Isles to various national tournaments. Here is a picture of me with my parents at the 1996 Boys Home Internationals in Kent:

And here is a picture with Tony Moore who has been my coach and mentor from day 1 of my golfing career:

My amateur career culminated in the famous 1999 GBI Walker Cup victory at Nairn in Scotland:

Two days later... I arrived at Stanford!

4a. How did you come to choose Stanford since you were coming from Britain?

Confession... It was never a goal or a particular dream of mine that I would one day attend Stanford, university in the States or university anywhere for that matter. Such an unthinkable scenario to me now, even this confession seems outrageous! Nonetheless, one has to put it in the context of growing up in the UK (and Europe similarly) where for most young players the choice is either sport or academics. Foremost, I wanted to be a touring pro golfer!

Several circumstances delayed my decision to turn pro. First, I had parents who somehow cajoled me into taking “A-level” exams (that meant sacrificing entry in several big national amateur events). Second, I watched a close England International teammate’s pro dream initially turn sour when 17 year old Justin Rose followed up his stunning British Open 4^th place finish with a run of 21 European Tour missed cuts. Third, there were other examples of teammates who seemed to be making a good go of US college golf and in whose footsteps I could follow (notably Paul Casey, Graeme McDowell and Luke Donald). Thanks to the precedent set by these players, it gradually dawned on me that to become a “Student Athlete” in America would only enhance my eventual golf career.

Pertaining to my recruitment for Stanford... when players like Casey, McDowell and Donald set off from the British shores to play US college golf, their talent quantities and potentials were somewhat unknown. On arrival they just lit it up. For example, earlier in 1999 Paul Casey had shot a final round of 60 en route to winning his second of three consecutive PAC-10 individual titles. So... fortunately I had a full one hundred SAT points more than “Wildcat” Luke Donald; who coincidentally, I was partnering in the summer of 1999 Palmer Cup matches at the Honors Course, Chattanooga (see picture below) when I met Coach Goodwin for the first time.

4b. You mean that College Sport does not exist in Europe?

Not in the same way... In golf’s case at least, plain facts still emphasize the United States as the only viable option for combining high levels of academic ability with sporting achievement. Gonzalo Fernández-Castaño of Spain is perhaps the only example of a European university graduate successfully competing on world golf tours. All the same, Europe is now on course for linking up its excellent and longstanding golf coaching structures with education systems. When it finally does, high level performers in golf will have some great opportunities for education, language and cultural exchange open up through their sport!

5a. You were an outstanding golfer at Stanford, graduating as an All-American in 2002. Was there a particular highlight that you remember from your playing days at Stanford?

So many little ones... Hawaii trips staying at Mauna Kea with Sukey and Irv Grousbeck, “double Don Chu” plyometric workouts from 6am with Pat Phillips and Kevin Blue, the famous Nan Goodwin red track suit (pic)... I have many great memories of life on the golf team!

And a few big ones in terms of golfing performances too... the US Intercollegiate victory at Stanford in 2002 (my senior year) has to stand out as the highlight. Personal preparations to make a memorable showing at my final home event started weeks before when I spent many hours each day specifically practicing to produce every single shot I could count on facing over the familiar course. With a first round 64, the quest started out well and I held on for victory.

PAC10s followed that event and the form continued with a tied second place alongside Kevin Stadler (we were denied a 3 way playoff only because Jim Seki ’03 holed a bombshell chip shot on his 18^th hole). We failed to qualify for Nationals that year despite our late charge, and admittedly it still hurts not to see our names inscribed in Stanford Championship Tradition. However, referring back to my recent appointment to rejoin the team as Assistant coach, the story is not complete because since then Coach Ray has built the Cardinal Golf wagon up to such momentum that it is sure to threaten for a win in every competition... Championships included!

5b. What else stands out from those years?

A couple of anecdotes from other Stanford sports that really opened up new ideas - about being a student and an athlete at the same time:

1 – Football. One of the first people I met was my roommate in the Freshman/Sophomore College. At 6’5” and 300 lbs, he was perhaps the biggest person I had ever shaken hands with... until I met some of his 2am pizza eating machine friends that is! Initial impressions did not reveal all though because I soon learned how he played two instruments in a music band plus he liked to write poetry, novels, political debate articles for the Stanford Daily as well as his own computer programs!

2 – Track. In my junior year I made a couple of friends on the track team when they attended Spanish classes with me in the late mornings three days per week. It became a ritual to eat lunch together on those days and on the way to the dining hall we would flaunt bike and pedestrian safety by playing disc golf across campus. Nothing extraordinary or clever, just silly... that was until the day we had to make a disc golf hole pass by Meyer Library because one of the runners needed to login and check on data relays from his satellite whilst it was in communication range! The other runner did stand-up comedy shows in the CoHo... that was clever and silly at the same time!

6. Have you kept in touch with some of your former teammates at Stanford?

Yes, several. The “prowegolf updates” that I write have been helpful to keep in touch with people in general. However, I had to expel one or two of the guys off the mailing list because of the mocking abuse I received back from them! They still find ways to do that via Facebook! This recent Assistant Coach announcement also provides an occasion to reconnect.

My wedding... aware that it’s not exactly across the street I sent out early wedding invitations just in case maybe they could make it coincide with a European vacation. I was delighted and touched when three of them came across to attend the celebrations in France (L-R: Jim Seki ’03, Phil Rowe ’02, Eric Johnson ’03 and DJ Powers -Assistant Coach ‘00-’03).

7. We understand you turned pro soon after graduating from Stanford. What were your plans at that point and how did those early professional golf years unfold?

In the year of my graduation, 2002 (still an amateur at that point), I remember feeling a little torn between the States and Europe, Amateur and Pro. Not clearly making up my mind was an error. For example, I passed through European Tour Qualifying Stage 1 easily enough and then flew over to La Purisima near Santa Barbara to play the US PGA Tour Qualifying Stage 1. By that point my head was filled with permutations of not only what would happen should I earn tour card privileges in one, the other or both; but also whether I would perhaps wait for one more Walker Cup should I end up with nothing. Well I did... end up with nothing!

Midway through the following year I made the positive decision to turn pro in Europe. Form picked up as a result of making those choices. Thanks to some sponsorship support, I was able to play a full schedule of mini-tour events around the British Isles as well as a few ‘last minute’ invites to Challenge Tour events around Europe. Then at the end of 2003 I received a couple of invitations to play events on a circuit called the Alps Tour. My performances and experiences in those events combined with my motivation to learn a second language (Spanish 1 did not do the trick!) helped me to preference and fix objectives for playing on the satellite tours in Europe rather than the UK. I made a base in France.

All along, the plan was to arrive at a point where I could pick and choose between tournaments on both sides of the Atlantic (rather like several of my contemporaries are now able to do: Donald, Casey, McDowell, Wilson, Rose). However, my rate of progress in all departments of my game, scoring average and all important money earnings; could be described as gradual (see Table 1 below) at best. Taking a step back to look at things anew at several points along the way, I took reassurance in another piece of George Roberts counselling: “There are no guarantees... but if you work at it hard enough and stick at it long enough then you will make it”. On every occasion, tenacity paid off over the course of a long season (see Table 2 below) yet at the same time, even a few well timed low rounds did not manage to make me inroads to compete with players at the pinnacle of the PGA or European tours (see Table 3 below).

8. What were some of the highlights of your professional golf career and what was the life like for you and your family?

Between 2005 and 2009 I never left the top 10 on the end of season Order of Merit standings on those tours (whether it was Europro, Alps or Allianz Golf Tours on which my schedule was focused). In terms of wins, 2006 was my best year: I won the Open de Pays Basque, Towergate Insurance Championship and the Open de la Réunion. The latter is played on a French island in the Indian Ocean and I won the event for a second time in December 2009.

9. What was the best and the worst thing about playing professionally all over the world these past 8 years?

Best: playing pro-ams, meeting and trying to communicate with fascinating people in many different countries (they thought my job was interesting too!).

Worst: I think that I have travelled a fair bit yet there are still many gaps, places where I have not managed to play yet... notably South Africa, New Zealand, Russia, South America and Canada!

10. Are you married? Tell us about your family (if you could send a couple of photos that would be great).

I was married to Claire Rowe (née Michaudet) on 8/16/08 in her home town of Jaunay Clan in Poitou-Charentes, France. Pics:

Claire is trained in Law. Immediately prior to moving over to the States she was the only legal expert in a small semi-public company that managed a portfolio of development projects for a departmental authority in Aquitaine, France.

My Parents (pictured earlier) still live in the same house near St.Ives in Cornwall since before I was born. Father Jonathan is a retired Chartered Accountant and Mother Jenny worked in the hotel industry for many years.

Pictured below are my good friend Jonathan Coleman [who caddied for me in the Walker Cup ‘99 (trophy in picture) and the British Open ’00 (teeing off in picture below too)] and my sister Margaret who lives between Oxford and London in the UK with her husband and young daughter.

7am start time at St.Andrews:

11. What are you looking forward to in working with Stanford's highly successful golf program? Do you know any of the players?

There are many aspects of the Assistant Coach role that I am really looking forward to and coaching with the players is one big part of the whole picture. September 10, the day when I get to meet the whole team together for the first time, will be a huge day for me. Observation, listening and getting to know each player will be on my immediate agenda.

Speaking of momentum earlier... in this past weeks David Chung has won the Western Amateur and the Porter Cup to add to his outstanding 4:0 match play win contribution at the Palmer Cup last month, and Steven Kearney has won a three-way playoff at Torrey Pines to become San Diego City Amateur Champion. Top National events are Cardinal loaded for the remainder of the summer, so the message from Coach Ray is “...keep the wins coming!”

12. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the Stanford golf community?

It goes without saying that long before the current Stanford men’s team and its coaches arrived on the scene, alumni, supporters, course staff and members were generous and unwavering in their allegiance to the golf programs. Clearly, Coach Ray and the entire team appreciate this great support, and from it they have certainly enjoyed performance benefits in many subtle but significant ways. Perhaps the players end up feeling like they have “home” advantage wherever they go (written just before Butler beat Michigan State 52-50 in NCAA Basketball this year, here is an interesting article about this phenomenon)!

And speaking of home... there’s two in a row coming up: just eight months from now in 2011, The Stanford Course will host Pac-10s right before the team sets out on its Championship quest that surely ends in showdown at Oklahoma State, a college golf powerhouse that has just a slender 10-8 Championship count advantage. The following year, NCAA Regionals will be hosted at... Stanford.

Whilst all this tremendous support is going on, it is also important that the traffic is not one way. Hopefully, greater and greater value will be thrown into the ring and will be attracting interest via the content of this website and various Team Blogs. If it doesn’t or if there are developments that can be made, I know the message from Coach Ray would be “Let’s hear about it and get it done!” Another aspect might be the incredible network that Stanford Golf has across the nation and around the world. Much of this is made up from the golf community rather than the golf team itself of course, but, with a South-African arrival last season and a “Cornishman” re-installed this year... Stanford blazes a trail to all geographical corners!

Finally, I’ve heard legend of how Coach Ray works his team pretty hard. I think he must feed them the odd sandwich from time to time, however, in between dashing to classes, completing their practice drills or battling it out for qualifying... the players may not get much chance to come up for air! On the other hand, coaching staff is on call to respond to all questions ...

Phil, thanks for sharing your unique background with us. The Stanford golf community is excited to have you return to the Farm to continue your career in golf.

Pleasure ...and congratulations on all that you have achieved with this website Bob!

Right Down the Middle With Steve Ziegler

2010-03-11T16:55:00.000-08:00

This interview appeared on gostanford.com 3/11/10:

STANFORD, Calif. - Steve Ziegler earned first team All-Pac-10 Conference honors last season as a sophomore after leading the team in stroke average (72.58) in 12 events on the year. He captured his first individual title as a collegian at the USC/Ashworth Invitational, where he carded six rounds in the 60's en route to the title.

A native of Broomfield, Colo., Ziegler won both the Colorado Association Stroke Play and Match Play titles last summer, becoming just the ninth player to win both events in the same year and the first player to accomplish the feat since Brandt Jobe in 1985. He carded rounds of 69, 70, 67 and 67 to claim the Stroke Play title at the Lakewood Country Club and defeated Tom Gempel one-up in the 36-hole final of the CGA Match Play championships at the Bear Creek Golf Club in Denver after being two down with three holes to play.

One of 25 players listed on the watch list for the prestigious Ben Hogan Award, Ziegler has carded a 73.0 stroke average in his eight events this season for the second-ranked Cardinal, with his top finish coming at the Fighting Illini Invitational, where he tied for sixth.

"Steve is one of the most tenacious players on the team," said Knowles Director of Golf and head coach Conrad Ray. "Steve, along with Joseph Bramlett and Sihwan Kim, provide valuable leadership at the top of our line up. His scores this year haven't necessarily reflected how well he has been playing and hitting the ball. He's a hardworking kid who won't take no for an answer."

GoStanford.com recently caught up with Steve for this installment of "Right Down the Middle," which profiles members of Stanford's men's golf team.

Home course: The Ranch Country Club; Stanford Golf Course.
Favorite course you have played: Friar's Head.
Course you would most like to play: Augusta National.
Favorite golfer: Nick Faldo.
One swing thought you are always trying to remember: Making a full shoulder turn.
Favorite major championship to watch: The Masters.
Earliest memories of playing golf: Hitting balls with my dad and brother on practice range.
What's your most memorable round: The final round, specifically final nine at USC's invitational last year.
What's your most memorable shot: Hitting it close on 18 the final day of last year's USC Collegiate.
Favorite ball mark: None.

(Click here too read more)

Tiger ('96) honored by Stanford at the Big Game

2009-11-24T08:35:00.000-08:00

The following story comes from the Tiger Woods website - the photo below is from Getty Images, also on the official Tiger Woods website:

STANFORD, Calif. -- Tiger Woods was officially inducted into the Stanford Athletics Hall of Fame on Friday night during a small dinner on campus. Woods was a two-time first-team All-American and NCAA Individual Champion in 1996.
Accompanied by his wife, Elin, children Sam and Charlie, and mother Kultida, he was serenaded by the Stanford Band beforehand, Woods conducting the final song "All Right Now" from the steps of the Cantor Arts Center.

Following a video tribute, his mother and former Cardinal teammates Jerry Chang and Notah Begay III gave heartfelt testimonials.

On Saturday, Woods served as honorary captain for Stanford's football game against archrival California. He gave a short but rousing pre-game speech in the locker room before the game and flipped the coin at midfield, Stanford winning the toss. But after jumping out to a 14-0 lead, the Cardinal lost, 34-28.

Woods was also recognized for his election into the Hall of Fame at halftime, where he was presented with a plaque by Stanford Athletic Director Bob Bowlsby.

For the complete story on Tiger's website click here.

Tiger to be honorary captain of The Big Game & inducted in the Hall of Fame

2009-11-19T09:09:00.000-08:00

STANFORD, Calif. - Tiger Woods, winner of 14 major golf championships and the top-ranked player in the world, will serve as Stanford's honorary captain for Saturday's Big Game against California, head coach Jim Harbaugh announced today.

"It will be an honor for Stanford football to share our sideline with the greatest competitor of our generation," said Harbaugh.

Woods, who attended Stanford from 1994-96, will meet with the team prior to the game and will also take part in the pregame coin toss. In addition, Woods will be honored on the field at halftime at which time he will be presented with a plaque signifying his induction into the Stanford Athletics Hall of Fame.

"I'm really looking forward to being on the sideline Saturday to support coach Harbaugh and his players in one of college football's great rivalries," said Woods. "It's also a great honor to be included in the 2009 Stanford Athletics Hall of Fame class. I want to congratulate the other honorees. I had a wonderful time competing at Stanford, was challenged in and out of the classroom, and developed many life-long friendships. The university helped me grow as a person and an athlete, and I will always be grateful."

Woods, now 33 years of age, has had an unprecedented career since becoming a professional golfer in the late summer of 1996. He has won 94 tournaments, 71 of those on the PGA Tour, including the 1997, 2001, 2002 and 2005 Masters tournaments, 1999, 2000, 2006 and 2007 PGA Championships, 2000, 2002, and 2008 U.S. Open Championships, and 2000, 2005 and 2006 Open Championships. With his second Masters victory in 2001, Tiger became the first ever to hold all four professional major championships at the same time. He is the career victories leader among active players on the PGA Tour, and is the career money list leader.

While at Stanford, he won a total of 10 intercollegiate events including finishing first at the 1996 Pac-10 Conference and NCAA Championships. A two-time first team All-American in 1995 and '96, Tiger recorded the lowest round in Stanford history, carding a 61 at the 1996 Pac-10 Championships. He also holds Stanford's lowest career stroke average at 71.1.

