In the days before Tour players had their own caddies, they took potluck with loopers recruited from nearby clubs. Thus I got a bag in a couple of Cleveland Opens played back in the Vietnam War era.

I saw things that popped in my teenage head like fireworks: galleries; gallery [...]]]> Nosing Out Pebble Beach

In the days before Tour players had their own caddies, they took potluck with loopers recruited from nearby clubs. Thus I got a bag in a couple of Cleveland Opens played back in the Vietnam War era.

I saw things that popped in my teenage head like fireworks: galleries; gallery ropes; the gallery rope against the chest of Doug Sanders’ girlfriend; TV cameras; Arnie. While leaning on a green metal pipe fence against which scores of golf bags also leaned, and because no one told me I couldn’t, I hefted the clubs of the gods. It awed teenaged me to make a few strokes with Billy Casper’s putter. I expected Julius Boros’s irons to be as heavy as anvils, so languid was his swing and so forceful were his shots, but Julie’s clubs weighed about the same as mine. Arnold Palmer’s driver—Thor’s hammer– was a heavily modified Hogan.

Then, there was that golf course.

Aurora Country Club allowed a few good scores that week, and its 6600 yards weren’t too many even back then, but for the most part it shrugged off the best efforts of the best golfers in the world. Its defense, I guess, was the same thing that made it so much fun to play and to caddie on: Aurora was as varied as the images in a kaleidoscope. You had to slug it on one hole, and caress it on the next. You had to fade it off the tee on two, then draw the ball on three…and on and on like that all day. Credit goes to its very capable designer, a chap named Bert Way, whose resume included Firestone South—and to the land. Aurora opened in 1925. The old architects got all the good sites.

Arnie won that year at Aurora. A college golf teammate, Herbert Page, got a golf shop job there one summer a few years later, so I got to play ACC a few times…The decades passed. The economy slumped in Northeast Ohio, and the golf industry cratered everywhere in the world except China. Would Aurora join the ranks of decommissioned American courses? No, thank goodness. In 2009, a new owner rebranded the lush 220 acres: welcome to Aurora Golf Club, open to the public.

I reacquainted with Aurora last year after a very long absence. On a warm fall day, the leaves on the deciduous trees popped against the lush green background. Perhaps the beauty overwhelmed me; I played like a monkey on crack. But there was real pleasure in seeing the place again, and in hanging with its estimable head pro, Jim Beers, and in having my first-ever meal in the clubhouse. Arnie’s 19th Hole Bar and Grill has an impressive menu for a daily fee course. It also has wine by the glass or the bottle and a giant window with a view of the 18th hole. I drank a bit of the one and looked through the other and imagined 17-year-old me with a giant staff bag on my back.

You may feel sheepish, like you’re stealing, when you pay Aurora’s $49 green fee. It’s not a feeling you get at Pebble Beach, the second best daily fee I’ve played lately. Pebble Beach charges $495. I’d rather play Aurora.

Some joker brought a giant thermometer to our game at Old American Golf Club last week. As the needle nosed toward 115, James Monroe began to pant after the exertion of pressing the accelerator pedal on his cart, and Dan Strimple cut back on the twitches and tics in [...]]]> What’s Old is New Again!

Some joker brought a giant thermometer to our game at Old American Golf Club last week. As the needle nosed toward 115, James Monroe began to pant after the exertion of pressing the accelerator pedal on his cart, and Dan Strimple cut back on the twitches and tics in his swing, simply because it was too hot to do anything but just hit the damn ball. Yet the heat had a salubrious effect on Old American pro Matthew Vahalla, who bombed it even farther than usual off the tee, which is saying something.

Monroe, a bigwig in the world of parking your car (Superlative Valet) and Strimple, a notable instructor and the 2000 North Texas PGA Pro of the Year, are normally mostly sane, yet here they were outdoors in the nuclear winter of this Texas summer. Why? It wasn’t just the chance for fellowship with like-minded individuals; that could have done at their familiar haunts, Whataburger and the bar at the Radisson on 183. No, James and Dan risked heat stroke and chafing for the opportunity to play Old American. Everyone’s been talking about it since it opened last year; it was one of only two new courses in Texas in 2010.

