Twenty-five years ago, as spring reluctantly returned to northern New England, I received a surprising phone call from a golf-writing legend.
“Mr. Dodson,” said a cultured Yankee voice. “My name is Herbert Warren Wind. Do you have a few moments to talk?”
It was middle March and snowing yet again in Maine. I was sitting at my office desk over the garage, remembering my Scottish mother-in-law’s stern admonition that March is a winter month in Maine. The last thing I expected was a phone call from the dean of America’s golf writers.
“Why … yes sir, I do,” I said, sitting up a bit straighter. “What a pleasure to speak with you.”
“Please call me Herb,” he said. “All my friends do.”
He’d recently read A Golfer’s Life and Final Rounds, he explained, and felt compelled to get in touch to say how much he enjoyed both books. The former was the result of my three-year collaboration with Arnold Palmer on his memoirs; the latter a little memoir that told the story of taking my dying father back to England and Scotland where he’d learned to play golf as an American airman stationed on the Lancaster coast near Lytham & St Annes Golf Club shortly before D-Day.
At that moment, Arnold’s book was climbing the New York Times bestseller list and Final Rounds had recently topped 100,000 copies in sales and been honored as a “book of the year” by a second major golf industry organization.
“I found things in both of your books I’d like to discuss with you. Seems we share a keen admiration for Arnold Palmer and golf in Great Britain,” Wind said.
Before I could reply, he continued, “I’m wondering if you might be interested in having lunch with me here some afternoon at my place here northwest of Boston?”
I said it would be my genuine pleasure.
“Excellent,” said Wind (whom I would never call “Herb”). “How about 1 p.m. on Patriots’ Day? That’s the third Monday in April. The Boston Marathon is run that day and the Red Sox traditionally open their season. Hope that doesn’t conflict with your plans that day.”
I have a peculiar little ritual I do to celebrate the return of the Masters and the golf season in Maine. I assured him there was no conflict, pointing out that I was simply in the annual grip of “Masters Fever” awaiting the last of snow and ice in my yard that typically occurred around the Masters time.
“I know what you mean. Is there a cure for that?” he asked.
“I have a peculiar little ritual I do to celebrate the return of the Masters and the golf season in Maine.”
“Oh, I shall look forward to hearing about that,” he said with a gentle chuckle, then provided the address of the retirement community where he lived in Bedford, Massachusetts, wished me well, and politely rang off.
I sat for a moment watching the snow come down out my office window, marveling at how some of the greatest things in life are moments one never sees coming – such as spring in Maine and a surprise phone call from a living legend.
Herbert Warren Wind, of course, was far more than just an “American Sportswriter noted for his writings on golf,” as Wikipedia modestly sums up the patron saint of American golf writing. I hardly needed an Internet encyclopedia to remind me of Wind’s incredible influence on my work and that of many other golf scribblers because I grew up reading many of his articles in Sports Illustrated and The New Yorker magazine, and most if not all of his earlier golf pieces in four collected editions.
One reason I became a student of the history of golf in Britain and America, in fact, was due to vintage editions of Wind’s incomparable The Story of American Golf (1948) and The Complete Golfer, both of which I got my hands on early in life.
There were at least two more indispensable Wind classics on my bookshelf, beginning with a hopelessly dog-eared copy of The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, the 1957 best-selling instruction book that he wrote with Ben Hogan, and Following Through (1985), a collection of the master’s pieces that spanned from 1962 to the 1980s, many of which appeared in “The Sporting Scene” department of The New Yorker magazine.
The nickname “Amen Corner” was born in a 1958 Sports Illustrated article by Wind in which he wrote: “On the afternoon before the recent start of the Masters golf tournament, a wonderfully evocative ceremony took place at the farthest reach of the Augusta National course – down in Amen Corner where Rae’s Creek intersects the 13th fairway near the tee, then parallels the front edge of the green on the short 12th and finally swirls alongside the 11th green.”
His inspiration for the name, he later confided, came from a song by Mildred Bailey and the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra called “Shoutin’ in that Amen Corner.”
Historically, records show, it’s the stretch of holes that invariably impacts the outcome of the Masters, where contender hopes are either elevated by brilliant play or shattered by a single shot.
In a nutshell, Herb Wind was the writer I emulated when I began writing about the game for Golf Magazine and later as golf correspondent for Departures Magazine. Thus, being summoned to lunch by the man who named Augusta National’s “Amen Corner” and personally fueled my passion for the game’s history and traditions was tantamount to being invited to sit by the Aegean Sea and nibble grapes with the poet Homer.
As instructed, I arrived at Wind’s attractive retirement village at the stroke of 1 p.m. and was greeted at the door by a dapper elderly gentleman wearing a handsome green tweed sports jacket and a Yale University golf tie. In his honor, I was wearing the same collegiate necktie.
We shook hands and he wondered whether I was a Yale alum. As he led me to a sun-splashed private dining room overlooking a garden, I explained that I was a product of the North Carolina university system but had recently spoken to Yale University’s annual intercollegiate invitational the previous autumn at the invitation of the school’s longtime golf coach, who not only gave me the Yale necktie as a thank-you, but invited me to play the university’s famous golf course, a Seth Raynor jewel. This was the first time I’d had a chance to wear the tie.
After we ordered lunch – Wind ordered a bowl of cream of celery soup and a small fruit salad; his visitor a simple club sandwich and chips – we were suddenly off and running on a host of topics near and dear to us: our shared love affair with Arnold and Winnie Palmer, golf in Scotland, collegiate ice hockey, his friendship with Glenna Collett Vare, and his deep affection for his hometown of Brockton, Massachusetts, and the golf course where he’d learned to play the game, historic Thorny Lea Golf Club.
He seemed pleased to learn that I’d recently done a club talk at Thorny Lea, and earlier in my career, as former senior writer for Yankee Magazine, I’d profiled both the sizable sports heritage of Brockton and Dame Glenna Vare.
Back home in Maine, meanwhile, two of my weekly golf pals were Bowdoin College ice hockey coach Terry Meagher and his boss, athletic director Sidney Watson, two college ice hockey legends. Naturally, Wind knew them both.
Out of respect for my host, I didn’t take notes, but at one point he casually wondered which of golf’s major championships gave the most pleasure to watch. I told him that I considered the annual telecast of the Masters every April the start of official springtime in the far frozen North, celebrated by a silly little ritual I performed every year in my front yard on Masters Sunday if I wasn’t fortunate…
