To win the 1955 PGA Championship, I had to beat Doc Middlecoff in the 36-hole final, and the secret to my winning was a chair. Doc was as slow a player as ever walked this Earth, and I had my son carry a chair for me to sit in when it was Doc's turn to play. That chair saved my legs. Playing the 14th hole, I was 2 up with five to play and was closer in two than Doc was in three. When we got to the green Doc lit a cigarette, and he didn't putt until the whole cigarette was gone. The gallery really got on him, but you couldn't rush Doc. I didn't care. I just sat in that chair. I won the hole and eventually closed him out, 4 and 3.
At the 1959 Ryder Cup I missed my plane to Palm Springs from Los Angeles. So I bummed a ride with the British team, which had a charter plane. It's a 45-minute flight, and somewhere we ran into the Santa Ana winds, which were a lot more severe than the pilot had been told. The plane dropped 700 feet in just a few seconds and 4,000 feet overall before the pilots regained control. Books and magazines were glued to the ceiling of that plane. It was terrifying, and when the plane somehow got on the ground -- we were back in Los Angeles, not in Palm Springs -- every person on that plane was soaked in sweat. My gray suit was black. For several Ryder Cups after that, there was a reunion dinner. I was the only American member of the "Long Drop Club."
One day I was sitting in the clubhouse at Augusta National with Jackie Burke, Jay Hebert, Ben Hogan and Jimmy Demaret. Tom Weiskopf approached and said, "Mr. Hogan, I wrote you a letter asking if you'd play a practice round with me here." Hogan glared and said, "I never got the letter." End of conversation, Weiskopf just walked away. After he left, Hogan said, "I choose who I play with." Tough guy, Hogan.
I've been asked a lot about the letter the club wrote to a bunch of us old winners back in 2001. In that letter, the club asked me, Gay Brewer and Billy Casper [and later, other former champions beyond age 65] not to play in the Masters anymore. It wasn't a big deal to me; I was finished anyway. Hell, that course was a tough walk even in my prime. But the letter wasn't very diplomatic, and it hurt some feelings. There's a lesson in that: Think twice before you put the words "lifetime exemption" next to something, because at some point an old guy is going to take you up on it.
One year at Flint, Michigan, I was on the 13th hole when lightning started popping everywhere. I dove into a car that was parked on the course, and looking out, I see a guy following Mason Rudolph. Lightning hit, and they both went down. I jumped out of the car and ran over, and Mason said he was fine. The spectator said, "I'm OK, I'm fine, just a little shaken." Guys decided to drive the guy to the hospital, just to check him out. And in the ambulance, the guy died. It was weird. He seemed completely normal just a few minutes earlier. I don't fool with lightning.
For having such a big population, New York doesn't produce many great golfers. The weather, you know. I'd tough it out and play until it snowed, but there always seemed to be five or six weeks where I couldn't play. When I got to Los Angeles to start the year, the guys who liked to gamble were just waiting for me, because it would take me a good two weeks to play myself into shape. Well, one year, we had a freakishly warm winter. I played every day in December. And when I showed up, I cleaned up. They're pouring money into my hands every day, and one of the guys wanted to know why I was playing so well. "You need to start reading the weather reports," I said.
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