Often Bloody, But Uncowed

Dave Hill was only 11 at the time, so short and frail you almost could have stuffed him into one of those golf bags he carried at the Country Club of Jackson in Jackson, Mich. This particular day he was caddying for one Andy Andrews, who though only 16 already was the club champion. Now Andrews' ball lay in a trap, but the ball sat free atop the sand and the trap had no lip to be surmounted. "The putter," said Andrews.

"Sand wedge," suggested caddie Dave.

"No, give me the putter."

"Use the wedge."

"Now listen, David," said Andrews, annoyed. "Please give me my putter, and don't argue with me."

"Only one club for that shot, the wedge. You putt that thing," little Dave declared, "and you're gonna carry your own bag." Andrews took the putter, whereupon Hill dropped the bag and walked off the course.

Today, Dave Hill probably is the pro tour's most opinionated player, a sort of underweight Alex Karras of the golf links but, as Andy Andrews has known all along, Hill started training for the part at an early age. Professional status merely gave him a gymnasium, so to speak, in which he could work harder at the strength of his convictions. On the tour he once terminated a motel-room game of gin when, after playing 30 straight losing hands, he picked up his fully packed suitcase and hurled it through a window, not taking the trouble to open the window. When golf courses have depressed him, he has been known to quit tournaments in the middle of a round, undeterred by the fact that he would be fined. "Go ahead," he says as he heads for the clubhouse. "Lay the hundred on me." And as the PGA whets its ax, Hill relaxes over a drink. "There is one thing I can say about old Dave," says old Dave. "I am what I am and I'm not what I'm not, and I don't ask no favors."

Well, if no favors, how about a little mercy says the USGA, with next month's U.S. Open golf championship in mind. Relax. Dave Hill says he thinks he will like the course. After all, the Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pa. was good enough for Bobby Jones when he completed his Grand Slam there in 1930. The stately old dame was good enough for the Open in 1934, when Olin Dutra beat Gene Sarazen by a stroke, and she was good enough again in 1950, when Hill's idol, Ben Hogan won it. So Hill, who during last year's Open shook pro golf to its tradition-rooted spikes by recommending that the Hazeltine National Golf Club be converted to cornfields and dairy pastures, suspects Merion is steeped in class and that it will not be necessary for him to so much as suggest that even a small rutabaga patch be planted on the back nine.

But wait a minute. All those Merion Main Liners in their royal-blue blazers will please refrain from standing at ease. Hill as yet has never played their sacred plot (where, instead of flags, Scottish wicker baskets crown the pins). His jury remains out. And remembering how, at Hazeltine, this onetime Jackson mailman squinted through his granny glasses and speculated that those Minnesota doglegs best qualified for crop subsidies, the possibility remains, his mouth being what it is, that for the Open the postman may indeed ring twice—that he may recommend Merion's tight little fairways for conversion to bridle paths and that he will grind to a halt somewhere along the front nine and tell the world the truth about those Scottish wicker baskets, that they were made in Hong Kong. As one of Hill's middle-aged neighbors told him following last year's tumult: "Dave, by the time you're my age, your mouth will be 300."

Amid the Hazeltine sound and fury, the fury having been supplied by PGA Commissioner Joe Dey in the form of a $150 fine, Hill finished second. Standing 5'10�" and dwindling toward his normal season-ending weight of 130. he is not much thicker than an out-of-bounds stake and is, to those who prefer the pro tour tranquil, about as welcome. Some say that only an obsession with perfection—and the toll it takes on his physique and composure—keeps him from being right up there with Palmer and Nicklaus. "Tremendous ability," says PGA Tournament Director Jack Tuthill, one of Hill's periodic opponents in his battles with the Establishment, "but a poor shot dwells on his mind. It might interfere with his overall management of a golf round. He's wasted a lot of money by letting things get to him." Indeed, a bad case of player's nerves once drove Hill partially blind for a period of 10 days.