It’s quite a success story. Often there’s a disconnect in what the marketers tell you and the product itself, but concept and execution sing the same song at Old American. The idea for this mostly flat acreage by the shore of Lake Lewisville was to create an old-timey course that whispered Gilded Age designers Ross, Raynor, McDonald, and Mackenzie. To get in the mood, designer Tripp Davis and his expert assistant Justin Leonard played several of the best old courses in America, including Long Island stalwarts Shinnecock Hills and National Golf Links. Their old school inspiration is plain in the ragged outlines of bunkers, bunkers that actually punish you for wandering in there, the dirt cart paths, green shapes that shout 1920, and the almost total absence of forced carries. Golf used to be much more a ground game, and it still is at Old American.

The overall effect is subtle, and may not occur to you until you drive away: OAGC looks sculpted rather than bulldozed. Even as we holed out on 18 and removed our hats and shook each other’s hands and murmured something about what a pleasure it had been to watch your magnificent long irons, we knew we had not played the real Old American. The heat had been a trial, sure, but the real deal at Old American is a day with wind. That’s the reason for their short (five foot) flagsticks. We’d thought they were another charming reminder of the classic era, but General Manager Jeff Kindred explained that the breeze off the lake was blowing regulation-sized flagpoles right out of their holes. So the club went with this shorter version. They’re made of wood. Classy.

Old American is located in the Colony, just a half hour drive north of Dallas, but it feels like a half a world away.

******

The message on the portable marquee outside a Hill Country church could have been speaking for our entire drought-stricken state. Not that I picture God as a voice in the drive-through at a cosmic fast food restaurant. “This is God, may I take your order? Rain…a meaningful relationship with a [...]]]> GOD PLS SEND RAIN

The message on the portable marquee outside a Hill Country church could have been speaking for our entire drought-stricken state. Not that I picture God as a voice in the drive-through at a cosmic fast food restaurant. “This is God, may I take your order? Rain…a meaningful relationship with a human woman…crisper contact with the irons. Anything else? Fries?” It will rain if it rains, in other words, and until it does, we’ve got to help ourselves. I’ve got an idea…

The scenic route from Dallas to the primo Westin La Cantera resort in San Antonio took me through Blanco, where the cost of a gallon of gas at the Shell station was $3.47 and the woman working there called me Sweetie, twice. I looked down as I crossed a bridge over the normally robust Guadalupe River and saw a minor trickle, not a lot more than the shallow stream on the driveway after you’ve washed your car. The parched land outside my Prius looked dispirited and sullen, like a teenager.

La Cantera—“the quarry”—is an elevated oasis atop a giant limestone outcropping. Its views are commanding, its food and rooms outstanding, and if it is your fate to take the kids to Sea World or Six Flags, it is a far more sane choice than the buzz-kill of a chain hotel. You could walk to either attraction, not that you would in this heat…Thirty-six holes of golf course is the other attraction at La Cantera. The PGA Tour played the Texas Open there between [blank and blank] at the Resort Course. Tumbling terrain, rocks, and imaginative paths from tees to greens make it enjoyable, and wild driving from the tee can make it very difficult. Ditto the Palmer Course, a two-minute cart ride away, only there the views and off-fairway penalties are even more vivid.
Water use restrictions had both courses playing fairly fast, but what if we took the conservation thing a couple of notches further. What would that be like? I can tell you exactly what we’d get if we stopped drenching our fairways and roughs—we’d have a better game.

Curmudgeon alert: I played a lot of golf as a kid on un-watered or haphazardly watered courses, and it was a ball. Tee shots rolled as if gravity had taken a coffee break. The game had a pinball aspect and was much more feel-based and intellectual than the boring modern version. Low, lower, lowest scores became a tantalizing possibility. Yardages weren’t important, water bills weren’t an issue, the fairway mowers could rest, and golf–an outdoor game, after all–felt much more natural as it responded to the seasons.