The 112th Big Game will kickoff at 4:30 p.m. at Stanford Stadium and will be televised nationally on Versus.

Tiger Woods heeds lessons learned at Stanford

2009-09-20T06:25:00.000-07:00

SF Gate/SF Chronicle by Ron Kroichick, Chronicle Staff Writer 9/20/09

Tiger Woods' long trail of triumphant moments includes several in Northern California - stirring comeback in the 2000 AT&T at Pebble Beach, historic romp in the U.S. Open later that year, memorable playoff victory over John Daly at Harding Park in '05. Woods' appearance in next month's Presidents Cup offers another chance to burnish the NorCal chapter of his career.

But his history in our little corner of the world stretches deeper. Remember, he lived in the Bay Area for two years as a student at Stanford in the mid-1990s - two years that shaped Woods in ways beyond propelling him to fame and wealth as the world's best golfer.

He already was a much-hyped phenom, with three U.S. Junior Amateur wins and one U.S. Amateur title, when he arrived as an 18-year-old freshman in the fall of 1994. But to the seniors on Stanford's golf team - who had won the NCAA championship in the spring and were standout players in their own right - Woods was a scrawny target.

Notah Begay III considered it his duty to treat Woods like any other freshman. This meant he carried the bags on road trips (at least initially) and found himself in the worst seat on the van and airplane and worst room in the team hotel.

Begay chuckled as he reflected on those distant days, given Woods now travels in a private jet, owns a luxury yacht and could buy an entire hotel if he wanted.

"We felt like we were entitled to give Tiger a hard time," Begay recalled last week. "Now he's having the last laugh."

Woods lived in coed freshman dorms and realized he was in a different realm when one roommate took apart his computer and put it back together, just for kicks. Current Stanford coach Conrad Ray, a college teammate of Woods', said Woods enjoys telling that story, much as Ray likes telling the one about a Woods roommate who was hardly awed by Tiger's burgeoning stature in golf circles.

He took a call one day from a guy named Greg with an Australian accent, then forgot to pass along the message. As Woods was leaving for the Masters in April 1995, the roommate remembered - and Woods realized it was Greg Norman, one of the world's top players, calling to arrange a practice round at Augusta National.

Amusing memories aside, Woods offered an uncommonly animated answer when asked how his two years at Stanford shaped him.

"I look at those as two of the greatest years I've ever had - being away from home for the first time and learning how to cope with things, how to learn, how to grow," he said. "We were all in the same boat together trying to get through it together.

"I'll never forget the intelligence people had and their perspectives on so many different subjects, the things I was exposed to. It certainly did shape me, no doubt about it."
1995 Stanford golf team photo

Read the full article at: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/19/SP4N19O6OI.DTL.

Photos from Stanford photo archive.

Tiger Woods joins former teammate Notah Begay in Skins Game

2009-08-24T06:45:00.000-07:00

Tiger Woods ('96) joined his friend and former Stanford roommate Notah Begay ('95) in Notah's Skins Game benefitting disadvantaged Native American youth held today at the Turning Stone Resort in central New York state. Also playing in the Skins Game with its $500,000 purse is former Masters champion Mike Weir and Camilo Villegas.

After the event the PRNewswire reports:
Native American Youth True Winners
VERONA, N.Y., Aug. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Tiger Woods, the world's No. 1 golfer, outshot an all-world foursome that included Camilo Villegas, Mike Weir and Notah Begay III to win the second annual Notah Begay III (NB3) Foundation Challenge. Taking nine skins and $230,000 during the 18 holes played on Monday, Woods successfully outplayed both the field and the challenging Atunyote Golf Club course at Turning Stone Resort & Casino in Verona, N.Y. The tournament raised at least $750,000 for the Notah Begay III Foundation.

"Today the whole thing was about bringing awareness to what Notah is trying to do," said Woods shortly after the Challenge concluded. "It's great to see what he's doing. He's put his heart, soul and passion into it." Here's the complete story about the event.

The one-day event raised $750,000 dollars for Notah's foundation giving back to his Native American heritage as the PGA Tour's only full-blooded Navajo.

General info about the event can be found at this local website and at Notah's website --- notah.com.

Tribute to Bob Rosburg ('49) on 50th anniversary of his PGA win

2009-08-11T06:06:00.000-07:00

Bob Rosburg came from six shots back on the final day in 1959 to claim the Rodman Wanamaker Trophy. (Photo: The PGA of America)

The PGA of America offered "A Tribute to Rossie" By Roger Graves, PGA.com Contributor

This month marks the 50th anniversary of Bob Rosburg's PGA Championship triumph at Minneapolis Golf Club.

The table was set, and Bob Rosburg had the dates circled on his calendar. Fifty years after "Rossie" won the 1959 PGA Championship at Minneapolis Golf Club, he was planning to commemorate his Minnesota milestone at Hazeltine National Golf Club during the 91st PGA Championship at the age of 82.

However, the articulate Rosburg passed away on May 14 from injuries sustained in a fall two days prior outside a restaurant in Indio, Calif. But Rossie's victory half a century ago, in the first stroke-play PGA Championship conducted in Minnesota, will be remembered, celebrated and commemorated at Hazeltine National when the world of golf converges this week.

Rosburg, a native of San Francisco who resided in La Quinta, Calif., in recent years, chuckled earlier this year when recounting his 1959 PGA Championship triumph. He certainly earned his major title with closing rounds of 68 and 66 to finish a single swing superior to Jerry Barber and Doug Sanders. But when reviewing his '59 victory during a taped interview, Rossie acknowledged that he was "very fortunate" to win the 1959 PGA Championship after coming from six shots back on the final day.

"I've always said timing is everything in golf, and I was on the good side of timing at the PGA Championship in 1959 after being on the other side of timing at the U.S. Open earlier that year (at Winged Foot Golf Club)," recalled Rosburg, who didn't hit a single practice shot all week due to the scorching heat. "Looking back, I probably should have won the Open and not the PGA (Championship). I had a good final day at the PGA (his 66 was the low round), but Jerry Barber bogeyed the last two holes and kind of gave it to me. I had finished a little earlier, and Jerry looked like he was going to win it. I was surprised when he bogeyed the final two holes."

Rosburg used a similar, late-charging strategy to nearly win the 1959 U.S. Open at Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y. In those days, the final 36 holes of the U.S Open were played on Saturday, but a rainstorm pushed the fourth round to Sunday. On another blustery day, Rosburg's 71 matched the low round of the day by host PGA Professional Claude Harmon and longhitting Mike Souchak, but third-round leader Billy Casper posted a final-round 74 to edge Rosburg by one shot at 282. Ten years later, Rosburg missed a three-footer on the 72nd hole and finished in a three-way tie for second at the 1969 U.S. Open, one stroke behind Orville Moody.

Casper remembers Rossie as a superb putter and a supreme competitor. He also recalls Rosburg's sense of humor and sense of golf history, which served Rossie well during a 30-year career as a roving on-course reporter during ABC-TV golf telecasts.

"Rossie and I were both considered pretty good putters and we were both from California, so we had some things in common," notes the 78-year-old Casper. "During those years, the greens on most courses we played were scraggly and slow, so we were always figuring out a way to punch the ball with our putters. After Bob finished second at Winged Foot, I was happy to see him win a few weeks later in Minnesota at the PGA Championship (where Casper tied for 17th)."

At Winged Foot, Casper made headlines with the unique strategy of laying up short of the deep bunkers on the par-3, 216-yard third hole each day. Rosburg never let him forget the ploy.

"Bob was mad at me. He says, 'You beat me by one shot and laid up on the third hole every day.' Every time he saw me, he mentioned it," says Casper. "It was a 2-iron or 4-wood to the green, and I hit a 5-iron or a 6-iron short of the green and pitched up every day. Fortunately, I pitched close enough to hole four putts and make par every day.

"Rossie thought that was crazy, but he mentioned it on television several times years later when he would be part of the U.S. Open telecast for ABC. He never forgot that."

At the age of 12, Rossie earned local acclaim when he defeated retired baseball Hall of Famer Ty Cobb in a club championship match at The Olympic Club in San Francisco. After losing to the 12-year-old prodigy, Cobb was seldom seen playing at Olympic. The son of a doctor, Rosburg went to Stanford and earned a degree in humanities after leading the Cardinal to the 1946 NCAA Golf Championship.

The complete article can be found here at the PGA.com website. A 5-part video interview with Bob Rosburg in 2008 was completed by the Stanford men's golf program and can be found here: http://stanfordmensgolf.com/stanford_greats/bobrosburg.htm .

The first part of this video interview is included below in which Rosburg talks about trouncing Ty Cobb at age 12 & recalls his Stanford teammates & winning the 1946 NCAA national championship:

Joseph Bramlett finally able to compete again

2009-08-08T05:32:00.000-07:00

Senior Joseph Bramlett is on the mend and finally able to compete again. A major step back to the 2nd team All-American caliber play Joseph had in 2007-08 was his recent qualifying once again for the US Amateur to be played at Southern Hills Aug 23-30. Joseph finished 2nd in sectional qualifying to teammate Jordan Cox with a 138 total at the Peninsula Golf and Country Club in San Mateo, CA.

In an article written in the San Jose Mercury newspaper, Joseph talked about what it's like to compete again after his injury battles.

"I'm excited to get back to competition," said Bramlett, a long hitter who tore ligaments in his right wrist. "When bad stuff happens to you, you tend to grow. I appreciate the game so much more. When I make double [bogey], it's not the end of the world." "It's just fun getting out and competing again," Bramlett said. To read the article click here.

GolfWeek writes about Joseph Bramlett and his injury problems

2009-04-16T06:59:00.000-07:00

4/15/09
GolfWeek Online Magazine
Ron Balicki

Stanford’s Joseph Bramlett could be the poster boy for an old saying: if it weren’t for bad luck, the Cardinal junior would have no luck at all.

Bramlett entered Stanford after a highly touted junior career, especially after he became the youngest player to qualify for the U.S. Amateur at age 14 in 2002.

He didn’t disappoint as a freshman, earning second-team All-American honors after posting seven top-10 finishes, including a victory in Puerto Rico, and a 71.5 stroke average in 13 events.

He ended his inaugural college season with a tie for 39th at the NCAA Championship while helping Stanford capture the team title. After an opening 78, his next three rounds (68-70-69) counted in the team score.

In the fall of his sophomore season, Bramlett had three top 25s in five starts. But in January 2008, while working out in the school’s weight room, he slipped and fell, injuring his right wrist. He missed the entire spring and didn’t play again until July.

So when the current season got under way in the fall, Bramlett was filled with anticipation and high expectations. More -- to read the complete article click here.

Notah Begay is featured in Sports Illustrated Article

2009-02-13T07:54:00.000-08:00

Feb 2009 issue of Sports Illustrated features this interview with former
Stanford All-American and PGA tour member Notah Begay III ('95).

The soccer ball seemed more like a lottery ball, bouncing lightly in the air, from knee to foot, from foot to knee. A 10-year old
Navajo girl kept the juggle drill alive while PGA Tour pro Notah Begay watched her team practice on a soccer field outside Albuquerque last fall. “Her dad is an alcoholic; she lives in poverty,” said Begay, a fullblooded Native American, who described the girl’s skills in a recent telephone interview. “Two years ago she couldn’t juggle once. Now she can do it 30 times without the ball ever touching the ground. This is her outlet, her escape.” The girl is part of a four-year-old soccer program that
Begay started and helps fund for the children of the Pueblo of San Felipe in New Mexico, where median household income on the reservation is $29,800 and 38% of the population lives below the poverty line. And that was before the recession.

“I think about disparity all the time, making the type of money that professional athletes make, and yet probably 95 percent of my family lives at or below poverty,” Begay says. “It’s worse now for everyone.” Begay grew up on the Isleta reservation, a dozen miles south of Albuquerque, in a house with a futon as the only piece of furniture; and yet he got out—one
leap at a time. As a kid he jumped a chain-link fence to get to a municipal golf course, where he cleaned bathrooms in exchange for playing privileges. By 2001, at only 28, Begay had won $3 million on the Tour. Back trouble has bedeviled him in recent years, but with four victories and $5 million in career earnings as he enters his 13th PGA season, he gets it: He’s one of the lucky ones — especially now.

“There is guilt because I can have what I want when I want,” he says. “I haven’t seen a credit-card bill or mortgage statement in God knows how long because I have people who take care of that. But I know life is paycheck to paycheck in Indian country. The economy hits the poorest first, and hits them the hardest. It makes you think.”
L ife on the Tour can have an almost Stepford-like sameness, but Begay remains wonderfully different, a man grounded in his unique perspective.

Before Obama made personal accountability more hip, Begay understood the math of circumstance. “I’ve been put in a category because I’m from a certain place,” says Begay, who can recite by heart the suicide rate (3.3 times the national average) and high school dropout rate (twice the national average) on reservations. “And 80 percent of Native American
kids who do make it to college will drop out by the second year. From an economic standpoint, that’s not a very good use of your resources.” Begay has a plan, though. Through the consulting arm of his nonprofit Notah Begay III Foundation, he is pushing his own economic stimulus package to increase revenue streams in Indian reservations with
new infrastructure, including the development of golf courses next to existing casinos.

“We have to have more than hope,” Begay says. “For years, that’s all we had.” He returns to the New Mexico reservations a dozen times a year to watch over his youth soccer and golf programs and to consult with local
businesses. Begay served a seven-day sentence for DWI in 2000, and he admits it took him a while to “trade my partying days for community service. I realize I can’t change everything for everybody. But whether you’re rich or poor, you have 24 hours in a day. That’s your resource. As an athlete, you ask yourself, What do you do with it?” Be part of a revolution.

Hall of Famer Charlie Seaver shares thoughts about Stanford golf

2008-10-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note Oct 2008 - Recently the Stanford men's golf team received a copy of a 1990 letter written by Charlie Seaver, charter member of the Stanford Hall of Fame, in which he responded to questions about his Stanford golf memories in addition to his other experiences playing golf. This letter was written to Gordon Ratliff who has done extensive research into the history of Stanford golf editing a book entitled Stanford Golf Clippings published in 1996.

The transcribed contents of the letter which include references to Lawson Little, Hogan, Hagen, Watson among others are included below. A scanned in version of the letter can be found at the following website: http://www.stanfordmensgolf.org/SeaverLetter.htm

Saturday, 8/19/90

Dear Gordon (Ratliff)

Sometime back you sent me a letter and enclosed information about golf at Stanford that you plan to include in your second book. You also requested that I provide pertinent data about earlier people, events, etc, of the 1929-1930 era that I can recall regarding Stanford.

1) I started playing golf with my father & teacher when I was 9 years old. He was a fine golfer and student of golf having won the Southern Calif. Amateur in 1920 and the Trans Mississippi Championship in K. C., Mo in 1908 when that Tournament was considered #2 in the U.S. Also, because my Dad was such a great golfer I enjoyed many opportunities to play with leading professionals including Hogen, Diegel, Farrell, Sarazen, MacDonald Smith, Bobby Jones & others. All this added up to be a valuable learning experience.

2) Lawson Little & I were the Freshman team leaders in 1930; we had a very strong team. Lawson beat me on the 37th hole for the 1st University Championship & I won the 2nd on the 38th. Great Competition. Eddie Twiggs had come down from the Olympic Club to coach the team - a very fine gentleman & an impeccable stylish dresser. He was an amateur member of Lakeside & a good but not great golfer.

3) The Stanford golf course was laid out & built by William P. Bell (Willie). He was a good friend & had built a number of golf courses in Southern Calif. where we both lived. Prior to attending Stanford I had played in 2 exhibition matches at fee golf courses he constructed at Sunset Fields - S. E of LA. – once with Hagen & Johnny Farrell & then with Hagen & Diegel. Also the brothers Olin & Mortee Dutra played as my guests in a quiet exhibition match shortly after the Stanford Course opened & then we went to the stadium for the Stanford - Dartmouth football classic. Ernie Cadell of Stanford was the star of the game & later became a Pro football player of fame & great ability.

4) In the thirties and forties when possible I used to play in the Alumni golf Matches. It was great experience - played with Sandy Tatum , Warren Berl, Chares (Bud) Finger. Later for years Stanford’s Golf Coach. Also Jim Rheim, Kent Winton, Chuck Van Linge & Grant Spaeth.

On one memorable occasion when playing Tom Watson we were in the middle of the fairway on #1 past the left bunker & at least 20 yards in front of our respective playing partners. My ball was about two yards ahead of Tom's. So while we waited for the others to hit their second shots I looked at Tom & said, "You had better check your ball. I think its dead”. He looked closely at his ball for an instant & then looked back at me & that broad boyish grin came over his face. We both laughed, but not a word was said. After that I did not think my ball was within 15 yards of his on any tee shot for the rest of the round.

