Close your eyes, picture this: Vinny Giles is taking it easy. He is sitting peacefully in a rocking chair on his front porch holding a sign that says, “Gone golfin” except that “golfin” is crossed out and replaced by “fishin” and a few other Southern proverbs.
Believe it or not, Giles is talking vigorously about retirement. In effect, the colorful 76-year-old announced his retirement from competitive golf during the recent 2019 U.S. Senior Amateur Championship, which concluded Thursday at Old Chatham Golf Club in Durham, N.C.
“I’ve had a lot of fun,” he said, looking back. “I don’t enjoy playing golf four, five or six days in a row anymore. I don’t enjoy getting up at 5 in the morning so I can stretch and try to loosen up enough to play golf, like I did twice this week.
“I love to compete. I’ve really had enough to be honest with you. I’ve been doing this for 60 years. That’s long enough. It’s absolutely enough. I can still hit a golf ball 250 or 260 yards with a driver, and I credit flexibility exercises for that. But I’m not strong. I don’t lift weights. I don’t do anything other than try to stay as flexible as possible.”
Without much doubt, Giles is the best 76-year-old amateur golfer on the planet, despite the fact that his putting stroke belongs in an old-folks home.
Giles has been an inspiration to many golfers around the world, primarily because he knows how to play golf and win. Always has. In a competitive golf career spanning more than five decades, he kept winning and winning. In 2009, at the age of 66, he embraced one of his unfulfilled dreams by capturing the U.S. Senior Amateur Championship.
Ten years later, last week, he lost a playoff for one of the coveted match-play spots in the U.S. Senior Amateur. He was truly disappointed, which reveals a lot about Giles and the spirit that motivates him.
In that 2019 U.S. Senior Amateur qualifier, Giles matched his age twice with consecutive rounds of 76. It wasn’t good enough to earn a match-play spot, nor was it enough to satisfy Giles and his personal goals.
“In the playoff, “ he said, “I hit a bad first shot, a bad second shot, a bad third shot, and a bad putt. I made bogey, and that was that.”
Now you know why Giles is widely considered one of the most straightforward golfers ever to play the game. His conversation is largely unfiltered.
“I missed two putts that were so short that Ray Charles could have made them,” he said. “I don’t mean any disrespect by that. It’s just the reality of my current golf game is that I can’t putt worth a darn. I feel like I’ve tried every putter ever made. Nothing works. It’s very discouraging.”
Giles rarely holds anything back. He revealed that his wife of 53 years, Key, would be happy if he maintained an active tournament schedule.
Say hello to Vinny in retirement, say goodbye to the putting yips that have bedeviled him for countless years.
Giles is an expert at making announcements and proclamations. He’s done it throughout his career in golf, so his measured retirement shouldn’t surprise anyone.
Here is the Giles timetable: He says he will continue to play a few tournaments close to his Virginia home. He will participate in national events if asked by the USGA. This could occur if he is rewarded with an honorary spot in a field.
Giles rarely holds anything back. He revealed that his wife of 53 years, Key, would be happy if he maintained an active tournament schedule.
“She and I have a slight disagreement about this,” Giles said, “and of course I absolutely value her opinion.”
Where did the names Vinny and Key come from? Simple enough. Vinny is Marvin M. Giles III. His nickname started out as Vin, the last part of his father’s name, and expanded to Vinny. Key is a Southern name used liberally in her family. Their Virginia roots go deep.
In essence, Key and Vinny are golfing royalty, and their status in golf circles is mostly undisputed. This is the greatest possible recognition for a family that holds amateur status in the highest regard.
Here are some highlights of Vinny’s golf career and legal career:
Three-time All-American at the University of Georgia … graduated from the University of Virginia Law School … finished second in the U.S. Amateur for three straight years in the stroke-play era (1967-1969) … won the U.S. Amateur in 1972, also won the British Amateur in 1975 … a member of four Walker Cup teams, captain in 1993 … won the U.S. Senior Amateur in 2009 … played in 11 professional majors.
Giles and his business sidekick, Vernon Spratley, started Pros Inc., a management firm, in 1973. They represented players such as Tom Kite, Davis Love III, Lanny Wadkins, Beth Daniel, and Meg Mallon.
“It was all about friendship,” Giles said. “We wanted to be around interesting people.”
Pros Inc. was sold to another management company, Octagon, in 1999. In 2011, Pros Inc. was briefly restarted, although the high volume of work convinced Giles that it wasn’t a smart thing to do. Pros Inc. quietly went away.
“I can’t tell you how much I respect Vinny Giles,” said Ernie Els, who was set to become the cornerstone of the new Pros Inc. “He went out of his way to help me.” After deciding to pull the plug on Pros Inc., Giles made sure that Els was comfortable and secure with management agency IMG.
Giles, meanwhile, still represents players-turned announcers Gary Koch (NBC) and Lanny Wadkins (Golf Channel). “I charge them enough to pay for phone calls,” he joked. “They are my friends.”
Giles is a smart man who has opinions on many of the current issues in golf – anti-anchoring, for example.
“My feeling, all along, has been that the (anti-anchoring) rule for golfers at the elite player level is 100 percent correct. I believe the nerves are an integral part of the game. If you can’t control your nerves, then too bad. You’re going to have to deal with it.
“At the amateur level, though, you ought to be able to putt with anything you want. We need people to play the game. Ninety-eight percent of the (amateurs) out there don’t care what implement they use, as long as they’re comfortable rolling the ball.”
Giles is often labeled as the best modern example of a lifelong amateur. Technically this may not be true. In the early 1970s, a sales rep for Maxfli golf balls left several dozen Black Max balls in a locker that was designated for Giles. These balls were seen by a USGA executive committee member who filed an official report. As a result, Giles was suspended for two months (a major suspension would have been two years). He never played the balls in a tournament and ultimately gave them to his father and godfather.
“I was classified as an applicant for reinstatement,” Giles recalled. “I was not a pro, and I was not an amateur.”
Another incident occurred in the crazy 1970s when Giles was playing for the Eisenhower Trophy in the World Amateur Team Championship. It was Buenos Aires, 1973. As Giles returned from shopping, explosions rocked his hotel. Several people were killed, none of them golfers.
“Today it would be called a terrorist attack,” Giles said. “This isn’t funny, but I have told the story before. When the bombs went off, Ben Crenshaw was putting on the carpet on the sixth floor of the hotel. I remarked that it was the only time in his life that he ever yipped a putt.”
Giles doesn’t count the number of times he has shot his age, although one round in particular made an impression on several observers. It involved Tom O’Toole, the extremely articulate former president of the USGA. O’Toole is never at a loss for words, or so it seems.
Giles was 71 at the time. He shot a 2-under-par 70 in the first round of qualifying at the U.S. Senior Amateur. After Giles achieved this feat on a difficult golf course, Big Canyon Country Club in Newport Beach, Calif., O’Toole was left to stammer like a teenager.
“Well … it’s, well … awesome,” said O’Toole, choosing a nondescript adjective from the newfangled vocabulary.
It was a memorable achievement. For O’Toole to use the word awesome was perhaps akin to Ben Hogan saying to Byron Nelson, “Lord Byron, that was an awesome round of golf you just played.”
“This is absolutely the biggest thrill of my golfing career,” said Larry Silvestri of Lincolnshire, Ill., who not only played with Giles for two days but also shared a cart with him. “I’ll be talking about this for a long time.”
In or out of retirement, Vinny Giles will be the object of golf conversation for an equally long time. He is the undisputed champion of modern amateur golf.