Long Game
A MASTERS REMEMBRANCE
THE WALRUS BY A WHISKER
That’s the cover line on the April 19, 1982 issue of Sports Illustrated. I keep a copy of it on my desk, and I smile every time I see it. It’s superimposed on John Iacono’s photo of Craig Stadler in his follow-through and argyle sweater. Inside, there is a great story by Dan Jenkins on how Stadler dug down deep to win the 46th Masters, as well as a terrific profile of the Walrus by John Papanek. I also had a forgettable piece on the rebuilt Big Red Machine.
https://sicovers.com/featured/craig-stadler-1982-masters-april-19-1982-sports-illustrated-cover.html
But the real reason I smile is the The Letter From The Publisher about Jane E. Bachman, the SI golf reporter better known as Bambi. As it happened, my future wife was friendly with Craig and his wife Sue, so she was overjoyed that he won, especially after he blew a 6-shot lead in the final round to necessitate a sudden-death playoff with Dan Pohl. Because that particular page had to close early, there’s no mention of her friendship with the Stadlers. It does, however, recount what had already been a challenging week:
“Her journey began on Tuesday, the day after a freak blizzard struck New York, when she was forced to spend six hours at LaGuardia Airport. Her flight was eventually canceled, and when she tried again on Wednesday, she found the airport had come to resemble a zoo… Bachman got to Augusta 29 hours late, and by the time she arrived she had traveled on nine different forms of transportation. She did, however, make it in time to for the coldest, wettest opening day in the history of the Masters.”
Mom at the Masters: Bambi did a Masterful job that week
Later in the piece, it mentions that “Senior Writer Dan Jenkins was particularly delighted that she found her way to Augusta last week, enabling him to stay in the locker room and keep warm.”
The weather cleared, just as it did at this year’s Masters. After an opening round 75, Stadler shot a 69 and a 67 to take a three-stroke lead into the final day. When the Easter Sunday telecast began on CBS, the Walrus had a six-shot lead with nine holes to play, with Pohl, Jerry Pate, Seve Ballesteros, Tom Kite and defending champion Tom Watson on his heels.
Bambi was, too. Jenkins’ description of the scene when Stadler missed his putt on the 18th bears the stamp of her reporting:
“When the frantic hordes went galloping over to the 10th hole to watch the playoff, Stadler had a chance to see Sue on his way to the tee. She was as calming as she had been the night before when they had eaten leftovers for dinner, as calming as she had been Sunday morning when they took their 2-year-old son, Kevin, on an Easter egg hunt.
“Stadler looked at her as if to say, ‘What do you have to do to win this thing?’ She only smiled and said, ‘Come on, babe, there are only two of you now—you can do it.”
And he did, when he parred No. 10, the Camellia, and Pohl’s par putt skittered past the hole. When Watson put the Green Jacket on Stadler in the Butler Cabin, Bambi was waiting outside.
https://vault.si.com/vault/1982/04/19/up-to-par-when-he-had-to-be
Meanwhile, back in the Time & Life Building in New York, the SI edit staff was scrambling. It just so happened that they had a feature story on Stadler that hadn’t run yet.
“I had gone out to Tahoe to do the profile toward the end of 1981,” says John Papanek, who was a close friend of Bambi and I. “I loved writing the piece, but there was never room to run the feature. But then Scot Leavitt, the golf editor, called that Sunday and said they were running it. Bambi was the reporter who fact-checked it.”
(Which meant that her week in Augusta became even more challenging.)
John’s story was entitled, “Sloppy Man In A Clean Sport,” and there’s a wonderful, and wonderfully prescient, passage toward the end of it when Stadler offers up a self-assessment: “What I’d like them to say about me is this. ‘They call him the Walrus, he’s colorful, he gets hot, but he gets over it and is ready for the next shot. And he’s playing great golf.’”