5) I did not know Bennett & knew Van Gorder only slightly. I know nothing about Sylvia Potter Cain. I did not play with either Douglas or Joseph Grant but remember Douglas who was a great good friend of my father's. Douglas however was here at Cypress Point to congratulate me when with Mike Fetchik we were leading the Crosby the first day with a best ball of 58; - later he won in 1964.

6) I knew Almon Roth, the Stanford Comptroller to be a serious but pleasant person. He always looked & dressed well and looked every inch a banker.

7) There is a picture somewhere in the Stanford golf files - circa 1929-1930; - showing 6 or 8 Stanford University golfers with highest handicap 2. Also I played a lot of golf with Dink Templeton the famous track coach & with the even more famous Ty Cobb at Stanford.

Hope this helps - all the best Charles Seaver.

Interview with Stanford Hall of Famer Steve Smith ('60)

2008-08-28T16:18:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note - In a continuing effort to accurately compile the remarkable history of Stanford's men's golf team, we feel fortunate to get a first hand report on a Stanford Hall of Fame golfer, namely Steve Smith who graduated in 1960. Mr. Smith was kind enough to respond to our request to learn about his background that took him to the Farm from Green Bay, Wisconsin, to first team All-American and near NCAA champion and then on to a Wall Street career and his current role as Director of the Long Island Golf Association.

Steve responded to a series of questions we sent him by telling his own story below that includes his upset victory over Jack Nicklaus in the 1960 US Amateur only a week after Nicklaus was runner-up in the US Open at Cherry Hills.

"I have been Executive Director of the Long Island Golf Association since 2004 after an almost 30-year career on Wall Street as an institutional salesman for various firms. I spent my last 18 years with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, Inc.

As Executive Director of the LIGA, I am responsible for a golf event schedule of about 16 events a year including our Open Championship, several low handicap amateur tournaments and the usual array of other tournaments serving other demographic groups. I am also the Executive Director of the Long Island Caddie Scholarship Fund, which is a 501c3 charitable organization.

I still play golf, my handicap is 5.6 up from 2.6 at one point last year, but I don’t play a lot of competition anymore. I belong to The Rockaway Hunting Club and National Golf Links of America, both Long Island clubs.

I had a good junior record winning some local events in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where I grew up. I was sectional low qualifier for two USGA Junior Championships and competed in 1955 at Taconic GC in Williamstown, MA and in 1956 at Purdue University GC in Lafayette, IN. I did not go far in either event.

I entered Stanford in the fall of 1956. At Stanford I played on the freshman team and was on the varsity for three of the next four years, but I was usually fighting for the fifth or sixth spot. Stanford had a good team while I was there, although we did not do all that well in the NCAAs.

The better players included Ron Lucetti, Alf Bertelson, Bill Seanor, Kent Winton, Pete Choate, Wheeler Farish and Jim. By the way, Bill Seanor had a fantastic junior record in California and, I believe, either won or was runner-up in the USGA Junior before he came to Stanford.

I stayed out of school for a portion of my junior year and red shirted to keep my eligibility for a fifth year. In 1960, what would have been my senior year, I was playing in matches for Stanford, but usually as the 5th or 6th man. Coach Bud Finger decided to have a 72-hole play-off to see who would be the fifth man to travel to Colorado Springs to play in the NCAA. Since he was having a play-off anyway, he threw everybody in, including some guys who had no chance. It came down to the last four holes between Phil Underwood and me. I beat Phil and was the fifth man to go to Colorado Springs.

On the way we stopped in Denver and watched the US Open. I believe we were there for the first or second day. Some of us watched Palmer, Nicklaus, Tommy Bolt, hoping for a tantrum, and Ben Hogan, competing in one of his last Open Championships.

My game was pretty honed after that 72-hole play-off and I won my first two matches in each shooting around par (the NCAA individual championship was a match play competition with a 64-player draw). My toughest match was in the second round. I can’t remember my opponent’s name, but I do remember making a lot of crucial putts to win the match.

In round three, I had the privilege of playing against Jack Nicklaus. By the way, he finished second at Cherry Hills the week before and was the reigning US Amateur Champion.

To make a long story short, I had good luck, birdieing four holes on the front nine including a chip-in on #2, a shot from under a tree to 12” on #5, and birdie putts of 30’ and 40’ on #6 and #8, respectively.

Despite that I was only one up teeing-off on nine. With the fairway sloping sharply from left to right, the best tee shot was one that landed in the left rough, the only risk being a small bush about eight feet in diameter. Jack nailed the bush for an unplayable lie. As a result I turned three up.

The turning point in the match was on #13 where I hit a seven iron short and Jack had a flip wedge up to the smallish back section of the green where the pin was set. He left it short in the bunker, and recovered to 8 feet. My chip went 17 feet past the hole. I made and he missed! I finished the match on the 15th hole. I can still remember seeing both Jack and his dad eyeing me from across the green, hands on their hips, trying to figure out how he lost to this nobody.

I won my next three matches to get to the finals ( the semis and finals were each played over 36 holes). My opponent was Dick Crawford, the defending national champion. By the way, Dick also had to play in a play-off to get to Colorado Springs, despite being the defending champion. Dave Williams (Houston’s golf coach) was a tough guy! In the finals I shot around par in the morning 18 holes and was 6-up.

My head was elsewhere in the final 18 holes and I lost 2-up on the 18th hole. Great story has a sad ending! I obviously had him and let it fritter away. The turning point was the 14th hole. I don’t know how the match stood, but I was still up. He putted first. His caddie was frozen holding the pin and Crawford screamed at him to pull the pin out. Just as the kid pulled the pin out Crawford’s ball hit the back of the hole, bounced into the air, and fell back in the hole. I can still feel the pain from that one. On 17 we had fairly equal 6 foot putts for birdie, measured, and he putted first. He made the putt and I missed to go 1-down. End of story.

As a result of this showing in the NCAA, I made first team All-American in 1961. In 1961, I had another good run in the NCAA at Purdue University. I beat some good players and got to the 36-hole semi-finals. Among my victims were Jack Rule and Jim Wright, both big names at the time, with the latter going on to bigger things. I played Mike Podolski, a classmate of Jack Nicklaus at Ohio State, in the semis. Jack, along with a few others, witnessed our 36th hole.

We had equi-distant birdie putts, but mine was trickier coming from above the hole. I three-putted to lose. Bud Finger’s son was sadder than me. Perhaps I was lucky. Nicklaus beat Podolski 10-8 in the finals. I suspect he would have done the same to me, given the added incentive.

In retrospect I played my best golf when I was in my teens and early twenties. I won the Wisconsin Amateur Championship the same year I beat Jack, 1960. Later I qualified for three US Amateurs, 1975, 1978 and 1981. I wish I had tried to qualify for the US Amateur when I was at Stanford, but it usually conflicted with something.

Right after Stanford I went into the Air Force, and then to business school. I did finish fourth in the All-Air Force tournament in 1962 and 11th in the Inter-Service. Orville Moody won the Inter-Service that year. It was at Westover Air Force Base in Springfield, MA.

I also played in three British Amateurs, two at St. Andrews and one at Troon. The second time at St. Andrews, I got to the round of 64, losing on the first extra hole to a Scotsman. My golf career in the New York area has been undistinguished. I won some member-guests and came close in a few other things, but I can’t claim any major championships. As a senior player I have struggled, and I never have qualified for a USGA Senior Amateur, a sad omission from my resume.

Well, perhaps this will help flesh out my story. I would be pleased to answer more questions or field a phone call. Please tell Conrad that I intend to make a donation in memory of my fond friend, Kent Winton, who died of cancer just this April. I will be in touch with Conrad. Kent thought he was doing a fabulous job and I think the results are self-evident.

Perhaps we will have the chance to meet sometime or talk on the phone. Thanks for your persistence."

Regards,
Steve Smith
Stanford Class of 1960

Jordan Cox Interview about '08 US Open by Brian Murphy

2008-08-14T12:05:00.000-07:00

Here's an excellent interview with Jordan Cox after his experience of playing in the US Open at Torrey Pines. As Jordan says it was a "surreal" experience as he talks about the qualifying rounds, the highlight of playing practice rounds with Tiger Woods and what it was like playing in the tournament.

Part 3 & 4 - video interview with Wally Goodwin

2008-04-21T07:23:00.000-07:00

Part 3: Stanford Hall of Fame golf coach Wally Goodwin on his 1993-94 national championship team, the team chemistry and recruiting Tiger Woods and other players. Will Yanigasawa, Casey Martin and Notah Begay are highlighted.

Part 4: Stanford Hall of Fame golf coach Wally Goodwin talks about Tiger and his relationship with Earl Woods, his most improved player ever, current coach Conrad Ray and 4-time All-American Joel Kribel.

Wally Goodwin - Part 2: Video Interview of Stanford golf coach 1987-2000

2008-04-02T14:47:00.000-07:00

Part 2 of a video interview with 2-time national coach of the year Wally Goodwin. Wally talks about the keys to turning Stanford into a great program starting with bringing in players such as Christian Cevaer, Casey Martin, Notah Begay and then Tiger Woods among others.

This interview includes discussion of his national championship team in 1993-94. Wally was 80 in Nov 2007 when this interview was conducted by Dr. Lyman Van Slyke, Bob Stevens and Rich Peers.

Wally Goodwin - Part 1: Video Interview with Coach from 1987-2000

2008-03-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

PART 1:
Wally Goodwin, Stanford men's golf coach from 1987 thru 2000, talks about how he turned Stanford into a national power in a few short years. Part 1 features Wally's coaching philosophy on the short game -- a proven approach that would help any player lower their scores.

This video interview was conducted Nov 30, 2007 by Dr. Lyman Van Slyke, Bob Stevens and Rich Peers. Wally Goodwin was 80 years old at the time.

Sandy Tatum - Stanford Hall of Fame Golfer

2008-03-06T15:59:00.000-08:00

This wide ranging interview took place at the Stanford golf course Nov 20th, 2007. An 8-part video of this interview is available on this website at http://stanfordmensgolf.com/video-Tatum.htm.

Interviewer (Lyman Van Slyke, with Bob Stevens and Richard Peers): This is November 20th, 1 p.m. Sunny day at the Stanford Club House looking over the 18th green, back down the 18th fairway. You must have a lot a fond memories of coming down that fairway, Sandy.

ST: Well, I say I do. You know, this golf course is just loaded for me with fond memories.
I: I’m sure.
ST: You stand up on that 18th tee and see the panorama of this area and this wonderful golf hole out in front of you, that’s a really stimulating experience.
I: It’s a good finishing hole too, don’t you think?
ST: Oh, absolutely. Wonderful! The bombers have made it less effective, somehow we have to deal with the bombers, but that’s not the subject of this meeting.

I: Well, we are obviously focused on Stanford golf, but in an expansive, rather than in a narrow way. I think we are interested in the broader lives in which golf was embedded importantly. Maybe we can start by your telling me how you got started with golf and what fascinated you with playing golf.
ST: My father was a dedicated golfer and a good one. I think he probably reached the point of being a 4 handicap. I was the youngest in the family. I had three siblings, two brothers and a sister. It was a very important part of my father’s life and remarkably enough, he worked on those three and didn’t get any one of them interested in golf, which I think frustrated him seriously, but he found me, and he found me basically at the age of 6. He was one of the very early members of Bel-Air Country Club down in Los Angeles. In those days, there weren’t very many people playing the golf course on Sundays. So he would take me along with him. He gave me a couple of sawed-off golf clubs and a couple of golf balls and said, “just stay out of people’s way and when you get tired, go sit in the car.” He then would have his game and many hours later, my having been back and forth to the car maybe four of five times at least, he would turn up and we would head for home. Remarkably enough, at the age 6 I thought that was a swell way to spend a Sunday. There is no question that my own perceptions of how much the game had contributed to his life was a prime factor that made the game truly attractive for me. There is fundamental attraction in it, isn’t there? Once you get one airborne, and particularly if it goes somewhere where you think it’s going to go, something very clearly useful happens. So I learned from there. He was experienced in the process enough so that he realized that he had hooked me. So what he did was to make it a reward for performance, scholastic and otherwise. He would evaluate me, how I performed and if I performed effectively, I got to play. That was, of course, an additional incentive which had something to do, for certain, with regard to my understanding of the efficacy of effective performance. He then got me into a posture where I could caddy for him. That was a very defining experience for me because then I was really out there sharing the game with him and it just further inculcated in me the values and attractions of the game. There was of course the other element that is really important. This is my father and he and I had a very very effective relationship.

I: What was your father’s profession?
ST: He was a real estate broker. He paid me fifty cents a bag, fifty cents for a round of golf caddying, and I was overcompensated I thought, but I loved it. Then from time to time, as I grew a little older, a little stronger, he would be playing and he would arrange for me to double caddy, so I would be carrying his bag and the bag of somebody he was playing with, and that meant I made a buck, which certainly was useful! So those experiences were all very very positive. I think probably one of the most expressive ways of identifying his views of the values of the game was an incident that occurred when he had upped the performance criteria as we went along and the ultimate criteria, that is the performance had to be good enough, so that we could arrange a game with another father and another son, and the son was a friend of mine and we had played some golf together. So, the four of us went out on a Sunday at the Wilshire Country Club, where my father was then a member. I have a very vivid memory that on the 5th hole, I hit my second shot into a baranca crossing the fairway. I had about five clubs and one of them was a hickory shafted 6-iron. I took a swing with the 6-iron and the ball caught the top of the bank and came back. I, in a state of frustration, threw the club and it bounced off the bank and came back to me. I extricated the ball, and played on. As we were walking up toward the green, my father suddenly appeared alongside me, and he very quietly said, “You will not say anything to anybody. You will pick up your ball. You will go back to the club house and you will sit down in back of the 18th green and you’ll stay there until you are told what to do next.” So, I picked up my ball, I went back. Wilshire had two 9-holes, one on each side of Beverly Boulevard, and this was on the north side, so when they came through on the 9th, I saw them. I saw them playing the 16th and saw them play the 18th. They went into Club House and I sat there, and it got dark. I had been there for a long time, when the steward came out of the locker room and he said, “Your father says you can now go sit in the car.” So, I went and sat in the car. In due course, a little while later, he came out, got in the car, started it up, didn’t say a word. At about halfway home, he was focusing on the road, he said, “I only have one question. Will you ever ever again ever throw a golf club?” I said, “No, sir. I never ever ever again will throw a golf club.” And while there were provocations subsequently, I never could let go of it. That told me a lot about his values with regard to how you conducted yourself. It was a very valuable lesson. And so it went, and he encouraged me in all of the ways that he could encourage me, but he made it a discipline, rather than a picnic.

I: Did you have a teacher in your early stages of golf?
ST: No, I just observed, mostly observed him, but observed. I got to be pretty good as a youngster, certainly good enough so that boy I loved to play. And there were a couple of summers where, I don’t remember why, I had access to the golf course and there was a group of us, about six kids, about my age. And again, in those days, the courses weren’t particularly crowded, and we, particularly during the week, would frequently play, successively, at least 54 holes a day, and more if we could get it in. So there was a community of us, and that had a lot to do, for me, in terms of how I related to the game.

I: So it was mostly play and not practice as we think of it; going down to the range and hitting a bucket of balls.
ST: No, until I got well into my teens, I don’t really remember ever being on a practice range. So that’s how all of the foundations were firmly laid, and as I now look back on a life that’s been so inexpressively enriched by my involvement with the game, it strikes me as the most effective legacy he possibly could have given me.

