I used an excerpt from my book, Uncorked, The Life and Times of Champagne Tony Lema for the main story this week due to the short holiday week. I also told the Bonus Story in the book. Hopefully, it will make for quick reading so you can get back to enjoying food, football, and family. Speaking of which, check out this week’s playlist that’s all about family, food, and thankfulness. One of the things I’m thankful for this year is all of you for reading my little project week to week. And welcome to the new subscribers that have signed up recently—I really appreciate it.
We also have some breaking news concerning my book on Tony Lema.
I’m so proud to have Uncorked selected as a finalist for Coyne Prize. Thank you to Tom Coyne, author of A Golf Course Called America for conceiving this prize. This is what the website says about the Coyne Prize:
“By recognizing and celebrating the best storytelling in golf, the Coyne Prize endeavors to ENCOURAGE, PROMOTE, and ADVANCE the careers of both new and established voices in the game.
The Coyne Prize is awarded annually to the most exciting golf writers and creators, as deemed by a panel of golf and creative industry professionals.”
You can buy Uncorked, The Life and Times of Champagne Tony Lema on Amazon HERE.
The TOUR finished out the season and congratulations to Ludvig Åberg on winning the season ending RSM Classic. Åberg’s year has been unbelievable as he has eight top 25 and four top 10 finishes. He was also runner up at The Sanderson Farms Championship and then he won at the RSM. All of this in just five months on the PGA Tour. But wait, he also won the Omega European Masters on the DP World Tour, and played for the European team in the Ryder Cup. He made over $3 million in 11 TOUR starts and $700,000 in three DP World Tour starts. All eyes will be on him when he plays his first major in April.
We’ll return next week with a story that mirrors what played out last week with players improving their playing status for next year or trying to keep their card.
In last week’s Tour Backspin Poll, we asked you if you watched the Netflix Cup and if you did, whether you liked it or not. 0% of respondents watched it and liked it, 15% of respondents watched it and hated it, while 85% didn’t watch it. Okay, then!
Have you eaten yet? What side did you have? Let us know in this week’s Tour Backspin Poll.
Tour Backspin Poll
Whaddya got? Stuffing or Dressing?
Clips You Might Have Missed
Sam Ryder takes on more than he can handle.
Good news about Tiger!
And bad news
Extensive damage to the TGL league’s arena that will push back the debut to 2025. Read more at Golf Digest HERE.
What was Golf Digest doing with this?
You said it was 165 to the pin? Let me just check for myself . . . .
This week’s Vintage Ad is against the law by current standards, but these types of advertisements were everywhere back in the day. Scroll down to see the illicit marketing.
Pretty cool GIF of Arnold Palmer in this week’s Swing Like a Pro feature. Scroll down to view.
If you like golf history, check out the Your Golfer’s Almanac podcast. Host Michael Duranko celebrates birthdays, milestones, and other accomplishments that occurred on the day in golf history. Listen HERE.
Congratulations to Martin Pool who correctly identified #10 at Chambers Bay Golf Course in University Place, WA in last week’s WHAT HOLE IS IT? contest. Martin beat out six other correct answers in the random drawing and a prize pack is on its way to him. Check out the 2023 leader board and scroll down for your chance to win in this week’s WHAT HOLE IS IT?
Space is filling up! Save your spot. This is a great book right in the wheelhouse of the era we cover here at Tour Backspin. You can buy the book at Amazon or Barnes and Noble and then join us For FREE, to talk about it with Patrick on the 14th. Sign up HERE.
We’re playing Thanksgiving PGA TOUR Trivia in this week’s Tour Backspin Quiz. Scroll down to play.
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Okay, we're on the tee, let's get going.
Enjoy!
Larry Baush
The Holidays the Palmer and Lema Way
It is Thanksgiving, November 24th, 1960 and Arnold Palmer has teed off in the Mobile Sertoma Open, his first tournament since September. His primary motivation for entering the Mobile, as well as the West Palm Beach Open on December 1st through the 4th, and the Coral Gables Open on December 8th through the 11th, was to break Ted Kroll’s money winning record set in 1956. Kroll made $72,836 and Palmer needed a little over $1,000 to set a new record. It says something about the purses in the early 1960s that Palmer was going to play in three tournaments to ensure he made the just over $1,000 he needed to set a new record. He succeeded in setting a new record with winnings of $80,968 for the year.
Tony Lema was also entered in the Mobile Sertoma but his place on the money list was far removed from Palmer’s. He would finish 1960 in the 77th place on the money list with a total of $3,061. He was seriously thinking of quitting the tour. Below is an excerpt from my book Uncorked, The Life and Times of Champagne Tony Lema and it tells the story of Palmer and Lema competing during the 1960 holiday season.
“Do you realize what you have really done this year?”
Palmer finished out his year by winning the Mobile Open, the first round played on Thanksgiving. After the Mobile Open, Palmer and Tony accepted an invitation to spend a few days on a mutual friend’s yacht in New Orleans. The two flew down to New Orleans, enjoyed a night on the town with a cocktail party the following afternoon.
They spent the final night on the yacht rooming together in quarters that featured a bunk bed. Tony, in the top bunk, was having trouble sleeping. After tossing and turning for about a half an hour, he called down to Palmer’s bunk, asking if he was asleep. Palmer was also awake, so the two lit up cigarettes and talked.
“Do you realize what you have really done this year?” Tony asked.
“What do you mean?” Palmer replied.
