George Boutell
So what do you think a college kid is supposed to do when he has a one month break in January? Go out on tour and caddie! And that is just what I did.
I called George Boutell, a friend playing the PGA Tour, in December of 1968, my junior year at Colorado College. “What do you think about me coming out and caddying for you in January?” I asked George. It was a bold phone call but I didn’t think he would turn down my offer.
This got me heading to the west coast for the next two years at mid-term breaks. It was a win - win proposition. I was able to go out into the sunshine of the PGA Tour and George did not have to look for a looper. I took all the stress of that aspect of the tour off George. I knew golf, how to act on the course, and how to caddie in a PGA Tour event.
By 1969 I had known George for about 5 years. Not that I knew him well, as I had probably only seen him once or twice per year. Originally from Minnesota, he would come up during the summer to play the Resorters Golf Tournament in Alexandria, a tournament that I played. In addition, I would wrangle a way to play a round of golf with him at the Wayzata Country Club where professional Homer Martinson knew him.
George’s parents sold the family business and moved to Phoenix in 1956. They resettled 13-year-old George and his older brother in the Valley of the Sun. He became a child prodigy, one of the finest amateur golfers in the country as a junior. At age 14 he became the youngest person to ever qualify for the U S Open. This continued through his college career at Arizona State University where he was an All American.
In 1965 he was the runner-up in the Western Amateur and won the Trans-Mississippi at Kansas City Country Club, where another child prodigy, Tom Watson played as a 14-year-old. In 1965 Golf Digest named him the number one amateur player in the country.
He finished fifth at Tour School in 1967, playing the eight round marathon qualifying without making a double bogey. After a short stint on the Caribbean Tour he headed out to play the PGA Tour in January of 1968. His first season was bumpy, but he made enough money so that he did not have to go back to the qualifying school in the fall of 1968. Encouraged by his limited success, he was ready to head out in 1969.
The Los Angeles Open traditionally started the tour year. Played at Rancho Park Golf Course, the set up was somewhat remindful of Keller Golf Club in St. Paul where I caddied in the St. Paul Open. Rancho Park was an old public course which the pros seemed to enjoy playing. It was a better course than Keller, longer and more challenging, with a smallish adobe style clubhouse built during the depression.
However, Rancho Park had many shortcomings for hosting a PGA Tour event. The size of the clubhouse, the practice facility, and parking all fell well short by any standard. By 1972 the tournament found a new home at Riviera GC, which still to this day hosts the event. The venues for PGA Tour events have evolved over the decades from Phoenix CC, Keller Golf Course, Randolph Park in Tucson and Rancho Park to the many TPC Clubs with big footprints, big courses. The money to be gained from corporate tents and many spectators have made the modern tour stop big in every regard.
The practice area at Rancho Park intruded into the course near the clubhouse. It was narrow compared with today’s facilities and made shagging balls particularly perilous. The practice area was marked as out of bounds and had a 30’ high chain link fence surrounding it. On one side, the first fairway ran parallel on the left and on the other side was the 9th fairway as the hole came back to the clubhouse. A big challenge was to keep your drive away from the fence. It was not only unsightly but a terrible obstruction to play.
Grier Jones. in his tour debut after winning the 1968 NCAA, was paired with George. After shooting 66 on Thursday, good for second place, Jones hooked his tee shot at the ninth and watched as it bounded toward the fence. Anxiously, he walked down to find the ball directly under the fence, with part of the ball still in bounds. The rules of golf state that if any part of the ball is in bounds, the ball is in bounds.
Grier looked the situation over and made the decision to walk all the way around to the inside of the range and take a swing at the ball, slamming his club against the fence. He did just that, taking a controlled swing with the blade of the club catching the ball and sending it sideways out into the fairway. From there he hit a long iron onto the green and two putted for bogey. It was one of the more creative shots I have seen, saving him at least one shot.
There were never very many spectators at the LA Open, even though the event attracted one of the best fields of the year. Fans did not seem to appreciate the likes of Palmer and Nicklaus right in their hometown. However, parking may have been the problem, there wasn’t any. Parking was in a residential neighborhood, with the course parking lot reserved for competitors and officials. Everyone else was forced to walk many blocks to get to the course. Nothing kills an event like inconvenient parking.