I: I want to get to Stanford here in a moment, and Rich and Bob will of course chime in as they feel appropriate. Listening to you talk about your siblings who didn’t connect to golf in the way that you did, but you did, do you think that there is anything in a kind of personality or temperament that finds fascinating an individual game like golf which, however social it is, is also a solitary game in some ways? Did you also enjoy team sports? Did you play a lot of team sports like basketball?
ST: Yes. The two sports in which I participated in seriously were track, in which I ran the high hurdles, not very well, if I may say so, but with an enormous amount of enthusiasm… and football. And football was an important part of my high school experience. I went to Los Angeles High School. What a wonderful experience, in every sense that was, in those days. For that part of the city, it had some diversity in relation to the ethnicity of the people in it. The education was superb in every respect, and it was certainly attractive and the social life, my whole recollection of those teen years as they related to the high school experience couldn’t be more positive. Football was an important activity for sure and I was reasonably good, good enough, so that I played first string. We had a coach by the name of Burt LaBucherie who later was a very successful coach with UCLA for a while and ended up coaching, interestingly enough, at Cal Tech. He was a remarkable personality in many ways. I found him exceedingly challenging and very attractive and tougher than hell, and I liked it. I played quarterback in those days. It was single wing, so the quarterback, most importantly, called the plays, and the quarterback was the lead blocker for these “Fancy Dans” in the backfield that were running around getting plaudits while we were trying to knock people down so they wouldn’t get to them. But the thing that really attracted me about that experience was to be the play caller; I ran the team. In those days, if you were taken out in the quarter, you couldn’t come back until the next quarter. So, the coaches didn’t control the game, we did, and that part of it, that extra part, I just found utterly, completely compelling and fascinating.
[discussion about ambient noise – Interview moves inside to the clubhouse]

ST: I would like to go back chronologically and pick up on an experience that I had that also was very influential on my feelings about the game and about myself and how you relate to life and people and problems and challenges. I had a hero outside of my father and he was just Bobby Jones. I think back on how important that hero worship was for me given the fact that my only exposure to him, except for one incident that I’ll describe, was through the print media and occasionally a news reel. Just to illustrate how remarkable it was, in 1926, Bobby Jones lost in the finals in the National Amateur Championship to George Von Elm, and George Von Elm was a local southern California figure, obviously a remarkably good golfer. I certainly can relate back to the fact that when that news got to me, it really seriously affected me. Now I’m just beginning to play the game. I’m six years old and I have had very little exposure to Jones, but the exposure that I had made that kind of impression on me. When I got into junior high school, I’d bicycle a long way from school. I’d stash my clubs somewhere and then when I got out, particularly in the season when there was some real daylight left, I would go to Wilshire where my father was a member, but I had no right to be on the golf course. Wilshire Country Club was divided by Beverly Boulevard, with the last 9 holes, the Club House, Pro Shop all of the structures on the north side, and the first 9 holes on the south side. And so I would go out onto those first 9 holes late in the day and nobody knew I was there. I had a game every time I so played there, which I did frequently. I played two balls, and one of them was Bobby Jones and one of them was Walter Hagen. And they were intensely competitive, but I have to say, that I compromised the principles, that should have been instilled in me, because Jones never lost. [laughter]

I just loved being out there by myself. That part of the love affair has certainly stayed with me, because I play by myself, not as frequently as I can, but often, and I can commune better with myself in those circumstances than I can in any other. It did have another dimension in that experience because Howard Hughes was a member of the Wilshire Country Club. A remarkably good player: I would guess, at most maybe a 4 handicap. He had a house along side the 9th tee at Wilshire. One day I was playing out there and I was in a situation where he wasn’t going to be able to see me, but I saw him coming down on to the 9th tee, and following him was Katherine Hepburn. In those days it was a bit of scandal, if I may say so, that Katherine Hepburn was shacked up with Howard Hughes. He would have called the pro shop and say “is anybody on the front nine,” and the pro shop would say no, and he’d say, “okay, send over a caddy.” So they sent over a caddy - the two of them were playing and she was in a pair of slacks. You didn’t see that very often in those days. And she had that beautiful head of hair piled on top of that beautiful face and she was wearing Howard Hughes’ sweatshirt.
It was perfectly clear that they were engaged in a very serious competition and she was a pretty good golfer. You have to remember that when I witnessed that scene I was 13 years old and when you consider how the hormones were beginning to go, and there I am looking at that perfectly beautiful creature, shacked up with this guy, it had a serious impact. One other note about that, if you saw The Aviator, it had them playing golf. I considered my exposure to that relationship to be an important piece of information that I carefully protected, but occasionally exposed to people when I thought that it would be useful to do so.

I: So, fast-forward, when you came to Stanford, you matriculated in 1938, and you were already a pretty accomplished golfer.
ST: Yes, I was a pretty accomplished golfer, a long way to go, but yes.

I: Tell me about the golf team at Stanford at that time? In other intercollegiate sports, freshman could not participate in varsity until they were sophomores. What was that state of golf at Stanford when you arrived?
ST: In the spectrum of college athletics, it certainly was well behind football and well behind basketball, and some distance behind baseball, but it had a place. One of the reasons it had a place was Lawson Little. After all, he was a Stanford golfer and that certainly had an influence on me. My oldest brother was also one of my heroes. He had come to Stanford and I used to come up here occasionally for a football game. I had the exposure to the institution, but the thing that most effectively attracted me into the golf scene was the fact that Lawson Little played on the golf team. He was a very effective, colorful character in his prime and that was a very significant attraction. I’ll jump ahead regarding Little.

I was very much involved with watching his career with a great of deal interest, and he wins the 1940 U.S. Open. In 1948, I was at Oxford and I wanted to try to play in the British Open. I was good enough then where that was not an unrealistic idea – I’d never come close to winning it, but it was not unrealistic to think that I might be able to qualify to play. In those days, they had a fairly open qualifying. The British Open was at Muirfield and I went up to Muirfield and tried to qualify. I came close, but didn’t make it. But Lawson was there. I had had some exposure to him over the years, but I hadn’t seen him in a very long time and he was there. He announced that he had come because he had won the Canadian Amateur, Canadian Open, U.S. Amateur, U.S. Open and British Amateur, but he’d not won the British Open and he wanted to complete that six. He typically would hold court in the evening and he was engaging and interesting, but he was drinking. I remember that he shot 73-73 in the first two rounds. That night I’m sitting talking with him and he’s drinking remarkably heavily, and I thought to myself, he’s gone. He’s taken this trip for this purpose and he can’t possibly realize the objective and it’s a shame.

It’s also, I think, briefly worth mentioning that I had another exposure to him. In the navy, when I got a commission as an ensign, they sent us to indoctrination school at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and there were a thousand of us in five hundred double bunks - as roommates in this gymnasium, and Lawson Little was there. So we crossed paths again. And, of course, at that time, he was not too far from his prime. Oddly enough, a match was arranged for the benefit of the Red Cross. I was paired with Lawson Little and we would play Bob Goldwater, Barry’s brother, and Lee Diegel on a public golf course in Tucson. I have to tell you, when that happened I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
I will be Lawson Little’s partner, people are going to pay money to watch and it’s going to go the Red Cross, so it certainly was a seriously defining moment for our relationship.

I: What kind of player was he? Obviously he was world-class, considered the finest match player in the world for a period, as I understand it, hooked the ball, but what would you say about his game?
ST: He’d hit the ball a long way. I would say, the most effective aspect of his ability was that, boy, he was competitive. This is true of any really accomplished golfer. The competition brought out the best in him and he demonstrated that a lot. There was that British amateur where he was playing at Prestwick, and in the final he won 14 and 12. He started out the afternoon round with six straight 3’s.

I: Back in those days, wow!
ST: I mean, that’s just absolutely mystical. So, that basic characteristic I think had a lot to do with it, but the lore of it was that he wasn’t number one on the Stanford golf team. I don’t know whether it was true or not, but there was a guy here by the name of Art Doering and Doering was able to beat him here.

I: Didn’t Lawson Little carry vast numbers of clubs?
ST: We all did. They all did. Yes, you know it wasn’t unusual to find some guy with 23 clubs in his bag. So he wasn’t unusual in that sense. It was amazing how that developed.

I: But all that eventually led the USGA and the R and A to limit the number of clubs to 14, something more reasonable.
ST: You bet. No, it got out of hand. [chuckling] First, it took a long time to select the club. It was ridiculous.

I: You mentioned Art Doering. Did you have any interaction with Art Doering? He’s also a member of the Hall of Fame. I’ve been able to get a little bit of information about him, but not a lot.
ST: No, I did not. I was simply aware of him on two counts. One, the most important, that he was said to be ahead of Lawson Little in the golf team here. And they said that he beat Little fairly regularly on this golf course. And then subsequent to his Stanford career, for a while, he was fairly prominent. He could really play, obviously.

I: Who was the golf coach when you came?
ST: Eddie Twiggs. And, boy, what a break that was for all of us to have Eddie Twiggs. He was one of the more interesting personalities that I have ever met. He was an amateur. He was a member of the Olympic Club. He obviously had a lot of money and the lore was that he had made a fortune in Coca-Cola stock. And he lived a life-style that would indicate that he certainly had a significant amount of money. As, I understand it, golf was just beginning to develop here and he found out that there was an opening for a golf coach. I’m not clear on whether he was the first golf coach or not, but if he wasn’t, he was certainly the second. Al Masters was the Director of Athletics and Eddie heard that there was an opening and Eddie came. He never had any experience other than playing amateur golf, but he loved the game and thought that would be a wonderful way to spend some time. He lied to Al about his age; he was much older than he admitted to be, but he certainly was functional, and he got the job. Boy, he was influential in terms of how he affected those of us who were lucky enough to be exposed to him.

He was a total consummate lover of the game. He was a very strong taskmaster with regard to the conduct of his players. He was fastidious in his dress and he insisted that his players be thoroughly well-groomed. Occasionally, we’d have player that didn’t have enough money to be well-groomed and Eddie would groom him. He was an extraordinarily effective purveyor of qualities and characteristics which you needed to be able to be an effective golfer, transcending how you had to swing the golf club. And so the golf teams responded to him because, if I may say so, we were very good. He had one other attraction that is worth mentioning, and that is that Eddie was a bachelor. He was in his 70’s, and those days being in your 70’s was well up there, but he had plenty of energy. Eddie had a girlfriend and Thursday was Eddie’s day with his girlfriend. You have to understand how that intrigued us. When we would go away on a trip somewhere (we never got out of the state, except for the National Championships) ,and every Thursday, Eddie got a long telegram. So there was an element of romance there to add something to our feelings about Eddie.

I: It was Howard Hughes and Katie Hepburn, Eddie Twiggs and his girlfriend.
ST: That’s right. It picked up again!
[laughter]

I: You mentioned that you didn’t go out of state at all. Did you just play competitive matches with local schools? How did that work?
ST: There was the Pacific Coast conference in those days, but I don’t recall playing any teams from out of the state. We did have a PCC Championship, but the farthest we wandered was Los Angeles. The only times we went out of the state was playing the National Championships. Having Eddie as a feature and factor in Stanford golf was a very important addition to my experience playing.

I: Did he actually coach hands-on very much: I mean swing, course management, short game, that short of thing?
ST: Yes indeed, he did. One amusing incident given Eddie’s fastidious feelings about how you conduct yourself on the golf course happened playing down at Lakeside against, I think, UCLA. George Traphagen was playing ahead of me. I was on the tee and Traphagen was playing his second shot and Eddie was sitting on his shooting stick watching Traphagen. There were factors there, in Traphagen’s performance, that obviously had created some frustrations in Eddie because I saw Traphagen take a swing, and Eddie got up, took the shooting stick and threw it into the woods in frustration. It was way out of character! Anyhow…. but, boy we all admired him and he was wonderful.

I: Stanford won the National Championship, the records show, in ’38, ’39, ’41 and ’42 before World War II hit. The records show that you played on the ’42 National Championship team.
ST: I also played on the ’41 team , but I didn’t make the cut to match play.

I: Okay, so you were part of the group that won that National Championship as well.
ST: Yes, but I wasn’t one of the four that counted. There were 36 holes of stroke play to qualify for match play. 64 qualified for match play, so that the team championship was determined on the basis of the 36 holes of stroke play. My score was not one of the low four.

I: So there was a cut after 36?
ST: Well, so to speak. They only took the low four scores from each team. Mine was not one of the low four, but I must say I certainly loved the experience. There was a wonderful attitude and atmosphere about college golf in those days, a lot of which I think has been lost. It’s like almost all of Division 1A athletics has taken a huge piece out of the experience that you have in the cultural, intellectual, social experience in four years of university life – critical part of your life. Obviously you are coming from upper adolescence to young adulthood and what you experience in that context, for most people, I think, is one of the truly defining experiences that you can have. What’s happened now has been that it’s virtually a year-long regimen of playing the game. I’m not being critical of anybody – take Conrad Ray, look at what a fine job he does. But the fact is that I’m glad I’m not here now playing on the golf team, because it would take much too much out of the whole experience for me.

I: Several of the Stanford Hall of Fame golfers were on the ’38, ’39, ’40, ’41 teams. Could you say a few words about Warren Berl, Bud Brownell, for example?
ST: You’re going to have a tough time with me if you’re going to limit me to a few words. [laughter]

I: As much as you like.
ST: Particularly when you mention Warren Berl and Bud Brownell. I should pick Berl first.

Warren Berl had one of the best golf swings I have ever seen. Period. I’ve been watching now for 80 years. He was a superb human being and a joy to be around, and became one of my very closest friends. Happily we picked up together again after the war in San Francisco, and Warren and I have a very important relationship, certainly for me. He was a superb player and he had all of the qualities and characteristics that add up to an absolutely first-class human being. He could really play golf. So, to have him on the golf team, on which I was participating, was very important in my whole experience.

Bud Brownell. Boy, I often think what Bud’s career could have been... Boy, he could play.

Just two illustrations: the most dramatic being that Denny Shute was the defending PGA champion and I don’t remember why, but he came here on a cold, wet, tough February day. They set up a game with Berl and Brownell playing with Shute. Shute shot 72, which was a very good score in the conditions. Bud Brownell had 9 3’s and 9 4’s. A 63 in those circumstances(!) and he hit an eight footer into the hole for a birdie on 18 and it came out. I also happened to be playing behind him in the qualifying for the State Amateur Championship at Pebble Beach, and all he shot was 66, which was then the course record that stood for some time; the competitive course record. So, he was a very important factor and a very interesting guy. Unfortunately, he got killed in the war; heaven knows what his career could have been… I had exposure to those two guys. They were friends of mine, and we played golf together. How lucky could a guy get?

I: Bud Finger, who eventually became the coach, was also on the team, is that right?
ST: In ’41.

I: In ’41, Bud Finger was also a teammate of yours in those days?
ST: Yes, he was an interesting guy. He lead a relatively uninhibited life, and he could certainly play golf. Without any question, he was an attractive person, no doubt about it.

I: Bud was coach here for a long time - from ’48 to ‘73, or ’76… 25-26 years…
ST: Yes he was, for a long time. He was a very likeable guy and a very good player.

I: So in 1942, you were the individual titlist at the NCAA’s, and you said it was two day of stroke play and then it was a match play?
ST: Match play, 64 qualifying. There’s some background there I want to identify because it’s an important part of my own career, so to speak. The team got set to go to South Bend to play at Notre Dame. Notre Dame was the host. Eddie came to us with the very sad news that the Athletic Department didn’t have the money to send us, and so we weren’t going to be able to go. Well I found that absolutely intolerable. So I asked how much money we needed and I was told we needed twenty-five hundred bucks. So I organized a campaign, but before I could do that, I was told, I had to get the President of the University to approve of the process. So I went to see Ray Lyman Wilbur, who was an austere, remarkable figure. He’d been, I think, Secretary of the Interior, in the Hoover administration. And he was a gaunt, tall man and he wore high collars and had an austere personality. So I had some trepidation about having to make this sales pitch to him. And in those days, the President’s office was where the history corner is now and there were no secretaries around. It was just a door, with a piece of glass that said “President” on it. So I went and knocked on the door and I heard a muffled voice say, “Come in.” And I walked in and he’s sitting at the roll top desk so that I got a profile of him and he’s busy, he’s writing. And without stopping writing and without looking at me, he said, “What do you want to see me about young man?” And so I gave him my pitch. He then reached into the cubby hole on the desk, pulled out a checkbook, wrote me a check for twenty-five bucks, turned around and looked at me and handed me the check to say, “Good luck, young man!” Those were the days. [laughter] And so I raised the twenty-five hundred bucks.

I: So talk about the tournament itself – the National Championship back at Notre Dame.
ST: There’s a very strong element for me that I’m playing in a national event, and I’m playing for Stanford and I’m with that team and with those teammates and with Eddie Twiggs. It was a mystical experience for me. When I talk about mystical, it was that my golf game fell into place.. I would have thought that if you ranked me in that setting of those 64 players, I’d have been down about 25, but the fact is that I could play and I played very well. I got into the finals and I played Manual Delatorre from Northwestern. His father was the pro at North Shore in Chicago – a very prominent teacher and Manual obviously was a very strong, good golfer. I shot 69 in the morning 18 and I eventually beat him in five and four. And I have to say I think I saved Manual’s career. He became one of the leading teachers in the country. Instead of going on the tour, which he was planning to do, he turned his life to teaching, and the reason I think I saved him was because when I could beat him five and four, he knew that he didn’t have a chance out there.
[laughter]
He was a very nice guy.

I: Would you say that was the highlight of your playing career as a golfer?
ST: Oh, without any question. It had all those dimensions. I had one other experience that I can talk about briefly that ranks somewhat near it, but it was, all things considered, truly a permanent life enhancer, and added to the whole impact was getting on the telephone with my father and saying, “Dad, I won.” Neither of us could speak thereafter for a long time.
From my perspective, there can’t have been a better time to have been at Stanford. It was clear when the war came, it was never ever going to be the same, and it was a consummately wonderful, literally beautiful experience for me. Golf was a feature of it, but there was so much more than that added considerably more to whatever I became.

