Golf Stories: Mingling with the Pros

Tom: I played in two regular pros with the pros. I played right behind Arnold Palmer, and Billy Casper, Sam Snead.

Like a puff of smoke in a wind storm. [laughter] I made it there twice and never made the cut — I came within one stroke.

I played in a Pro Am here in Atlanta with Billy Casper, and on the third hole, I was kind of uptight. I had a putt about as wide as this table. I said “Billy what’s that going to do?” He said “I think so and so…” Well, I got down to hit my stroke, and I pushed it a little bit, which went to the right of the cup, just rimmed out on the right. Instead of saying “you missed it,” he said “I’m sorry, I misread that.”

Very nice. Every one of them.

And the best example I know is Bill Hoffman, president of the Atlanta Coca-Cola company. They had an outing and had him as a guest. So the next year there was something where Palmer was in that group, and Bill’s wife said “I’d like to meet Palmer if I could,” and he said “well, he won’t remember me, but I’ll go see what I can do.” So he went over to Palmer and said “I’m Bill H—” he said “oh sure Bill, how are you?” He said “my wife wants to meet you, if you have the time.” He said “well sure, where are you seated?” He said “table three,” and he said “well, go sit down, I’ll be over there in a little bit.” So he went and sat down and thought maybe Palmer forgot all about him, but then all of a sudden Palmer is rambling around, walks by and says “Hey Bill! How in the world are you?” [laughter]

And that’s the way I always knew him — he’d be hanging around just standing around, looking around, and walk up to him like you were the only fellow in the world.

And in his house in Pennsylvania, I was coming through one time with Curtus Purson and he said “let’s stop and see what’s going on at his house.” I said “alright,” and we got in his house and he had a barrel about this big around [large] just full of putters. I said “what in the world does he have that for.” Well, later on when I ran into him I said “I stopped by your house, and you’ve got a barrel full of putters,” I said “what in the world do you have all those putters for?” He said “you know,” he kind of laughed, he said “people send me putters all the time and say ‘what do you think about this one?’” He said “I just put them in the barrel.” [laughter]

And that Pennzoil tractor — you know, he was the guy that used to advertise that Pennzoil tractor. I got on that thing just to say I’d been on it. But shortly after that, I got an autographed picture from him, and I still got that in my house. So he’s just a principled fellow.