Outside the small clubhouse players would mill around, chat, get squared away for the day, connecting with their caddie or friends. It was there that I met Arnold Palmer. The King. Wow, I had not seen him in person since the 1965 St. Paul Open. He was in his prime, fresh from a couple of weeks in Palm Springs and ready to go. He was shorter than I remembered, with large forearms, big, strong hands and a huge personality.
“Mr. Palmer, Cal Simmons,” I said as I stood with George’s bag waiting by the locker room. “Good luck this week.”
“You have a good bag, hope your man plays well,” he said as he pulled a driver out of his bag and fiddled with it.
The game of golf exploded in the 60’s. Many people give much of the credit to Arnold. He was everybody’s favorite, like Tiger when he was on top. Count me as a big Arnold fan.
The course itself was decent by tour standards of the day. It moved up and down a slight slope throughout the course. It was not exceedingly tight, but there were trees and the player had to hit it straight. The greens had some contour and were fairly bunkered.
My job was to get yardages, hole locations each day and help with pulling clubs. George did not need or want help reading the greens.
The strength of George’s game was his chipping and putting. He was a good driver of the ball with average length, a decent short iron player, but as the irons got longer through the bag his talent deteriorated. As George said, “too many moving parts.”
There were no hybrids, bafflers, or other clubs that substitute for long irons as there are today. Therefore, when the 2 or 3 iron came out, I always had to “say a little prayer,” as an Irish caddie once said to me as I hit shot that he knew I could not accomplish. George would have greatly benefited from playing the utility clubs we have today. He did not hit his long irons high. Utility clubs allow that.
George also would have been helped by the “top 125” rule that started in about 1980. For the five and a half years he was on tour he finished above 100 on the money list each year. Thus, he was always having to Monday qualify because only the top 60 were exempt from qualifying each week. However, if the 125 rule had been in effect, he would have been able to plan his year, playing and taking breaks in his schedule, since he finished inside 125 a couple of years. In his tour career, he qualified for 63 tournaments and made 24 cuts.
When George played well he would make the cut, but if he was not on top of his game, he did not. Unfortunately, he was not on top of his game at Los Angeles. Playing on a course Arnold Palmer called, “close to unplayable” because of wet conditions, George opened with 75 on Thursday. It was well behind Charlie Sifford, the great black player, who would go on to win for the second time on the PGA Tour. The wet conditions made the course play long and difficult and required George to play too many medium and long irons, which doomed his round.
It was much the same on Friday, as his 74 and two round total of 149 put us, “slamming the trunk” after the round.
George was easy to be with and I believe enjoyed my company. He did not seem to have a group of guys that he ran with on tour. He typically hit balls after the round for an hour or two, ate dinner and went back to the hotel to watch TV and hit the hay.
It can be very lonely for those missing the cut. Nobody wants to hang around you. In addition, you do not want to hang around others missing the cut either. Too much negativity. I was someone to talk to, providing a supportive, positive attitude.
It was a great thrill for me just to be there and, while I hoped George could play well enough to make the cut, I was still out on tour. Shaking hands with Arnold Palmer, spending two days with NCAA Champion Grier Jones, and traveling with a tour player, I was “livin’ the dream”.
The second tournament of the year was at Silverado Resort in Napa, CA. Originally built in 1955, it had been redesigned in 1966 with a second course added. In 1969 it had a high profile as the hot destination resort on the west coast. I was excited to see it.
Silverado is a beautiful area in the wine country. However, it was also drenched with rain, cutting practice rounds to just one. In a rare rain shortened tournament, only 36 holes were played. In continually wet conditions, again making a long golf course even longer, George was never on track and missed the cut badly. “I need to find some hard, fast fairways,” he said to me. It was some consolation that while George missed the cut for the weekend, nobody else got to play either.
I am always in awe at the skill of PGA Tour players. Every time I watch a tour event in person I leave highly motivated to improve my game. While I dreamed of being good enough to be a tour player, I was smart enough to see that I was miles away. The closest I would come would be a looper. It was a thrill traveling on tour. I returned to school excited to work on my game and determined to caddie again my senior year. A fun two weeks in a life in golf.
