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).