Excerpted from:
GOLF Magazine, Sept. 1983 with John Trinkle
IT ISN'T THE SAME
Says Jimmy Demaret, looking back on a half century of American pro golf.
...He was invited to compare lifestyles, travel, purses, competition, quality of players - no holds barred.
Here is his story.
THE TOUR...
THE MONEY...
THE COURSES
I know one thing: They built better courses 40 and 50 years ago than they do now. Golf wasn't meant to be a real estate promotion. We used to play some great courses - Riviera, Pinehurst, Los Angeles Country Club, Merion, San Francisco Golf Club and Lake Merced in San Francisco. They were marvelous courses and still are.
Then the new crowd of pro's started griping about the grass, the trees, the bunkers, the locker rooms and everything else, and the wheels came off. Fine clubs didn't want the tournaments. Before the pro's knew it they were playing on public courses like Sharpstown, in Houston. Some players would complain if they were playing on Dolly Parton's bedspread.
The great course architects - fellows like Donald Ross, Percy Maxwell (sic), John Brademus, Alister Mackenzie, Ralph Plummer and A.C. Tillinghast (sic) - built fairways (italicized) and greens (italicized). They didn't dig holes for 100 sand traps.
It's all cosmetics nowadays. Helena Rubenstein and Max Factor could build these new courses. But they get away from golf. Palmer and Nicklaus may be able to play 'em but the members can't.
I read where one course used 43,000 railroad ties. It's all gimickery. The great courses like Merion and Pebble Beach and Riviera don't need retouching. They endure. Augusta National would have endured, too, but I think they have made too many changes on it.
Courses are in better condition than they were years ago. technology is better and so is equipment. We used three-blade mowers as compared to the present 10 blades. We fertilized every few years; they fertilize every week. You didn't find fairway watering systems at Winged Foot, Westchester or Shinnecock Hills. The only water was around the greens.
I learned a lot about golf courses from John Brademus, shaping greens with a mule and a fresco. That was between 1926 and '29. He built the first sand greens around Texas. Before that, they were sand mixed with cottonseed hulls.
Let me tell one final story and I'll stop. early in 1949, Hogan and I tied for first place in back-to-back tournaments. He won the playoff at Long Beach and I won the next one in Phoenix. We were the best of friends so I asked him if he was going to Tuscon the next week. He said no, he and Valerie were going back to Fort Worth to see their new house.
He had the accident on that drive home. I stopped by El Paso to see Ben. I walked into the hospital and said, "You'd do anything to get out of a playoff with me, wouldn't you?"
The fellows on today's Tour may have a lot of things better than we had - bigger purses, bigger endorsements, jet planes, and caddies who tell 'em the yardage and how a putt's gonna break. That's fine. But if Ben and Sam and Byron and I had another chance, we'd still say our way was better.
END