Beginning this weekend, 256 of the best golfers age 25 and over will convene at Vinny Giles’ course just outside Richmond, Virginia – Kinloch Golf Club – for the U.S. Mid-Amateur. It would behoove any and all of them to grab a beverage and Kinloch’s specialty sandwich (grilled peanut butter and jelly) and sit a spell to chat with the course’s co-designer and the last great career amateur champion.
Conversations with Marvin “Vinny” Giles III are always a treat and never filtered like his cigarettes. He is one of the game’s great characters and the last of his kind – a supremely gifted champion who opted to remain a lifelong amateur despite the undeniable talent and charisma that could have made him a tour star had he chosen that alternate route.
“After Georgia and having some success and playing well in a couple of U.S. Amateurs and finishing second in the NCAA against what was going to be the next crop of professionals, I thought I was pretty good,” Giles said. “I mean, I thought I could beat my peer group on the right week.”
A three-time all-American and 1966 NCAA runner-up at the University of Georgia, Giles could more than handle his peers – on the course and off. He considered the idea of turning pro, but as a young married man, he and his wife, Key, didn’t relish the idea of living out of motels and chasing the sun.
“I quite honestly wasn’t sure that I’d enjoy that life,” he said. “I just loved playing golf, and I didn’t want it to quit being fun. … I wasn’t sure I was made out for it. My only regret is that I never proved to myself whether I was good enough to play at that level. Outside of that, I have no regrets at all.”
Giles went to law school at Virginia instead, and in 1973 fell into founding a sports management company, Pros Inc., with his partner Vernon Spratley representing friends through the years such as Lanny Wadkins, Gary Koch, Tom Kite, Davis Love III and later Ernie Els. Long retired himself, Giles still represents Koch and Wadkins in their broadcast deals.
“We were 30 years old. If it doesn’t work, you know, we’re 35 and can go do something else,” he said they were thinking, opening a management agency with the philosophy of being friends first and representatives second for their clients. “And we capitalized our business with a grand total of $50,000, which lasted for about a week and a half. Basically, we weren’t paying ourselves anything. And our first official business trip was for me to go play in the 1973 Masters.”
In 1975 they happened to sign the top three qualifiers from PGA Tour Q-School – Jerry Pate, George Burns and Koch, “and it kind of put us on the map.”
A whole life sprung from a game he fell into by sneaking on as a kid between groups at Oakwood Country Club in Lynchburg, Virginia, before honing his talents at nearby Boonsboro Country Club, where his family became members.
“So five days later, I’m on a train going to Athens, Georgia. I don’t even know where Athens, Georgia is. Never heard of it.” – Vinny Giles
As a 19-year-old college dropout from North Carolina in 1962, Giles won the Virginia State Open. Little did he realize the door that would open for him when he got a phone call out of the blue in March 1963 from Howell Hollis, the golf coach at Georgia.
“He said, ‘I understand you’re a good player,’” Giles said in recalling the conversation. “I said, ‘I don’t know if I’m a good player or not.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got a guy on my team – he’s my best player – and he says he can’t beat you. … If you’ll come down here next week, I’ll give you tuition and books for the spring quarter, and I’ll give you a full ride starting in the fall.’ I said, ‘Well, that’s very nice. Thank you, sir.’ And just kind of waved it off.”
He mentioned the call later to his family at the dinner table, and Marvin Giles II did not wave it off.
“He looked over his little half-rim glasses after I told the story, and he says, ‘Son, how fast can you pack your damn bags? I’ve been paying this tuition and these fraternity bills [to UNC] and I haven’t seen any results.’ So five days later, I’m on a train going to Athens, Georgia. I don’t even know where Athens, Georgia is. Never heard of it.”
It worked out pretty well for his golf game. “To be honest with you,” he said, “from a golf standpoint probably the best thing that ever happened to my game because I got some top-level competition and we’re playing $2 Nassaus every day for beer money. And I learned a heck of a lot down there. Really, it was critical to getting better playing golf.”
