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Authors: Adam Lazarus

Tags: #Palmer; Arnold;, #Golfers, #Golf, #Golf - General, #Pennsylvania, #Sports & Recreation, #Sports, #United States, #Oakmont (Allegheny County), #Golf courses, #1929-, #History

Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont (35 page)

BOOK: Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont
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Seasiders also noticed that Schlee never displayed anger or threw clubs when he failed, or gloated upon pulling off an unthinkable shot. As Maine recalled, “you always had this feeling that even the ultimate end wasn’t all that important.... Every shot was an event unto itself: ‘Forget the before and the after; this shot stands on its own for what I can do with the ball at this point in time, period.’”
At a junior tournament in Portland, several boys stepped up to the first tee (a dogleg par-four) and took ferocious practice swings, pretending to drive the green before playing the hole safely down the middle. When Schlee’s turn came, he took no practice swings, aimed directly across the dogleg, and smashed the ball onto the green, within eagle putt range. He then walked unassumingly off the tee without acknowledging the applause of the gallery. Six under par at one point during the round, Schlee refused to coast, and his go-for-broke spirit ultimately yielded several large numbers that cost him the tournament.
Erratic, up-and-down rounds like this defined the teenage Schlee. He would put together a hot streak and fearlessly pursue it, seemingly headed for a record score. Then, as Maine recalled, “the whole thing would go sky-high.” Even when Schlee shattered Seaside’s course record by shooting a 58 (twelve under par), he bogeyed the last two holes, a product of his unceasingly aggressive style of play.
Because he concerned himself only with preparing for a future on tour—not helping his team’s chances for victory—Schtee practiced high-risk shots in every match, posting a good, not great, high school record. Still, during his junior year, the Seaside Gulls won the North Coast league championship and Schlee earned medalist honors with a 74. That summer, he totaled the lowest score in the thirty-six-hole medal qualifier for the Oregon Junior Golf Tournament, and finished sixth in the event.
The next year (1957) Schlee only got better, taking medalist honors in nearly all of the Gulls’ matches. At the state championship in May, Seaside finished thirteenth in a field of thirty-one teams; Schlee closed out his high school career with the Gulls’ best score, a four over 152, nine strokes behind the medalist winner. Schlee’s play during the 1957 season impressed Oregon State University enough to dispatch two of its best players to meet with him and see if he might consider attending OSU on a golf scholarship.
 
