On The Winter Tour With Harry Sprague

Jan 7nt
Dear Mr. Parmenter
I am writing to you from the writing room in the Del Monte Lodge which you can see from the printing on top is in Pebble Beach where we pros are playing the Crosby turnament this week. It is very noisy in here because an awful racket is going on in the bar and if I make any errors in spelling it will be because of the racket and how it effects a persons cordination. Before I left Mass I promised you I would write you a regalar report which is the least I can do since you are my backer and are backing me on the winter tour. So Im going to get this letter off and will treat the racket just like a galery which I did fine in the LA Open or else would I have tied for 14nt place. Thanks for sending your tellergram (spelling?). It was sure good hearing from you Mr Parmenter.

That was a good daybue finishing tied for 14nt. I could have won the whole shoot and match if I had my touch on the greens. I was paired with Dutch Harrison one round and with Walter Burkemo another round and I am not being conceeded when I tell you I outplayed them every hole from tee to green but they got the putts and I couldent buy one for love of money which is what I hear happens on the tour. Meaning that the real golfers cant putt these aradic greens. I blew a couple of easy birdie putts on 14nt and 15nt that was the differents between tieing for 14nt and a tie for 7nt but as you say a person has got to be a pholossifer (spelling?) if hes going to be a golfer and I did hole 2 40 footers so I feel like a pholossifer about those 2 putts.

For a sample I got one of those alpacker sweaters which you push up the sleeves on and makes you look extra rugged and proey.

Some pros had to cancell out of the Crosby so I was invited to play here on the strenght of my showing at LA which I am grateful (spelling?) for and told them so seeing it is my first year on the tour. The pros are very regular guys both the old fellows like Harrison and Littler and the young fellows you never heard of because I never did. However I am strictly unimpressd by their golf. Harrisonsswing is no better than Mrs Proutys but he is almost as old as she is so maybe he was better when he was young. That figures. As I wrote you above the pros are very freindly. Al Besselink for ex-sample let me use one of his sports jackets on a big date I had in LA and it was sure nice of him even though the jacket was kind of small thru the shoulders. I bougth some new clothes here in a habadashry in Pebble so I exspect to do better with the females from now on.

Wait till your boy starts putting
Yours truly
Harry

Jan. 21, 1958
Mr. Walt Parmenter
Parmenter Enterprises Co.
148 So. Main Street
Micawba, Mass.
Dear Mr. Parmenter,
Like you asked me to in your telegram last week, I have got in touch with a public stenographer, so all the words in this letter will be clear which apparently they was not in my handwriting due to the racket coming from the bar at the Del Monte Lodge. Also they will be spelled right. I am sitting in a chair in an office here on the main drag in Palm Springs on the second floor of a building above a store where they sell nothing but moccs and loafers but are still in business apparently. They are playing the Thunderbird Invitational here this week, and I am giving this dictation like I was Adolph Menjou to a lady name of Lorna Thomas who is going to stick in the periods and the other dots and dashes when she types the letter up. She is a nice-looking lady with white hair like Mrs. Prouty which is the best description I can give you under the present playing conditions, if you catch.

Well, Mr. Parmenter, you have probably been wondering how come your boy wasn't in the money since-your last letter. So have I because I have been hitting it a ton. That is one of those slang expressions all the pros use. When you ask a pro how he played, he answers one or two things. "I was hitting it a ton," he says or he says, "I was playing like a Gang-busters" which also means good. They got a lingo of their own out here, like bankers, and that's all they talk. I'll give you a sample of what I mean. No pro calls a golf course a golf course. That's strictly bush. You call a course a track. Another sample. When you get into a sand trap and someone asks you where your ball is, you don't say, "I'm in the trap." You say, "I'm on the beach." Another good sample for you is if you see a pro or anyone else whose name you don't remember just then, you call him "Old Buddy." You can pick up this lingo pretty quick like I did in a couple of weeks if you have got any brains at all. I don't want to lose my own personality which has always been my trademark at the driving range, like you keep telling me, and I think this is the reason for my popularity with my colleague pros. They think I'm a pretty good lingoist, too, is what I mean.

Like at Thunderbird, where I am not entered this week since only something like the top 40 money-winners get invited and I wasn't on the circuit last year, I played a practice round with Burke, Souchak, and Demaret who are all from Texas except Souchak. I had a nice little 66 and took the boys for a few bucks, so when we finished I said, "Okay, you guys, let's adjourn to the 10th Hole and I'll buy you all a Moxie." They got a great kick out of this because though we call the bar the 10th Hole at the Micawba Country Club—who knows better than you, Mr. Parmenter?—apparently if you have an 18-hole course you change around and call the bar the 19th Hole of which I get the point.

Jimmy Demaret can be a serious fellow sometimes, though. He was out practicing the other afternoon and because I like to help the fellows out like I did Dick Mayer with his putting stroke last week, I told Jimmy, "Jimmy, you are cutting across the ball. That is why you are getting that fade at the end on those irons. Would you like a couple of tips, old buddy?"

"Harry," he says, "I've always played the ball from left to right. I better stick with it and just do the best I can."