The PGA TOUR is off for another week before resuming action at the Procore Championship in Napa, CA. To fill the time, the Tour Backspin journey through the past heads back to late October in 1983 for a wild story. President Reagan had a tough year and wanted to get away for the weekend to relax and he, and his entourage, headed down to Georgia for some golf at Augusta National. Turned out, it wasn’t so relaxing. Scroll down to learn more about this story that has almost been lost to history.
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He Just Wanted To Talk To The President
By the first week of October 1983, well into the third year of his first term, President Ronald Reagan needed a short rest. It had been a busy year and included major events such as the “Evil Empire” speech and the “Star Wars” speech in March, the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut that killed 32 in April, and the Soviet attack on the Korean Airliner flight 007 that killed 269 in September.
Then there was the saga of James Watt, the controversial Secretary of the Interior. After nearly three years of controversy including banning The Beach Boys and The Grass Roots from the Independence Day concerts at the National Mall, Watt addressed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in September. There, he mocked affirmative action when describing a department coal leasing panel saying, “I have a black, a woman, two Jews, and a cripple.” The ensuing uproar from his inappropriate remarks grew to a crescendo. He announced his resignation on October 9th at a press conference.
Reagan wanted to get away for a few days and relax after the eventful year and so the President, and his wife Nancy, boarded Air Force One along with the Secretary of State, George Shultz, and his wife, Treasury Secretary Donald Regan and his wife, New Jersey banker Nicholas Brady and his wife, and a veritable army of aids, for a trip to Augusta Georgia. The party arrived at Bush Field in Augusta late on Friday and would be returning to Washington on Sunday evening.
The trip was not publicized, and the President made the trip at the invitation of Schultz who was a member of Augusta National. The party stayed on the grounds of Augusta National in the cottage that was built for President Eisenhower.
The plans for the weekend included a round of golf on Saturday, with a group of White House officials, including Lanny Wiles, a 30-year-old advance man responsible for making sure presidential trips went smoothly. Wiles and Bud McFarlane, the national security advisor, were teeing off in the group in front of Schultz and the President. Wiles had worked for the campaign in 1980 and he was taking some time off from his job running a Bojangle’s franchise in Jacksonville to help his old boss. In return, he was promised a round of golf on the famed course.
McFarlane was called away for a phone call, most likely about the invasion of Grenada that would occur in three days. The group stepped aside to wait for McFarlane to return and let the President’s group tee off. During the long wait for McFarlane to return, Wiles decided to follow the President’s group and watch them play.
Reagan was a very infrequent player, usually just once a year on New Year’s Day. Wiles watched the President play the front nine before the group retired for lunch. When they were ready to resume their round, Reagan sent Wiles for a light jacket before the group teed off on the 10th hole.
“Mitch, who got in there?”
Wiles got the jacket and then drove a golf cart, along with David Fischer, a personal aid to Reagan, to the 12th hole. There, they watched the president put two balls in the water before his third tee shot ended up short of Rae’s Creek. Wiles had had enough, he passed on the light jacket, and headed back to the pro shop to do some shopping. He asked Fischer if he wanted to accompany him and the two drove the cart to the pro shop.
Earlier that morning, a 45-year-old recently unemployed pipe fitter, Charles Harris, was driving with his sister Harriet past Augusta National and he noticed the increased police presence around Gate 3. His sister recognized a county deputy that was a family friend and as the car slowed down, she rolled down the window.
“Mitch, who got in there?” she asked the deputy.
“The president’s here to play golf,” Mitch, the deputy, replied.
As Reagan had been shot in an assassination attempt in Washington two years before, the level of security at Augusta National was extremely high.
“An ant can’t crawl in there,” Mitch told Harriet and Charles.
Harris was familiar with the grounds of Augusta National as he worked selling concessions at the Masters tournament while he was in high school. After talking with the deputy, Harris and his sister returned home. Harris’s life was spiraling downward with the loss of both his father and his job, a growing drinking problem, and his wife recently left him taking their three kids with her.
