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 'Poor Ken' Hits It Rich Again Fighting off the world's best golfers and heat exhaustion, the once-great Ken Venturi halts a three-year slide to oblivion with a dazzling performance that won the U.S. Open Championship in Washington
Posted: Tuesday June 08, 1999 03:49 PM By Alfred Wright Issue date: June 29, 1964
Golf players have turned out to be the movie stars of the decade. The idolaters want their autographs, they get the best tables at "21" and the Pump Room, and Ed Sullivan books them like Beatles. That was the way it was for Ken Venturi in the closing years of the Eisenhower Administration -- golden years when he was going to be the next Ben Hogan when there was no matching his confidence or his glamour or his prospects. Then all of a moment he could not hit the golf ball straight anymore. A moment after that he had disappeared. ... A man who once won $41,230 in a year, he earned only $3,848 in 1963. ... He had become a nobody lost in the shadows. On Saturday at Congressional Country Club he stepped into the sun again. It was a day of 100° temperatures and salt tablets and dizzy spells and doctors in the steamy cauldron that is Washington in June. Heat exhaustion was a constant threat to Venturi, and at times it seemed he would never be able to walk up where his ball lay. But when he got there, he lashed at his shots with almost furious intent, and there was nobody on the record-long (7,053 yards) Congressional course that day who could match his efforts. By 6:45 p.m. the Arnold Palmers et al had shot themselves into nowhere, while a staggering but relentless Ken Venturi posted a 66-70 for the day and a total of 278 to win a fantasy-filled Open. When Venturi's final putt went in, a roar of approval sounded through the natural valley that cradles Congressional's 18th hole, and it came in large measure from a group that only an hour before had been properly known as Arnie's Army -- an army now willing to follow another general. "Until the last holes," Venturi said later, "I just had Arnie's outcasts, but those cats out there were solid supporters. The last few years all I've had were Venturi's vultures." ... Then he turned serious again. "If I had to do everything all over again and write a script or a book about it, I wouldn't change one thing that happened to me in my life. Nine months ago I was about to quit, and I didn't know what was going to happen. I've tasted the bitterness of defeat, and now I'm going to taste the sweetness of success." Bitter is a fair enough word for what Venturi calls "the three long years when I went from the top to the bottom of the barrel." The decline became critical on a February day in Palm Springs in 1962. Ken was playing in the pro-amateur tournament there, and as he leaned over to pick his ball out of the cup he felt something snap in his spine. The pain was very sharp and refused to go away , so he had to withdraw from the tournament. In fact, it was some weeks before he could rejoin the tour. Even then he had to have daily heat treatments and massages to remove the strain and stiffness. His golf swing was restricted and no doubt he should have rested until he was sound again. ... The more he played with his back hurting, the more Venturi had to alter his swing. Pretty soon that swing, one which Byron Nelson had helped to mold into the most classical on the tour, was entirely gone and, at the age of 31, Venturi seemed to be washed up. ... Last summer he seriously considered quitting golf and finding a profession elsewhere. He kept practicing, however, and among those he played with was Father Francis Murray, a priest with a parish in Burlingame near Ken's home. Father Murray concentrated on the part of Venturi's game that needed the most work -- his state of mind. Slowly he built a more relaxed and philosophical attitude in a mind that had been as jumpy as popcorn in a skillet. On Wednesday of last week Venturi received a letter from Father Murray, and it meant a great deal to him. "He told me," Venturi said later, "that you have to keep your composure, that you should never let anything bad get you down. He said you should just keep an even pace and just ask God to let you do the best you can. Believe me, when I get home I'm going to split the trophy right down the middle and put half in my house and half in Father's Murray's parish." On Thursday morning, play in the 64th U.S. Open began, and a hundred letters form Father Murrays would not have convinced anybody to follow Ken Venturi. Because of its length and the fact that Washington's tropical sun had broiled much of the once-vaunted Open rough down to brown harmless hay, the only question was which of golf's hardest hitters -- Palmer, Jack Nicklaus or Tony Lema -- would win. ... Then, on Friday, occurred the sort of improbably happening that makes sport sporting. Tommy Jacobs, one of the most likable and least known among the very good younger pros, shot a 64. ... To shoot such a round at Congressional must be regarded as a superlative, if not unbelievable, golf. ... In addition to the stir it caused in its own right, the 64 gave Jacobs the lead in the tournament. One stroke behind was Palmer, who had a 69. ... The opinion was nearly universal that Palmer would devour Jacobs like an hors d'oeuvre as the two of them played head to head. Speculation began as to whether Arnold would be able to win the British Open three weeks hence and then the PGA on the week after that for the first Grand Slam of pro golf. ... It was at the 5th hole that Palmer's first makeable putt failed to drop. When the same thing happened on the 6th hole, and he took his second straight bogey, a little of the starch seemed to go out of him. Jacobs was holding steady at par, and was three strokes up on Palmer. It was at this moment that the gallery following the two leaders could first the large scoreboard behind the 7th green, where a row of red (for sub-par) figures was growing opposite Venturi's name. These were the numbers 3-3-4-3-3-4-3-3-4 -- a five-under-par 30 on the first nine holes. ... Even so, his long day was far from over. He had nine more holes to play in the morning round and then a full 18 holes after lunch. ... Perhaps because he had been off the tour for a time or perhaps simply because he had taken no salt pills, Ken began to have trouble. The temperature was now well over 90° -- it was measured at 112° by the cup on one green -- and by the 14th hole Venturi began to wilt. ... By the time he reached the 17th green he could not scarcely hold his putter, and he three-putted there from 25 feet. ... A couple of minutes later he missed a four-foot putt for his second consecutive bogey. He winced in disappointment, but he still was in with a remarkable 66. The big scoreboard across the pond told him that Jacobs was ahead of him again -- by two strokes. Palmer was four behind. ... After the 50-minute break, Venturi was back on the first tee ready to play his afternoon round. ... He seemed well revived, and he parred his way easily through the first five holes. By that time the knew he was again tied for the lead, as Jacobs had taken a double-bogey 5 on the short 2nd hole and Palmer continued to lose his personal battle with his own putter. ... As Venturi started up the long 10th hole, having completed the first nine holes in even par, he still stood two strokes under par for the tournament and had his first clear lead, for Jacobs had suffered another bogey behind him, and no one else was within four strokes. ... Going up the 14th fairway, however, he said to Joseph C. Dey Jr., the USGA official who was refereeing the match: "If you won't slap a two-stroke penalty on me, Joe, I'm going too slow down." And he did, cutting his pace in half, from a slow walk to an eerie, slow-motion-march. ... Jacobs was still faltering behind him, and soon Venturi was at 18. All the way down the fairway the gallery was five and six deep, and it cheered the tired golfer step by step. ... His face was wrinkled in concentration he strained to read the scoreboard across the pond and assure himself that he was, at long, long last, a winner. As he neared his ball, a weird distraction erupted close to the green -- a bloody fistfight between two tournament marshals over who could stand where. Venturi, seemingly blessed with tunnel vision, ignored them. He played a tricky 35-yard explosion to within 10 feet of the hole, then watched as Raymond Floyd sank a short putt along much the same line, demonstrating the slight break to the left. Venturi's putt took the same route into the hole, giving him his 278, the second-lowest score in Open history. ...
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