'Deep Thoughts': The similarities between golf courses and stock car races

[Wayne_Freedman]

    Had an interesting conversation with a race  car driver.
He was explaining the Nomex fire suit that Dale Earnhardt, Jr. wore when his Corvette burned at Infineon, last Sunday. All drivers wear them---three layers, in fact.  
   "Must get hot on a day like this," I suggested.
   "It's already 140 degrees in the car," he told me. "Add the three layers,
I can lose eight pounds in a race. And I only weigh 145 pounds."
    "So I suppose you get miffed when people say auto racing isn't a sport."
    "Yep."
    "I feel the same way about golf."
    "Haven't taken golf  up, yet, but I know I'll get addicted," he said.
     The race car driver and I soon discovered that our two sports have plenty in common. They're both about staying in  the moment, about precision, about small margins for error. "One bad swing, and it can cook my score," I said.
    "One bad turn and my day is done."
     "At least you don't have to worry about  divots."
    "No. Just the guys around me."    
    What I found most interesting, however, were the analogies we drew between  driving ranges, a practice laps, actual golf games, and races on the course.
   "In a practice lap, I can take the perfect line," he said. "There's no interference from other cars or drivers. But in a race, they get in my way, they mess my lines, and I haven't even factored in the pressure."
   "Same with golf," I agreed. "On the range we can simulate problem situations, but there's no predicting what a golf ciourse will deal us...from trees, winds,  lies, bounces, divots."
   "And will the track dictate what kind of race you drive? The kinds of risks you take?"
   "Absolutely," he  said.
   "Design makes a difference?"
   "All the difference."
   Someday, I'm going to take that guy golfing.

 
   

[ForkaB]

Wayne

Check out the archives and see if you can find some of Tom Paul's posts on Fireball Roberts.  Possibly the finest writing ever seen on GCA then or since.

[TEPaul]

Wayne:

Fine thread and post. As Rich said I did once write about Fireball Roberts (the king of American stock car racing in the 1950s and 1960s). I think I wrote about him as basically satire because as good as Fireball (Glenn Roberts) was at his sport he had less than zero idea about anything to do with golf.

But what you're saying about possible similarities is interesting. Anyone who excells at anything sort of interests me. I think I got that sense from a man by the name of Bull Hancock who was the owner and master of Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky--probably the premier breeding farm in all the world of thoroughbred horse racing (Gary Player was a long time client of Hancock's and idolized the man---and the likes of Bold Ruler and Secretariat stood at Claiborne at stud--basically Mr Hancock created Secretariat and other great modern American thorougbreds through bredding expertise--he was actually a graduate of Princeton in eugenics--although he hated the place---his father with another man or two essentially created the modern American thoroughbred strain!).

Hancock used to say he didn't care what any man did--if he was the best at it he had true respect for him. He said he didn't care if he was the best garbage man in the world he respected him for being the best. Hancock could get a little extreme in his thinking sometimes I guess--he brought his children up to his philosophy that winning was all there was, that second place wasn't any different from last place!

Anyway, one of the reasons I may have mentioned Fireball Roberts on here is because of some of the odd things that sometimes happen in sports between cultures or whatever but all brought together through some strain of real raw talent.

Anyone who knows anything about car racing knows that American stock car racing is (or at least was) as different from international formula one racing as night and day! Fireball used to joke that there wasn't that much to stock car racing that all you had to do was floor it and turn left! But you should have seen the way that man could take a automobile across the surface of the earth--it was real poetry in motion.

The American Ferrari importer (Luigi Chinnetti) got it into his head for some reason that Fireball might be able to drive well in the 24 hours of LeMans, so he proposed it to Fireball. Fireball was such an uneducated greaseball he didn't even know where France was. But he agreed to try it and they took him over there (Fireball couldn't understand why anyone would want to drive a car from the right side so they switched the steering column to the other side for him. So off he went (with an amateur American driver to occassionally spell him).

Fireball completely blew away the entire field (probably consisting of the likes of heavy-weights Phil Hill, Sterling Moss and maybe even Juan Fangio). The French were going crazy cheering him on---Firebool, Firebool. He was miles and miles ahead of everyone after 23 1/2 hours and then within less than 30 minutes of the finish his engine stopped, Fireball got out and went home and never returned to Europe again.

One of the oddest juxtapositions I've ever known--the man was running on raw talent in a context he'd never even seen before. The irony, or perhaps real explanation may have been that perhaps Chinnetti forgot to inform Fireball that the 24 hours of LeMans was as much about endurance (the car) than about raw speed. But Fireball gave them all a thrill and those who saw it will likely never forget.

I often wondered what Fireball would've been like if either me or my Dad introduced him to golf and he got interested in it. He was a big gangly man who moved with the easy motion of a big cat--obviously a real natural athlete.

One of the ironies to this thread and the mention of Dale Earnhardt Jr. lastest firey crash is in the days Fireball was racing Nascar stockers is they were just beginning to bring in fireproofing measures---the fireproof suits they wear. Fireball didn't like them--he said they gave him a rash and he refused to wear them. Around 1965 Fireball flipped his car on a straight at Charlotte--a new speedway that apparently had some unevenness in the new pavement. He was going over 200, flipped his car, hit the wall and got incinerated. 90% burns over his body. He survived in the Charlotte hospital for one month and finally succumbed to pneumonia!