After which John writes, “They call him the Walrus, he’s colorful, he gets hot, but he gets over it and is ready for the next shot. And he’s playing great golf.”
https://vault.si.com/vault/1982/04/19/sloppy-man-in-a-clean-game
There’s another kick to be had in the story, a photograph by Richard Mackson of Craig squatting while watching his toddler son with a putter: “On the Stadlers’ Lake Tahoe sun deck, Kevin, age 2, takes a swing at his father’s game.”
The Stadlers: 32 years later, they were in the same Masters field
In 2014 Craig and Kevin became the first father and son to play in the Masters. Kevin had been on the tour for 12 years when he won the Phoenix Open in February of 2014, ensuring him a spot in the Masters field for the first time, though he knew the course well—he used to caddy for Craig at the annual Par 3 tournament. It should have been a happily-ever-after story—Kevin was built so much like his father that he was called the “Smallrus”—but alas, Craig and Sue had divorced a few years earlier.
Still, the significance was not lost on Craig, who said he choked up when he first saw their names written in perfect calligraphy on the Masters scoreboard. “That got me a little bit,” he said. “It’s going to be a wonderful week, and I hope he plays really well, and I hope I don’t embarrass myself.”
Kevin did play well, finishing in a tie for 8th. Craig, not so much—it was his last Masters as a competitor.
But he still comes back every year, and during last Thursday’s rain delay, Golf Channel commentator Brandel Chamblee mentioned chatting with Craig at the annual Champions Dinner on the eve of the tournament. When Bryson DeChambeau double-bogeyed No. 13 in the first round, he could take solace in the fact that one Masters champion overcame a double bogey in the first round—Craig Stadler.
Call it curiosity, call it sentimentality, but I dug up CBS’ Sunday Masters telecast from 1982:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmq1kpkGBio
Yes, it’s a tradition like no other, but a lot has changed since then. The polyester clothes, for one thing. Some players were using neon golf balls. And all of them had the African-American caddies that Augusta National insisted that they use to reinforce its Gone With The Wind image. This was actually the last year of that “custom.”
Craig’s collapse is painful to watch. After he misses that putt on No. 18, you can see him in consultation with Sue, dressed in pink. True to his word, he gets over the disappointment and hits a perfect drive, then a 6-iron to within 32 feet of the pin. Pohl hit an even better drive, but his 7-iron second shot lands to the right of the green. After Stadler taps in for a par, Pohl misreads his putt, and Craig bows his head and closes his eyes, thankful that, as Vin Scully says, “he walked away from the wreckage of what could have been a terrible accident.” Stadler then hugs his caddie, and consoles Pohl, who was playing in his first Masters.
A few minutes later, in the basement of Butler Cabin, Masters Chairman Hord Hardin conducts some awkward interviews, first with low amateur Jodie Mudd, then runnerup Pohl, then Stadler. “What does your wife think of your nickname?” asks Hardin.
“Well,” Craig replies, “she bought me a dozen walrus head covers, so obviously it doesn’t bother her.”
Then Watson appears in his Green Jacket, ready to give Stadler a new one. “Here it is,” says Watson. “You played great. You deserve it.”
“Will it fit?” asks Craig.
“It fits just right,” says Tom.
Thirty-eight and a half years later, Tiger Woods did the honors for Dustin Johnson, whose younger brother Austin is his caddie. It goes without saying that golf is a family game, and that connection was brought home in the little piece about Bambi—“born with a niblick in her mouth.” It also mentions that the former Mount Holyoke French major is comfortable speaking not only French, but also, thanks to her heritage, Norwegian and German. “I don’t think I’ll ever make a tremendous contribution until Bernhard Langer or Phillipe Ploujoux wins a tournament, or until the next great Norwegian golfer comes along.”
The other day, after I sent a copy of the Pub Memo to our four kids, our second son John responded, “She called her shot on Langer!”
Indeed, not only did he win two Masters (1985 and 1993), but at this year’s tournament, the 63-year-old became the oldest golfer ever to make the cut.
—30—
