The Ties That Bind

The Summer of ’64: The Friendship of Ken Venturi and Tony Lema and How a Small Equipment Manufacturer Hit the Jackpot.

 

Part 1: The Road to Congressional

The ties that bind the friendship of Ken Venturi and Tony Lema were legendary and dated back to the time Lema spent as an assistant pro at the San Francisco Golf Club where Venturi would meet Byron Nelson for lessons. The two played in Bay Area tournaments, but with Venturi three years older than Lema, they did not run in the same circles. The Bay Area not only had a robust junior tournament schedule, but also featured many talented teenagers playing against the men in some of the most prestigious adult events on the West Coast, such as the Oakland City Championship and the San Francisco City Golf Tournament, known as “The City.” Venturi won “The City” in 1950 and Lema won the Oakland City Championship in 1953. Both players were just 19 years old.

The first Venturi to interact with Lema was, in fact, Ken’s mother Ethyl, who ran the golf shop with her husband Fred at Harding Park Golf Club. She noticed the tattered pair of sneakers that Lema was wearing when he showed up to play a junior tournament. Without a second thought she grabbed a new pair of golf shoes from the shelf and gave them, free of charge, to the young player from the Oakland suburb of San Leandro.

The two boys came from very different backgrounds. Venturi was from San Francisco and although he struggled with a speech impediment, his upbringing was substantially more middle class than the hard-scrabbled youth of Lema who lost his father when he was just a 4-year-old. The two would become much closer after the U.S. Amateur that was held at Seattle Golf Club in 1952.

| I would like you to meet Byron Nelson |

Venturi was hungry to make a mark on the national level but found himself 3 down with just four holes to play against Arnold Blum in his opening match. Venturi birdied the next three holes, but Blum birdied the final hole to win the match. Although he was disappointed in the outcome his outlook soon changed. Eddie Lowery, famous for being the caddie on Francis Ouimet’s bag for the historic upset in the 1913 U.S. Open at Brookline Country Club against Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, met Venturi as he finished his match.

“I would like you to meet Byron Nelson,” Lowery said.

This was quite an honor for Venturi who accepted an invite to play a round with Nelson and Lowery at San Francisco Golf Club the very next day. While Lowery and Nelson traveled in an airplane back to the Bay Area, Venturi had to rely on a 1942 Buick Roadster as his mode of transport. He drove through the day, repaired a flat tire along the way, and arrived in San Francisco in time for this very important round of golf.

 

Thus, began a long and fruitful relationship between Byron Nelson and Ken Venturi, a student-teacher relationship that bloomed. Nelson would travel from his ranch in Texas to San Francisco Golf Club to work with Venturi who soaked up the knowledge of the 52-time PGA Tour winner. While Venturi and Nelson worked on Venturi’s swing, Tony Lema was working as an assistant in his first job as a professional golfer at San Francisco Golf Club. Lema stocked and manned the counter in the pro shop and picked the range in the evening. When he could get away from his long hours and duties for pro John Geersten, he played regularly with Venturi and Harvie Ward, a gifted amateur from the area who won the U.S. Amateur in both 1955 and 1956. Both players worked for Eddie Lowery at his Lincoln dealership in the city selling cars in the morning and playing golf in the afternoons.

After a lesson from Nelson, Venturi found a unique way to burn what he learned into his memory; he would give the same lesson to Lema. The two would work together on the range at SFGC and both of their games improved.

Venturi made a national splash in 1956 when he nearly won The Masters as an amateur losing by 1-stroke to Jack Burke, Jr. and then turned pro at the end of the year. At this point Lema had landed his first head pro job at a small 9-hole course in Elko, Nevada called Ruby View Golf Course. A year later, he had made friends with a wealthy sportsman from Portland, Oregon who offered to stake him, as a sponsor, on the PGA Tour.

Lema played in the last event of 1957, the Mayfair Inn Open in Florida. As this was the last event of a long year of tournaments on the PGA Tour, the organizers had difficulties filling the field. As a result, any PGA member could play in the event without going through a nerve-wracking qualifying round. The biggest benefit for Lema was that if you made the cut in this tournament, you would be eligible to play in the Los Angeles Open, the first tournament of 1958, again without the need to go through the qualifying process.

Venturi won two tournaments in 1957, the St. Paul Open Invitational on August 18^th and the Miller High Life Open a week later. The two pros from the Bay Area would be competing against each other as the 1958 PGA Tour kicked off in Los Angeles. Though they were competitors, they were also each other’s biggest supporters.

After a successful rookie season, Lema’s game fell on hard times in 1959 and 1960. He fought back and by 1962 he began showing improvement in his game. About this time, he signed a contract with a small golf club manufacturer from Colma, California, Fernquest and Johnson. Venturi also signed a contract with the company, and he made the two models the players would use; a square toe design for Lema and a more traditional rounded toe design for himself. Venturi virtually built the clubs that both he and Lema used.

| Venturi Virtually Built The Clubs That Both He and Lema Used |

“I made Tony Lema’s irons,” Venturi said in an interview I conducted with him in 2008. “I ground them, I shafted them, chromed them, gripped them and everything else.”

Fernquest and Johnson offered the signature models for sale in golf shops in limited quantities while they focused their marketing attentions on the value oriented line of clubs such as the Golden Gate model. Little did the small company know that they had hit the jackpot with the two player’s endorsements. Soon Lema’s signature was added to the Golden Gate model.