He was a real greaseball but a true natural talent and the best there was at what he did. I only wish I could've introduced him to golf. It would've been interesting to see what would've happened if he got interested in it.

[TEPaul]

There was one last odd addendum to my Fireball stories (this is in those back pages somewhere). I've never had a real prescient moment before or since this but one night in Mexico City (my father exiled me to Mexico for about six months) around 1965 I had a form of a nightmare about Fireball dying in a crash. I literally hadn't even thought of him in a number of years (and I'm not the kind of guys who believes in prescient moments). I got up, went to work thinking that nightmare about Fireball Roberts sure was an odd thing to have. I picked up an International Herald Tribune and right there in the sports page was an article that read;

"Nascar Stockcar racing great Glenn (Fireball) Roberts crtically injured in a firey crash at the Charolotte Speedway in N. Carolina."

Really spooky! I hope I never have another of those prescient moments.

[ForkaB]

Tom

In web-searching this topic this morning, I found out two important things:

1.  The nickname "Fireball" came from Glenn's ability as a baseball pitcher, and not his driving ability.
2.  Contemporaneous with Fireball on the racing circuit was Briggs Cunningham, who was an acquaintance of my father and also dropped out of the car racing circuit for a summer (1958), in order to skipper the winning America's Cup yacht in the resurrection of that sporting series.

Sic transit gloria all-rounders.......

[TEPaul]

Rich:

I think I very vaguely remember hearing that about the reason for Fireball's nickname but I sure wouldn't have thought of it now.

Briggs Cunningham was around but he sure wasn't a stocker of the likes of Fireball and his "seat of the pants" driving contemporaries like Tim Flock, Curtis Turner, or Richard Petty's father ( I can't remember his first name). Cunningham was a rich guy who seemed more into racing of the Sebring type. I think Cunningham even created his own car--called the Cunningham.

Fireball's type of culture was more out of the greasball variety of young guys who grew up with their heads almost never out of an engine or the southern or Carolina moon-shine running type like Curtis Turner.

One night in the middle of the night this friend of mine and I while drunk out of our minds in NYC called up Bill France, said we were from the NY Times and asked him for his opinon of who the best of them all was. France said he didn't want to be quoted directly but he felt there was never anyone before or since like this guy Glenn (Fireball) Roberts. And then he said, "4am is kinda late, I gotta go back to sleep boys!"

[Robert_Walker]

Courses are refered to as Tracks
Tracks are refered to as Courses

Anyone can drive a car
Anyone can play golf

Dale Jarrett was offered a Golf Scholorship to SC

Racing and Golf are loaded with nuance.

The NYT hated both so much that no one knew which was worse:
Covering golf or covering NASCAR for the paper

[TEPaul]

I dont know much of anything about automobile racing of any kind anymore but talk about a guy who has the complete  respect of his peers---it's this guy Schumacher--the current world's champion. His peers say he might have reactions almost never seen before and can take a car to the limit better and calmer than anyone.

I heard a couple of years ago he was the highest paid athlete in the world, and so I made a point of watching a TV interview with him.

He was impressive, very calm and considered, obviously a fit and honed physical athlete. The interviewer asked him what it felt like driving one of those cars flat out at something in the neighborhood of 220+. He said if he was mentally prepared he felt very calm in those situations. The interviewer asked him what he thought about when he was running at that limit on the razor's edge. He said without a trace of humor sometimes he thought about things like the homework he helped his young daughter with.

[Brad Swanson]

Well, not all doglegs on golf courses are dogleg left!

Cheers,
Brad Swanson

[W.H. Cosgrove]

Whether a race car driver is an athelete or not had an interesting test in the early seventies.  ABC had their Superstar series where competitors from different sports got together and competed in sometimes ridiculous competitions.  We learned several things during that series.  

1) Atheletic ability in one sport does not necessarily mean competence in another.  Joe Frazier nearly drowned in one installment.  

2) That just because a race car driver sits on his butt doesn't mean he isn't fit.  Mark Donahue showed up to compete against some of the nations finest atheletes.  Broadcasters treated hime nicely if without respect.  Donahue basically blew their doors off with his atheletic abilities.  Unfortunately, Mark Donahue died in an accident shortly thereafter.  If he had lived, I think he may have been one of our true american heroes.

[TEPaul]

That's like the wizzenheimer NYC and Long Island socialite who was a pretty good friend of Jim Brown's. (Brown btw, was an understudy to Rafer Johnson in the Olympic decathalon trials).

This socialite wizzenheimer told Brown down on the beach in the Hamptons he could beat him in a pentathalon event but he'd pick the rules. Brown said to the guy "What're you nuts, you can't beat me", and told the guy--OK let's go".

So the guy said to Brown; "It's gonna be a 100 yard dash, the shot put, a round of golf, best of three sets in tennis and a sail boat race!"

PS;

From that occurence Richard Preyer cooked up his ultra famous act and record that was known as "Niggers I've known yachting."

[Dan Kelly]

Tom I --

How'd you get to know Fireball Roberts?

I recommend a Google "Image" search for Fireball Roberts. My favorite, so far, is the fourth one of the top row of Page 2.

[Wayne_Freedman]

I've been hijacked.
This thread is going to LeMans.
But that's fine.
Never thought it had this much life.

[TEPaul]

"Where did you happen to see the Schumacher interview?"

redanman;

On television.