“Well, winning what you have the way you have,” Tony, explained. “Finishing birdie-birdie to win the Masters. Shooting a 65 in the last round to win the Open. It seems so fantastic, so superhuman, to have done these things in that way.”
Palmer thought for a moment, exhaled a stream of cigarette smoke and then said, “I never thought of it in those terms. I just kind of see what it is I have to do, and I just make up my mind that I’m going to do it. If I have a long putt to make, I just think about making that putt. I shut from my mind the thought of missing it or all the other stuff that would come from my missing it.”
The talk with Palmer inspired Tony. He got a glimpse inside Palmer’s head, seeing how he thought while he was charging towards a title. Palmer liked Tony, and he often helped him by giving him equipment and advice.
Tony took this newfound inspiration into the last event of the year at the West Palm Beach Open and won the opening pro-am event with a smooth 67. He then promptly missed the cut in the tournament.
“When Tony came home from the tour, he was just Tony. He wasn’t a pro golfer; he was just a part of the family.”
His year over, Tony headed back to the Bay Area for the holidays. On the plane ride back to Oakland, Tony went through his customary year-end self-examination and review. He realized that in every tournament he had at least one good round, that there was something to build on.
When he got home to Oakland, he finally began to relax. He spent time with his family and old friends like Bill Craig. He left the pressures of the tour behind.
“When Tony came home from the tour, he was just Tony,” his brother Harry remembered. “He wasn’t a pro golfer; he was just a part of the family.”
Tony particularly enjoyed dating the hometown girls who did not know a thing about golf. Out on tour, the women who flocked to the bachelor pros were hanger-on types. At home in San Leandro, where the phone rang off the hook as old girl friends called, he could spend time with women who did not care that he was a professional golfer.
He loved Cleo’s [ his mother] home cooking and he would start his holiday meals by loading up his plate with her dressing. He gobbled up the dressing, washing it down with a big glass of milk before returning to fill up his plate with the other food.
Lema did not quit the tour. He came back in 1961 but his slump continued. It wasn’t until 1962 that he fought his way out of the slump. In September he won the Sahara Invitiation (an unofficial event at the time but has since been recategorized as an official event) and the Orange County Open, the first tournament he celebrated with the press by pouring champagne and earning the nickname “Champagne Tony Lema.”
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BONUS STORY
In 1953, Tony Lema played John Fry in the Oakland City Championship at Lake Chabot Golf Course. Lake Chabot was the home course for both of them and John’s father, Dick, was the head pro. Both boys were teenagers and more than 1,000 spectators came out to see the final match which was played over 36 holes.
They were playing not only for the title, but for the first-place prize of a 12-piece silver service set in a rich mahogany box which was suppied by Mark Weiss Jewelers. Lema won the match, 2-up, and could not wait to take that silver service home to his mother, Cleo. He was so proud to have won something for her, a woman who raised Tony and his two brothers and sister as a single mother after the death of her husband, Tone.
That silver service was used on every holiday, or special event, meal in the Lema household and now is in the custody of Lema’s nephew, Marc Matoza.
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WHAT HOLE IS IT?
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Tour Backspin Quiz | Thanksgiving PGA TOUR Triva
What PGA TOUR tournament was played over Thanksgiving Weekend in 1969, 1970, 1971, and 1972? Won won each year?
Scroll down to for answer
Swing Like a Pro
Arnold Palmer
I’m on the radio! Check out the interview I did with Frank LaRosa for the Golf To Go radio show on Sactown Sports 1140AM. The first half of the show is an interview with Umash Patel of Corica Park Golf Course in Alameda, and you can hear my segment at the 22:35 mark.
Blind Shot
Click for something fun. 👀
Lanto Griffin gives a candid analysis of the state of the TOUR in an interview with Golfweek’s Adam Shupack and calls out some of his fellow pros by name. Read it HERE.
The Tour Backspin Playlist
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Uncorked, The Life and Times of Champagne Tony Lema tells the story of one of the tour’s biggest stars in the mid-1960s. A fascinating glimpse into the traveling caravan that was the PGA TOUR during an era where the fields were full of “Mad Men” era personalities. From a hardscrabble youth spent on the “wrong side of the tracks” in the Oakland suburb of San Leandro, to the temptations of Elko, Nevada, to the bright lights of the PGA TOUR, Uncorked tells a story of determination, redemption and, above all else, a love story that documents how Betty, Tony’s new wife, provided the direction and motivation for him to become a top star. Order on Amazon.
Uncorked, The Life and Times of Champagne Tony Lema has been named a finalist for The Coyne Prize. The Coyne Prize is awarded annually to the most exciting golf writers and creators, as deemed by a panel of golf and creative industry professionals.
WHAT IS HIP?
Arnie Palmer was hip. Enough said.
Tour Backspin Quiz Answer:
The Heritage Golf Classic was played over the Thanksgiving Weekend in 1969 (won by Arnold Palmer), 1970 (Bob Goalby), 1971 as the Sea Pines Heritage Classic (Hale Irwin), and 1972 as the Sea Pines Heritage Classic (Johnny Miller).
Thank you for reading this far, I know your time is valuable and choosing to spend some of it on what I’ve created is gratifying. If you want to help support the work we’re doing, please consider upgrading. It’s just $36 a year and you’ll be helping to tell the stories from one of golf’s golden ages.
Vintage Ad
Final Thoughts
Absolutely LOVE this week’s Tour Backspin Playlist album cover.
Can you believe how low the total was for money won by Palmer and Lema in 1960?
How cool is that GIF of Palmer’s swing?