The Loop
Doug Sanders, a vandalized sculpture and pink underwear
Doug Sanders is an American original renowned for his sartorial flamboyance, a technicolor winner of 20 PGA Tour events.
A sculpture of him was unveiled recently on the Polk County Courthouse lawn in his hometown of Cedartown, Ga., part of its Sports Walk of Fame. Alas, vandals broke the golf club off the sculpture and made off with it last weekend.
That was unfortunate, of course, but not the only unfortunate aspect of the sculpture. There also was this:
“I should have spray painted the sculpture pink,” the sculptor Julia Knight said via telephone on Monday, noting that its greenish hue doesn’t do justice for the man known as the Peacock of the Fairways.
Indeed.
When Knight was commissioned to do the Sanders sculpture, she flew down to Houston and spent a long weekend with him.
“He is a character,” she said. “I loved it.”
She went through his photographs to find the pose she wanted. She also wanted a pair of his golf shoes “because I needed something to sculpt from,” she said.
Sanders obliged by giving her the full Sanders: A pair of pink golf shoes, pink socks, pink pants, pink shirt, a pink and teal sweater, and pink underwear.
“He gave us the whole outfit,” she said. “Apparently it cannot be separated. It was the pink underwear that was a little creepy.”
Sanders also visited her studio while she was in the midst of working on the piece. “All he wanted to do was comb the hair, comb the clay. That’s all he cared about. It was so funny.”
As for the missing golf club, if it isn’t recovered Knight will have to recast the clubhead and re-fabricate the shaft.