Twenty-five years ago, as spring reluctantly returned to northern New England, I received a surprising phone call from a golf-writing legend.
“Mr. Dodson,” said a cultured Yankee voice. “My name is Herbert Warren Wind. Do you have a few moments to talk?”
It was middle March and snowing yet again in Maine. I was sitting at my office desk over the garage, remembering my Scottish mother-in-law’s stern admonition that March is a winter month in Maine. The last thing I expected was a phone call from the dean of America’s golf writers.
“Why … yes sir, I do,” I said, sitting up a bit straighter. “What a pleasure to speak with you.”
“Please call me Herb,” he said. “All my friends do.”
He’d recently read A Golfer’s Life and Final Rounds, he explained, and felt compelled to get in touch to say how much he enjoyed both books.
The former was the result of my three-year collaboration with Arnold Palmer on his memoirs; the latter a little memoir that told the story of taking my dying father back to England and Scotland where he’d learned to play golf as an American airman stationed on the Lancaster coast near Lytham & St Annes Golf Club shortly before D-Day. At that moment, Arnold’s book was climbing the New York Times bestseller list and Final Rounds had recently topped 100,000 copies in sales and been honored as a “book of the year” by a second major golf industry organization.
“I found things in both of your books I’d like to discuss with you. Seems we share a keen admiration for Arnold Palmer and golf in Great Britain,” Wind said.
Before I could reply, he continued, “I’m wondering if you might be interested in having lunch with me here some afternoon at my place here northwest of Boston?”
I said it would be my genuine pleasure.
“Excellent,” said Wind (whom I would never call “Herb”). “How about 1 p.m. on Patriots’ Day? That’s the third Monday in April. The Boston Marathon is run that day and the Red Sox traditionally open their season. Hope that doesn’t conflict with your plans that day.”
I have a peculiar little ritual I do to celebrate the return of the Masters and the golf season in Maine.
I assured him there was no conflict, pointing out that I was simply in the annual grip of “Masters Fever” awaiting the last of snow and ice in my yard that typically occurred around the Masters time.
“I know what you mean. Is there a cure for that?” he asked.
“I have a peculiar little ritual I do to celebrate the return of the Masters and the golf season in Maine.”
“Oh, I shall look forward to hearing about that,” he said with a gentle chuckle, then provided the address of the retirement community where he lived in Bedford, Massachusetts, wished me well, and politely rang off.
I sat for a moment watching the snow come down out my office window, marveling at how some of the greatest things in life are moments one never sees coming – such as spring in Maine and a surprise phone call from a living legend.
• • •
Herbert Warren Wind, of course, was far more than just an “American Sportswriter noted for his writings on golf,” as Wikipedia modestly sums up the patron saint of American golf writing. I hardly needed an Internet encyclopedia to remind me of Wind’s incredible influence on my work and that of many other golf scribblers because I grew up reading many of his articles in Sports Illustrated and The New Yorker magazine, and most if not all of his earlier golf pieces in four collected editions.
One reason I became a student of the history of golf in Britain and America, in fact, was due to vintage editions of Wind’s incomparable The Story of American Golf (1948) and The Complete Golfer, both of which I got my hands on early in life. There were at least two more indispensable Wind classics on my bookshelf, beginning with a hopelessly dog-eared copy of The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, the 1957 best-selling instruction book that he wrote with Ben Hogan, and Following Through (1985), a collection of the master’s pieces that spanned from 1962 to the 1980s, many of which appeared in “The Sporting Scene” department of The New Yorker magazine.
Two early influences from the pen of Herbert Warren Wind
The nickname “Amen Corner” was born in a 1958 Sports Illustrated article by Wind in which he wrote: “On the afternoon before the recent start of the Masters golf tournament, a wonderfully evocative ceremony took place at the farthest reach of the Augusta National course – down in Amen Corner where Rae’s Creek intersects the 13th fairway near the tee, then parallels the front edge of the green on the short 12th and finally swirls alongside the 11th green.” His inspiration for the name, he later confided, came from a song by Mildred Bailey and the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra called “Shoutin’ in that Amen Corner.” Historically, records show, it’s the stretch of holes that invariably impacts the outcome of the Masters, where contender hopes are either elevated by brilliant play or shattered by a single shot.
