My father inherited that set of clubs from Daddy Bill and added its one iron to his own set of clubs. The rest of the clubs in that set, rendered sacred relics in our minds by Bob Jones, were eventually lost or stolen. When my father stopped playing golf, he passed the one iron along to me. I found it nearly impossible to hit and donated it to the museum at Redtail golf club in Canada, to which I then belonged. (Of course, there is no disgrace in not being able to hit a one iron. As Lee Trevino, who had been struck by lightening on a golf course, once said while exiting a course after a lightening alert and waving a one iron over his head, "Even God can't hit a one iron!")
Recently, my sister sent me some old newspaper clippings. One of them chronicles Daddy Bill's interaction with Bob Jones. It seems that the setting was not Augusta National, which had just been completed, but Forest Hills, in North Carolina. Jones was using borrowed clubs and was struggling with the driver in the set. At the ninth tee, Daddy Bill joined the small gallery following Jones's foursome and loaned Jones his driver. Jones hit Daddy Bill's driver so well that he even used it once for his second shot on a par five.
How did that tale become so embellished? Was it just the process of retelling over a period of years? My father was the keeper of golf stories in our family, and he loved to tell a good story. I don't know if my father was familiar with Mark Twain's dictum, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, unless you can't think of something better." Once my father told a version of a story that he liked, he stayed with that version until it became his memory of the event. If my father had been shown the newspaper article, I'm sure that he would have added to his repertoire my magnificent gift of the one iron, never touched by Jones, to the golf museum.
I played Augusta National only once, as a guest of Ted Danforth. When we reached number 12, the famous three par on "Amen Corner," I didn't realize that the pin was in its treacherous "Sunday-at-the-Masters" position-- the quintessential sucker pin placement. Ben Hogan once said that if he ever birdied number 12 on Sunday at the Masters, you would know that he had missed his tee shot. Not knowing any better, I took dead aim at the pin, and my ball came to rest about two feet from the hole. Not only the other members of my foursome, but also the caddies couldn't contain their laughter at my dumb luck.
Striding across the Hogan Bridge spanning Rae's Creek on my way to the hole, all I could think about was the glory of making a birdie at number 12 at Augusta with the pin in that storied location. I missed the putt.