But golf equals green to the dilettante. The first course most of us see every year is Augusta National, and then we spend a fortune trying to get emerald fairways like theirs. We shouldn’t bother. Will you, dear reader, have a go on fast brown and tan surfaces? If this drought gets much worse, you might have to.

#######

Marr was part of a continuum of Texans who led our side in the biennial [...]]]> While researching a book a on the ’91 Ryder Cup, I paused today to consider the greatest RC team of all time—the 1981 US squad. And I paused a while longer to recall the captain of that team, Dave Marr.

Marr was part of a continuum of Texans who led our side in the biennial match. They alternated in personality types: sandwiched between certifiable hardasses named Ben Hogan, Lloyd Mangrum, and Jack Burke, Jr. (Dave’s cousin) were two sweethearts, Byron Nelson and Mr. Marr. He performed the ceremonial aspects of his job without flaw in ‘81, and he kept his 10,000 horse power team awake and aware. “Those guys want to beat you,” Marr told them. It was enough. Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson, Johnny Miller, Larry Nelson, and the rest of Marr’s All-Stars delivered a righteous whipping to Team Europe. It was the last year of American dominance in the Ryder Cup.

David Francis Marr was the most graceful man I ever met. The 1965 PGA champ’s swing was so smooth it hardly disturbed the air, and his easy-on-the-ears conversational and observational abilities led to a 21-year career calling golf for ABC, and then a new gig with the BBC, literally within hours after he lost his job in a regime change. The Brits were delighted when the Houston in his voice came out in words like “time,” which he pronounced like Watson’s first name. Once the ABC microphone caught a pro from Tulsa or Muskogee telling his caddy the shot he wanted to hit, “a big ol’ sow over that bunker.” Marr was ready. “For those of you who don’t speak Oklahoman,” he said, “Smith is planning to play a slice.” And you should have seen the performance art of him lighting a cigarette, and exhaling a cloud while extinguishing the match by shaking it twice.

Touring pros still apprenticed as club pros back then. Marr started at the top, at Winged Foot in New York in the summer and Seminole in Florida in the winter. Thus Dave knew his way around the cafes and cabarets in Manhattan; it was Dan Jenkins, I think, who gave him his nickname, “the pro from 52nd Street.”

On my first day with a contract to write my first book, I tried to appear casual when I approached Marr in the press room at the Nelson. “Um, the book’s called Texas Golf Legends, and we, that is I, would like you to be in it,” I stammered. “Sure!” Dave said, and since he was a journalist himself—broadcast division—he understood what kind of thing I needed. A friend of his came by during our half-hour talk. “You ever think about moving to a town that has a pro football team?” Marr asked as they shook hands, and the two old pals laughed. The Cowboys were horrible back then.

A few years and a couple of chance meetings later, Dave told me he’d be glad to help with a new project. After a few pleasant and for me very useful phone conversations, I heard from someone that Marr was being treated for stomach cancer. “They try to stop just short of killing you,” he said of chemotherapy. And he said he enjoyed our brief talks, so we spoke a couple of more times.
He died in October of ’97, a couple of months after Hogan passed away. I dedicated that book, The Masters, to Marr. It was a small gesture, but as Dave taught me, life is made of small gestures.

#########

I kicked a few field goals on the Super Bowl turf before the before the teams came out of the locker room. I ran the bases at Fenway Park before Game Seven of the World Series…

Finding the right metaphor for [...]]]> I tried on the prima ballerina’s tutu before her final scene in Swan Lake.

I kicked a few field goals on the Super Bowl turf before the before the teams came out of the locker room. I ran the bases at Fenway Park before Game Seven of the World Series…

Finding the right metaphor for what I really did a half hour before the final round of the 1999 British Open is a little tricky, but the inspiration for my almost criminal trespass upon the eighteenth hole at Carnoustie is easy to explain. I grew up reading a wonderful writer named George Plimpton, who at some point must have asked himself: How to make the reader feel the sting of a hook to the ribs? What would best convey the chaos swirling around the quarterback as he drops back to pass? Plimpton decided to research very directly. The tall, thin, vaguely athletic Harvard grad sparred with Ray Robinson and Archie Moore; took a few snaps at QB for the Lions in an intra-squad game; and played baseball, bridge, tennis, golf, and hockey with professionals. The resultant books, such as Bogey Man and Paper Lion, are still worth reading.

