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too.) Ken told us about being a pallbearer at Hogan’s funeral and about his many practice rounds with Hogan. He told us how Hogan, after being absent from the national open for several years, agreed to play in the 1966 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco if and only if the USGA would pair Hogan with Venturi for the first two rounds. That seemed astounding to me, but that was Ken’s story.
    In rich detail, Ken told us that on the second hole of the opening round, Hogan got stuck while standing over a putt. Hogan had the yips.
    â€œI can’t take it back, Ken,” Hogan said.
    â€œNobody gives a shit, Ben,” Ken said back.
    That bit of wise-guy humor was evidently all Hogan needed to hear: At age fifty-three and playing barely any tournament golf, he finished twelfth. Venturi finished three shots behind. Palmer was leading by seven with nine holes left and lost to Billy Casper in a playoff.
    Ken was on a roll. He talked about the aftermath of his win at Congressional at the ’64 Open, how he declined a Sunday-lunch invitation with LBJ at the White House so he could go to New York and appear on The Ed Sullivan Show , have drinks with Toots Shor at Toots Shor’s, eat at “21,” and see Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! , accompanied all the while by his first wife, Conni, who looked like she belonged on a Broadway stage herself. Ken said Carol Channing changed the famous lyric of her show’s most famous number to this: “Hello, Kenny . Well hello, Kenny ! It’s so nice to have you back where you belong.” The reference, in Ken’s mind, was not just to his return to the bright lights of the big city but also to his position among the elite players in the game, right there with Arnold and Jack and Gary Player. But the real soundtrack to his life seemed to be My Way , as sung by Francis Albert himself.
    We were talking about the 1964 U.S. Open when I asked Ken if he had watched the 1990 U.S. Open, Mike’s Open. Ken recalled the bomb Irwin made on the last hole of regulation to post a Sunday 67.
    â€œHow do you think your life would have been different if you had won?” Ken asked Mike.
    â€œYou know what?” Mike said. “I doubt it would have been very different.”
    Ken shook his head. “It would have been different,” he said.
    Our conversation turned to Curtis Strange, who had been trying to win his third straight Open that year at Medinah. Ken jumped to the ’85 Masters, when Curtis opened with an 80 and still managed to get himself in contention on the back nine on Sunday. During that ’85 broadcast, Venturi had been critical of Curtis’s play in the final round, when he made bogeys on Augusta’s two back-nine par-fives, each time knocking his second shot into a water hazard beside the green. Curtis finished two shots behind the winner, Bernhard Langer. In the broadcast, Ken said Curtis should have laid up short of those water hazards. Later, Ken said, Curtis confronted him about what he had said. “He poked his finger in my chest and said, ‘If I had it to do again, I’d play those same shots again.’
    â€œAnd I said, ‘Yeah, Curtis? And you’d be wrong again. Which is why you’ll never win the Masters! And if you ever poke me again, I’m gonna slug ya.’ ”
    There was another little up-and-down nod. Ken Venturi, winner by unanimous decision.
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    Ken said he learned all he needed to know about Tiger Woods at the 1997 Masters. That was the tournament Woods won by twelve shots at age twenty-one, playing in his first major as a pro. It was all so unlikely. Woods’s father grew up in a segregated country. His mother grew up in Thailand. To say the least, they were not country-clubbers. When Tiger holed out on eighteen on Sunday, it was stirring. I was standing right there.
    â€œHe walked right by his mother on that eighteenth green and