The other day Brownwood Country Club once again hosted the “Birdies on the Bayou” and it was good golf. Tanner Napier was the winner and won $22,000. That amount may not sound like too terribly much today, but in 1960 it would have. More about that shortly.
My golfing history is probably well known in Brownwood even though I’ve tried to hide it for a long time. I used to play golf at the Country Club here in Brownwood and courses all over the area. Needless to say, it took me a very short period of time to find I was pretty much a lousy golfer. Funny thing is, I had two birdies back to back, I think on maybe thirteen or fourteen, something like that out at Brownwood, and I thought that I had suddenly struck gold. I was going to be a rich pro golfer and then then next hole I think I shot like a fourteen. Fact is, I played from really the late ‘50s until I broke my shoulder up in Utah (in a snowmobile accident). Even though I recovered in a couple of months, I used it as an excuse and I’ve never played golf again. I’ve totally enjoyed not playing.
I was in Houston and saw a pro tournament. The fact is, it was the week after a guy named Orville Moody shocked the world and won the US Open, and he won it down in Houston. The next week I was in Houston and I got to play the course. They have two courses at Champions. One is called something like the “jack rabbit course” and the other one is the main course. They guy I was with wanted to play the main course and I think I shot 200 and something. It ate me alive! I knew then I wasn’t going to be a good golfer, but I did get to go see some golf tournaments.
The first one I ever got to see was in San Antonio. It was somewhere around 1960 and Arnold Palmer won the Texas Open in San Antonio. Guess who walked the last nine holes with him – it was me! I had one thing in common with Arnold Palmer. We were both chain smoking! Palmer took the field and wiped them out. He won the Texas Open that year in 1960 and I was an Arnie fan so I was ballistic about it! I couldn’t believe that on the radio when we were leaving San Antonio they were talking about Palmer winning ten thousand dollars for a golf tournament! We’re talking and we said, “Man, are you kidding me? You could win one tournament a year and you could retire”. It was unbelievable. I had never heard of somebody actually winning that much money! Ten grand!
The other day I’m watching TV. The winner of the US Open, 3.6 million dollars. I sometimes wonder, Palmer of course has passed away, but you’ve got people like Jack Nicholas, Gary Player, and I can’t imagine what those guys must think about the payroll that these guys in 2023 are racking up. They had no chance at anything like that, even though both of them got extremely wealthy after their hay days in golf were over. It’s amazing the difference in now and then -$10,000 back in 1960 and 3.6 million for the Masters in 2023. Well, things have changed and I have too.
Until next time, so long everybody.
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‘Out of the Box’ with Dallas Huston is published each Monday morning at BrownwoodNews.com. Dallas was the radio voice of the Brownwood Lions and Howard Payne Yellow Jackets for more than 55 years. He currently is Pastor of Center City Baptist Church and hosts a Men’s Bible Study in Brownwood on Monday evenings. Your comments are welcome at [email protected].