Not always the Gentle Ben
Richard Dunn
Two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw has been accused of being too
nice a guy by Lee Trevino, but “Gentle Ben” at times has been an
emotional whirlwind.
Crenshaw, who made his Champions Tour debut in 2002, has enjoyed
an illustrious career with 19 PGA Tour titles, including the 1984 and
1995 Masters. His disposition on a golf course, however, has been
anything but gentle.
“That (nickname) came because of my temper,” Crenshaw once said.
“It was certainly born out of sarcasm. A fellow here in Austin
(Texas), a golf writer named Dick Collins, gave me that nickname. He
wrote it in a golf column here after I had won the city championship
when I was 15. That was the first time I saw it, sort of a misnomer.
He knew I was competitive and had a temper. But it was directed only
at myself.”
Crenshaw, who once kicked an oil drum at Colonial in Fort Worth
after three-putting the 16th green, said he threw some clubs. “And I
broke some,” he added. “I broke a club one day with my mother
watching me at a college match. It was just terrible. I beat it on
the ground and it broke. She just said, ‘Oh, Benny.’ I could tell how
hurt she was.”
Crenshaw has been known to lose his cool missing putts. He’s
thrown clubs, broken shafts and, according to his calculations,
squandered at least seven majors. His ardent devotees, however, love
him, and all they’d prefer to remember is the image of Crenshaw
collapsing to his knees in tears after the last putt at the 1995
Masters -- not because he’d won, but because he was grieving the
death that week of his lifelong instructor, Harvey Penick.
After the ’95 Masters, Crenshaw struggled on the PGA Tour the next
six years, playing a limited schedule, but his new lease on life came
last year as a rookie on the senior circuit.
Crenshaw’s Masters win in 1984 was also emotional, coming on the
heels of a decision to separate from his first wife and get a
divorce. “I don’t know if that cleared my thinking,” he said. “I did
feel a certain freedom and an ability to concentrate at that time. In
retrospect, it did have a way of getting everything back to the golf
course. In 1995, I don’t know how to explain it, I just had such a
calm feeling that week. I saw my brother at Harvey’s funeral and told
him that my caddie, Carl, had found something in my swing. It was
like Harvey had climbed into Carl’s body and told me, ‘Get the ball
back in your stance and make a little tighter shoulder turn.’ ”
Crenshaw, who will be this year’s keynote speaker at the Toshiba
Senior Classic Community Breakfast presented by Deloitte & Touche
Tuesday morning at the Newport Marriott, was also the captain of the
1999 U.S. Ryder Cup team, which had the greatest comeback in event
history at The Country Club near Boston.
Also one of golf’s noted historians, Crenshaw fought winning
battles against Graves disease in the mid-1980s, wrote a highly
successful book called “A Feel for the Game,” which reached No. 25 on
the New York Times best-seller list in 2001, and has been appointed
to the President’s Commission On White House Fellowships by President
George W. Bush.
This is a speaking engagement you won’t want to miss.
“With Ben Crenshaw as our breakfast speaker, we continue our
tradition of inviting PGA superstars who have dramatically impacted
the modern golf era to our Community Breakfast,” said Hank Adler,
Toshiba Senior Classic Co-Chairman. “Between his Masters victories
and his remarkable leadership of the 1999 Ryder Cup team, Mr.
Crenshaw has endeared himself to golf fans everywhere. He has quite a
story to tell.”
Crenshaw, who played on four Ryder Cup teams, lives in Austin and
owns a second home in Dana Point and plays Newport Beach Country Club
regularly.
“It’s funny, as a golfer, at least in my case, you start out on
the tour and you’re totally one-dimensional,” Crenshaw said during
last year’s Toshiba Senior Classic. “You just start tournament golf
and you go as far and hard as you can to try to make adjustments and
experiment with things. There are trials and tribulations, there are
lost tournaments and occasional wins ... then between the age of 42
and 50, you just start wondering what you’re going to do with the
rest of your life.”
The recipient of the Payne Stewart Award in 2001 and winner of the
William Richardson Award from the Golf Writers Association in 1989,
Crenshaw defeated Orville Moody to win his first start as a PGA Tour
member at the 1973 San Antonio-Texas Open. He won the 1971 and 1973
NCAA Championship and shared the title in 1972 with University of
Texas teammate Tom Kite.
Past Tuesday breakfast speakers have been Jim Colbert (1998), Gary
Player (1999), Gary McCord (2000), Tom Watson (2001) and Fuzzy
Zoeller (2002).
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