I Plimptoned my British Open book, Royal and Ancient, as much as I could, partly by residing during the tournament with John Philp, Carnoustie’s embattled superintendent. Then I took the participatory journalism thing a step further. Philp invited me to observe as he and two stiff-as-a-board gents from the R and A cut the cups for the final round. He suggested I bring a putter; that would be a treat, I thought, to putt for fun where the best golfers in the world would soon be putting for glory and money. As I noticed after an evening of drinking Scottish beer, I didn’t have a putter, so I brought the only club I had, an 8.2 degree Callaway driver given to me by Clark Dennis, a pro who had failed to qualify for the tournament. But the Royal and Ancient men, in ties and crisp shirts even at 6 am, plainly did not want me to putt with a driver or anything else.

By the final hole of the final day of the painstaking ritual of choosing targets, I could see that Paul O’Connor, Philp’s assistant, felt, as I wrote, “a joyous madness. He commandeers the forgotten club, the briefcase with the balls inside, and the writer chap. O’Connor skids to a stop at the eighteenth tee, puts a ball on a peg, and cuts the air with a few ferocious practice swings. But the ball seems not to understand the violence the club intends…

“I take the driver from the crazy Irishman because a dare is a dare and the law is 300 yards away. I look down at the teed ball and notice that the hangover is still a category five. Then I look up toward the putative target and discover with alarm that there is no fairway…My two tee shots duplicate Paul’s—a pathetic grounder into the burn and a girly-man flare toward the right rough and the ditch.”

This adventure informed my writing about what happened later that day, when with a three-shot lead with one hole to play, Jean Van de Velde managed not to win. I’d bent the rules to breaking with my escapade but I think I got the best version of an amazing story. Yeah, I’d do it again.

*****

On a cliff in a thatched roof bungalow 700 feet above a turquoise river in primeval Mexico, Gilbert Freeman serenaded the night with Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd, and some Sinatra-sounding guy with clarinets and a string section. The music bounced off the soft roar of the Rio Gallinas emptying into [...]]]>

On a cliff in a thatched roof bungalow 700 feet above a turquoise river in primeval Mexico, Gilbert Freeman serenaded the night with Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Pink Floyd, and some Sinatra-sounding guy with clarinets and a string section. The music bounced off the soft roar of the Rio Gallinas emptying into the Rio Santa Maria, the awe-inspiring Cascada de Tamul. Dim moonlight turned the falls into unmoving white columns.

You shook me all night long/we’re captives on a carousel of time/so you think you can tell heaven from hell
Freeman used battery power for his odd lyrical juxtapositions. No electricity in our mountain hut. And we had to make do with only one chef, just two nubile Mayan princesses to light our candles and serve our food and rum and wine, and a mere two guides to keep the three of us un-drowned and heading downstream as we tubed through the river rapids. We were roughing it.

Attentive readers will recall that Freeman, Dan Strimple, and I had felt nervous at our first roadblock in Mexico. Drug runners from the Zeta gang had shot and killed a DEA agent in the area only two days before. Was this an extralegal traffic stop? No: Vicente Mojica—our driver and primary river guide—murmured something soothing to the heavily armed man in black sunglasses. “Vas.” “Gracias.” And off we went.

We were two golf pros and a golf writer, ostensibly on a golf trip but about to experience something deeper than another set of fairways and greens. We’d hooked up with a company called Huasteca Secreta, whose eight properties are dotted around this wild region in northeast Mexico. The Huastecs were an indigenous people with their own food, music , culture. That they were naked most of the time speaks volumes about the climate and their attitude. The Aztecs conquered them in 1450, which didn’t seem bother the Huastecs much, but the Spanish conquered the conquerors 50 or so years later, and blushed. They decreed Roman Catholicism, and clothes.

