Thought for the Day
Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable
Goodbye and Thank You
Since Christmas Eve we have lost two golfers of wildly contrasting careers but who nevertheless shared one outstanding characteristic – they were both remarkable people. In a game where, thankfully, decency and good manners are the norm (we’ll ignore Patrick Reed for the moment), this pair stood head and shoulders above their contemporaries for their innate charm, modesty and courtesy.
First to leave us was someone you may not have been aware of and yet Kathy Whitworth was the most successful golfer, man or woman, to have lived. She won 88 times on the LPGA tour and the nearest men’s equivalent is 82 victories, claimed by both Sam Snead and Tiger Woods. That alone would guarantee her golfing immortality but, like Bobby Jones, Byron Nelson, Tom Watson, Lorena Ochoa and many others before her, she insisted that, winning or losing, there is only one way to play golf – with respect for one’s opponents and the rules of the game.
The LPGA Tour was started by a bunch of indomitable women who drove to venues, did virtually all the organising for themselves and at the end of day’s play socialised and partied together. Kathy Whitworth is the bridge between those pioneers and the modern women’s tour. She first picked up a golf club at age 15 and played terribly but, like so many before and since, she was hooked. Unlike so many, she applied her natural athleticism and keen intellect to finding out what she needed to do to improve, and then put in the hard hours necessary to achieve that improvement.
Her first win came only two years after taking up the game when at the age of 17 she won the New Mexico Women’s Amateur. She successfully defended the title a year later, spent a year on a golf scholarship at Odessa Junior College and turned pro aged 19. It is fair to say she was not an immediate success. But she applied herself – in everything. For example, in eighth grade (13-14 years) she weighed 215 pounds but recognising the need to shed a few of those pounds in order to excel at golf (but don’t tell that to Laura Davies), by the time she turned pro she weighed 170 and when she won her first LPGA event in 1962 she was 145 pounds. She would later say of herself: ‘I’d probably be the fat lady in a circus right now if it hadn’t been for golf. It kept me on the course and out of the refrigerator.’ That maiden win came in the Kelly Girls Open, her 79th tournament as a pro but once she had lit the blue touch paper of success, she took off like a firecracker on one of the most sustained runs of consistency of any golfer, man or woman.
Between that first triumph in 1962 and 1978 she won at least once in 17 consecutive seasons. During those glory days she twice managed eight wins in a season (1963 and ’66) and in 1968 she won 10 times. She led the money list eight times and was Player of the Year seven times. Sometimes numbers are enough. One surprising statistic, however, considering her dominance over so many years is that she only won six majors – three LPGA Championships, two Titleholders and one Women’s Western Open.
In contrast to Kathy, the other golfer we lost, Barry Lane, had a successful but more modest playing career, although between 1992-’95 he finished no lower than 11th on the European Tour money list. He also won five times, and added a further eight victories when he joined the Legends tour, where he was held in such high regard that the Rookie of the Year award has now be renamed in his honour.
I was never fortunate enough to meet Kathy Whitworth so my memories of Barry are more personal. When I worked on a magazine called Today’s Golfer, he was one of the tour professionals contracted to contribute instruction articles and working with him was always a delight. One of the smoothest, elegant swingers in the game, he had endless patience explaining the nuances of technique to a lumbering, disjointed writer. But I remember him most of all for an afternoon at The Open Championship.
In the days before the R&A priced all but the biggest conglomerates out of the merchandising tent, magazines like mine could afford to have a stand and we set up a putting mat, challenging all-comers to have a go. We asked Barry if he could drop by and when he did, I was expecting a 15-20 minute visit, a bit of glad-handing with readers and thanks very much. He stayed all afternoon, gave numerous putting lessons, chatted happily with everyone who wanted a word, posed for pictures and gave out autographs to anyone who asked.
That he has left us at the tragically young age of 62 is truly awful and, despite a limited acquaintanceship, I feel a deep sense of loss. Some people simply touch your lives in often quite profound ways and Barry was someone who, despite being in the public eye and possessing a level of skill envied by us all, never thought of himself as more important than anyone else and, in my experience, treated Kipling’s twin imposters of triumph and disaster exactly the same. He was, quite simply, a lovely bloke.
Quotes of the Week
It was like she [Whitworth] was playing in another tournament, and I was the leader of everybody else. The only way anybody was going to catch her was if she completely fell apart, and she wasn’t going to do that.
Patty Sheehan