I: You have spoken about how much golf has contributed to your life. I have to say that your life has contributed a very great deal to golf, as well.
ST: That is a generous thought. I recognize that I have that reputation for which I’m humbly grateful, but I am certainly conscious of the fact that nothing that I’ve ever done in golf has been anything other than intensely satisfying on a personal basis, and if you add up the balance sheet in terms of what golf has done for me, as opposed to what I’ve done for golf, it isn’t even close.
I’m grateful, very grateful for the perception, but much more grateful for the fact that, whatever role I have had, that I still have now, involvement in and playing the game are priceless assets.

I: Well, I think it’s much more than perception, Sandy.
ST: I’m grateful for that thought. Are you interested in Oxford?

I: Yes.
ST: Okay. The Rhodes Scholarship had been put on hold during the war and it got revived in 1946. The competition occurred and it frankly had never really occurred to me that I could be a Rhodes Scholar. And it so happened that I was with a friend in a taxi cab in New York, and he said to me, “Did you know that that the Rhodes Scholarship was going to be revived?” And I said, “No.” And he said, “Well, it is.” And he suggested that I apply.
I said to him, “You know, okay, well, what have I got to lose?” If he hadn’t suggested that I apply, it would have never occurred to me. In any rate, I applied, and to my consummate surprise was selected. What an incredible experience that was. Two years at Oxford and here again comes golf. Boy, did it ever figure in that experience. The Oxford system functioned, and it still does, on the basis that it was a tutorial system. You seldom went to a lecture. You had 8 weeks at Oxford in the fall, 6 weeks off at Christmas, 8 weeks and then 6 weeks off in the spring and 8 more weeks and then three months in the summer. With the idea that your tutor was to direct you, you weren’t supposed to get the education handed to you, you were to go and get it. And then of course it was a wonderful adjunct to the education that I had where so much of it had been fed to me.
[pause]

I: Okay, more thoughts.
ST: Well, you know, I had a marvelous intellectual experience, but the expansion of my horizons was very significant in that Oxford, obviously being world-class, also attracted students from around the world. The Student Body was remarkably diverse. And the whole scene, the historic aspects, it was thrilling, literally. The intellectual side of it was very stimulating. The tutors I had were so impressive. I read for a bachelors in law degree and the way the system worked, you had two years of study and then at the end of two years, you had 8 days of excruciating examinations on what you had accumulated. And two of the examination papers were in Roman law, and the questions were in Latin. What they did, they quoted sections from the Justinian Code in Latin and asked you to comment on them. In junior high school, I had had one year of Latin, but that’s all I had. And what I did, I just carried with me wherever I went a pony that had on one side the Justinian Code and on the other side the translation. And I worked at that so very hard, that I could really recognize effectively the English translation of the Latin, so I got through those two papers okay.
It was certainly impressive that Balliol college had an underground that took Jewish academicians out of Hitler’s Europe, and among the people who were in that underground was the premiere Roman Law scholar in all of Europe. He was my tutor, and here he’s just got a kid that’s had one year junior high school Latin. He was wonderful. So, I had that experience. But then there was golf – my goodness.
The only University match we played was against Cambridge, and otherwise we played club and golf society teams around the area. There were a lot of them. We played every Saturday, every Sunday in the fall term and in the winter term, starting in October right through the winter, to the end of March. And that added another dimension to my approach to golf. Weather could not matter less to me. You just got used to the fact that you were almost never to play in anything but uncomfortable circumstances. For example, we’d play say Suningdale. So we got on a bus in Oxford at about six o’clock in the morning, or 5:30, and when we get to Suningdale, the team that we were going to play would greet us, and we would all sit and have some coffee together. And as I observed in most of the clubs, when we did this, there was a designated old boy who went and reflectingly looked out into this terrible maelstrom that was going on outside and say, “Oh, I say, I think its lifting.” That was signal, and out we went without regard to how lousy the weather was.
That expanded my horizons hugely, both with regards to golf but also with regard to the people to whom I was exposed. Those friendships that I made at Oxford, but particularly the golf friendships, and the associations I have with the Royal and Ancient Golf Club are horizon expanders. Bernard Darwin was reporting on our matches. In those days in the UK, amateur golf was a very important game, and there wasn’t a lot else going on. It was post-war, and was tough, but we got a remarkable amount of exposure. It was something else.

I: England must have been just trying to find its feet and heal its wounds, recover its stride again in 1948 after all the trauma of World War II. It must have been really something to be there. It wasn’t the normal quiet time I would think.
ST: It was anything but. It had a lot of depravation and a lot of terrible weather. A shortage of coal. Rationing, the rationing was really severe; two pieces of lousy meat a week, a couple of eggs. They just shoved in whatever else they could find. London was chaotic in terms of what had happened to it. But there was a countervailing factor that overwhelmed that part of the problem. And that is - two things: individually we had survived that war and collectively what we had done was to save the world, as we visualized it. Without any question, and we’d done it together. So the synergy between us was really wonderful. Apropos of that, I was the only American that ever played on the Oxford golf team up to that time. There have been several since, but I was the first one. We spent Saturday night in some member’s house - they spread us around – and then we were to play at another club the next day. The host would go down to the cellar and get the wine he had been keeping for some very very important occasion. He had an American as a guest, and he wanted to be able to express gratitude by giving something he cared a lot about.
[A discussion follows regarding St. Andrews and Wilson which is not intelligible]

ST: Then again this is right up there close to the NCAA win, but nothing will ever match that triumph for me. They had an international intercollegiate at St. Andrews and it was called the Boyd Quaich. The Quaich is a Scottish drinking bowl. The Boyd family had two Boyd brothers killed in the war, and one of the ways… They were both avid golfers, as was the rest of the family, and one of the ways that the family memorialized them was to persuade the University of St. Andrews to be the host, at St. Andrews, of an international intercollegiate. It certainly had a broad-based field from the U.K. In those days there wasn’t a lot of golf in Europe, but it had Europeans and it also had some Americans. It was 54 holes, stroke play. First round on the Old Course, the second round on the New, wonderful, and the third round on the Old Course. And I won it. I shot 217: 72, 73, 72, and in the circumstances those scores for me were inexpressively satisfying and I, therefore, won the Boyd Quaich. And, boy, in a setting like that, at St. Andrews … I got a little model of the Quaich, which I treasure.
The Quaich itself is a large bowl and we had a dinner celebration, which was wonderful. They filled that Quaich with port and passed the Quaich around and we all took a drink until all the port was gone. That added a lot of frivolity to the atmosphere.

I: A lot of color.
[laughter]

I: Made the haggis a little more palatable.
[laughter]
ST: No, nothing can make haggis palatable.
Maynard Garrison was then at Princeton, and he and a Princeton friend were over there and they were playing in it. Maynard and I were paired to together in the last round. That’s how I came to know him and it was a significant introduction from my point of view.

I: I’m just noticing up on the wall over here – there you are – 1942, you and Brownell in the stroke play at 146 to qualify, and Traphagen was at 147 and McCann was 152.
ST: Yup.

I: It looks like you tied with LSU.
ST: We did.

I: And there must have been a play-off?
ST: No, we were co-champions.

I: There you go.
ST: Yeah.

I: Now, fast-forward a bit. At the same time, perhaps, as your successful law career was unfolding, you developed an association with the USGA and eventually became President. So could you speak about how that process took place.
ST: That’s another mystical development in my life, without any question. It developed because I had become a member in the Cypress Point Club and Jack Westland was a member. Jack Westland was then and still is, I think, the oldest person ever to win the U.S. Amateur Championship. He was 47 when he won. A very good golfer, and he had been on the Executive Committee of the USGA. I just can surmise now, but I believe that, without saying anything to me, Westland thought I could be useful and he so identified me. A past president came to me and said that they thought that it would be useful if I went on the Executive Committee. I took a look at my life at the time, both economically and in terms of my law career, and I couldn’t manage to do it. So with a great deal of reluctance, I passed it up. Incredibly enough, about 10 years later, they came back to me. By that time, I was able to organize and handle it. So, I got on the Executive Committee in 1972. And I had eights years and, boy, they were wonderful. Being involved with the governance of the game and then to end up as the President was a life expanding experience. And almost as important was that I was on the Championship Committee for six years and I was Chairman of the Championship Committee for four of those years. In those days, the Chairman of the Championship Committee set up the Open golf courses. And we had something to do with the course selection. So, I had two years of experience as a member, and four years as a Chairman, setting up Open golf courses. How fascinating that was! As you may not know, the 1974 Open at Winged Foot was a watershed Open.
I loved that golf course and I had the very strong sense of what we needed to do to identify the best players in the world. We couldn’t do that without giving them an effective challenge. I participated actively in the set-up of Winged Foot.
I think the average score the first day was about 78. You would have thought an atom bomb had fallen on the place. In those days they there were terrible tensions from the player’s side; the players literally thought what we were trying to do was to humiliate them. The atmosphere was very pyrotechnic. At he end of that first day was the setting in which the media got to me with a great deal of intensity, effectively indicating that the players had a hell of a lot to complain about on this lousy, rotten, miserable set-up that had humiliated them. And it was then that I said, which was a spontaneous, but understandable reaction, I said “No, we are not trying to humiliate the best players in the world, we are simply trying to identify who they are.” And that was what we were doing. A fellow named Schaap, I can’t spell his name, but he wrote a book called “Massacre at Winged Foot”. The happy fact is that I didn’t have any questions about that set up. I thought, if you want to be among the best players in the world, you ought to be able to handle this golf course. There isn’t a hole in which you couldn’t make a birdie if you played it as well as it could be played. And if you don’t play it well, then you are going to have a tough time. So go play. And it was watershed, in the sense that that set the premises for Open course set-ups to this day.

I: Is that the one that Billy Casper won?
ST: No, Hale Irwin won that.

I: I am sure your knowledge is much more direct and insightful than mine, but I’m remembering a tournament at Winged Foot where Billy Casper, on all four days, played short on that long par 3 on the front 9. I have forgotten which number it is, 6 or 5, and he deliberately played short because there was so much danger around the green. And he pared it all four days and the players who finished second and third bogeyed it at least twice, or something like that. So his course management was unusual, but superb.
ST: He had it, alright, no doubt about that.

I: Certainly in reading over the years about Stanford golf, your association and relationship with Tom Watson comes up repeatedly. Could you share with us some of how that came about?
ST: Another dramatic illustration of how golf has enriched my life. The relationship I have had with Tom Watson is soul satisfying, let’s put it that way. The background is that when I was an undergraduate here, his father was in business school. His father was a very good player with a somewhat flamboyant personality and was easy to identify and attractive, so that I just got interested in him. I didn’t know him very well, but I was interested in him because he was effective in so many ways. So when Tom turned up here, the name registered. I followed him with a good deal of interest. I didn’t make any particular contact with him, although we communicated from time to time. But what really triggered the relationship for me, what it became, was the ’77 Open in Inverness where Tom was playing. I don’t remember the circumstances, but I do remember that we were socializing in some way and he said “You know what, Tatum, we should play together in the Crosby.” And that did it. I played with him every year, either as his partner, or - there was a fellow by the name of Bob Willits and we alternated playing as Tom’s partner. For those alternate years, Tom would set up another pro partner for us, and we would therefore be playing as a foursome. So, I had the unique experience of playing as his partner or, in alternate years, playing in Tom’s foursome with another pro Tom selected, right through all his glory years. Wow!

I: Wow is right!
ST: Yeah, and in those days we played from the same tees, so we were out there playing in competitive circumstances that really mattered and it was mystical. You know, “mystical” is not too strong a term in my view for the way in the way in which he played the game, but even more important, boy he loved it. And he was into everybody else’s game, particularly in a social setting, in a very constructive, positive way -- very very intelligent. It’s been a friendship that has been inexpressively important to me. I once said to him, “You know, Watson, I got a lot of breaks in my life, and one of them is that the devil never turned up and offered me your golf swing.”
[laughter]

I: What did he say to that?
ST: He just chuckled. He wouldn’t necessarily initiate conversations, but he’d talk to you and you’d have some socializing involved, but boy when he stood there and composed the golf shot and picked his golf club, there wasn’t anything more intensely effective than Tom Watson organizing to play that golf shot. A characteristic that I have to say I think is the basic fundamental reason why Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson are better than anybody else. They have a capacity to focus, and eliminate all of the intrusions. And he had it, and it was fascinating to watch it develop because he’d be relaxed and walking along and all of sudden, as he approached the shot the isolation was total. I said to him one day, “You know, Watson, we ought to use you as a cancer cure because you’re positively radio-active once you get over that ball.” It was truly how I observed him. And, boy, could he putt. And furthermore, every putt he had, he worked at it to make it. I don’t care how tough a putt it was. And he made a lot of them. When he missed they all went three feet past and he nailed them coming back. He was wonderful.

I: I was a graduate student in business myself here when he was graduating and playing golf on the team, and I remember a round, I walked around with him one day and two holes stood out. Number 6 he hit a quick hook into the trees and had a shot that I didn’t think was playable, but hit it straight up in the air from about 110 yards to 10 feet, rolled it in for a birdie. To me it was an impossible shot. He was four under going into 16 and hit the worst drive I’ve ever seen on 16, about 70 yards right, straight out of bounds. Then he proceeded to hit a driver and 3-wood to 30 feet and rolled it in for a net par, and finished four under. So he had a looseness to his game, but there was brilliance.

ST: Oh yeah. No question. The capacity there was really something, and a lot of that has been lost in the public’s perception of him. Obviously he’s an important factor, but he isn’t given the credit he deserves by a long shot. When they play up Gary Player along side Tom Watson, I think Gary Player couldn’t carry his jock strap… in all kinds of ways, but in any event … boy, he could play. He dominated the game for seven year and not many people know that. But beyond that, well beyond that, it was a joy to be playing golf with him. Apropos, I took a trip with him. He won the Open in ’80, I think, it was ’81 or ’82. I had been kidding him, I said, “You know, Watson, you don’t know anything about links golf. They roll out the red carpet for you, they set up those golf courses in ways that you guys, you know, can handle it, and come on… You ought to take a real look at links golf and I’d be glad to be your mentor.” So we set up a trip and we started at Ballybunion, and went to Portmarnock and Troon and Prestwick and we ended up Dornoch and when we got to Dornoch we had a day when the wind was blowing and the rain was coming in horizontal. We teed off about 2:30 in the afternoon, and everywhere we went, notwithstanding the fact that I asked the secretaries please to keep it quiet, we had well into the thousands, two or three thousand people turned up because Tom Watson was playing. Apropos, when we played Ballybunion that first day on the trip, when we were crossing the Shannon about seven o’clock in the morning there were 10 other cars on the ferry. I went around checking them out and they all had come from Belfast because they heard Tom Watson was playing Ballybunion. If you can imagine what a trip it is from Belfast on those roads in Ireland as they certainly as they then were. And by the time we arrived at Ballybunion, there were buses and media, and I said to some Irish friend of mine, “damn it, you know, we tried to keep this quiet, so we can have a private golf game. “Oh,” he said, “you made a terrible mistake. Nobody in Ireland can keep a secret for God’s sake! What you should have done was publish it in the newspaper, nobody would have believed it!”
[laughter]

I: Dornoch still remembers Tom very fondly.
ST: Oh, everywhere he went.

I: But I mean even now.
ST: Oh, absolutely! And apropos, we played in very very tough weather and we were coming in about 6:30, walking up 18 and he said to me, “Come on, Tatum, we haven’t had a private game. Tell you what we do. Send the caddies home, and tell them to come back in a half an hour and let’s go out and play.” So we did, and therefore we got started out about seven o’clock. And all day, basically, wind had been blowing, it had been raining. We were walking down the third fairway and I was walking along behind him and he stopped, and he said, “Tatum, I’ve got something I want to say.” And I said, “What do you want to say, Watson?”. He said, “What I want to say, Tatum, is that this is the most fun I’ve had playing golf in my whole life.” Okay? That was Tom Watson!

I: That would be a course on which you would be likely to say that.
ST: Absolutely, and in those weather conditions.

I: I remember Watson being asked what is the most difficult shot on the golf course at Dornoch? And he’s reported to have said, “the second shot on the second hole”, if you remember the hole.
[laughter]
The second hole is about 170 yard, par 3, and the green is quite elevated and sort of oval away from you and you’re looking down the long axis and on either side of the cheeks of the green are these deep bunkers …
[laughter]
… and long is no good either.
[laughter]
ST: That sounds like it.

