My Shot: Doug Sanders

The moonshine we made around Cedartown was not clear, like grain alcohol. It was the color of Coca-Cola. After I strained it through a tablecloth it was the color of gasoline. It's about as powerful as gasoline, too, about 190 proof. I always kept a gallon or two of moonshine around for guests. They were very curious about it; most people have never tasted real moonshine. I gave a small glass to Dean Martin once with the standard warning. "This is not like whiskey," I said. "Take tiny sips, or you'll be in for it." Dean was skeptical. He took a mouthful, swallowed half and was ready to swallow the other half when I went to light a cigarette. Dean's eyes got big, and he sprayed what was left of the moonshine on the floor. "Don't light that smoke!" he screamed. "You'll blow my head off!" My moonshine almost sent Dean Martin to his knees. It is not to be trifled with.

When my feel was good, I could snatch a fly out of the air with two toothpicks. When my touch was off, I was just another player. Once in a while my feel would desert me suddenly. One year in Orlando I opened 66-66 and had a four-shot lead. Yet, early in the third round, I knew I was going to be lucky to finish in the top 10. My touch was gone, and I knew there was nothing I could do about it. There's a lesson in this: When the train runs off the tracks, don't panic, because it'll just ?ake it worse.

Three failed marriages taught me this: You can disagree with what a woman says, but never argue with how she feels.

You hear how Ben Hogan was a thoughtful, interesting, chatty person away from the golf course. I never saw that at all. I played with Ben a lot and was on the 1967 Ryder Cup team that he captained. The truth is, Hogan was the hardest person to talk to I ever met in my life.

In hot, humid weather I gave myself an edge: I shaved under my arms. Give it a try. You'll feel clean and classy. You'll be more comfortable. Your deodorant will work better, too.

Right now I'd love a glass of buttermilk. I crave it but can't find it anywhere. It's almost extinct, like the dinosaurs.

A no-tipping policy serves two purposes: It keeps the workers poor and denies the customer an opportunity to feel good about himself. Therefore, I ignore it.

Generosity is giving more than you can. Pride is taking less than you need. Jill St. John told me that. She got it from Kahlil Gibran.

Doug Ford had the best short game I ever saw. He was a tough guy. If I had asked him to teach me a couple of shots, he probably would have said, "Get out there and learn yourself, like I did." One night I took Doug down to a steakhouse. Got him a big steak for $3.95, ordered a couple of carafes of wine for $1.25 apiece. We got to laughing. The wine kicked in. "Tell me how you played that pitch on 17 today," I said. "Well, first you weaken your grip," he said, and he went on to give me all kinds of secrets. I would have given him $50 cash to teach me that shot, but I got it for under $10 and had a good meal to boot.

In the early 1960s very few of us had regular caddies. At a tournament you took the caddie they assigned you, and there were some beauties. Bobby Brue slipped $10 to the caddiemaster once, hoping he'd get a caddie who knew what he was doing. On the first hole, Bobby asked the guy how far it was to the hole. The caddie answers, "About three blocks."

Clothes make the man. You know how you go to a hardware store to buy paint and they have 50 shades of white? I went to great lengths to blend the colors of my clothes just right. I found my best color combinations at the pharmacy. I'd look at all the colorful medicine capsules, choose the ones I liked, then have the pharmacist dump out the medicine. I'd stick the top half of an empty yellow capsule onto the bottom half of a blue one, then send it to the factory where my shirts and slacks could be colored the same way. My wife would send my white underwear and socks along with the capsules so they could be dyed along with the other fabric. Oh, my clothes were beautiful. Still are.

Figure out how much you spend on clothing each year, then spend it in equal sums twice a year instead of in dribbles. Once a year, thin out your wardrobe. Give away what you don't need.

I had torticollis, a neck condition where my head tilted one way and my chin went the other. I couldn't hit a golf ball without biting the collar of my shirt to keep my head in place. The pain was terrible, like an intense cramp that never goes away. The doctor said he could operate for eight hours and probably straighten my head, but the chances of curing the pain were only 50-50. I didn't want to live anymore. I started looking for a possible way out. I made a phone call, and a few days later my doorbell rings. The man at the door introduced himself as Tony and said he was there with orders to help. We worked out the details over dinner. We would go to a public place that wasn't crowded. In the parking lot there, when no one was around, Tony would put a bullet in my head. It would look like a robbery; I wanted to avoid the stigma of a suicide. There was the matter of how much the hit would cost. The rate Tony gave me was too low; I upped it to $40,000. For that kind of dough, I knew I could count on him to do the job right.