“Why don’t I just ride up there and see him?”
Harris poured himself a drink and sat down to watch some television. While he enjoyed his drink, he heard a news report about U.S. Steel laying off thousands of workers due to losing business to foreign-made steel. He poured himself another drink. He emphasized with all those workers losing their jobs and he got increasingly worked up. Finally, he remembered what his deputy friend, Mitch, had said about the president.
Harris thought he could make things better if he could just talk with the president. Now, Harris was not a bastion of good citizenship by any means. He had been involved in many a bar brawl and always carried a .38 pistol under his belt in the small of his back for protection.
After downing his second drink he thought to himself. “Why don’t I just ride up there and see him?”
He loaded up his 1974 Dodge pickup he called “Ol’ Blue” with a bottle of tequila, slipped the .38 under his belt and headed back to Gate 3 at Augusta National. Just before 2:15 in the afternoon, Harris stopped his truck in front of the gate, got out and locked the hubs on his front tires, putting it into four-wheel drive. He then got back into the cab, revved the motor, let out the clutch, and stomped on the gas. He hit the gate, but it didn’t give way. He backed the truck up and tried again, and this time, it sped through the locked gate and towards the pro shop.
He stopped the truck near where the club chauffeur, Roy Sullivan, was unloading a member’s clubs. He shoved the .38 into Sullivan’s back, put him in a headlock, and walked him to the pro shop pushing the startled Sullivan through the door.
The press reported that Reagan’s group was out on the course at the 16th hole when this happened, but Harris told the legendary writer, Dave Kindred of Golf Digest for an interview than ran in 2000, a different story. Harris sat down with Kindred years after he was released from prison and had found God. At that time, Harris insisted that the president was standing not far from the clubhouse.
“I never had any idea of shooting the president,” Harris told Kindred. “If I’d wanted to kill him, I’d driven up to him and done it. I just wanted to talk with him. I was protesting our government giving our jobs to foreign people.”
“If you look behind my seat in the truck, there’s a bottle of tequila. I’d be pleased if you drank it all.”
Harris entered the pro shop with Sullivan in a headlock and the .38 pointed at his back. He encountered Jim Armstrong, the general manager of the pro shop, Kris Hardy, a clerk at the pro shop, two young employees of Armstrong’s and the two White House staffers, Wiles and Fischer. Wiles was looking at a golf bag den caddie when he heard “Everyone in the back room.”
Wiles turned around to see Harris, dressed in a red Atlanta Falcons practice jersey, jeans held up by suspenders, and a Dixie ball cap. Fischer whispered to Wiles that it was a robbery, but Wiles knew better. He told Fischer to get rid of his radio as the gunman would know they were with the president if he saw it. He dropped his own radio into a bin of towels.
Harris forced the five hostages into a back room before he released Sullivan.
“If you look behind my seat in the truck, there’s a bottle of tequila,” Harris told Sullivan. “I’d be pleased if you drank it all.”
Sullivan rushed out of the pro shop to the waiting secret service agents.
“I want to see that son of a bitch on the golf course.”
Harris noticed Hardy in the quiet back room because Hardy was nervously tapping his foot.
“How old are you?” Harris asked Hardy.
“19,” Hardy, who was 23, lied.
“You’re too young to be in here,” Harris said and released the young man.
Harris then issued his only demand.
“I want to see that son of a bitch on the golf course,” Harris announced.
Fischer volunteered that he might be able to facilitate a conversation with the president for Harris. Harris let Fischer out to go find the president, and then eventually released the other pro shop employees one by one. Harris noticed through the window a helicopter lowering black clad commandos. It was now only Wiles and Harris in the quiet pro shop.
“This is the moment of truth. Raise your right hand. Have you had a drink of liquor today?”
Harris asked Wiles what he was doing in the pro shop that day. Wiles related to Adam Schupak of Golf Magazine in 2019 how he told Harris he had talked his way into the club to buy a shirt in the pro shop. Harris didn’t believe him, pushed him upside a wall, and pointed the .38 into Wiles’s eyes.