In a nutshell, Herb Wind was the writer I emulated when I began writing about the game for Golf Magazine and later as golf correspondent for Departures Magazine. Thus, being summoned to lunch by the man who named Augusta National’s “Amen Corner” and personally fueled my passion for the game’s history and traditions was tantamount to being invited to sit by the Aegean Sea and nibble grapes with the poet Homer.
• • •
As instructed, I arrived at Wind’s attractive retirement village at the stroke of 1 p.m. and was greeted at the door by a dapper elderly gentleman wearing a handsome green tweed sports jacket and a Yale University golf tie.
In his honor, I was wearing the same collegiate necktie. We shook hands and he wondered whether I was a Yale alum.
As he led me to a sun-splashed private dining room overlooking a garden, I explained that I was a product of the North Carolina university system but had recently spoken to Yale University’s annual intercollegiate invitational the previous autumn at the invitation of the school’s longtime golf coach, who not only gave me the Yale necktie as a thank-you, but invited me to play the university’s famous golf course, a Seth Raynor jewel. This was the first time I’d had a chance to wear the tie.
After we ordered lunch – Wind ordered a bowl of cream of celery soup and a small fruit salad; his visitor a simple club sandwich and chips – we were suddenly off and running on a host of topics near and dear to us: our shared love affair with Arnold and Winnie Palmer, golf in Scotland, collegiate ice hockey, his friendship with Glenna Collett Vare, and his deep affection for his hometown of Brockton, Massachusetts, and the golf course where he’d learned to play the game, historic Thorny Lea Golf Club.
He seemed pleased to learn that I’d recently done a club talk at Thorny Lea, and earlier in my career, as former senior writer for Yankee Magazine, I’d profiled both the sizable sports heritage of Brockton and Dame Glenna Vare. Back home in Maine, meanwhile, two of my weekly golf pals were Bowdoin College ice hockey coach Terry Meagher and his boss, athletic director Sidney Watson, two college ice hockey legends. Naturally, Wind knew them both.
Out of respect for my host, I didn’t take notes, but at one point he casually wondered which of golf’s major championships gave the most pleasure to watch. I told him that I considered the annual telecast of the Masters every April the start of official springtime in the far frozen North, celebrated by a silly little ritual I performed every year in my front yard on Masters Sunday if I wasn’t fortunate enough to be working in Augusta, Georgia, that week.
“Oh, right. The cure for Masters fever. I’d like to hear about that,” urged my smiling host.
Though snow on Masters Sunday wasn’t unheard-of in mid-coast Maine, I explained, I carried a single golf ball and my sand wedge to the largest patch of grass in my front yard, dropped that ball and took dead aim at my house. With one cold swing, I fired the ball directly over my house – officially “opening” my golf season in Maine. It was my version of a clutch shot in Amen Corner.
Wind clearly was amused. He wondered whether I’d ever missed and hit my house.
“Not yet. Thankfully.”
As he walked me to the front door, Wind asked about my current writing project. I mentioned that I’d recently been hired to write an authorized biography of Ben Hogan by his family. The research was just getting underway.
As for my favorite major, I told him, the Open Championship had long held my greatest interest, in part because it was the birthplace of the game and that links courses were such a joy and adventure to play. But also, on a more personal level, the Open reminded me of my late father, who learned to play golf in England – a love of the game he’d passed along to me.
“Opti the Mystic,” Wind said as he ate his soup with care. “He sounded like a special fellow.”
“Yes, sir. I miss him.”
Finally, I told him about recently spending an afternoon with Gene Sarazen up at Lake Sunapee Country Club in New Hampshire, and how The Squire told me the wonderful story about winning the Open Championship at Prince’s in 1938 thanks to an elderly caddie named Daniels, an account of which Wind later told in Sarazen’s voice. It seemed to please him when I mentioned that it was my favorite golf story of all time.
As he walked me to the front door, Wind asked about my current writing project. I mentioned that I’d recently been hired to write an authorized biography of Ben Hogan by his family. The research was just getting underway.
“How exciting,” he said. “You know, I spent a great deal of time with Mr. Hogan.”
I told him that I knew this and wondered whether I might come back sometime and have a chat with him about the “Wee Ice Mon,” as the Brits fondly called Ben Hogan.
Wind said it would be his pleasure.
“Why don’t we do this again next year on Patriots’ Day?” he proposed.
• • •
Exactly one year later, we found ourselves seated at the same table in the sunlit private dining room. Both of us were wearing our Yale golf team neckties. Wind was having cream of celery soup – again – and I was having an egg salad sandwich.
