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U.S. Open Historical Artifacts

Sun, 16 Jun 2019 06:07:41 +0000

The USGA Museum Museum is the oldest in sports and showcased some of the most memorable clubs and scorecards from past U.S. Open champions, including Arnold Palmer’s 1960 red visor.

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Masters 2019: Here are the 11 juiciest Masters controversies of all time

Jeff Ritter — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 13:59:28 +0000

The Masters prides itself on being the greatest golf event in the world. And more often than not, it achieves that goal. But you can’t climb to the top without a few bumps along the way. Here’s a look at the biggest Masters controversies from in and around the tournament.

1958

Arnold Palmer and Ken Venturi, paired together on Sunday, enter Amen Corner while chasing their first respective green jackets. Palmer’s tee shot on the par-3 12th flies the green and plugs into the soggy bank between the fringe and the bunker. An official on the scene refuses to give Arnie a free drop. Palmer chops out of the plugged lie and barely advances the ball, eventually making a double-bogey 5. He then returns to the original spot and declares that he will play a provisional and drops near his original spot on the bank. He gets that second ball up and down for par. As Palmer and Venturi play 13, a rules official buzzes over and announces that Palmer’s second ball would count, and his score of 3 would stand. Venturi is rattled, and Palmer goes on to win his first green jacket by one shot. Venturi reportedly stews about the ruling for the rest of his life.

1966

CBS broadcaster Jack Whitaker refers to Augusta’s sprawling, 18th-hole gallery as a “mob,” and he’s summarily bounced from the telecast for five years before returning in 1972.

1968

De Vicenzo (left) handed a shocked Goalby the jacket in '68.

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The Masters appears to be heading for an 18-hole playoff between Roberto De Vicenzo and Bob Goalby, when both men finish their Sunday rounds at 11 under…until the scorecards are submitted. De Vicenzo’s playing partner, Tommy Aaron, records De Vicenzo’s score on 17 as a par instead of a birdie, and in one of the most stunning gaffes in major championship history, De Vicenzo signs the card without catching the error. He is forced to accept the higher score and misses the playoff by one agonizing shot.

1994

Careening down the trail first blazed nearly 30 years earlier by Jack Whitaker, Gary McCord draws the members’ ire when he refers to Augusta’s fiery greens as “bikini waxed.” After years of pushing the limits with his one-liners, this one seals his fate. He hasn’t called another Masters since.

1997

After Tiger Woods storms to his first major title at age 21, former champ Fuzzy Zoeller is asked about Woods’s upcoming champions dinner. The veteran pro quips, “Tell him not to serve fried chicken . . . or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.” Zoeller apologizes, but the remark remains etched in Masters history.

2002

Five years after Woods’s 12-shot victory and one year after he capped his “Tiger Slam” with another convincing win, Augusta initiates extensive renovations that come to be dubbed “Tiger Proofing.” More than half the holes are stretched for the 2002 event, and later trees are added on holes 11 and 15, among other spots. Fairways are narrowed and rough, or a “second cut,” is added. Augusta has continued to make tweaks to the course ever since, including a stretched out par-4 fifth hole, which will debut at this year’s event.

2003

Martha Burk at the mic in 2003.

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It’s arguably the biggest controversy Augusta has ever faced. Women’s rights activist Martha Burk leads a very public battle with the club over its men-only membership policy. When Burk writes to then-chairman Hootie Johnson, he responds, saying that Augusta won’t be pressured to change its policy “at the point of a bayonet.” Burk organizes a rally at the ’03 tournament, which only draws about 40 fellow demonstrators, but the cause resonates. Johnson drops all corporate sponsorship for both the 2003 and 2004 tournaments, and Augusta’s membership policy remains in the headlines for several years until finally, in 2012, ANGC admits its first two female members: former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and South Carolina banker Darla Moore.

2013

"The Drop" at the 2013 Masters.

