Open Book

By Jaime Diaz
Photo by AP October 30, 2009

Though 6-6 and a Masters champion, George Archer took pains to live his life under the radar. About the most attention he ever received was when it was posthumously revealed that he was functionally illiterate.

Until just before he died of lymphoma in 2005 at age 65, Archer kept his handicap a secret from all but his family and a very few intimates. The secret helped keep Archer's public persona small, while friends and family knew Archer as an outsized personality -- a gregarious, wise cracking, endearing know-it-all. He and his wife Donna, a 5-1 dynamo, were for 44 years by all accounts one of golf's greatest couples. This week both were honored at the George Archer Memorial Stroke of Genius Pro-Am, with the proceeds to go toward combating the illiteracy that caused Archer so much shame.

The event took place at the Peninsula Golf and Country Club just south of San Francisco, the club where Archer was introduced to the game as a caddie when he was 13. The place is a Golden Age gem, designed by Donald Ross in 1922 -- the only course Ross ever did west of Colorado -- and distinguished by artful greens with precipitous roll offs. Archer called it the most important place in his life.

"George told me when we met that he had felt suicidal as a teenager because he couldn't read," says Donna, "He always said if hadn't been for Peninsula, he would have ended up a bum or worse."

Instead, Archer earned a rewarding life in golf, a player admired by his peers as a fierce competitor who by consensus is considered one of great putters in history. In his early days hustling and playing amateur golf around San Francisco, Archer was known as "Trash Can George" because of his inelegant swing, magical short game and cold-blooded constitution. At Harding Park, a favorite Archer story involved his boasting he could play from the 18th tee to the 10th green -- a distance of more than 800 yards across a parking lot and adjoining in fairways -- in five strokes. After collecting a dozens of bets, Archer set off with gallery in tow, and with a trademark pitch and a putt, made his five.

Archer was also the master of the practice putting green at San Francisco's other great muny, Lincoln Park, often partaking in marathon night matches under a street light. "We had an apartment right across the street at the time," says Donna. "At midnight, when he told me, 'I'm going to go out and putt,' I knew it wasn't a big fib. All I had to do was look out the window, and there he was." From these beginnings, Archer became a top pro, finishing in the top four on the PGA Tour money list three times, collecting 12 victories (and 18 more on the Senior Tour), and bagging that green jacket.

In 1983 daughter Lizzie became the first woman to caddie at the Masters when she carried her dad's bag.
AP Photo

"I wasn't very good for a long time," Archer said in 1998. "I kept getting money games because I looked like a guy you could beat. The thing I had going for me was that I loved to play, and still do. I just kept playing."

"George was an amazing player," says Johnny Miller, a fellow San Franciscan who as a young pro regularly played practice rounds with Archer. "He found a way to get it around with that awkward swing, but he was a really fearless competitor and just cut your heart out with the putter. But off the course, George was a wonderful, funny, sweet guy. Everyone loved being around he and Donna because they were so much fun."

Miller and Dave Stockton, one of Archer's closest friends, put on a clinic for the assembled, transfixing the attendees with their assertive wisdom. Stockton, himself in the putting pantheon, has recently reemerged as the architect of Phil Mickelson's resurgence on the greens. "Phil called me and just said, 'I'm lost,' said Stockton. "But his problem was easy to fix. Mainly I got his hands ahead again with his old forward press. The ball started rolling in, and he said what a lot of people say when I help them, 'This is the way I used to putt when I was a kid.'"

Miller was at his oracular best, free to elaborate on everything golf rather than fit his thoughts into the quicker sound bites that television requires. A host of other greats, including Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, made donations. And Tom Watson offered the most coveted item for the auction, a framed series of photos from his shots on the 72nd hole at Turnberry, accompanied by his handwritten reflections on the experience.

It was an intimate, emotional day that was both melancholy and deeply gratifying for Donna. "It's almost as if people can finally now see the George that he didn't let them see," she said.

Donna first learned of George's illiteracy on one of their first dates in the late 50s.

"We got pulled over by a police car one day, and George real fast told me to switch seats with him," she said. "It turned out he didn't have a license because he couldn't pass the written test. After that, we took the bus until California instituted an oral test."