Juan Ignacio Torres Landa thought like an Aztec general when he formed Husateca Secreta: occupy the high ground, and control the rivers. Thus we middle-aged golfers, who rarely do anything more strenuous than brunch when on vacation, found ourselves driving on hilariously bumpy roads through mazes of sugar cane fields, being stared at by machete-wielding cane cutters and their wives and ninos, to reach mysteriously blue rivers whose sheers sides blocked out half the sky. Tubing was exhausting, ultimately, because you have to hold your body like a luger, with head and butt up, to avoid unpleasant collisions with rocks. And you have to swim hard against strong currents when you fall off your big rubber doughnut.

The reward at the end was a pleasantly blank mind. Although Strimple jonesed like a crack addict for internet and cell phone signals, and Freeman had a nasty bruise on his ass (he told but didn’t show), they were distracted from these mundane worries. We floated music out from our cliff top residence into the vastness. The night breeze gently ruffled the thatch on the roof. The moon rose pink and orange over the mountains. We imagined the jaguars and javelinas in the jungle below, and naked natives, and dinosaurs.

Beef tongue taco—part uno.

Recently we found ourselves in the center of Mexico on Highway 57 just north of San Luis Potosi—two days after two American DEA agents were shot (one killed) on Highway 57 just south of San Luis Potosi. They were in a big black Chevy SUV with tinted windows. [...]]]>

Beef tongue taco—part uno.

Recently we found ourselves in the center of Mexico on Highway 57 just north of San Luis Potosi—two days after two American DEA agents were shot (one killed) on Highway 57 just south of San Luis Potosi. They were in a big black Chevy SUV with tinted windows. We were in a big black Ford SUV with tinted windows. We came to a roadblock, which looked improvised, and consisted of a couple of piles of tires in the road. Several serious-looking men in black stood by, making downward gestures with one hand while gripping automatic weapons with the other. Their dull gray rifles hung from straps like necklaces with very large pendants.

We—Dallas-area golf pros Gilbert Freeman and Dan Strimple, and me—were reprising a trip we’d made five years before. As a kid, Gilbert had spent his summers in Mexico’s vast, tropical interior, along for the ride in the station wagon as his father, a world class lepidopterologist, searched for new species of butterflies. Each year they headquartered in Ciudad Valles, at a little hotel with an attached nine-holer called Covadonga that was as much jungle as golf course. There little Gilbert learned the game. When he went back for the first time in 32 years—with his father’s ashes—he took Dan and me along.

That trip became a story in Sports Illustrated called “Back to the Mariposas,” a chapter in a book called Golf Dads, and a topic of conversation for us ever since. When someone bought the defunct hotel and overgrown golf course two years ago, Freeman was compelled to introduce himself to the new owner, the charismatic Juan-Ignacio Torres Landa. They became friends. Freeman got the old gang together to play mysterious Covadonga again, to meet Senor Landa, and to see some of his spectacular empire.

We flew from Dallas on American Eagle non-stop to San Luis Potosi’s little airport, a twin to the air field in Santa Fe. We laughed like fraternity boys at dinner at El Cielo Tinto. We toasted with Juan’s favorite drink: medium-dark local rum, cola, and mineral water. We discussed Huasteca Secreta, Juan’s adventure tourism business, and one of his other holdings, a bull fighting arena. After the tenth cocktail and fiftieth belly laugh, I looked up at the stars through the roofless restaurant and felt pleasantly adrift. The next morning, we teed it up.

San Luis Potosi is not a golf town. Its one million people make do with only two courses, both private. We played La Loma—which means “the hill”—which perches above the reddish brown smog hovering over the city below. Its glass and stucco clubhouse is huge and avante garde, and its very entertaining Jack Nicklaus golf course tumbles through a rock strewn desert.

