The 12th

Palmer eventually won eight majors. Venturi never did win the Masters, and his only major victory was the 1964 U.S. Open. Who knows how different things might have been if Palmer had been stuck with 5 at number 12 instead of 3?

Venturi isn't stewing about it. "I like my position in life now," he says, currently in his 23rd year as a CBS golf analyst. "There were a lot of guys who wanted to beat me back then. And now there are even more guys who want my job."

And Palmer isn't exactly destitute, either.

Here's one last story about the 12th. It was 1963, and the late Champagne Tony Lema was having a rocky Sunday. He had missed a short putt on the 10th hole and three-putted the 11th. Now on 12 he hit a good shot, which left him eight feet from the cup, but his putt just missed. Lema couldn't stand it. He let go a string of oaths that would make a Jersey longshoreman blush. Just then he realized that his playing partner, a Nationalist Chinese named Chen Ching-po, was looking at him curiously.

Embarrassed, Lema apologized for using such language "in front of a visitor to our country."

"Is all right," said Chen. "If I knew those words I would use them myself."