I: I want to take you back and then you can bring it forward for a second if I could. Just reflect on what your Stanford experience has meant to you. Not just the golf, the experience of being a student here -- did you go to law school here as well?
ST: Yes, I did. I’m stopping and thinking for a minute or so, because it’s very hard for me to be able to express it in a way that satisfies me that I get across how much it meant for my life, in two respects. I had the four years as an undergraduate and one consummate life. Intellectually, it woke me up to huge horizons. The student body was made up of people that were very very interesting. The atmosphere in the place was so conducive to learning and enjoying. The intellectual life, therefore was very satisfying and the social life was very satisfying and, of course, the there was the factor of golf. But basically, it would been a perfectly wonderful experience even if I had never picked up a golf club. The academicians that were here, every single one of them, to whom I was exposed was an inspiration. And I got the intellectual foundations and the other foundations that helped to develop me as a decent human being.

I: Would you like to say a word or two about Tiger?
ST: I certainly would. He hasn’t yet reached the point of being the greatest player in the game simply because in order to acquire that title, he has to have a record that is competitive with Nicklaus’ record. That takes some longevity. There’s a factor there in terms of time of playing at the top of the game, that Tiger, in my judgment, needs to accomplish. On the other hand, I think there is a perfectly understandable point of view that he is the best player who’s ever played the game.

There is a combination there, isn’t there. I mean, after all, it becomes hard to believe, you’ve seen the videos when he was three years old and see the golf swing, it’s pretty much the same golf swing that he’s got today at age 30. The way in which he has developed. His father, we ought to have a memorial to his father. Contrast his development with that of Michele Wei. Perfect contrast. Furthermore he has all the other credentials, as I see it. He knows the game and he’s a very interesting, very intelligent human being. He comports himself impressively, I think, other than except for the occasional expletive, which is understandable, but I have enormous respect for him as a person. And as I say, I think you can identify him in terms of being the best player who’s ever played the game. That is to say his ability transcends anybody else’s ability, as I see it, but that doesn’t qualify him as the greatest if all time, for reasons that I have identified. And you know, golf happily and understandably has the truly great players identifiable as really interesting and effective human beings as contrasted with other sports.

I: Can we ask you one more favor, Sandy, I don’t know if we’re quite through, but while it’s on my mind, in terms of this enterprise that you are participating in with us today, we would hope that we could have a conversation like this with Tom Watson, or with Tiger or with some of the other people who you have been close to. Could we call on you to help us facilitate that?

ST: Oh, absolutely. I would expect Tom would be delighted and even go out of his way. I don’t have access to Tiger, but I’m trying to get it, as a matter of fact. And this is an aside.
In the Don Kennedy administration - I had always been frustrated by this golf club. II don’t mean to be critical of anybody, I’m only recording the facts. A golf club superimposes itself on golf at Stanford, so that this golf course doesn’t nearly satisfy Stanford’s needs, so that students, faculty and staff can get effective access to it, and so Stanford can use it for all the things that Stanford can use it for without the imposition of the golf club.
That’s beginning to be rectified, as you probably know, but it will take many years. Now this goes back to the Don Kennedy administration, and playing here frustrated me as a student because it wasn’t all that easy to get on the golf course. So, I got the idea, and got Tom Watson involved, that there be two golf courses out in the 280 corridor. There’s a 1,200 acre triangular piece that’s bordered on the east by 280 and on the west by Alpine and on the south by Arastradero, and the intersection between 280 and Alpine is where the apex of the triangle is. 1,200 acres there. The concept was that we would have two golf courses, one would be for Stanford students, faculty, staff and alumni. Any time left over they could sell, and depending on how Stanford wanted to deal with the money factor, there would be a public golf course with the economic factor being, how much Stanford wants to make. They could make a lot, in my judgment. A really first-class golf course in that setting, in this environment, I don’t know what you could charge. And it was perfectly clear that I could raise the money, that is Stanford wouldn’t have to invest a dime. All they’d have to do is permit us to use that property. On the basis that if some other use came along, it would be effectively available. The only thing it is now used for is occasionally to run cattle. Nobody sees it.
Tom and I worked out roughly the routing for it both golf courses. And we’d have a state of the art golf academy utilizing all of the technology, and Tom would design that. So, I got that going, and the Board of Trustees was on board, Don Kennedy, the President, and the provost were very enthusiastic. And I had two committees: a policy committee and working committee and we were well along. The working committee went all around and looked at all of Stanford’s lands and came to the conclusion that that was the very best place where we could possibly have that kind of a facility. It was going to happen, until the government affairs people came along and said we can’t handle that politically now because we have Sand Hill Road.
So, it’s been on hold ever since; they put it on hold. I’ve made some runs at it. I made a run with Gerhard Caspar and got nowhere and I finally now have revived it - I got Spaeth involved, and we’ve come up with the idea that the golf courses would be designed one by Tom and one by Tiger.
And you know, wow! And there’s no question about Tom, but getting Tiger, somehow I’ve got to work out a way, hopefully I can manage to do that.
I: Have you talked to Conrad about that?
ST: I don’t know whether we have…

I: You know Conrad, of course, is very close with Tiger, because they were teammates, so…
ST: One aspect of that is I got support for the project from the development department because they understood how important golf is. One of the things to have on the record is that Tom Watson used to do the Watson event here for the golf teams. They had done that for three or four years when Tom, playing with me one day, said, you know, “I need some help.” I said, “What do you need help on?” He said, “I don’t want to do that anymore. I give three days out of my life, I raise about $35,000. And I need to get out of it on a constructive basis.” So, I said, “Well, let me think about that.”
So I went back to him and said look, “You can really get out, not only constructively, but you can really do something with what you’ve got. You put on events for Stanford, like the things you do for IBM and the corporate world and you can attract people to Stanford who otherwise wouldn’t be attracted to it. And I have cleared that with Tom Ford. And Tom Ford said “you can’t know much that could matter.”
And I know how much it could matter, because Tom did six of those, and he is so good at it and so impressive and so attractive in all respects that they were very very successful events. He’d put on a clinic, we’d have lunch, we’d play golf, we’d go to the President’s house and have cocktails and dinner and out of all that, well, well, over a hundred million dollars was raised for Stanford.

I: Wonderful legacy there.
ST: Oh, I’ll say. And apropos, the development people, Tom Ford, he said, “You know, Sandy, one of the real frustrations we’ve had, we haven’t been able to get to Tiger.
I think this is an access to Tiger, let’s go for it. Well, I hope I can get to the point where I’m sitting across the table from Tiger asking him if he’d do this for Stanford, against the background, as you probably know, where the first golf course he’s doing is in Dubai. His fee is $26 million, plus 10% of the action.
[chuckling]

I: Wow!
Well, Dubai is unreal, just in general.
His second course is in North Carolina. His first one in the U.S.
ST: Yes.

I: Is there anything else that you’d want to add across the range of topics or personalities or teammates or experiences that you’ve had?
ST: No, I think we’ve covered it as effectively as I can. I do want to say that I think what you’re doing is wonderful. I think there’s a legacy here that needs to be identified and it involves, obviously, extraordinary combination of the institution and people and the game, and it’s wonderful. And thank you very much!

I: Thank you. It’s a privilege to be part of this project.
ST: I’ll bet it is.

I: Sandy, as I was listening to you talk about these wonderful plans for more better golf here, I was thinking of the dark side of that, and that is the two near misses of the near destruction of this golf course with this idea of housing on the first fairway, and then the trails running through the back nine, which would have essentially destroyed the back nine, certainly as it is now.
And so I hope that those issues are dead, but there are obviously people in or around the university who do not understand golf or who actually have an antipathy toward it, who feel that it’s a, I don’t know, the kind of resentment about golf that we find in some elements of the public, seem to be present in the university somewhere because, you don’t have to be Rich Harris, the wonderfully active attorney who has lead the fight against…who has a kind of paranoid conspiratorial take on all of this. You don’t need necessarily to subscribe to that, but there’s something negative …
ST: I understand that. The answer is that one of my basic motivations was the absolute conviction, in my judgment, that this golf course was going to go. I wouldn’t cause it to go, but it’s going to go. And my understanding was that when the golf course was put in, the understanding was that one day, particularly that first seven holes, would be converted, primarily for faculty housing,. So it was always a kind of temporary, and it’s still in that posture, and I can assure you that we’re still in that posture. The communications that I’ve had – it’s what is wrong, witness Condoleezza Rice’s proposal - the business about the first fairway. And so that leaves me totally comfortable that I’m not going to be responsible for the death of this golf course, but I’d like to be responsible for making golf much much more useful to the university than it is here now.

Sandy Tatum - Part 4 of 8

2008-03-06T10:35:00.001-08:00

Stanford Hall of Famer and former USGA President Sandy Tatum talks about his Hall of Fame teammates Warren Berl and Bud Brownell and future coach Bud Finger.. Other parts of the video interview with Sandy Tatum can be found at http://stanfordmensgolf.org/video-Tatum.htm.

Grant Spaeth Interview - Part IV of IV

2008-01-02T06:46:00.000-08:00

Grant ("Biggie") Spaeth. Stanford men's golf team letter winner 1952, 1953, 1954. Member of the
1953 national championship team. USGA President 1990-92.

Intro: As part of an ongoing project to create a new website for the Stanford Men’s Golf Team, and to preserve the oral history of Stanford golf, interviews with notable Stanford golfers will be made. This is the part IV of IV of an interview with Grant Spaeth. On Monday, October 8, 2007, Grant Spaeth was interviewed overlooking the 18th green at Stanford University Golf Course. The interviewers were Lyman Van Slyke, Bob Stevens and Richard Peers.

INTERVIEWER: Can I take you back for a second to Stanford - your undergraduate days. You were here for four years I assume.
GRANT: Right.
INTERVIEWER: Can you think of one person who stands out as having had more influence over you, in your Stanford experience? Could have been relative to golf or a professor, or it could have been I suppose somebody outside of the University.
GRANT: Oh, gosh. I’d have to think on that, but the fact of the matter is that I got very close to Sandy Tatum when he was around, and I got very close to the president of the University. His name was Wally Sterling. One of the great people of all time. And my dad! That was a pretty good three-some of friends to have. So somehow, as a kid, I can recall turning to them.
INTERVIEWER: Since you mention Sandy Tatum, and he has played such an important part in the history of the program.
GRANT: Sure.
INTERVIEWER: Could you speak about him a little bit.
GRANT: Sure, actually Lyman ought to do that because he interviewed him with great care a few years back.
INTERVIEWER: Specifically with respect to his friendship with Alistair Cooke.
GRANT: Sure.
INTERVIEWER: Not in a more general, broader way.
GRANT: Well, Stanford was very important to Sandy. His brother had gone, been a Rhodes Scholar. Sandy worked very, very hard and got very good grades. Pop identified that very quickly when he first came here and he hired two guys to run the law school for him: Sandy Tatum and Warren Christopher. They are both, obviously, hard working, brilliant people. What Sandy, in his career, which has been a very successful law practice, very important charitable contributions, including being a Trustee at the University, he’s very bright, very careful, very organized. He is a very compelling person. He can talk you into just about anything. But golf has been just an integral part of his life. But it hasn’t deflected him from what I consider important achievements. I’ve always thought he ought to go into politics. I think he could have been a winner in politics, but that wasn’t to be. And so, he’s an intense person and he cares a lot and he thinks a lot about things that matter to him. And he’s otherwise been a very loyal friend. I could go on at great length, but that’s my summary.
INTERVIEWER: Is there a player since you left that you built a connection to and sustained that relationship over the years?
GRANT: I can’t think of anyone other than Dick McElyea. I got to know Tiger very well, but it’s tough to sustain something in the last five years.
INTERVIEWER: Absolutely.
GRANT: I’d have to think on that one a bit. No one pops out, but I’ll keep thinking.
INTERVIEWER: Certainly Watson and Woods stand out in the world of golf.
GRANT: Sure.
INTERVIEWER: Your interactions with Tom Watson?
GRANT: Not very close. Sandy Tatum and he – Tom’s had a very complex life. From upbringing until today, and Tatum, I’ve always thought, though we don’t talk about it a lot, is almost a surrogate father for Tom. We played golf here not so long ago, and the relationship is one which I felt almost like I was intruding. There were three of us.
INTERVIEWER: I understand, yes.
GRANT: And because the unsaid things were obviously ones of intimacy between two men, father-son kind of things, but I get along with Tom fine.
INTERVIEWER: Your experience with Tiger? You mention you did have some interaction with him when he was here.
GRANT: Well, Earl. Tiger was appointment to the World Cup and one of the things the president is invited to do is be the captain, whether you’re a good golfer or not. I’d like to think I know something about the game. Anyway, I happened to be captain and Tiger, who was on the team, he was picked. He should have come with us, but I told him to stick around for the three days of introduction to freshman to Stanford. They have those various occasions, and I said, “Come late, I’ll meet you at the plane.” Which is what I did. So he stayed here and he arrived late. In the meantime his father had called me and said that Tiger had gone on a foreign trip and had been really mistreated, that the person who organized took care of himself rather than the kids, and he was worried. And I said, “Well ,don’t you worry, Earl.” I’d come to know him a bit. I said I’ll assign Laurie, my wife, to make sure that he’s okay. And so we did. And so when Tiger sees Laurie, he calls her “Momma”. Anyway, so we had a week, an intense week and we won of course, but he was very impressive. The press was bugging him so I said to the press, I said, “Look, let’s have one meeting and take an hour and half, answer your questions, and then I want you to lay off him. We’re here to play golf. Is that agreeable?” People from all over the world, big turn-out. 50 members of the press, and so we did. So I kind of MC’d it for a moment, and then somebody started asking a question which I felt was – “Have you contemplated the death of your father? Have you contemplated loosing and the psychological impact….” and I stepped forward and I said, “You know, it seems to me there’s a limit for a 17-year old man, what you can…” and Tiger interrupted me and said, “Never mind, Coach, I’ll take ’em.” So he answered this rather personal questions, and to this moment, I have been impressed with Tiger’s abilities. [laughter]
INTERVIEWER: Quite remarkable.

GRANT: He’s a very attractive and very strong guy.
INTERVIEWER: Did anything stand out about his golf during that Walker Cup?
GRANT: That was a World Cup.
INTERVIEWER: World Cup, sorry.
GRANT: Well, no, he just played wonderfully. Allen Doyle…The British head was Michael Bonallack. He came up to me in the 10th green and said, “We’ve got you!” And at that point, 10th green, last day, four rounds, we were 10 strokes behind. Allen Doyle shoots 30, Tiger shoots 32 and Frank Harris shoots 33. We win by 12. [laughter] So, yes!
INTERVIEWER: That’s good coaching!
GRANT: Of course, [laughing] I took all the credit! But he was very, very well received and we had a meeting beforehand and I said, “You know, we’re gonna win!” But you never can tell. The one thing we are going to win, we are going to be the finest diplomats to ever play in this golf tournament. I want every single player to be able to go home and say, “I met Tigers Woods, I met Allen Doyle, and they were nice people.” And they won that one going away! So I feel good about that particularly. And I did tell Tiger once, “coaches can coach” and I went up to him on the 8th green at this course and said, “I just want you to know, Allen Doyle had the same putt. About a 25-footer uphill. And it didn’t look uphill. And I just want you to know that he came up 6 feet short. And I don’t know what you’re going to do with that information, you know, but it looked to me that Allen thought he had hit the putt right.” He didn’t do those motions that we do when we get it on the toe or do something. And he said, “Thanks!” and he knocked it in! [laughing]
INTERVIEWER: Good coaching! I remember Wally Goodwin saying to me once that when Tiger came here that Earl called me and he had a conversation with Earl and Earl said to Wally, “Tiger’s here, you’re his coach. I’m not going to be interfering and always present.” And I think Wally… This wasn’t just as Tiger had arrived, he’d been here a year and was in his second year, and I had a feeling that Wally felt that that had been the case. Is that your impression as well?
GRANT: I don’t know. I’ve gotten mixed reports about the relationship and I don’t know the specifics. I think it’s fine now, but …
INTERVIEWER: Between Wally and Tiger?
GRANT: Yes, you’d have to talk to Mark Soltau to find out really what was the dynamic, because I never thought of Wally as working on Tiger’s golf swing, and so that’s interesting that Wally reported that. My talks with Tiger were not about golf. I’d say, “Goddamn, Tiger, you know, you’re going to be mixing it up with Tiger Woods of drama, poetry and science and computers, and you don’t understand what extraordinarily powerful roommates and dorm mates.” I said, “Eat it up! You’ll never have another experience like it.” And he said, “You were right.” [laughing] But I don’t know about his golf swing.
INTERVIEWER: I don’t have the feeling that they were talking specifically about Tiger’s golf swing, but he wasn’t going to be the hovering father who was always second guessing everything that Wally was doing.
GRANT: An idea I think you ought to toss in is that, my impression is that Eddie Twiggs had an impact on the players in terms of their education. I think Wally did, and I think our current coach did. I think other coaches haven’t, and I had a suggestion to the University would be the next time around, I think you ought to have a golf coach which also has the capacities of an adviser, a student advisor, just like I’d have a Lyman Van Slyke if I’m a freshman, to whom I reported on occasion and talk through what should my major be, you know these issues that arise with kids. I personally feel that one of the strengths of Conrad and the strengths of Wally was a larger impact on the lives of the players. I think it helps. So that would be my suggestion to the Athletic Department.
INTERVIEWER: Anything else Rich or Van or Grant that you would like to add? We’d certainly like to thank you.
GRANT: No, I do hope that you concentrate on the ‘30’s and early ‘40’s and on the Rosburgs. That as I’ve been thinking about this, now it’s gone on for what, 75 years. It’s an extraordinary, wonderful story, the early part. It’s one that’s totally forgotten and you know, it’s just like the Korean War. They were writing things about the Korean War and I forget that half the country doesn’t know what the Korean War was. And similarly to restore those people. There is no man in America who’s more of a delight than Charlie Seaver. Just go down to LA Country Club, his picture is everywhere because he won everything in California. And Lawson Little was a complicated guy, you know, an alcoholic, and winner and was Stanford too much for him? I don’t know. You can get a lot of psychological analysis. But the point is, a real person that really mattered in American golf. And there were others and I hope you get to Tatum quickly. Not that his health is… but just to chat with him about some of these people. Even he said – how about Art Doering? Whatever happened to Art Doering? And Bud Brownell, he knew Bud Brownell. And, I don’t know.

