Read Online Men in Green by Michael Bamberger - Free Book Online Page B

gave that hug to his father,” Ken told us. “He showed no respect for his mother.”
    In his 2004 book, Getting Up & Down , Ken talks about the last of his fourteen tour wins, the ’66 Lucky International Open at Harding Park, the San Francisco city course where he grew up playing. For many years, Ken’s parents ran the counter in the Harding pro shop. In the book, Ken gloats about beating Arnold by two and says that when he came off the final green to hug his father, Fred Venturi said, “Your mother is over there.” In other words, mother first.
    You can see the Earl-Tiger hug at the ’97 Masters on various highlight reels. Earl and Tida, separated in their married life, were standing on the back of the green arm in arm when their only child made his putt to win and punched the air with unbridled vigor. When Tiger approached his parents, Earl stepped forward, and father and son, teacher and student, shared a hug that was beamed across the world. Many people found it inspiring. Ken saw a mother being dissed.
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    Over the years, in many private dinners and eventually in public, Ken maintained that Arnold had broken a rule en route to winning his first major, the 1958 Masters. As far as I know, Ken is the only person ever to question Arnold’s fidelity to the rule book. The charge was bad enough, and the implication was worse. Ken was saying that Arnold was a fraudulent winner of that Masters, when Fred Hawkins and Doug Ford finished a shot out of first and Ken finished a shot behind them. “They were robbed,” Ken wrote. That sentence was a flat-out attack.
    To Ken, the Masters and Augusta National represented everything that was great and possible in the world, but his relationship with the place was complicated. He never won there, and after his final Masters broadcast he never went back. Arnold won four times at Augusta. In 1999 Arnold joined the club, not as an honorary member but as a full-status dues-paying one. He was at the tournament and the member events every year. He was royalty there, a “great man,” as a Masters chairman once called Arnold, who looked so comfortable in his green coat. Poor Ken. How did envy get assigned the color green?
    Still, when Ken went public with his accusation, a lot of people were surprised. As far as anybody knew, Ken and Arnold had enjoyed a good friendship on tour. In the later Eisenhower years, Ken would sometimes take over a house band’s drum kit, Arnold would step in as bandleader, other players would pitch in with other instruments, and they would bring down the house. The wives would hoot and holler, Conni Venturi especially. Arnold and Conni had an easy rapport, but that was not surprising. Conni had an easy rapport with a lot of men. All through their married life, Ken had to deal with the fact that various gents, famous and otherwise, were drawn to his wife. She had Sophia Loren’s face and hair and Audrey Hepburn’s playful spirit and lithe physique.
    Ken, like Arnold, had won one U.S. Open. When Ken made his winning putt at Congressional, he dropped his putter and uttered the words, “My God, I’ve won the Open.” Ever since, that sentence has defined the gritty nobility of the great American championship. That win, and that quote, became Ken’s calling card.
    Ken played in the Masters fourteen times—Arnold played in fifty—and contended three times. In ’56, as an amateur, he would have won had he shot a back-nine Sunday 40 instead of the 42 he did shoot. In ’58 and again in ’60, he was nipped by Palmer in events that helped sell truckloads of color TVs. (Who, man or woman, wanted to watch Arnold stalk those Augusta greens in black and white?) When Arnold first said farewell to the Masters in 2002, having played in forty-eight straight, Venturi was in the booth, making his final broadcast. Then Arnold decided to play two more.
    We got to