In Charge Of The Trumpet and The Champagne
Doc Giffin, press secretary of the PGA Tour, later went to being Arnold Palmer's right hand man.
As much fun as the PNC Championship, with it’s father and son setup, is to watch, we’re still waiting for the Sentry Tournament of Champions to cover the historical aspects of the tour stop each week. This week, we’re turning our attention to one of the great men who helped form what the PGA Tour became. He also became indispensable to one of it’s biggest stars.
When I first started research for my book, Uncorked, The Life and Times of Champagne Tony Lema, I sent a letter to Arnold Palmer to ask for an intervew. I received an email from Doc Giffin, Palmer’s right hand man. He explained that Palmer only granted interviews to authors who had a publishing contract in hand.
Quite understandable for a celebrity as busy as Palmer was, but an impossibly high bar for a first-time author. To my surprise and delight, Giffin also made me an offer in that email; he would be glad to be interviewed about Tony Lema as he served as the PGA Tour press secretary during Tony’s time on tour. We quickly made a time to conduct a telephone interview and Giffin was very generous with his time. Learn more about Doc Giffin in this week’s story.
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Doc Giffin, PGA Press Secretary, Father of “Champagne Tony Lema” Moniker
After being discharged from the Army following the Korean War, Doc Giffin was hired as the junior golf reporter for the now defunct Pittsburgh Press. The senior writer? The one and only Bob Drum, the first writer to see the promise of a young Latrobe lad by the name of Arnold Palmer. Drum introduced Giffin to Palmer in 1959.
“Drum picked up on Palmer when he was a freshman or sophomore in high school,” Giffin explained in a 2015 interview with Golf Digest.
Drum was the writer who told Arnold Palmer he had no chance to win as the two were at lunch between the third and final round of the 1960 U.S. Open. This infuriated Palmer who set out to prove Drum wrong, drove the first green at Cherry Hills and was off on a Palmer charge to victory.
Drum also greased the wheels for the PGA to offer Giffin the job as press secretary for the tour before the 1962 season. Drum told the 33-year-old Giffin, “Doctor, if you don’t take that job, I’ll never speak to you again.”
Giffin did take the job and became a one-man press operation that arranged post round interviews and kept stats by hand. In the fall of that first year, at the Orange County Open in Costa Mesa, California, Giffin observed the small press contingent who was interviewing the third-round leader, Tony Lema. The “press room” was a small card room in the men’s locker room and there was a cooler with beer for refreshments. Near the end of the session, Lema reached down into the cooler and extracted a beer.
“If I win tomorrow, men,” Lema began, according to Giffin, “we’re having champagne in here.”
Giffin knew a good press opportunity when he heard one. “I went and hunted up the club manager to make sure we were prepared,” Giffin recalled. The next day, Lema beat Bob Rosburg in a playoff and good to his word, and Doc’s help, the champagne poured for the reporters.
“After a couple of the guys wrote it that way, ‘Champagne Tony’ was off and running.”
In a similar vein, Giffin always made sure a trumpet was handy whenever Lionel Hebert was in contention. Hebert liked to jam in his spare time and would celebrate a win on the tour by playing a bit at the awards ceremony.
Giffin reminisced, “At Memphis in ’62, Hebert, Gene Littler and Gary Player played off. Lionel birdied the first extra hole to win, and at the awards ceremony, just before he put the horn to his lips, he turned to Gene and said, ‘Hey, Lit, do you want me to play some blues?’ Gene laughed. They could get away with things like that in those days because they loved each other”
Doc Giffin (l) and Jack Nicklaus (r) in the press room at The Masters
Check out the bonus fact below for more about Doc Giffin.
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Tour Backspin Quiz | Trivia
Which course has hosted the most U.S. Opens (same 18 hole course)? Name the winners.
Answers below
Bonus Story
In 1966, Arnold Palmer was nearly overwhelmed by all the off-course business activities that he was involved in, as well as his tournament golf schedule. While Mark McCormick handled his business opportunities, Palmer needed an assistant to help him keep track of his busy schedule. He offered the job to Doc Giffin.
Giffin accepted the job which began at the conclusion of the 1966 PGA Championship in Akron at the Firestone Golf and Country Club. His first duty as Palmer’s assistant was to call and inform his boss of the small plane crash that killed Tony Lema and his wife, Betty as they were flying from Akron to a suburban airport outside of Chicago.
Giffin served as Palmer’s assistant for over half a century. The now 92-year-old Giffin is still involved with the game helping to organize the historical artifacts of Arnold Palmer. He also writes for the annual World of Professional Golf Year Book which was started by Mark McCormick in 1966
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Shortly before he was killed in a small plane crash, Tony Lema sat down with Howard Cosell for an in-depth interview. Check it out HERE.
Blind Shot
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Quiz Answer: Oakmont Country Club, Plum, PA. Winners: Tommy Armour (1927), Sam Parks, Jr. (1935), Ben Hogan (1953), Jack Nicklaus (1962), Johnny Miller (1973), Larry Nelson (1983), Ernie Els (1994), Angel Cabrera (2007), Dustin Johnson (2016).
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