After after-golf cervezas and tacos con lengua—beef tongue, delicious—we drove north toward the next adventure. Then we slowed for the roadblock. Ice formed on the back of my neck as we waited to discover if the guys at the roadblock were gangbangers, freelancers, or Federales.

The David Leadbetter Academy at Champions Gate in Orlando comprises a manicured expanse of tees and target greens with a luxury hotel on one side and a luxury golf course on the other. But amidst the spit-and-polish in the clubhouse hangs a photograph as discordant and jarring as a whipped cream [...]]]>
What the?

The David Leadbetter Academy at Champions Gate in Orlando comprises a manicured expanse of tees and target greens with a luxury hotel on one side and a luxury golf course on the other. But amidst the spit-and-polish in the clubhouse hangs a photograph as discordant and jarring as a whipped cream and baloney sandwich:
Metallica. The venerable rockers—their genre is described variously as “speed metal,” “thrash metal,” and “not Perry Como,”—are apparently nuts for the game, have taken lessons from the Leadbetter staff, and increasingly relax between shows with the Greatest Game instead of with Illegal Drugs.

That golf draws musicians like moths to a street light is old news—Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis, Jr., Glen Campbell, and Frank Sinatra attached their names to PGA tour events back in the day. Nowadays, Justin Timberlake wraps himself in the golf flag, and various other acts—I’m looking at you, Blowfish and Hootie—seem like Tiger Woods bandwagon types.

But golf is too difficult a hobby to be merely a career move, so we shouldn’t impugn the sincerity or masochism of the stressed-out singers and pickers who take it up. Willie “You Got Any Papers?” Nelson, a 16, even built his own little golf course at his home near Austin; and Alice (no pretend nickname needed) Cooper avers that golf virtually saved his life, starting the day he decided to hit some balls instead of hitting the sauce.

Golf Digest bothered to list and rank musical golfers in 2008. That various Fleetwood Macs, Pink Floyds, Meat Loafs, and Eagles play the game in their dotage is no surprise; that the elfin jazz saxophonist Kenny G claims a scratch handicap is, however, hard for me to believe. Tell you what Kenny: you take Huey Lewis (a 6) and I’ll take Dweezil Zappa (also a 6). Anyplace, anytime—and we’re going to the back tees.

Adrian Young, the drummer for No Doubt, was one of the few really vigorous rockers who made the list. He told writer Jaime Diaz that about the time he secured a clubhouse pass to the 2005 Masters. “I had big pink hair at the time,” said the be-Mohawked Young, a 5. “I’m drinking and tipping well but I remember having this distinct feeling: I do not belong here.”

And so we come inevitably back to Metallica. After playing lullabies from their first album, “Kill ‘Em All” and sensitive ballads from their new chart topper, “Death Magnetic,” the boys can’t wait to tee it up. Why? The band did not respond to my interview request—shocking—but I think I know. It’s not just that golf offers relative solitude and surcease from those booming amplifiers, and air untinged by Marlboros. I think the primary appeal of the game for anyone who has to co-operate all damn day with co-workers or band-mates is the purity if offers. Although we often have partners in golf, it is not a team game. Success or failure are all yours—not the audience, not the bass player, not the promoter.

But wait I will, until April, along with about 100,000 golf nuts, some 500 members of the broadcast and print media, a hard to quantify number of ladies of the evening from Myrtle Beach [...]]]> On January 21, 2011, in Augusta, Georgia, the afternoon’s high temperature will be 43 degrees.  I can’t wait to get there.

But wait I will, until April, along with about 100,000 golf nuts, some 500 members of the broadcast and print media, a hard to quantify number of ladies of the evening from Myrtle Beach and Atlanta, and 110 carefully selected touring golf pros.

Many of the people I’ve met at the Masters seem a little puzzled that I’m having so much fun. Often they have read a book I wrote called The Masters, which turned a few green-jacketed gentlemen red. Then I wrote The Lost Masters, about the biggest screw-up in golf history (the Scorecard Incident of’68). My new friends assume I hate the place, and the tournament. So what the hell is he doing here, drinking our beer?

