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Ken Venturi, 82, dies 11 days after Hall of Fame induction

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:14:00 GMT

His was a life in two acts, neither of which he would have scripted for himself. It was not particularly easy, and often not fair, but Ken Venturi took his cues from its challenges.

"Fate," his friend and colleague Jack Whitaker once told him by way of encouragement, "has a way of bending the twig and fashioning a man to his better instincts."

Fate cast Venturi with "an incurable" stutter that had him seek the isolation of golf and he became a U.S. Open champion. Fate robbed him of the dexterity in his hands and he became the longest-running lead analyst in television sports history.

"The full body of work, spanning everything involved in golf, there's nobody in that Hall of Fame that's done what he's done," his friend and long-time pupil John Cook said. "Maybe some have better records, more tournament wins, but the whole thing? None. He transformed television. He's been the biggest philanthropist in golf history of the things he's involved in that people don't even know about. Lifetime achievement? That barely covers it."

Venturi, 82, died on Friday, little more than a week after his induction in absentia into the World Golf Hall of Fame. He had been hospitalized following surgery for infections in his back.

Related: The golf genius of Ken Venturi

When he was elected to the Hall of Fame last fall, he summed it up this way: "The greatest reward in life is to be remembered."

Venturi will be remembered on a variety of fronts. When he was 13, "the doctor told my mother that I would never be able to speak as long as I lived, because I was an incurable stammerer. And I went out and found the loneliest sport I could find and took up golf."

At 24, he took a four-stroke lead into the final round of the Masters in a bid to become the first amateur to win at Augusta National. "For three dazzling days Venturi was within reach of a prize no amateur in the history of the Masters has ever been able to seize," the legendary writer Herbert Warren Wind wrote in Sports Illustrated. "But the Masters is a drama in four acts, not three, and on the fourth day it was exit Ken Venturi and enter Jackie Burke." Venturi finished second, still the best performance by an amateur in the history of the Masters.

Venturi would turn pro and win 14 PGA Tour events, including the U.S. Open at Congressional Country Club in 1964, when against doctor's orders he played the second 18 of a 36-hole day with temperatures upwards of 100 degrees and humidity in the 90s.

"When I came in off the 18th hole in the morning, I laid down next to my locker and Doctor Everett said, 'I recommend you don't go out, because it could be fatal,'" Venturi said last year. He defied the doctor's advice, shot 70 and won his only major championship.

Related: My Shot: Ken Venturi

Carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands ended his career in 1967 and the following year, CBS Sports Producer Frank Chirkinian offered the "incurable stammerer" a job as an analyst on its golf telecasts. He would hold the job until his retirement in 2002.

Underscoring his accomplishments on the course and in the broadcast booth was the quiet philanthropy to which Cook alluded.

"Kenny was emphatic about not getting publicity for it, but his life was dedicated to philanthropy," CBS' Jim Nantz, Venturi's broadcast partner for 17 years, said recently. "He had so many different charities he was involved with, and it was under the radar. He was building a home for abused women and children in Florida. Every offseason he traveled to Ireland to throw something for the mentally-challenged kids there. He was a huge figure in bringing golf to blind people.

"He moved mountains, and people didn't know that about him. I remember there was a piece of machinery at Loma Linda (Calif.) Hospital that was one of the forerunners to really being able to treat some forms of cancer. They had that piece of equipment in large part because of money that Kenny had raised through various charitable events throughout Southern California and the Palm Springs area. That machine by the way ended up being the machine that would reach Paul Azinger when he had cancer in his shoulder."

He was only following instructions. "I was taught by Byron Nelson and I asked him one time, 'how could I ever repay you for all you've done for me?'" Venturi said. "He said, 'Ken, be good to the game and give back.'"

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[Photo: The Washington Post]

Pat Summerall, the voice of the Masters, dies

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:40:00 GMT

By John Strege

Pat Summerall was not necessarily destined to enjoy a long and distinguished career in golf broadcasting. When the opportunity presented itself, he had to pass muster with two powerful obstacles, one of them called the Ayatollah, the other called the Pope.

The Ayatollah (a nickname for which Summerall was responsible, incidentally) was legendary CBS Sports producer Frank Chirkinian, who was not thrilled that the network "sent me this football player" to work golf telecasts, he told the New York Times. "I thought the people in New York had lost their minds."

AP Photo

The Pope was Clifford Roberts, co-founder (with Bobby Jones) of the Augusta National Golf Club and chairman of both the club and the Masters. Every potential broadcaster had to meet with Roberts' approval, according to Curt Sampson's book, "The Masters: Golf, Money and Power in Augusta, Georgia."

Summerall recounted to Sampson his initial conversation with Roberts:

"You know you're better known as a football player," Roberts said.

"Yessir, I know that," Summerall replied.

"What's your handicap?"

"It's 12 or 13, Mr. Roberts."

"Well, the best golfer we've had has been Chris Schenkel, who was an eighteen. So you should be all right."

He was, it turns out, substantially better than that. Already an established football broadcaster on CBS, he became the voice of golf at the network and was part of 27 Masters telecasts before leaving the network in 1994.

Summerall, a former NFL placekicker who is in several sportscasting halls of fame, died on Tuesday, while in the hospital recovering from hip surgery. He was 82.

Among his colleagues on golf telecasts at CBS was Vin Scully, the legendary Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster, who worked the Masters from 1975 through 1982.

"Pat had been a professional athlete, he was a good golfer and he related to either the golfers or to the football players," Scully said Tuesday afternoon, as he was preparing for yet another Dodgers' radio broadcast. "On the air he came across as what he was, the master of the understatement. Pat was the perfect man to work with whomever his partner was, to tie in with the analysts, because his statements were so understated."

This was a sentiment echoed by another Hall of Fame broadcaster, Jack Whitaker, who worked Masters telecasts with Summerall from 1968 through 1973.

"It was amazing that he and Frank Gifford had been on the same team [the New York Giants] and both traded football in for broadcasting and both became very successful at it," Whitaker said. "His great strength was that he didn't talk too much. He got out of the way and let his color man do the job. He was as good as there was at doing that."

Summerall's golf broadcast career ended when CBS lost its NFL rights in 1994. "I didn't want to give up golf," he told the Times. But after he joined Fox Sports to continue broadcasting NFL games, CBS declined to allow him to continue on doing golf broadcasts.

"I'm very saddened that he's not leaving under his own terms," Chirkinian told the Times. "He is CBS Sports. I thought he could work here until he was 75 or 80. He was loyal to CBS for 34 years."

Among the Masters broadcasts that stood out, he said in an interview with the Philadelphia Daily News in 1987, was his first, 1968, when Roberto de Vicenzo signed an incorrect scorecard, allowing Bob Goalby to win, and the '86 Masters, when Jack Nicklaus, at 46 won his sixth Green Jacket.

"Of all the events I've done," he said about the Masters in the same interview, "and that includes everything but a World Series, this one is still set apart because of the way it's run."

His successor as the voice of the Masters was Jim Nantz, who said in a statement: "Pat Summerall was a hero to me. I treasured the gift of friendship that I had with him. I was his understudy for 10 years. He could not have been more generous or kind to a young broadcaster. He was a giant and one of the iconic figures in the history of the CBS Television Network."

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Golf's Biggest Breakups

Alex Myers and Sam Weinman — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 04:00:00 GMT

Breaking up is hard to do, even in golf. From husbands and wives to players and caddies to players and putters, we rank the highest-profile splits in golf.