Grant Spaeth Interview - Part III of IV

2007-12-08T11:47:00.000-08:00

INTERVIEWER: From say 1960 backyards, who was the finest Stanford golfer who you observed or played with or were a team mate of?
GRANT: Fred Brown was a very good player and he won the Broadmoor invitational more than once and that was one of the primary amateur events. Phil Getchell did very well after graduation. Chuck Van Linge was a very, very good golfer. He, over the years, has proven what a really good player he was.
INTERVIEWER: Did any of them play professionally?
GRANT: No, no professional golf seemed a long way away. Nicklaus was quoted as saying unless you’ve won your state amateur forget it. That was the test. When you haven’t proven that you’re the number one amateur, how could you possibly go on the tour? And I think that was the feeling that professional golf was not an option, except for a Venturi.
INTERVIEWER: Was Bob Rosburg an exceptional college player?
GRANT: Right, and he didn’t turn pro, he worked down in a clothing store in Palo Alto for three years, and then he decided to give it a go because he wasn’t enjoying that, and he made it. But as you know, he was a unique golfer with a baseball swing. He wasn’t long, but he was an awfully good chipper and putter.
INTERVIEWER: Did he surprise you when he won the PGA?
GRANT: No, because he nearly had won the US Open, I mean he lost to Moody by one stroke. He was a fighting winner. There’s just no question about it. I played a lot of golf with him – and, sure it surprised us, anyone who scores that well is going to surprise you, but he was good, he was good, I just didn’t know how good the rest were. So be sure to talk to Rosburg, he’ll be more colorful than I am, because he got angry at Stanford, the Stanford band. And they wouldn’t pay for the team to go to the national inter-collegiates in ’47. Dick McElyeas’ father financed it. So when they came back, they gave the cup to McElyea and they put it in his store on University Avenue, and said were not giving it to the Athletic Department. They wouldn’t support us!
INTERVIEWER: That’s a great story.
GRANT: [laughs] A true story. Rosburg will knock your socks off!
INTERVIEWER: Could you talk about Dick McElyea?
GRANT: Well, he was a very close friend, because as I’ve said, he was in high school. He was rather well to do, at least his father had lots of golf clubs. You know you got the thrill of seeing these clubs, because, remember, in 1946 they weren’t making golf clubs, or the grips were paper. It didn’t get going until sometime after the war, but Dick’s father had a lot of golf clubs. And secondly Dick loved Dixieland Jazz and he had records that wouldn’t stop. He lived in a lovely home in Palo Alto and he was a very gentle, nice fellow, and that was true all his life. He couldn’t hit the ball very far, and it was a surprise that he won the Pacific Coast Conference, but he was a meticulous golfer, and even though he couldn’t move the ball very far, he never was out of play. And he had a magnificent short game and he’d just would wear you down. Sort of reminded me of that, it wasn’t Jerry Barber, it was the other fellow who won the PGA hitting 4 woods 10 feet from the hole, from 50 yards behind Sam Sneed.
INTERVIEWER: You say it wasn’t Miller Barber?
GRANT: No, it wasn’t Jerry Barber, it was the other fellow in Southern California and won the PGA which was then match play. So Dick was gentle, never any trouble. He was kind, not showy. He was a modest fellow who went about playing golf as best he could and as best he could was very good. He wouldn’t shoot 66, but he’d rarely shoot 76. That sort of golfer. Just right there always. And a wonderful fellow in every respect.
INTERVIEWER: Could you speak about the other personalities on your teams?
GRANT: Warren Daily was kind of a nut, effusive. I told you he exploded with the ball. I’ve seen him, of course, since, and well, we all age, but when he was on the team, he was the fun, upbeat kind of guy. There was a fellow earlier by the name of Jack Knosher from Illinois, and he used to love to gamble. No one had any money, and we had IOU’s floating back and forth. Hopefully everybody broke even at the end, but we were playing for a lot of money, relative to what we had. Jack was an absolute character. Bobby Simms was another fellow on one of our teams and he became a pilot. He was always interested in the military and that was going to be his career and turned out to be his career. Unfortunately, he didn’t make it – he crashed at some point. So I can’t say that there were really characters. There were just good friends and there wasn’t any who did anything absurd, at least that I can recall. Pretty tame bunch.
INTERVIEWER: Except on the golf course.
GRANT: [laughs] Yes, we were good on the golf course! The high point for me, either when I was in high school or early in college, my dad got the wit of having the golf team and the alumni. The alumni match was a big deal, I mean an important match for the golf team, and the alumni showed up. So, you’d have Tatum, Berl, Seaver and a long line of them. They really went out and did battle, and then they’d come over to my house for lunch and a beer. You couldn’t have beer anywhere on the campus if you recall back in 1946. It was a dry place, but not at faculty homes. Anyway, that’s where we all got to meet and they started talking about Little, because Little was still on the tour then in the ‘40’s, early ‘50’s. And Seaver would get going and talking about the days of the first Stanford golf teams – ’33, ’32. I don’t know when the first team was.
INTERVIEWER: They actually had teams, I think, even before the course was built, that they would play like at Burlingame or at Peninsula or Menlo or whatever.
GRANT: Well, the really important golf started getting played, I think, with Little and Seaver in the early ‘30’s.
INTERVIEWER: There’s one fellow called Malcolm McNaughton who was 1931, and I’m just wondering if anyone had talked about him.
GRANT: Well, you might ask Tatum about him. Malcolm McNaughton was from Hawaii and one of those Scottish families that was very powerful in that community and I dare say he was into pineapples or whatever you’re into in Hawaii in a big way. I believe Malcolm McNaughton became the head of one of the big, what are there, four or five big companies?
INTERVIEWER: Like Dole or one of those companies.
GRANT: I forget, but Sandy could tell you, or Warren Berl can tell you, very important individual. I don’t know about his golf game.
INTERVIEWER: Could you talk about your career after you left Stanford? Obviously golf remained a very important part of your life because it led to your becoming President of the USGA. Could you talk about that transition?
GRANT: Well, I went to law school back East and then started practicing law here in Palo Alto about ’58, after a tour in the army. And then worked pretty hard, and then after about six years, organized my own law firm which stayed in existence for about 40 years until it merged into a larger firm. My recollection is that I started fitting golf in a bit, probably the third or fourth year of law practice, and I became a member here. I just played, nothing special. I played in the Club tournaments and I won it once here. It increasingly became important to me. I joined San Francisco Golf Club. Everybody else left this golf course to join Sharron, and I frankly didn’t like that golf course very much, so I waited around and wound up joining San Francisco. Then I decided to do some volunteer work, you know, like we all do, as a Marshall, at some event, or helping out the golf team here or the NCGA. Then just a series of circumstances. They wanted somebody from the West who was a lawyer who knew something about golf, and I wound up being general counsel. So, it wasn’t any organized campaign. It was kind of good fortune, meeting the right people. The combination of law and golf just seemed to be needed by the USGA at that time. Which a time when the golf ball, we had the self-correcting golf ball, which we had to stop, followed by Ping and the grooves, and golf became a litigious arena.
INTERVIEWER: What do you mean by the self-correcting golf ball?
GRANT: Well, two scientists in San Jose, ex-IBM, developed a golf ball which, if you sliced, would recoup and straighten out.
[chuckling]
INTERVIEWER: Boy, that would help my game, I tell you that!
GRANT: Or if you hooked it, it would straighten out, and it worked.
INTERVIEWER: Really?
GRANT: At a tremendous distance price, but it worked. We took the position that that was not a golf ball. But we didn’t have much underpinnings because we never thought of such a thing. You know, a round, and we basically said a golf ball has got to be consistent from every angle. We put that into effect, but we didn’t have it in effect when they sued us and the anti-trust laws, because we banned the ball. The ball would have failed. You wouldn’t have used it because even you Van can’t afford to loose 30 yards. [laughing] But anyway, so there was a need for a lawyer to oversee things. Not that the legal representation wasn’t strong beforehand.
INTERVIEWER: So when did you become President?
GRANT: 1990.
INTERVIEWER: And how long was your tenure?
GRANT: Two-year term. I was on the USGA for 13 years and you move up the chairs. So I got to see everything: Chairman of Rules of Golf, so that was a four-year, and Championship Committee, running the events and starting the mid-amateur. That was my favorite thing to have done. Serving on the myriad of committees that every charitable institution has.
INTERVIEWER: It’s a little unusual, perhaps, you were the second Stanford golfer who became USGA President, and there’s a third now, isn’t that correct?
GRANT: Walter Driver, that’s right, that’s right. Walter was on the golf team I think a little before Tom Watson. That’s my hunch. And he’s a very good golfer. He played in the mid-amateur when he was nothing in the USGA, but he qualified, which is an achievement. Big strong, long-hitting, good golf swing.
INTERVIEWER: He lives up to his name.
GRANT: Absolutely right!
INTERVIEWER: When Bob and Rich knew we going to be talking to you today, I looked back to “Fun and Games” and read again Alistair Cooke’s address, I guess you would call it.
GRANT: Well, yes, he stood up there.
INTERVIEWER: “The inauguration of President Grant”, he called it. [laughing]
GRANT: I got to know him through …
INTERVIEWER: That’s really quite funny.
GRANT: We played golf ever time he came out and he’d come out three times a year and stay up in the City. And then he learned I was going to be President and he called and rather coy about it, but he was essentially asking whether he might speak at the occasion. I couldn’t imagine that. I idolized Alistair Cooke. I still do. And I did then before I had ever met him, because mother being English, my mother being Scottish and my grandmother being English, we listened to him when I was right here, 14, 15. Anyway, he appeared and gave me the needle.
INTERVIEWER: Well that makes for segue. When did you first play in Scotland or the UK or Ireland?
GRANT: My first visit there, and I’ve been there a lot of times since, I had aunts in Scotland, and I negotiated with my parents to take the summer and winter, the fall quarters off. There were no Stanford abroad campuses. So I went to summer school, which enabled me to get six months, and I went to Scotland, and they conditioned it on my going up to see these aunts who were …
INTERVIEWER: So this was which year?
GRANT: 1952. And so I went up to this little town called Ballater and played golf at the little golf course every day, and then came down and played Carnoustie. I still have the score card. But my first Scottish golf course of any moment was Carnoustie for four days. The year before Hogan played. So when Hogan played, I was ahead of everybody, because I knew those holes backwards and forwards. So when he took a 6 on 17 in the third round, I said, my God, impossible. He hit it in the burn, no he didn’t hit the burn, he looked up on a second shot, blasted out and three putted. Anyways, so it was great fun to know what was happening because I knew the golf course. And then I went on down to St. Andrews where they had a tournament for college players and we stayed at the University dormitory and we played three rounds at the old course and one at the new, preceded by practice rounds. So that was my introduction. And that was followed by seven days in London with a famous man by the name of Gerald Micklem. Gerald Micklem was the caretaker of British amateur golf. Captain of the R&A, player who defeated Frank Stranahan in the British Amateur. He was on the Walker Cup team. He was a fabulous guy whose home was at Sunningdale. He took me around to all the London golf courses. That was my first trip – fabulous trip! [chuckles]
INTERVIEWER: So what are you say three or four favorite Scottish golf courses?
GRANT: Well I’ve got to say my favorite is Royal County down where I have just come from. I just think that is… have you been there?
INTERVIEWER: Yes, I’ve played there I think four times.
GRANT: Well I walked around it four times for the matches and I just couldn’t get over how perfect it was.
INTERVIEWER: Any others?
GRANT: I love Murfield. I have always had a ball at the Old Course, even though it’s a crazy golf course. But because Carnoustie was my first, it stays there, because of my memory, it’s a middle-class town, or lower-middle-class. I got to know the caddies. I got to know the members of the Club. It’s not a Club in the American sense. It’s just a place where – very modest, and I just fell for Carnoustie. Those are my four. But don’t tell others because I love them all. I mean the little courses like Panmuir and Ely, London Links.
INTERVIEWER: How does Dornoch rank?
GRANT: Oh, way up there. Way, way up there. It’s very, very special. That’s the trouble with your question.
INTERVIEWER: I know.
GRANT: The top three or four – it’s hard to put Dornoch number 5, but I’ll leave it there for the moment. You have a strong dissent to that?
INTERVIEWER: No, I …
GRANT: No, you can’t take away my love affair with Carnoustie because it was so emotional.
INTERVIEWER: Right.
GRANT: That first visit, plus Hogan.
INTERVIEWER: My experience at Carnoustie has not been so positive, but that’s just a completely personal thing.
GRANT: Sure, of course it is.
INTERVIEWER: Dornoch and County Down would be my two.
GRANT: If you keep going I’ll talk , to say Prestwick
INTERVIEWER: Prestwick is a lot of fun.
GRANT: As far as fun, just the fun of playing golf. Prestwick. Crazy.
INTERVIEWER: Cruden Bay is wonderful golf course.
GRANT: Oh, there we go.

Grant Spaeth Interview - Part II of IV

2007-11-26T06:40:00.000-08:00

This interview took place at the Stanford Golf Course on Oct. 8, 2007. The interviewers were Lyman Van Slyke, Bob Stevens and Rich Peers, members of Stanford.

INTERVIEWER: So, the Stanford team won the NCAA in ’53.
GRANT: Yes, ’53 at the Broadmoor.
INTERVIEWER: Talk about that.
GRANT: Well, I don’t think we thought we could win, number one, but we knew we were good players. But it’s not as if we ran into other golf teams around the country the way they do today. I notice the Stanford team has been in Chicago, Florida, Japan and will go to Hawaii, meeting these other teams. That didn’t happen at all, only the west coast teams and we’d play matches against them. So there was no sense of comparison and we really didn’t know going in whether we were good, relatively good, or not. It was 36 holes, six players and four lowest scores, so we went out played and we practiced a lot and talked a lot about the golf course. It was up high and so you had to make some adjustments to your golf game because the ball went further and how do you calibrate that? So we just spent a lot of time talking about that. And we just went out and played. I don’t recall anything special about that first round. I remember on the second round I realized the pressure and I wrote a long letter to my dad and Sandy Tatum and said, I think we’re about there if we can really turn it on tomorrow. So I can remember having a lot of pressure and excitement, and it worked out.

