Vinny Giles, the last of the great career amateurs
Beginning this weekend, 256 of the best golfers age 25 and over will convene at Vinny Giles’ course just outside Richmond, Virginia – Kinloch Golf Club – for the U.S. Mid-Amateur. It would behoove any and all of them to grab a beverage and Kinloch’s specialty sandwich (fried peanut butter and jelly) and sit a spell to chat with the course’s co-designer and the last great career amateur champion.
Conversations with Marvin “Vinny” Giles III are always a treat and never filtered like his cigarettes. He is one of the game’s great characters and the last of his kind – a supremely gifted champion who opted to remain a lifelong amateur despite the undeniable talent and charisma that could have made him a tour star had he chosen that alternate route.
“I quite honestly wasn’t sure that I’d enjoy that life,” he said. “I just loved playing golf, and I didn’t want it to quit being fun. … I wasn’t sure I was made out for it. My only regret is that I never proved to myself whether I was good enough to play at that level. Outside of that, I have no regrets at all.”
Giles went to law school at Virginia instead, and in 1973 fell into founding a sports management company, Pros Inc., with his partner Vernon Spratley representing friends through the years such as Lanny Wadkins, Gary Koch, Tom Kite, Davis Love III and later Ernie Els. Long retired himself, Giles still represents Koch and Wadkins in their broadcast deals.
“As a 19-year-old college dropout from North Carolina in 1962, Giles won the Virginia State Open.”
Marvin “Vinny” Giles III
It worked out pretty well for his golf game. “To be honest with you,” he said, “from a golf standpoint probably the best thing that ever happened to my game because I got some top-level competition and we’re playing $2 Nassaus every day for beer money. And I learned a heck of a lot down there. Really, it was critical to getting better playing golf.”
Giles’ career résumé backs up that assertion. For an eight-year window from 1965-72, the U.S. Amateur went to a stroke-play format instead of the match-play that has decided every other national championship before or since. The principal character of that stroke-play era was Giles, who prominently featured as the winner or runner-up in half of them. He signaled his aggregate prowess by finishing as co-medalist at Canterbury in 1964, the year before the USGA switched to stroke-play. But he also reached the semifinals in 1973, the year when the tournament reverted to match play.
“The record I’m most proud of is from ’67 through ’73 I had one finish in the U.S. Amateur that was outside the top three,” said Giles of a seven-year stretch that went 2, 2, 2, T6, 3, 1 and T3, his win coming in 1972 at Charlotte Country Club by a stroke over Ben Crenshaw and Mark Hayes. “I tied for sixth when Lanny Wadkins won in ’70.
Giles always preferred stroke play as a better way to determine a national champion, though he was no slouch at match-play, either. He played on four Walker Cup teams (1969-75) – three of them winners – and captained the winning U.S. side in 1993. Even in his lone team loss – the 1971 upset of a loaded U.S. squad by GB&I at St. Andrews – Giles featured in a day-one singles win over Michael Bonallack by holing his desperate pitch from off the road on the Road Hole of a tied match.
“At the next year’s amateur dinner at the Masters, the R&A secretary presented Giles with the flagstick and flag from the Road Hole – the only memento of his decorated career displayed in his family room. Giles competed for the U.S. in three Eisenhower Trophies (1968, ’70 and ’72), winning all three World Amateur Team events, in Australia, Spain and Argentina, respectively. At age 32, he won the 1975 British Am in an 8-and-7 romp over Mark James at Royal Liverpool and hoped to become only the fifth golfer to complete the double and win the U.S. Amateur that same summer at his home course in Richmond, The Country Club of Virginia’s James River course. But Giles…
