SOUTHWORDS

I’ve had a fondness in my heart for the PGA Championship since 1979 when I wrote what we used to call the “gamer” for Golf World magazine, the little engine that could, founded by Bob Harlow in Pinehurst in 1947. Often regarded as the least of golf’s four majors, it was my first time writing about any of them, and I remain deeply and profoundly in like with it. What I produced doesn’t belong in the journalism hall of fame but there is enough persiflage in it to suggest the troublesome wiseass I would become. Besides, anything that can be won five times each by Walter Hagen and Jack Nicklaus is good by me. The 107th running of the club pros (the PGA of America is, after all, their organization) will be conducted this month on the magnificent Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, which makes me wish it was 1979 all over again.

That championship was played at Oakland Hills Country Club in suburban Detroit, not far from the Red Fox, an upscale restaurant on Telegraph Road where, four years earlier, Jimmy Hoffa was supposed to meet with a couple of Tonys and was never seen again. If memory serves — and these days it rarely does — the media was lodged in a Holiday Inn also not far from the Red Fox. The hotel was in the midst of renovations, which meant the rooms were cheap. The lone non-negotiable requirement of any media hotel was (and I’m guessing still is) that the bar be functional and the hours generous. In this regard it was tiptop. In others, not so much.

One day when I returned from the course, tired and sweaty, I pushed the button to get on the elevator and was greeted by half a dozen enthusiastic policemen with sidearms, bulletproof vests and a battering ram. They were headed for the same floor my room was on to make a drug bust. One of them politely offered to squeeze me in but I told them, “Naw, you all go on, I’ll catch the next one” — a minor subterfuge that, of course, required a timely visit to the hotel bar.

That year a journeyman pro named Rex Caldwell, nicknamed Sexy Rexy, held the 54-hole lead by two shots over Ben Crenshaw, four clear of David Graham, Jerry Pate and Tom Watson. Tall and thin, Caldwell was flashy in his flared trousers and made good copy. A bit too good. He was quoted guaranteeing a victory. “You can make book on it,” he supposedly said. What Rex actually said was, “Hell, I’ll be nervous. You can make book on that.”

After dinner on Saturday night, when I got back to the hotel I ducked into the bar. There was Rex in a corner booth with a woman under each arm. For all I knew they were his cousins but I, for one, wasn’t going to make book on Caldwell winning the PGA.

David Graham, the Australian, wound up beating Ben Crenshaw, the crowd darling, in sudden death but only after David choked away a two-shot lead with a double bogey on the 18th. Graham has never claimed it was anything other than the pressure of the moment. What was remarkable is that he was able to walk off that last green — “I felt like I was 6 inches tall,” he said — and gather himself enough to win a playoff. He had to make a 25-foot putt on the first extra hole and a 10-footer on the second, just to stay alive.

Graham came up hard. He quit school at 13 and left home at 16. He has described his father as “a nasty guy” and, as far as I know, from the day he left they never spoke to each other again. David had an edge to him but if you were his friend, he was the kindest, most loyal man you could ever know.

Dick Taylor, the editor of Golf World who sent me to cover the ’79 PGA, considered David a dear friend. Two years after Oakland Hills, Graham won the U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club producing what I still consider the finest exhibition of ball-striking ever in the last round of our Open. He hit 17 greens. The one he missed was on the collar of No. 17. An inveterate club tinkerer and designer — Graham fashioned the irons Crenshaw used at Oakland Hills — on the Monday after Merion, Taylor called Graham’s home to congratulate his friend privately, not in the public of a media mash up. David’s wife, Maureen, answered the phone. Dick said, “For God’s sake, tell him to leave those clubs alone.”

Maureen relayed the message. From his shop, Graham yelled back, “Tell him I’m regripping them right now!”