Cleveland, though admittedly my attention to her was a distant second to that in my revived golf life.
One of the businessmen I was introduced to was Bill Wehnes, a paint manufacturer’s rep who sold industrial paints and tapping compound, a substance used to cool metal when holes are being drilled through it. Bill was a member of Canterbury Country Club and a pretty cool customer himself. He and his wife, April, more or less adopted me as their surrogate son. Bill knew I worried a great deal about money and the dilemma I would soon face—how to support myself
and
make the kind of commitment I yearned to make to playing tournament golf—and he proposed a nifty solution. Upon completion of my obligation to the Coast Guard, now just slightly over six months away, he would pay me to go back to Wake Forest and finish up my business degree, then hire me to work as a paint rep for him in the Cleveland area, allowing me as much time as I needed to polish my game and compete in tournaments. It was an offer that was too good to turn down, so I accepted it.
The summer of 1953 was a good one for me on and off the golf course. I won the Ohio Amateur at Pine Ridge and another Greensburg Invitational. I won the Cleveland Amateur, sponsored by the
Plain Dealer
, and an open tournament where a number of the top touring professionals like Porky Oliver and Jimmy Demaret competed. After a two-year absence from the event, I went to Oklahoma City and made it all the way to the fourth round of the U.S. Amateur before being nipped at the wire, beaten one-up by a pleasant Ohioan named Don Albert. A short while later, my first effort to make the cut at the U.S. Open came up a couple of strokes shy.
I was disappointed but not discouraged. The confidence I felt in my game was almost frightening, and the rekindled desire to play was practically all-consuming. When winter came and the private clubs around Cleveland closed down, several of us routinely went down to Lake Shore golf course and beat balls at frozen cups. Golf nuts in woolies.
Suddenly, it was late January and I was out of the service. My time with the Coast Guard was finished. I made a bee-line to Wake Forest, where my scholarship had been reactivated, and arrived a few days after the spring semester had begun. People there couldn’t have been nicer, and because Johnny Johnston was now occupying Jim Weaver’s job—Weaver had gone on to become commissioner of the new Atlantic Coast Conference—I was named interim golf coach. The team played pretty well that spring and I played exceptionally, winning the ACC championship and a number of other smaller invitationals and pro-ams, setting the stage for bigger wins.
In retrospect I was probably playing too much golf, because, once again, I ran afoul of the academic dean. One afternoon he summoned me to his office and pointed out that the scholarship that had been generously reactivated was in serious jeopardy because, just like old times, I was missing classes in the afternoons. It was true—I couldn’t deny any of his charges. Most afternoons, and many of the mornings, I played thirty-six holes and practiced my chipping and putting. The bookkeeping course I was supposed to be taking met for two hours two afternoons a week, but I reasoned that rather than sit there and fall asleep it was better for everybody if I did something useful with my time, like work on my short game. Unfortunately, the dean didn’t see it like that. After chewing me out, he warned me in no uncertain terms that I’d better start attending classes or I’d be in big trouble—and back on the bricks.
I think I did make it to a few afternoon sessions of bookkeeping after that, but it turned out to be almost immaterial, because by the end of the semester I found I was still a few hours short of having earned my degree. That was too bad; I really did want that business degree in my pocket, and part of me regrets to this day not finishing my task at Wake.
But
One of the businessmen I was introduced to was Bill Wehnes, a paint manufacturer’s rep who sold industrial paints and tapping compound, a substance used to cool metal when holes are being drilled through it. Bill was a member of Canterbury Country Club and a pretty cool customer himself. He and his wife, April, more or less adopted me as their surrogate son. Bill knew I worried a great deal about money and the dilemma I would soon face—how to support myself
and
make the kind of commitment I yearned to make to playing tournament golf—and he proposed a nifty solution. Upon completion of my obligation to the Coast Guard, now just slightly over six months away, he would pay me to go back to Wake Forest and finish up my business degree, then hire me to work as a paint rep for him in the Cleveland area, allowing me as much time as I needed to polish my game and compete in tournaments. It was an offer that was too good to turn down, so I accepted it.
The summer of 1953 was a good one for me on and off the golf course. I won the Ohio Amateur at Pine Ridge and another Greensburg Invitational. I won the Cleveland Amateur, sponsored by the
Plain Dealer
, and an open tournament where a number of the top touring professionals like Porky Oliver and Jimmy Demaret competed. After a two-year absence from the event, I went to Oklahoma City and made it all the way to the fourth round of the U.S. Amateur before being nipped at the wire, beaten one-up by a pleasant Ohioan named Don Albert. A short while later, my first effort to make the cut at the U.S. Open came up a couple of strokes shy.
I was disappointed but not discouraged. The confidence I felt in my game was almost frightening, and the rekindled desire to play was practically all-consuming. When winter came and the private clubs around Cleveland closed down, several of us routinely went down to Lake Shore golf course and beat balls at frozen cups. Golf nuts in woolies.
Suddenly, it was late January and I was out of the service. My time with the Coast Guard was finished. I made a bee-line to Wake Forest, where my scholarship had been reactivated, and arrived a few days after the spring semester had begun. People there couldn’t have been nicer, and because Johnny Johnston was now occupying Jim Weaver’s job—Weaver had gone on to become commissioner of the new Atlantic Coast Conference—I was named interim golf coach. The team played pretty well that spring and I played exceptionally, winning the ACC championship and a number of other smaller invitationals and pro-ams, setting the stage for bigger wins.
In retrospect I was probably playing too much golf, because, once again, I ran afoul of the academic dean. One afternoon he summoned me to his office and pointed out that the scholarship that had been generously reactivated was in serious jeopardy because, just like old times, I was missing classes in the afternoons. It was true—I couldn’t deny any of his charges. Most afternoons, and many of the mornings, I played thirty-six holes and practiced my chipping and putting. The bookkeeping course I was supposed to be taking met for two hours two afternoons a week, but I reasoned that rather than sit there and fall asleep it was better for everybody if I did something useful with my time, like work on my short game. Unfortunately, the dean didn’t see it like that. After chewing me out, he warned me in no uncertain terms that I’d better start attending classes or I’d be in big trouble—and back on the bricks.
I think I did make it to a few afternoon sessions of bookkeeping after that, but it turned out to be almost immaterial, because by the end of the semester I found I was still a few hours short of having earned my degree. That was too bad; I really did want that business degree in my pocket, and part of me regrets to this day not finishing my task at Wake.
But
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