Yes, I feel oppressed by the mirror shades and side arms of the Pinkerton security force, and I’ve endured hot stares and cold shoulders from a couple of members. And yes, the club produced a book to rebut mine (The Men Who Made the Masters by David Owen; it’s pretty good, even though it strongly and repeatedly implies that I am the worst dumbass ever).  But the chill has not dulled my ardor for their grand tournament.

On my first research trip there in ’97, I sat at the counter at the jam-packed Waffle House at Walton Way by the Bobby Jones Expressway, attempting to read the Chronicle sports page with my elbows pinned to my sides. A big right hand reached into the paper. “Danny Fitzgerald,” said the owner of the hand. “How you doin’?” While I could easily believe that my new friend sold insurance, he was almost incredulous that I scribble for a living. In the years since, he has told the story of his meeting with this oddity, this writer, with new embellishments every year. He enjoys introducing me to his army of friends as if I were a talking parrot on his shoulder.

We were at the poker table, deep in the night, and deep in the beer. Danny, guilty of hours of irrational optimism, sat behind a few lonely poker chips. As Tim raked another pot toward his impressive stack, he asked his buddy if he ever folded.

The table went quiet, for some reason. Danny regarded Tim with bloodshot eyes. “You a skunk-headed mother f…”

Tim won all the money, but he had a new nickname for the week.

######

He was just another dropout, a 13-year-old who spent his days reading greens instead of school books.  There were nine children at home, and mama needed the money. A big, solid-looking kid on his way to [...]]]> Ben and Carl, Masters Champions
If you know the standard Augusta National caddie epic, you know Carl Jackson.

He was just another dropout, a 13-year-old who spent his days reading greens instead of school books.  There were nine children at home, and mama needed the money. A big, solid-looking kid on his way to six foot-five, Carl got a bag in his first Masters, at age 14, in 1961. He drew Billy Burke. Mr. Burke, who had won the US Open thirty years before, was part of a charming but since-abandoned tradition:  a certain number of contestants were in the field not to win or even to do well, but to add to the atmosphere. Mr. Burke added to the atmosphere by performing in a starched white shirt and a tie, and by getting out of the way after shooting 81-79.

The years went by, and Jackson came to know Augusta National the way Sacagawea knew the way to Oregon. For example: the twelfth green doesn’t look like it, he says, but it slopes toward the thirteenth tee.  His employers during the magic week in April got better and better: from thanks-for-being-here amateurs Downing Gray and Deane Beman to Bruce Devlin in ‘64, Gary Player in ‘70, and Ben Crenshaw in ‘76. When Jackson tells you about the three times his man could have won, but screwed up in the eleventh hour by not listening to his caddie, he sounds like every other old Augusta National looper.

The tournament allowed the players to bring their own caddies in 1983, so the ebony men in ivory overalls lost their one annual chance at fame and fortune. This was where the Carl Jackson story diverged from the rest: Crenshaw kept him. If you don’t count 2000, the year he missed due to a prostate cancer scare, this will be his fiftieth year caddying at the Masters—a record. Two of those years, Carl ‘n’ Ben won. You’ll remember 1995 the best: on Wednesday that week, Crenshaw was a pall bearer as his beloved instructor Harvey Penick was laid to rest. On Sunday, he won the tournament, and collapsed in tears. Carl and Ben embraced; it looked like a bear comforting his cub.

If you know the standard Augusta National caddie epic, you know Carl Jackson.

You’ll be reading about all this somewhere else this week—the 50 years, Billy Burke, and so on. But the magazines and AP might miss another wonderful thing about Jackson, his charity. The only people more mercenary than caddies are actual mercenaries. But the 64-year old can’t forget being 13. “Me having to drop out of school when I was so young…I did it reluctantly,” he says. “I was a good student. But the school [A.R. Johnson High] went to uniforms, and we just couldn’t afford it.”

Carl’s Kids has given money to eight schools in five states—to students in such dire financial straits that might have to stay home or get a job, like Carl did. Google Carl’s Kids, send a donation, and get to know a most unusual caddie.

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