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Tied for the lead on Friday afternoon, Tiger Woods hits a wedge into the par-5 15th hole. The ball clangs off the flagstick and sucks back into the pond. Woods takes a drop and plays away. But that evening rumors swirl that Woods may have taken an incorrect drop, and TV replay quickly confirms it. Would the Masters penalize Woods and then disqualify him for signing an incorrect card? On Saturday morning, Augusta hits Woods with a two-shot penalty, but doesn’t DQ him. Instead, in a surprising interpretation of the rules, the club accepts responsibility for not informing Woods sooner of his violation. Woods never climbs back into the lead, eventually tying for fourth, and the ruling is dissected for years to come.

2013

Slow play is the scourge of today’s Tour, but the Masters takes bold a stand against it in 2013… and the target is a 14-year-old Chinese amateur. After being warned about his pace early in Round 2, Guan Tianlang is slapped with a one-shot penalty on the 17th hole. Critics wonder if it’s fair to punish a young am, but Tianlang still makes the cut and finishes 58th.

2013-Present

The Masters continues to grow, and members seem to have concluded that the club’s footprint should expand with it. Augusta National has reportedly purchased more than 100 acres of property outside its gates, often paying more than market value for businesses and homes in its path. (Some homeowners refuse to sell.) ANGC also reroutes and widens Berckmans Road, clearing the space to build a massive VIP hospitality pavilion, Berckmans Place.

In 2017 the club purchases a parcel of land behind the 13th tee from neighboring Augusta Country Club. (Terms are not disclosed.) In early 2019, it’s reported that Augusta also purchases the Publix shopping center on Washington Road for $21 million. How will all this new land be used? Only club members know for sure.

2017-Present

Those iconic green jackets suddenly start popping up in auction houses, which displeases the club. Some were “stolen,” some may be fake, and some are legit. The controversy lingers as jackets continue to appear in the wild.

Features

This Baltimore man owns a green jacket, and Augusta National desperately wants it

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Excerpted from 'Arnie': Revisiting the rules controversy that rocked Arnold Palmer's first Masters win

Tom Callahan — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 15:53:00 +0000

In the final round of the 1958 Masters, two young upstarts — Arnold Palmer and Ken Venturi – were paired together and battling to win their first respective green jackets. Palmer, 28, led the 26-year-old Venturi by one shot as they stood on the tee at Augusta National’s iconic, devilish par-3 12th hole. What happened next remains one of the most bizarre and controversial scenes in Masters history, and one that would drive a wedge between Palmer and Venturi. “We both wrote about [the incident] in subsequent books, each of us insisting that we were right,” Palmer wrote in a 2013 Golf Channel column. “I regret that the incident affected our relationship.” Here, from his new book, Arnie, author Tom Callahan recounts the episode that drove Palmer and Venturi apart.

Check out a Q&A our own Alan Shipnuck conducted with Callahan here.

Buy It Now

The 12th hole, a par 3, represented the middle of “Amen Corner” on the far end of the course. The expression was coined at that tournament, maybe at that instant, by Herbert Warren Wind, borrowing from a 45-rpm jazz recording (“Shouting at the Amen Corner”) by Chicago clarinetist Mezz Mezzrow. As Wind reckoned it, the corner began with the approach to the par-4 11th and ended after the drive at the par-5 13th.

Only players, caddies, and officials were permitted inside the ropes surrounding the 12th tee. From their tee shots at 12 until their second shots at 13, the golfers broke off from the crowd for a quiet interlude of relative privacy.

“My tee shot at twelve [155 yards, six-iron] flew the green,” Palmer said, “and embedded itself in the mud between the fringe and back bunker. To me, an obvious drop without penalty. But the official standing there, Arthur Lacey, said, ‘It’s only half-plugged.’ I said, ‘That’s like being half-pregnant.’

“Because of the heavy rain, just for the Sunday round, we were playing wet-weather rules ‘through the green’ [taking in all parts of the course except the tees, greens, sand bunkers, and water hazards]. I knew I was right. ‘I’m going to play two balls,’ I told Lacey. He said, ‘You don’t do that here.’