“This is the moment of truth,” Harris said to Wiles. “Raise your right hand. Have you had a drink of liquor today?”
Wiles, who could smell alcohol on the breath of Harris, responded by saying, “Charlie, if you count after midnight as today, then I sure have.”
“I just wanted to see if you were a drinking man,” Harris told Wiles. “Let’s see if we can find a bottle to drink.”
“Stand by for Rawhide.”
The two men looked around the shop for a hidden bottle of booze when the phone inside the pro shop rang and Harris answered.
“We ain’t playing no f**king golf here today,” Harris said before slamming the phone down.
Soon, the phone rang again, Harris answered it again, and it was the White House on the line. NBC News was monitoring the call and reported that the gunman simply hung up. They called a second time and Wiles answered the phone again.
“Stand by for Rawhide,” a barely audible voice said through the heavy static produced by a giant early model mobile phone. Rawhide was Reagan’s code name amongst the secret service. Wiles put Harris on the phone, and Reagan began talking.
“You know they’re going to come inside and kill us, don’t you?”
“This is the president of the United States. This is Ronald Reagan,” the president said into the mobile phone. “I understand you want to talk to me. If you are hearing me, won’t you tell me what you want?”
Harris thought the voice on the phone was recorded and hung up. The president called at least five times and finally Harris had enough and ripped the phone out of the wall and threw it across the pro shop. He then yelled out to the secret service saying he wanted to talk to the president face to face.
“You know they’re going to come inside and kill us, don’t you?” Harris said to Wiles.
“No one has to die here today,” Wiles replied. “My wife’s pregnant and due with our first baby in March, and I plan to be there. Tell me what you want, and I’ll make sure that’s what you get. No more, no less.”
Harris was getting more unhinged all the time and, in a rage, he kicked a restroom door open. Immediately, a scream could be heard. Louise Cook, the secretary at the club, and Dave Spencer, one of the head pros, had hidden in the bathroom when the incident began. They now emerged and Cook fainted upon seeing the gun Harris was holding. When she regained consciousness, Wiles helped her crawl out and escape from the pro shop.
The three men now sat waiting for what would happen next. One of them turned on the television set in the shop and they watched the Tennessee-Georgia Tech football game. The game was interrupted with news coverage of the event and footage showing Reagan leaving in a black limousine with an open convertible trailing closely behind. The convertable was loaded with secret service agents toting Uzis on their hips. As the limousine exited onto Washington Road, Reagan waved at the assembled crowd that had gathered. Unbeknownst to Harris, the limousine drove a short distance down Washington Road and then reentered the Augusta National grounds through a different gate and drove the president and Schultz to the Eisenhower Cabin.
Harris changed his demeanor with the departure of the president.
“He’s starting to digest what’s going on,” Wiles told Schupak.
“We’re going to be here a long time,” Harris said to Wiles. “We may need some food.”
Wiles jokingly suggested that what they needed was a strong drink, and suggested that the head pro, Spencer, could get a bottle of Jack Daniels for them and Harris got onboard with this plan immediately.
“I never saw so many guns pointed at me.”
It looked like Spencer would be the next hostage to be freed, but he blew his chance when he asked if he could have a white wine instead of Jack Daniels. This did not please Harris and he told Spencer to sit down.
“Lanny (Wiles) is my friend. He’ll come back,” Harris explained to Spencer. He took Wiles to the front door, put his .38 in Wiles ribcage and opened the door.
“I never saw so many guns pointed at me,” Wiles recalled to Schupak years later.
“Okay, Harris, give it up, it’s all over,” an agent yelled.
“Do I have to kill this boy right now?” Harris responded.
Wiles looked Harris in the eye and said, “Do you want a drink of liquor, or not?”
Harris pushed him out through the door and then slammed it shut. Once outside, Wiles sketched a diagram of the pro shop for the secret service and pinpointed Spencer’s location so he would not become collateral damage from the sharpshooters. A sheriff contacted Harris with a last ditch effort to negotiate a peaceful outcome. Harris demanded to speak to Wiles who volunteered to go back into the shop.