OREGON GOLF COURSES WERE NOT the only place where Schlee flashed his athletic gift. Not just tall but with a sculpted physique and muscled legs, he could “leap like a kangaroo.” One year, Lucky surprised his stepson with an expensive racing bicycle, and Schlee further built up his legs by riding to and from the Washington state line on weekends, before returning for a late round of golf.
Schlee occasionally ran hurdles for the track team, and started for the football team during his senior season. As a defensive end, he earned a place in Seaside sports history by securing a championship game victory, thanks to his solo, open-field tackle of the opposition’s star running back.
The Seagulls basketball team was where Schlee stood out most. Although not a good shooter, he dominated the paint because of his leaping ability and penchant for diving for loose balls and sacrificing his body. Overly aggressive (without starting fights or getting thrown out of the game), he inspired teammates with his all-out effort. “[It was] just the same way he played golf ... going way too hard and oftentimes out of control,” Maine recalled.
Many of his teammates loved Schlee for his fiery spirit. Teachers, town officials, and many Seaside High students detested him for that same reason.
Often arrogant, he delighted in “putting down” and verbally abusing others, especially those who were not good athletes or simply got in his way. He claimed to be dyslexic, but he certainly had a sharp wit. “He didn’t do much kiddin’,” recalled Ray Sigurdson, a tough-skinned acquaintance who joined the marines after high school. Once, when Schlee finally defeated an older archnemesis, Ralph Diechter, in northern Oregon’s premier match-play tournament, Schlee publicly taunted and humiliated him.
There was more to Schlee than the simple immaturity of his arrogance; most people around town knew him as a troublemaker, a liar, and a petty thief. He threw stones and broke all of the streetlamps on one of the town’s main streets, and even tried to kill a rare, protected bird with a string of golf shots. A disrespectful wiseass in school, he taunted fellow students and generally made life miserable for teachers and coaches.
Never suspended, Schlee banked on school officials to cut him slack because he contributed so much to the varsity sports teams. And he was smart and devious enough to know the limits of what he could get away with.
But not always. On one occasion, the school principal, fed up with Schlee’s classroom antics and tired of hearing complaints from teachers, persuaded a group of school toughs to grab Schlee, blindfold him, and force him to fish banana peels out of a toilet with his mouth. (Fifty years later, former and current school officials still successfully campaign to keep Schlee out of the high school’s sports hall of fame.)
Schlee was most infamous around town as a thief. He would shake down the paperboy when he was short of cash, and regularly siphon gas from lumber trucks to fuel the souped-up hot rod he raced late at night, James Dean style. Seaside’s police chief knew of Schlee’s transgressions and stashed officers in various locations to catch him in the act. They never caught him, a source of great embarrassment to the town’s police chief: Schlee was dating his daughter at the time.
Schlee mostly stole golf equipment, both on and off the Seaside course. He swiped golf balls from the bags of those he caddied for, and from the shed where Charlie Cartwright stored thousands of them. He used them to sharpen his game, sell them to Seaside duffers, or sell them to nearby Gearhart’s pro shop.
Charlie suspected his de facto son, but never caught him in the act. And Charlie’s easygoing nature, his personal sympathy for Schlee, and his hopes that the troubled teen might have a golf future caused him to overlook the thefts. Even when Schlee’s excuses were obvious lies, he received no more than a slight reprimand. In the end, Schlee came to believe he could get away with anything. “I was a pretty bad actor as a kid,” he admitted years later.
Although he made a few bucks from selling his stolen merchandise—and like many juvenile delinquents, enjoyed the thrill of the crime—Schtee needed an endless supply of balls to prepare for his imminent career as a professional golfer. He loved to close out summer days at Seaside by driving balls down the fairways and into the brush at twilight, with no intention of retrieving them.
Anything not tied down, including clubs and other golf equipment, was not safe around Schlee. If he saw a club he felt would improve his game, he simply took it. Visits to fancier clubs than Seaside and Gearhart (usually to play in sanctioned junior or amateur tournaments) meant a prime opportunity to steal. After making his way into the bag room, he took whatever he wanted and was never caught in the act. He did the same in the pro shop. Years later, Seasiders who heard tour professional Johnny Pott’s complaint that Schlee stole his shoes knew the tale was no joke.
John Schlee’s charmed life as a petty thief ended abruptly during the summer of 1957, a few months after his high school graduation. Despite scouting from Oregon State, Schlee did not intend to go to college. He made no plans for the future and played golf endlessly. With his game steadily improving, he set his sights on the PGA tour; a high-profile amateur win might entice sponsors or convince a prominent club to make him an assistant professional. Schlee had tried for several years but failed to win the state’s second-most-prestigious match-play tournament, the Oregon Coast Open, in nearby Astoria. As the summer came to an end, he and one of his former teammates set out to win the state’s leading match-play tournament, the Southern Oregon Open, several hundred miles away in Medford.
Needing money to pay for travel and housing during both practice rounds and the event, Schlee sneaked into Charlie Cartwright’s shed and stole hundreds of brand-new golf balls. He then drove to the Gearhart golf course and somehow persuaded the skeptical pro to buy them. With cash in his pocket and more than enough golf balls to play with, Schlee and his friend drove to Medford for the open—at the aptly named Rogue Valley Country Club—and began preparing for their first-round matches.
Charlie Cartwright discovered the heist the next morning. He didn’t suspect Schlee (only because so many balls were stolen) and reported the theft to the Seaside police chief, who conferred with his counterpart in Gearhart. Questioning of the Gearhart pro made it clear that Schlee had stolen the balls.
The state police were dispatched to Medford, where they found Schlee practicing on the course. They promptly arrested him, snapped on handcuffs, and marched him off the course, befuddling the other contestants. Schlee spent the night in Seaside’s jail. The next morning, the police chief asked Charlie Cartwright to come down to the station and make out a formal complaint.
When he learned that Schlee was the culprit, Cartwright would not file the complaint. This infuriated the Seaside police chief, especially since Schlee had recently broken up with his daughter. Although Charlie was disappointed that Schlee had so blatantly betrayed his trust, he knew that the grand-theft charge would mean substantial jail time. In an informal arrangement (not uncommon during the 1950s), Schlee escaped incarceration by agreeing to join the military.
 