Venturi’s game had also fallen on hard times due to an auto accident in 1961 and a battle with alcohol. His game had fallen to such a low level that he was only able to post winnings of $6,951 in 19 tournaments placing him 66^th on the money list in 1963. He would not enjoy an automatic exemption into events and would instead have to rely on sponsor exemptions and Monday qualifying to get into the 1964 events.  After a lecture in 1963 from Dave Marcelli, a San Francisco bartender, Venturi gave up drinking and began the hard task of rebuilding his game.

As the PGA Tour played out in the Spring of 1964, Venturi’s game slowly improved. Lema had broken through with his first official PGA Tour win in Orange County in 1962 and then followed it up with a victory a couple of weeks later at the Mobile Sertoma Open Invitational. At his press conferences after his victories Lema served the press champagne and thus was born the moniker of “Champagne” Tony Lema. Lema’s game and life improved when he met Betty Cline, the former flight attendant whom he married in 1963 after a second-place finish in his first Masters tournament. Although 1964 got off to a slow start, Lema began to catch fire as the prestigious higher purse events came up on the schedule.

One of those prestigious events on the schedule was the Thunderbird Classic at Westchester Country Club in Rye, New York. Lema and Venturi had the same manager, Fred Corcoran, was very involved in the Thunderbird tournament often serving as Tournament Director. In 1964 he was a consultant for the tournament and hosted Tony and Betty for the week at his home near Westchester.

Venturi, who got a shot of confidence by qualifying for the U.S. Open, a tournament he had not played in since 1960, that would be conducted at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland. He now had his sights set on making the cut at the 500 Festival Open Invitational in Indianapolis. With a made cut, he would get an automatic invitation into the Thunderbird Classic. It was not to be. Venturi missed the cut in Indy and would need a sponsor’s invite to play at Westchester. He called Bill Jennings, the owner of the NHL New York Rangers and Tournament Director for the Thunderbird.

“I’m so close to playing well, to winning, but I don’t have the money,” Venturi told Jennings as he began to lay out his case for an exemption. “If I don’t get an invite, I’m going back to selling cars. My career is over.”

Jennings informed him that they only had one invitation remaining. “Call me back tomorrow and I’ll let you know.” Jennings then called Fred Corcoran and the two discussed the situation and after a lengthy discussion, it was decided to extend the invitation to Venturi. It was the break that Venturi needed.

The Thunderbird Classic would prove to be a turning point for both Venturi and Lema. The Thunderbird featured a strong field with many players using the tournament as a warm-up for the U.S. Open that would be played in two weeks at Congressional Country Club. Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus were the pre-tournament favorites at both the Thunderbird and the U.S. Open.

 

Venturi came out of the gate in the first round with a 67, trailing the leader Jerry Magee by one stroke. Lema sat one stroke further back tied with nine other players. Lema sat alone on top of the leader board after a second round 67. Venturi was two strokes back tied with Mike Souchak and both players sat with the clubhouse lead for 3 hours before Lema posted his 67.

Arnold Palmer gifted Lema a putter at an exhibition the two played a few weeks earlier and it was paying dividends at Westchester. In the third round he made a long 20-foot eagle putt on his way to a 70 and now enjoyed a 3-stroke lead over Souchak and Bobby Nichols. Another stroke back sat Venturi who continued to play well.

| “Bring Your Sleeping Bags. We’re Going To Have A Ball. It Will Be a Long Evening” |

“I sure hope I’m here Sunday night,” Tony told reporters after his round while contemplating one of his trademark champagne celebrations with the press. “Bring your sleeping bags. We’re going to have a ball. It will be a long evening.”

That long evening would have to follow a long day as Lema and Souchak battled head-to-head in inclement weather that featured a most dramatic finish. Lema finally put away Souchak on the final hole with a tense 8-foot putt and the champagne celebration with the press was on.

 

 

 

Venturi took full advantage of his sponsor’s invite finishing in third place earning a check for $6,250 and an exemption in the following week’s Buick Open. He would then roll into Washington D.C. for the U.S. Open at Congressional the week after that. Things were looking up for Venturi. Lema was just getting started, though.

Warwick Hills Country Club in Grand Blanc, Michigan played host to the Buick Open and it was a tournament that Lema was committed to as he was part of a group of players who endorsed Buick. The players received a car as part of this endorsement deal as well as the use of a car at every PGA Tour event they played in.

Lema kept his hot streak going with roller coaster rounds that contained more birdies than bogeys and won the event with a 277, three strokes better than Dow Finsterwall. He became the first back-to-back winner on tour since 1962 when Jack Nicklaus won the Portland Open the week following his victory in the Seattle World’s Fair Open Invitational. Venturi kept his comeback on track by finishing at 286. Lema won $8,177 and another Buick automobile (he won enough new cars in the summer of ’64 he could of opened a dealership) while Venturi pocketed $2,344.

Next stop was Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland for the U.S. Open. The magical summer of ’64 was just heating up.

Part 2: Venturi Completes a Career Comeback at U.S. Open

Larry Baush is the author of Uncorked, The Life and Times of Champagne Tony Lema available at 9acespublishing.com or on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle edition. Larry carries a single digit handicap at Rainier Golf and Country Club in Seattle, Washington. He is the editor of tourbackspin.com. You can contact larry at larry@9acespublishing.com.