Texas Golf Legends

by Curt Sampson, Ben Crenshaw (Foreword), Paul Milosevich (Illustrator)

Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Ben Crenshaw, Judy Rankin, Tom Kite, Fred Cobb, Harvey Penick, Babe Zaharias, Lee Trevino . . . the list of Texas golf legends reads like the leader board of an imaginary Twentieth-Century Golf Greats Invitational.The Lone Star State has spawned more than its share of golf heroes, and fifty of the best are featured in this collection of portraits and interviews. Milosevich deftly illustrates each golfer with compelling head-and-shoulder portraits and action views. Sampson's brief vignettes of the golfers capture the dramatic incidents and illuminating details that help make each person a legend on and off the links.BEN CRENSHAWNineteen eighty-six Buick Open, thirteenth hole, final round. Again Crenshaw is fighting to hold a one-shot lead, but he hits a wild four-iron second shot on this par five that stops against the trunk of a tree. He has no shot—or does he?"My only shot was with a nine iron, upside down—left handed" says Crenshaw. He hits the damnedest pressure shot anyone has ever seen: from forty yards and between trees, Crenshaw's left-handed hack stops four feet from the hole. He makes the birdie putt, of course, and wins the tournament. LEE TREVINOOn the first tee, a laughing Trevino held up a rubber snake he kept in his golf bag. The gallery laughed too, feeling the same release from the drama and tension of the moment that Trevino did. Nicklaus sat quietly, at the back of the tee on a spectator's chair while his mugging opponent dangled the toy reptile at the end of the club. Nicklaus joined in the merriment—he asked to see the fake snake, then flung it back to Trevino—but his smile seemed forced.Trevino won the playoff [with Nicklaus], sixty-eight to seventy-one, for his second US Open title. Three weeks later he won the Canadian Open and the week after that, the British Open. No one else has ever held these three national titles simultaneously.TOM KITEWhat would Kite hit? Surely he would play away from the water, with a two or three iron. Perhaps he would gamble and hit a three wood. He looked at his caddy, Mike Carrick. "What do you think about a driver?" he said. The color drained from Carrick's face.Wind billowed the legs of Kite's grey pants as he got set to hit. "It's a driver!" whispered the television announcer.He nailed it...."Best swing I made all day," said Kite to no one in particular as he walked off the tee.HARVEY PENICKDave Marr calls him "one of God's people." He is indeed a gentle man, this patriarch of Texas golf, but he is also humorous and sly. "'I'd like you to meet Mr. Ammanex," Penick says, as a confused-looking member introduces himself as Roane Puett. Ammanex? "Well, whenever I see you, you say, 'Am I next?"' explains Penick. HOW ARE YOU TODAY, MR. PENICK? asks another member, loudly compensating for the old gentleman's hearing loss. "I'm Mister Penick's son Harvey," he deadpans, not answering the question."BABE" ZAHARIAS"I remember playing in one of those first tournaments with Babe, and I was nervous," recalls Marilynn Smith. "So Babe put her arm around me on the first tee and said in a loud voice, I always like playing golf with you Smitty. You really bring out the crowds." The gallery laughed, of course. They were there to see the Babe. But the humor relieved Smith's tension and made her a Zaharias fan for life.When he's not out on the golf course trying to improve his five handicap, Paul Milosevich is in front of an easel sketching, drawing, or painting. A thirty-year retrospective of his work, Out of the Ordinary, was published in 1991 by Texas Tech University Press.Curt Sampson was "broke and disgusted" at the end of a four-year stint as a club and touring pro. So he traded in the trials and tribulations of a golf pro for the woes of a writer, thankful that he can stay close to the game he loves. He is a frequent contributor to national golf magazines and the author of The Eternal Summer.Each collector's edition is prefaced wi

152 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 1993

About the author

Curt Sampson, golf professional turned golf writer, came to golf the old-fashioned way—as a caddie. He looped for his father for a few years on summer Saturday’s, then turned pro, in a manner of speaking, at age 12, as one of the scores of disheveled boys and men in the caddie pen at Lake Forest Country Club in Hudson, Ohio. His golf game developed from sneaking on LFCC at twilight, an occasionally nerve-wracking exercise because the greens keeper intimated a readiness to call the cops on trespassers. Sampson—never caught—progressed as a player and as an employee, scoring a job as starter/cart maintenance boy at age 16 at Boston Hills CC, a public course, also in Hudson. His high water mark as a young golfer was a win in the Mid- American Junior in 1970. Sampson attended Kent State University on a golf scholarship and managed a municipal course for two years following graduation, worked a couple more as an assistant pro at clubs in South Carolina and Tennessee, then bummed around as a touring pro in Canada, New Zealand, and Florida.

In November 1988, Sampson began to write full-time, mostly about the game of his father, golf. Texas Golf Legends, his first book, was collaboration with Santa Fe-based artist Paul Milosevich. Researching TGL gained Sampson introductions with people he has written about many times since: Hogan, Nelson, Crenshaw, Trevino, and a few dozen others. His next book–The Eternal Summer, a recreation of golf’s summer of 1960, when Hogan, Palmer, and Nicklaus battled–is still selling 15 years after its debut, a rarity in the publishing world. Sampson’s biography of the enigmatic William Ben Hogan struck a chord. Both Hogan and his next book, The Masters, appeared on the New York Times bestseller lists. Subsequent books and scores of magazine articles cemented Sampson’s reputation as readable and sometimes controversial writer with an eye for humor and the telling detail.