“That was pretty stupid, I’ll admit it,” Wiles later said. “But they wouldn’t let me. I told Charlie (Harris) they would let him have food but no alcohol.”
Back in the shop, Spencer and Harris waited for the food to be delivered. When the food arrived, Harris had Spencer open the door to retrieve it. Spencer took this opportunity to escape by diving out the door to safety. The police had Harris’s mother and estranged wife delivered to the scene, but they couldn’t talk Harris into giving himself up.
But, eventually, Harris knew the jig was up.
“With all due respect, Mr. President, I’m not going to let my wife touch my underwear when I get home.”
“With Reagan gone, I put my gun down and figured I might as well take my punishment,” Harris told Kindred.
Secret Service agents treated Harris courteously. They did pick up his .38 and said it never would have fired.
“Bouncin’ at clubs, I’d done hit so many people with that trigger guard, it was bent in,” Harris told Kindred in 2023. “I picked the gun back up and shot through a window to show ’em.”
That shot was the only one fired that day and the hole it left in the pro shop window became a showpiece of Augusta National tours for years. The authorities cuffed him before taking Harris to the county jail. The whole standoff took two hours.
All the hostages were taken to the Eisenhower Cabin where they met with the president and Mrs. Reagan.
“Nancy Reagan gave me a big hug and told me she was sorry,” Kris Hardy told Schupak. “It was kind of cool. That’s the last time I shook hands with a president.”
Reagan asked Wiles if he had been scared during the incident.
“With all due respect, Mr. President, I’m not going to let my wife touch my underwear when I get home,” Wiles joked.
It wasn’t until after midnight that Wiles would get that stiff drink made with Jack Daniels. He was enjoying it at the bar at his hotel and was still overwhelmed with the role he played in what he thought was the biggest news story of the day. He was wrong. His thoughts were interrupted when he was paged by David Fischer, the aid to President Reagan.
“He told me to go to my room and turn on the TV,” Wiles says.
He then learned that the hostage story at Augusta had been replaced as the top news story by the reports that 241 American servicemen and women were killed by a suicide bomber who drove a truck load of explosives into their barracks in Beirut. The president’s party evacuated the Eisenhower Cabin in the dark during a driving rainstorm. Wile’s assisted in the evacuation helping Nancy Reagan by carrying her over a large mud puddle. (“Ruined my damn shoes,” he told Schupak).
The United States sent military forces, along with some Caribbean allies, into the island country of Grenada two days after the president returned to the White House from his trip to Augusta.
Looking for just a little bit of downtime with a weekend at Augusta National, President Ronald Reagan found little relaxation as events, both local and international, intruded demanding his attention. The siege on Augusta, bumped from the headlines by a major act of terrorism, and an invasion by U.S. troops, is all but forgotten today when it comes to the challenging year that President Reagan had in 1983.
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WHAT HOLE IS IT?
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Bonus Story
Charles Harris Goes to Jail After Hostage Stand-Off
Charles Harris was arrested at Augusta National following his abducting hostages and laying siege to the pro shop. On January 30, 1984, Harris pleaded guilty to kidnapping the chauffer, false imprisonment of the two White House staffers and the pro shop employees, and criminal damage in the second degree. No federal charges were ever filed after the federal government requested that all federal charges be dismissed.
He was sentenced to 10 years in a Georgia state prison and was paroled in 1987 having served three and half years. Judge Albert Pickett called Harris a reformed man.
“This is one of those rare cases in which the probationer is worthy of early release from his sentence,” Judge Pickett said in his ruling.
Harris could thank a guard at the prison who gave him a bible for turning around his life so that he could be paroled.
Once paroled, Harris, reunited with his wife, stopped drinking and served as a Sunday school teacher and a leader of his Methodist church. He died of a heart attack at the age of 68 in 2007.
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Hal Sutton captured the money winning title and also was named Player of the Year having secured the most points in the complicated system used during this era.
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