Giles’ career résumé backs up that assertion. For an eight-year window from 1965-72, the U.S. Amateur went to a stroke-play format instead of the match-play that has decided every other national championship before or since. The principal character of that stroke-play era was Giles, who prominently featured as the winner or runner-up in half of them. He signaled his aggregate prowess by finishing as co-medalist at Canterbury in 1964, the year before the USGA switched to stroke-play. But he also reached the semifinals in 1973, the year when the tournament reverted to match play.
“The record I’m most proud of is from ’67 through ’73 I had one finish in the U.S. Amateur that was outside the top three,” said Giles of a seven-year stretch that went 2, 2, 2, T6, 3, 1 and T3, his win coming in 1972 at Charlotte Country Club by a stroke over Ben Crenshaw and Mark Hayes. “I tied for sixth when Lanny Wadkins won in ’70.”
Giles always preferred stroke play as a better way to determine a national champion, though he was no slouch at match-play, either. He played on four Walker Cup teams (1969-75) – three of them winners – and captained the winning U.S. side in 1993. Even in his lone team loss – the 1971 upset of a loaded U.S. squad by GB&I at St. Andrews – Giles featured in a day-one singles win over Michael Bonallack by holing his desperate pitch from off the road on the Road Hole of a tied match.
“I had basically no chance,” Giles told Golf Digest. “I tried an explosion shot, but it was just a blind stab. The ball took one bounce, hit the flagstick and shot down into the hole. Shocked, Michael dropped his putter, then missed his [4-foot] putt. And I went on to win, 1 up. The headline in The Scotsman newspaper the next morning called my shot, ‘A most dastardly act.’ Perfect reporting.”
The name Marvin “Vinny” Giles III is etched on trophies of amateurs with names such as Dogwood, Porter, Crump, Coleman (senior), Fox Puss and various directionals (Southern, Eastern and Northeast). He lifted six Virginia State Amateurs from 1962 to 1987 and three times proved he could beat his home state’s best pros as well with Virginia Open titles (1969, ’74 and ’93).
At the next year’s amateur dinner at the Masters, the R&A secretary presented Giles with the flagstick and flag from the Road Hole – the only memento of his decorated career displayed in his family room.
Giles competed for the U.S. in three Eisenhower Trophies (1968, ’70 and ’72), winning all three World Amateur Team events, in Australia, Spain and Argentina, respectively. At age 32, he won the 1975 British Am in an 8-and-7 romp over Mark James at Royal Liverpool and hoped to become only the fifth golfer to complete the double and win the U.S. Amateur that same summer at his home course in Richmond, The Country Club of Virginia’s James River course. But Giles got ousted early, “the victim of an aching back, a serious case of ennui and the good play of a 23-year-old from Pittsburgh, Stan Price” as Sports Illustrated put it, spilling as much ink on Giles’ defeat as it did on the winner (some guy named Fred Ridley).
The name Marvin “Vinny” Giles III is etched on trophies of amateurs with names such as Dogwood, Porter, Crump, Coleman (senior), Fox Puss and various directionals (Southern, Eastern and Northeast). He lifted six Virginia State Amateurs from 1962 to 1987 and three times proved he could beat his home state’s best pros as well with Virginia Open titles (1969, ’74 and ’93).
In 2009, just four months shy of his 67th birthday, Giles won the U.S. Senior Amateur when he buried a 17-foot birdie putt on the 18th green at Beverly Country Club to beat John Grace, becoming the first player to add that title to wins in the U.S. and British Amateurs and the oldest to lift the trophy since 69-year-old Lewis Oehmig in 1985. He thrust a fist pump that Tiger Woods could admire.
“I don’t react that way very often on the golf course,” Giles told the Chicago Tribune. “But at 66, quite honestly, I didn’t think I had a snowball’s chance in hell of winning this tournament. These 55-year-olds, they’re kids.”
Now 81, Giles says his competitive days are behind him since he “retired” after the 2019 U.S. Senior Am, calling himself “lazy as hell” and unmotivated by the lure of super-senior flights (though he did win the over-65 medal at the 2011 Senior British Amateur at Royal Portrush). “That’s one of the drawbacks of having been lucky enough to play decently when I was younger. There’s not much sense of accomplishment if you beat a bunch of 75-year-old people,” he said. “I just decided my golf would be fun and pretty much just what I guess you’d call social golf.”