INTERVIEWER: What was the buzz, if any, about who the hot teams where?
GRANT: Well, there was LSU with Eddie Merrins who was the pro down at Bel-Air Country Club. They were the hot team, but beyond that there were Texas teams. North Texas State had been the power and Houston hadn’t appeared, but there were a lot of good players kind of banging around in the Texas/Oklahoma world, but again, I didn’t really know that much. There weren’t that many amateur tournaments and certainly not a lot of tournaments where we were exposed to the good players, but LSU was the one we beat and it was the favorite by a wide margin coming in. And frankly, I think they had a better team then we did, but they didn’t those two days. [chuckles]
INTERVIEWER: So it was four days of medal play?
GRANT: Two days.
INTERVIEWER: Two days of medal play.
GRANT: And the low 64 went into match play, that’s the way it was structured then. I don’t think they can fit all the schools any more and that’s why it’s been reduced: the number of players and the number of scores.
INTERVIEWER: What shape was the course in?
GRANT: Perfect. Colorado Springs – the course has since been changed, but it was just a good, solid golf course, and happily enough the 17th hole was one you could get on in two.
INTERVIEWER: Par 5.
GRANT: Par 5, yes.
INTERVIEWER: I take it you reached it in two.
GRANT: I did. I had a good round. I had 71-68.
INTERVIEWER: Fantastic!
GRANT: That wasn’t the medalist, but it was number 2 medal and we won by two shots.
INTERVIEWER: Who was the medalist? Do you recall?
GRANT: I don’t. I’ve got that stuff somewhere. I’ll find it for you.
INTERVIEWER: Was that your career best performance?
GRANT: Well, sure!
INTERVIEWER: Obviously, under the circumstances it was.
GRANT: Absolutely. The moment, you know, one of those special moments. One thing I do want to add here is that when I was in high school, I was very much involved with Stanford golf as a caddy. The NCAA was here [in 1948 – editor]. I had all kinds of jobs. I was in charge of measuring the long driving contest on the 10th hole, but as a result of being a kid and Eddie Twiggs being here and Sandy Tatum being a family friend, I heard all about Lawson Little, Charlie Seaver. I mean the idea, I learned that Charlie Seaver if he had won his semi-final match at Merion in 1930, he would have played Bobby Jones. That’s how good Charlie Seaver was. Maybe better than Lawson Little, who won the U.S. Amateur twice and the Amateur twice in Britain. And then there was Art Doering – who, I don’t know what happened to him, but he was on the professional tour for a number of years. And then there was the wonderful player who owned the course record.

INTERVIEWER: Bud Brownell?
GRANT: Bud Brownell from Monterey, who I don’t have a sense of, but everybody just thought he was the most wonderful golfer ever to appear and he had this extraordinary round of golf of 63. You can image what the clubs where that they used. And then, as a caddy, here I am caddying for Bob Rosburg, Bob Cardinal, Tom Lambie from Phoenix and a couple of others. And they won the NCAA in 1947. And they should have won in ’48, but Eddie Twiggs kicked Rosburg off the team.
INTERVIEWER: Why?
GRANT: He kicked Rosburg off the team because Rosburg was bought in a Calcutta at the Peninsula Golf Club and so he had an obligation to the guy who bought him and so he played in the morning, as I recall against USC, because I was caddying, and he didn’t show up for the afternoon match against USC because he had this obligation, and so Eddie kicked him off the team and as a result San Jose State won the NCAA I don’t know whether you want to put that in the history of Stanford golf…
INTERVIEWER: We have to tell it all.

GRANT: Well, you want to verify it. Ask Rosburg. That’s someone you have to interview.
INTERVIEWER: Was Venturi on the San Jose State team?
GRANT: Later, that was later. Venturi is a year older than I am. So he would have been class of ’53 probably at San Jose State.
INTERVIEWER: Actually Dick McElyea confirmed that story. Before he died they did an interview with him and he has the same story about Rosburg being booted off.
GRANT: Oh good.. Booted off! And just think about that as a decision by a coach. Facing the NCAA at your home course. Think of the edge!
INTERVIEWER: So it was here at Stanford.
GRANT: Oh yes, yes. So I was all wrapped up as a kid before coming to Stanford in the traditions of Stanford. Remember that Sandy Tatum won the NCAA individual [editor – in 1942] and he was hired by my dad as an Assistant Dean.
INTERVIEWER: Who was?
GRANT: Sandy Tatum. Yes, and then he in turn knew Warren Berl and George Traphagen, another name, and Dee Replogle. These were fellows on the teams that won in ’41 and ’39, I think it was. So I was raised as a kid in the Stanford tradition.
INTERVIEWER: That’s neat!
GRANT: By virtue of Tatum and my dad, and just being here.
INTERVIEWER: Did Sandy always have that stop at the top of his backswing?
GRANT: Apparently, certainly as long as I’ve known him, but somebody said he might not have had it as a younger golfer, but basically he stopped for a long time.
INTERVIEWER: So, in those days, how far are the long hitters getting it out off the tee?
GRANT: Well, I can remember Warren Daily hitting it where the boys hit it today, maybe slightly shorter, but he was hitting 4 irons into one. So that’s 1953. He was very long, he exploded on the ball. It wasn’t a smooth piece of work, which, it’s my impression that club head speed is generated effortlessly these days and it goes a long way. Warren got away with exploding at the ball, but he was huge, huge. He got it out to the trees on 12. Knocked it on 15.
INTERVIEWER: From the tee?
GRANT: Yes. I wasn’t short. I won the NCAA driving contest. They used to have a driving contest. You got three balls. The one longest ball was one prize. Three in the fairway and length. I won that won. [laughs]
INTERVIEWER: How far did you hit it?
GRANT: I can’t remember. It was up there in the first hole at Colorado Springs.
INTERVIEWER: So what ball did you use?
GRANT: Well, my recollection is that we used Spaulding Dot. Then along came Maxfli and at the NCAA in Houston, I hit a shot that didn’t reach the green and I hit it out of the bunker and then hit a putt and it only went half way. And then I looked at the ball and it was oozing white stuff, so I never played a Maxfli again. [laughing]
INTERVIEWER: You literally creamed it! [more laughing]
INTERVIEWER: And what clubs did you carry? When did the 14 club rule go in? That isn’t so terribly old, is it?
GRANT: You know, I can’t tell you. All I know is that Lawson Little, Stanford graduate, triggered it by playing at Prestwick in the British amateur with something like 32 clubs.
INTERVIEWER: It was something like 1938.
GRANT: I believe it must have happened before the war, but I could be wrong. The big golf meeting occurred in 1952 in England, at which point the “stymie” was eliminated and the rules of golf of the two countries were unified, in other words.
INTERVIEWER: Except the two balls were still in play for a while.
GRANT: That’s right. And so the areas in which they didn’t agree, they called them kind of local rules or local options and they’ve spent the last ensuing 50 years getting rid of all those. So that now, I think the last agreement was we insisted on permitting the play of an embedded ball in the rough if the local golf course chooses to invoke that rule. The rule of golf is you can only get relief from an embedded ball if it’s in a closely mown area. So that’s the one, I believe to this day, residual difference, but it was settled by giving a local option.
INTERVIEWER: Isn’t there a similar difference on whether you get line of sight relief if you’re putting from off the green …
GRANT: That’s the other one.
INTERVIEWER: … and there’s a sprinkler head in your way.
GRANT: Sprinkler head in your way within two club lengths. If this Club were to choose to do so and it could choose to do so on the 3rd green. The new 3rd green has that problem, it’s a local option. And the reason is that in the United States you can get a lot of rough that is close to the green and the idea being it can permit someone to change the shot from being in the rough to putting. Seems too lenient, given American golf. In Britain, as you well know, it’s hardly ever an issue.
INTERVIEWER: You’re almost always putting.
GRANT: You’re putting from 50 yards. They were doing that at the Walker Cup at County Down, they were putting from enormous distances.
INTERVIEWER: So, what clubs were you carrying?
GRANT: I can’t remember. McGregor woods. They were the primo. I carried three woods, yes. No 4 wood.
INTERVIEWER: Did you call them driver, brassie, spoon?
GRANT: Well, I used to call them that, but I was raised by an English mother, but that’s what we called them. Though we used to fudge with the lofts. So I’ve got a hunch my 3 wood was a 3 _ wood. My brassy was 2 _.
INTERVIEWER: Stronger?
GRANT: Slightly weaker – a little more height.

Interview with Grant Spaeth - Part I of IV

2007-11-01T12:27:00.000-07:00

Grant ("Biggie") Spaeth. Stanford men's golf team letter winner 1952, 1953, 1954. Member of the
1953 national championship team. USGA President 1990-92.

Intro: As part of an ongoing project to create a new website for the Stanford Men’s Golf Team, and to preserve the oral history of Stanford golf, interviews with notable Stanford golfers will be made. This is the first of those interviews. On Monday, October 8, 2007, Grant Spaeth was interviewed overlooking the 18th green at Stanford University Golf Course. The interviewers were Lyman Van Slyke, Bob Stevens and Richard Peers. Dr. Van Slyke initiated the interview.

INTERVIEWER: So, thank you for taking the time to join us today.
GRANT: No, no, my pleasure.
INTERVIEWER: Well, I’ve been curious Grant, obviously when you arrived at Stanford you were already a competent golfer, maybe a very a good golfer already. How did golf start for you? When did you start playing? Was your dad an active golfer?
GRANT: My father became a golfer. He was good athlete in college at Dartmouth. He was stationed in Montevideo, Uruguay, and there were none of the American sports, and so no football, baseball or basketball. We lived across the street from a golf course, so I learned there. For a couple of years we were down there. I played golf every day as a kid. So I was then what? 11, 12 years old.
INTERVIEWER: Self taught?
GRANT: No, there was a wonderful pro at the course. As a matter of fact, I was in Mexico teaching rules of golf and came across a fellow from Uruguay and asked him about the name of my pro. His nickname was “Espinaca”, spinach, which is bizarre and I don’t know how he got that name, but in any event. The fellow answered he’s still alive and he’s down there and he’s close to 90 and he’s very, very famous in Uruguay. So he was my teacher.
INTERVIEWER: Did you go to high school in Uruguay?
GRANT: No, I went to high school at Paly High and, as a matter of fact, was a regular caddy for the Stanford golf teams. That’s why I have some feeling for the traditions, it going back earlier than my college years because I lived here on the campus and caddied for the golf team fellows. I was kind of a general workman around here on the golf course.
INTERVIEWER: As I recall, your dad became Dean of the law school in ’46, right after the War.
GRANT: ’46, that’s right.
INTERVIEWER: You were how old in ‘46?
GRANT: I would have been 14.
INTERVIEWER: Was there a golf team at Paly?
GRANT: That’s right, there was, one fellow who later was a golfer here at Stanford was Dick McElyea - Dick and I were on the Paly golf team.
INTERVIEWER: He just passed away.
GRANT: That’s right; he just passed away. He is in the Golf Hall of Fame. He was a wonderful fellow. He and I were on the golf team and his father had a station wagon and so we played here and Crystal Springs, Palo Alto Muni, San Mateo Muni. There are a lot more golf courses around here now than there were then.
INTERVIEWER: It’s interesting that there was high school golf in those days.
GRANT: Absolutely, and it was a league that then extended from Daly City to San Jose, and we played them all in head-to-head matches.
INTERVIEWER: Was there a hierarchy of tournaments?
GRANT: No, there was no hierarchy. That was it.
INTERVIEWER: Just kind of regional play.
GRANT: That’s right.
INTERVIEWER: So you came to Stanford in?
GRANT: Class of ’54, so I came in ’50.
INTERVIEWER: The golf coach then was?
GRANT: Bud Finger. When I was in high school, the Stanford golf coach was Eddie Twiggs, who had been a golf coach for many years here and after the war, I can’t remember when he stepped down and when Bud came forward, but it must have been around 1950.
INTERVIEWER: ’48 to ’76, is what I have. Finger became coach in ’48 and Twiggs was coach from ’32 to ’47.
GRANT: Okay, yes, so Twiggs was basically the first golf coach, with a remarkable record, as you know.

Note: Coach Twiggs is shown with his 1939 national championship team including Bud Finger on his left.

INTERVIEWER: So you were on the golf team all fours years?
GRANT: Yes, I can’t remember whether freshman played on the varsity, I think we played on the Freshman team. It’s gone back and forth over the years. We played always with the varsity, I mean, there was no distinction as far as play, practice and so forth.
INTERVIEWER: That’s probably right, I know we are about the same age, I am couple years older than you are and in the Mid-West inter-collegiate sports there was always a freshman team.
GRANT: Uh-huh. It’s gone back and forth over the years.
INTERVIEWER: So who were your contemporaries/fellow team members?
GRANT: Well, I was thinking about that, the fellows, who, when we were good, the guts of the team were fellows named Fred Brown and Warren Daily. They were terrific. Fred Brown used to tackle Ken Venturi in our home-in-home matches against San Jose State. Warren Daily from Wisconsin was a very, very long hitter. Art Schroeder, who is still around here and works part-time at the golf course, was on that team. Stu Ledbetter and Bob Blackburn - the reason I’m good with the names right now is we had a reunion – 50th reunion - of our NCAA win and so that’s easy. In the earlier years there was Dick McElyea, Keith Beekman, who used to be a member here at Stanford; Dick Taylor from Arizona; Paul Palmquist, and I need to go back to the books to the get the names of some of the others. Phil Getchell was after us.
INTERVIEWER: Stewart Rhodes? Is that a name that rings a bell?
GRANT: It doesn’t.
INTERVIEWER: Phil was the fellow who was a friend of Bob……
GRANT: Yes, yes. Went into the church; into the cloth and spent a good portion of his life in Brazil, maybe as a missionary, maybe you wouldn’t describe him as that; maybe it was more sophisticated duty.
INTERVIEWER: So I think probably you fellows have the specific record of when titles were won and so on.
INTERVIEWER: Well, Grant played on the 1953 national championship team, so it would be great to hear some about that year and your experience of winning.
GRANT: The experiences of winning? Well, we were pretty good, vis-à-vis the rest of the Pac 10. I think we won every single championship and also the individual titles. McElyea. Art Schroeder won. I can’t remember the third year, but it was not very competitive as far as the Stanford golf team was concerned those years, with all due modesty.
INTERVIEWER: You were too good.
GRANT: [laughs] They were weak.

Note: The photo below of the 1953 national championship team includes Grant 2nd from left, top row.

INTERVIEWER: When we talk about a golf coach, I’m sure each one has his own style, but how did Bud Finger coach, how do you coach in golf? It’s not a team sport; it’s not like basketball or football.
GRANT: Well, I think the relationship differs one player to another. When Bud first became coach and I entered Stanford, I went and explained to him that I was taught by Art Bell at California Golf Club and that I really wanted to stick with Art Bell in terms of the golf swing, and Bud said “okay”. So our relationship wasn’t so much about the golf swing, except he was very good with the short game and was terrifically helpful with putting, chipping and all of the strategies associated with that. So we were kind of friends. But I had a sense that Eddie Twiggs, for the great teams that preceded, was very much involved in the golf swing, course management and the mental aspects of the game. So, you’d have to speak with others about what impact Bud Finger may have had on them because it wasn’t very great with me because we established this relationship when I was a freshman, and so it was understood and I abided by everything he did. We used to kid him a bit, because he was an easy mark for naughty undergraduates. We called him “Charles Bud” rather than “Mr. Finger”.
INTERVIEWER: Did he layout what he wanted out of the practice sessions, so much for short game and putting and so much for full swing, or did he work with each player one on one?
GRANT: As I say, I think it differed player to player, because he knew that I was in pretty good hands and I think they talked. Bud Finger talked with Art Bell, what should Grant work on? But it was not a highly disciplined arrangement as I sense is now the case. I remember Bud said he’d kick me off the golf team if I skied, because he was worried I’d get hurt. But there weren’t too many no’s and yeses and there was not much discipline of the sort that I see today.
INTERVIEWER: Did you have to dress in a certain way?
GRANT: Yes, we certainly did, on traveling. We were Stanford people who had to be a cut above everyone else.
INTERVIEWER: So you all wore the same blazers and slacks?
GRANT: Not so much the same. I don’t think we ever had uniform blazers. We all had to wear ties at almost all occasions where we would be seen as a group, unless it was on or near the golf course. That’s my recollection. But I don’t recall ever having been given a red coat. [laughs]
INTERVIEWER: Navy blue with a Stanford “S” on the back of it
GRANT: No, never got one of those. We’d occasionally get a golf shirt. It wasn’t a very fully funded program you understand.
INTERVIEWER: Where there scholarships?
GRANT: I guess there were. It was a different world and I really don’t know. I was the son of a faculty member, so I got to go to Stanford for nothing. I’ve never really inquired what the deal was with others, but it certainly was not loaded with scholarship money. Grants in aid, maybe, but I don’t know whether any of our teams needed it. Chuck Van Linge was after me and he came from a modest family and he may well have had a scholarship or some help of some sort, but I think it was more, it was kind of improvised and I don’t think the NCAA had a huge set of rules, the sort we find today.

EDITOR'S NOTE - To review the Stanford golf team members over the past 75 years go to: http://stanfordmensgolf.com/alumni_list_public.htm

Posted by Bob Stevens

Coming Soon!

2007-09-17T07:28:00.000-07:00

Look for articles and interviews about the current and former teams. We plan to interview each of the players and the head coach, Conrad Ray.

Notable players from the past will either contribute articles or be interviewed.