SEASIDERS—THOSE WHO WEREN’T OVERJOYED BY his departure from their community—could hardly believe the news of Schlee’s enlistment.
“A whole lot of people were saying, like, ‘What, Jack in the military? Good luck!”’ Neal Maine recalled. “He was a plenty bright guy; it wasn’t like he got in trouble because he wasn’t smart enough to figure it out.”
Whether by choice or because his drill sergeants noticed his outstanding leaping ability, Schlee was assigned to paratrooper school after basic training. Although paratroopers were among the army’s elite, the schooling requirement was relatively short. Schlee, however, spent most of his time at Fort Bragg playing golf at the base’s two excellent courses. Several months in the military did little to soften the conceited, impish, occasionally malicious ways that had defined him in Seaside.
On the golf course, the long-driving Schlee wouldn’t bother to wait for the group ahead to complete holes, and he swung away regardless. He hardly cared that the groups he sprayed were often comprised of the wives of Fort Bragg’s flag officers, including the wife of the base’s top general. And rather than show remorse on one occasion when he nearly beaned the general’s wife, Schlee chastised her for getting in his way! Very soon, those in charge of Schlee’s destiny again decided it was time for him to leave town, as rapidly as possible.
Still, with military golf more popular than ever, thanks to a golf-obsessed commander in chief, Schlee’s fairway transgressions may have impressed as many as they upset. No one could deny Schlee’s disciplined power and overall talent. At a time when golfer/soldiers were at a premium—tike Lee Trevino and Orville Moody, who dominated the armed services’ golf teams in the Pacific theater—Fort Bragg’s officers knew that Schlee would be a great asset to the army’s golf team.
By the spring of 1958, after spending just a few months with the paratroopers, Schlee was transferred to West Point. Officially, Private John Schlee’s role was to work as an assistant mail clerk; he would also serve as a part-time lifeguard, golf instructor, and member of the “honor guard.” But his primary mission at West Point—which boasted arguably the finest military golf course in the nation—was to help the army golf team win. As he wrote to his parents, “I don’t know how I was lucky enough to be picked for this.”
“[Except] for being in uniform, he would hardly know he’s in the army,” reported the Seaside newspaper. “Accommodations are several cuts above the army barracks he has encountered before, and he has time enough in the evenings to keep up with his golf game.”
Schlee certainly earned his cushy quarters and easy military assignment. In August 1958, he won the West Point Golf Championship and later that month won the first United States Army Golf Tournament, for which West Point’s detachment commander personally presented him an award. During the winter months, making creative use of his brief paratrooper training, Schlee kept limber by hanging an open parachute in the barracks and driving balls into it.
As Schlee’s discharge date approached, West Point’s golf coach, Walt Browne, persuaded Memphis State University’s athletic department to offer Schlee a golf scholarship, funded largely by profits from the Memphis Open, a prestigious PGA tour stop. Schtee—less than two years removed from evading a grand-theft jail sentence, and having spent an eighteen-month military golf vacation—was now a full-time college student, handed four years of subsidy to prepare for a career in professional golf.
During his freshman season at Memphis State, Schlee made the varsity and more than carried his weight on the team. He told few people about his military career—apart from acknowledging the thrill of jumping out of airplanes—and said nothing about his forced departure from Seaside or about his parents. And even when a few Seaside residents visited his dorm to see how their hometown prodigy’s career was shaping up, Schlee refused to take their calls or see them.
Despite trying hard to hide his past, Schlee did little to change his ways. Every day at Memphis State was “wrapped around golf.” He showed little respect to authority figures and flaunted his Seaside sense of entitlement as a star athlete.
BOOK: Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont
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