“‘Huh?'”

Palmer barely moved the indented ball, into a puddle of casual water, from where he received an uncontested free drop. But he required a chip and a couple of putts from there for a double-bogey 5. Returning to the embedded scratch, he dropped another ball over his shoulder. Rolling nearer the hole twice, it was eventually placed, and this time he got up and down for 3. “We’ll let the rules committee sort it all out when we get in,” he told Venturi.

“I agreed with Palmer on the original call,” Venturi said. “That ball was absolutely embedded. But he didn’t declare he was playing a provisional until after he made the double bogey. To me, that was wrong. Dead wrong.”

Arnold said, “I did declare the second ball, to Lacey, before I played the first. Ken didn’t hear me.”

The killer for Venturi came in the 13th fairway as Palmer was in the go-or-layup position, weighing the considerable risk of a 230-yard second shot over water to the par 5. Had he known the score, he might not have gambled. He looked across the fairway at Ken, who was either one behind or one ahead and had already laid up with his own second.

“They’re going to give me a five back there, aren’t they?” Palmer said.

“You’re goddamned right they are,” Venturi told him. So Arnold went for it with a 3-wood, and got it. “He met the ball squarely,” Wind wrote, “and it rose in a low parabola. There was some draw on the shot, and it curved from right to left as it crossed the creek and landed comfortably on the green.” Eighteen feet from the hole. Straight in the cup for eagle.

Sitting nearby in his green combination wheelchair/golf cart, Bobby Jones experienced a flashback. That night, he would say, “Today I was watching Palmer at 13 and once more Gene Sarazen was hitting from that mound at 15 [in 1935]. As Gene followed through, I remember thinking to myself, ‘It’s the perfect golf swing.’ Of course, I had no way of knowing it was going in the cup for a double eagle. When Palmer hit his, I turned to Cliff [Augusta National chairman Cliff Roberts] and said, ‘He really got that one.’ It gave me the exact same feeling of exhilaration I felt all those years before. And this time I was surprised it didn’t go in the cup.”

Shortly, Jones and Roberts came riding up like the cavalry. They heard Palmer out, and after conferring with several other green jackets behind the 15th green, ruled that Arnold had made a 3 at 12. In exasperation, Venturi began three-putting his head off. And when the head comes off, the turnip goes on. Playing together, both Doug Ford and Fred Hawkins had reasonable putts at 18 to tie, but each finished a stroke behind Palmer. As the defending champion, Ford helped Arnie into the green jacket, making him at 28 the youngest Masters winner since 25-year-old Byron Nelson in 1937. Palmer had his first major title.

“The rules of golf are very touchy and troublous things to administer,” Wind wrote (troublous being a typical Herb word; he liked fillip, too, as in “an arm of Rae’s Creek, four or five feet wide, adds a nice fillip of menace”), “and my own feeling on the subject is that if a man is notified he has been appointed to serve on the rules committee for a certain tournament he should instantly remember that he must attend an important business meeting in Khartoum and tender his exquisite regrets to the tournament committee.”

“Two years later,” Venturi said, “Palmer finished three-three-three to beat me by a shot, and I was forced to sit there at the green jacket ceremony as the runner-up. He turned to me and whispered, ‘I’m sorry it had to be you, Ken.’ I looked away and said, ‘Two years too late.'”

Player said, “Venturi started to tell me once how Arnold had cheated him at the 12th hole, but I stopped him right there. They always yell ‘cheater’ at the end. ‘That’s crap with a capital C,’ I told him. More than once, I’ve said to Palmer, ‘The reason I’m proud to have you as my friend is because you always do the right thing.’ Always doing the right thing was what made him Palmer.”

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Spinning: Ken Venturi's son has $17,000 golf cart stolen from driveway

Tue, 07 Mar 2017 16:15:00 +0000

Ken Venturi’s son had his $17,000 golf cart stolen from his driveway, but thankfully, was reunited with the cart at an impound lot two hours away.

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