This time, with his approval, I brought along my mini-cassette recorder, and we chatted for an hour about Hogan, Sam Snead and Byron Nelson, the three great players of America’s mid-century. My host seemed a bit quieter, a little slower to speak. But he shared some lovely memories of the three, some of which I’d read about, others that were new to me.
Among other gems, he told me about meeting Hogan out west several times and once calling on the game’s most elusive superstar at his new one-bedroom home in Fort Worth, Texas. “I always found him a much warmer, thoughtful man than the public appreciated. There were several things that surprised me about Ben.” He wondered whether I’d discovered the same.
I mentioned that Hogan’s family and closest friends had provided me complete access to his personal scrapbooks and letters and oldest friends, all of whom told me surprising things about Bantam Ben that humanized him, beginning with the fact that he often gave money to strangers in trouble that he read about in the newspaper; and that he was a semi-regular at the Congregational church in Fort Worth, to which he gave a million bucks near the end of his life.
We also talked about his early friendship with Byron Nelson and his longtime rivalry with Sam Snead, whom I knew quite well – and how the three of them unquestionably revived golf from the doldrums following the Great Depression and World War II.
He pointed out to me that any time the professional game had at least three superstars contending week after week for championships, season after season, the game of golf invariably prospered. He gave Britain’s Great Triumvirate – Harry Vardon, J.H. Taylor and Scotland’s James Braid – as a prime example.
“Bob Jones, Gene Sarazen and Walter Hagen were a triumvirate of sorts, too,” he allowed, “though only two were professional players.”
He walked me to the door and thanked me for coming, and wondered whether I might be planning to do my annual Masters ritual. With an embarrassed laugh, I conceded that my silly spring ritual had reached its end with a bang of sorts.
He sipped his hot tea and added, “Considering the impact they had on reviving golf in this country after depression and war, I’ve always thought of Ben, Byron and Sam as our American Triumvirate.”
He walked me to the door and thanked me for coming, and wondered whether I might be planning to do my annual Masters ritual.
With an embarrassed laugh, I conceded that my silly spring ritual had reached its end with a bang of sorts.
Following our lunch the previous March, my wife and I visited her Scottish mother for Masters weekend at her farm in northern Maine. Before the start of the telecast, I took a ball and my wedge to the far side of a small (still frozen) pond in front of Kathleen Bennie’s house, dropped it on the turf and took a mighty swing.
For an instant, I was sure the shot would easily clear the old farmhouse roof. Instead, it plummeted precipitously and went straight through the living room window where Mum – as we called her – was sitting in her favorite rocking chair reading her favorite British author.
When I raced into the house babbling apologies, I found Mum sitting perfectly still with shattered glass on the floor around her. She simply pointed to her teacup and instructed me to come have a look.
The ball was sitting in her teacup. With the faintest of smiles, she said: “James, dear, I don’t think you could do that shot again if your very life depended on it.”
Herb Wind loved this story. “She sounds like a marvelous woman. Did she place the ball in the cup?”
“She refuses to say. But she still watches the Masters and the Open every year with me.”
• • •
One year later, I received a call from an administrator from Herb Wind’s retirement facility, asking if I could come and have lunch with Wind. She warned me that he was not doing as well lately but wished to see me.
It was Patriots’ Day again, and I was delighted to see my literary hero, though he was dramatically quieter. A friend of mine who knows this insidious disease all too well describes it as – “every year, the boat drifts a little further from the shore.”
Wind takes in the 1983 U.S. Open at Oakmont (left), 30 years before Dodson accepts the USGA Herbert Warren Wind Award in 2013. (USGA photos)
As Wind slowly ate his cream of celery soup, I did most of the talking, filling him in on the progress of the Hogan biography – approaching its end – and mentioned that our previous visits had given me a nice follow-up idea – a book about the seismic impact Snead, Hogan and Nelson collectively made on golf. I planned to call it American Triumvirate.
He seemed pleased to learn this. At the front door, we shook hands. He thanked me for coming.
I thanked him for inviting me back, fighting a lump in my throat.
Three years later, Ben Hogan – An American Life won the USGA’s newly renamed Herbert Warren Wind Award.
Eight years after that, American Triumvirate also won the Wind Award.
This is why the coming of spring and Masters weekend always holds extra meaning for me.