Giles played in nine Masters (making three cuts) and two U.S. Opens (making both cuts) and won low-amateur medals in each of them as well as the U.S. Senior Open. The Masters – which came of age on TV with Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus in Giles’ formative years – was probably his biggest competitive motivation.
“My biggest goal, and the only goal I remember having early on, was I wanted to play in the Masters,” Giles said. “I’ve been going to the Masters since … I think I’m probably getting close to 60 Masters since 1961 when I got out of high school. It just was always sort of my goal. And when I finished second at the U.S. Amateur in ’67, I remember going down the 70th hole and looking at a leaderboard in Colorado Springs, and I was two shots out of the lead … and the next guy was about five shots out of the lead. My first thought was, ‘I’m in the Masters. I can go in the tank from here and still get in the Masters.’
“The first year was like going to Disneyland.”
“Back then, they had some of these old guys in red coats who would announce what was going on,” he said. “I’ll never forget, because I knew the man – Leo Beckmann, a pro from down in south Georgia – and on 10 tee he says, ‘leading the Masters at this time, a young amateur from Virginia.’ My throat got a little dry.” – Vinny Giles
In April 1968, he was so eager to get to Augusta National that he drove down the Thursday before and played golf all day long for a week before the tournament started. “Must have played the par-3 course 50 times,” he said. “It was like going to camp or a really fancy family vacation.”
His enthusiasm carried into the tournament, when playing with Doug Ford in the first round he birdied 1, 5 and 8 to make the turn in 3-under.
“Back then, they had some of these old guys in red coats who would announce what was going on,” he said. “I’ll never forget, because I knew the man – Leo Beckmann, a pro from down in south Georgia – and on 10 tee he says, ‘leading the Masters at this time, a young amateur from Virginia.’ My throat got a little dry. Front nine, I hit six greens and shot 3-under. Back nine, I hit eight greens and a fringe and shot 2-over. But that was just so much fun.”
The fun ended when Giles had a front-row seat to one of the most devastating endings in Masters history: Roberto de Vicenzo signing for a higher score than he shot and missing out on a playoff with Bob Goalby. Giles, as low amateur, was seated in the Butler Cabin beside both of them in the most painfully awkward moment in the history of that post-tournament television tradition. “I don’t think I’ll forget any of the shots, ever,” Giles said. Most etched in his memory are those moments sitting next to a crushed de Vicenzo and equally emotional Goalby as the reality of what happened settled on them all.
“I’m sitting in Butler Cabin just having the time of my life, and the next thing you know it’s just deathly silent,” he said. “Just doom and gloom. It was just so sad.
“I was sitting right there when [de Vicenzo] came in, and he was totally shell-shocked. He muttered under his breath. His first comment was, ‘What a stupid I am.’ And his next comment, I don’t think many people heard, he said something to the effect of ‘but in my country, what you shoot is what you get.’ How in God’s name Tommy Aaron could have put a 4 down [instead of birdie 3] on the 71st hole, I never will know.”
Fifty-six years later, Giles is looking forward to the mid-amateurs experiencing Kinloch, which he shares co-design credits with architect Lester George. Built around a 70-acre lake that was lying in the middle of dense woods, Kinloch was named the best new course in America when it opened in 2001 and has consistently ranked in the top 100 for 20 years.
Giles is justifiably proud of it, especially its welcoming reputation for exuding Southern hospitality to members and guests. The Mid-Amateur is the second USGA championship at Kinloch (after the 2011 U.S. Senior Amateur).
“It’s a great match-play course,” Giles said of a layout rich with risk-reward chances, drivable par-4s, well-placed hazards, wide fairways and green speeds that rival those at Augusta and Oakmont when firm.
What’s next? “I don’t think we’ve got enough to handle a U.S. Amateur,” Giles said of Kinloch’s future championship aspirations. “I think it’d be a good venue for a [U.S.] Senior Open. And way down the road, after I’m long gone, I would love a Walker Cup. Kinloch could do a great job of making people feel very, very comfortable for an event like … if they wear out their welcome at all those old, old prestigious clubs like Seminole, Cypress, Pine Valley, Oakmont and the Merions of the world.”