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The 1964 U.S. Open champ could relate to the players, and make viewers understand.
By BRUCE LOWITT, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 30, 2002
Ken Venturi started playing golf because he couldn't talk the way he wanted. He wound up talking about golf because he couldn't play the way he wanted. Sunday, the 71-year-old leaves the CBS booth after 32 years, the longest-running lead analyst in the history of sports on television, a remarkable second career considering he stuttered as a youngster.
He chose golf over team sports to escape teasing. "I could be alone and teach myself to speak while I practiced," he said. "When I was out there I'd pretend I was an announcer -- and I always sank the putt to win the Open."
Venturi gave viewers a sense of the game and its players, a depth few broadcasters -- including other former pros -- could match. Drawing on his experience as the winner of 14 PGA tournaments in 13 years, including a grueling, near-calamitous 1964 U.S. Open he barely remembers, Venturi went beyond techniques and technicalities and into the players' hearts.
"He can describe not just what they're thinking but what they're feeling," Jim Nantz, his broadcasting partner the past 17 years, said recently.
CBS isn't televising the Open at the Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md., two weeks hence, so Venturi is saying farewell this weekend in Potomac, Md., at the Kemper Open at TPC of Avenel.
"We're kind of right across the street from where I won the U.S. Open. That's fine," Venturi said from his Marco Island home.
The TPC also is a half-hour drive from Gainesville, Va., where he captained the U.S. team in the 2000 President's Cup at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club. "So it all kind of fits together."
Venturi was an amateur at the 1956 Masters, given an exemption on a vote by Masters and U.S. Open champions. He opened with 66 (the lowest amateur round at Augusta National), followed with 69, and on a windy Saturday, 75 to lead by four. Sunday, the weather and pressure got to him. He shot 80.
"All I was trying to do was hit greens and par, but I couldn't get the damn ball close. ... Everything I did was wrong. Basically, I choked," he said.
He lost by one to Jackie Burke, the only player to break par.
Two years later he turned pro and in 1958 and '60 again came close to winning the Masters, losing each to Arnold Palmer, the latter when Arnie birdied the last two holes and won by one. The '58 tournament still rankles Venturi. Rain had soaked Augusta, and Palmer's tee shot on the par-3 No. 12 landed in a muddy embankment. He took a double-bogey 5, then played a provisional ball which, under a temporary bad-weather rule, gave Palmer a free lift. He parred the hole with the provisional.
"Is it possible to hole out and then say, 'I'm going to play a provisional ball'? You have to announce it before you play the first ball, and you have to play them simultaneously," Venturi said. "I said, 'You can't play it.' He went ahead and played it anyway."
Palmer eagled No. 13 and Venturi, who birdied it, thought he had a one-shot lead. It wasn't until No. 14 that club co-founder Cliff Roberts ruled Palmer's par on 12 would be accepted. "When he came out and announced it, I lost my composure and three-putted," Venturi said.
He finished two strokes behind Palmer's 284 and one behind Doug Ford and Fred Hawkins.
"I don't know if I would have won," Venturi said, "but I got rattled. ... It would never happen today because of television and the number of people who would have been there on the spot to make a decision."
In 1961 Venturi tore muscles in his neck, arm and leg when his car was broadsided. He slid to 66th in earnings in '62 and 94th in '63, contracted walking pneumonia and, he freely admits, drank too much. He remembers praying: "Do with me what You will, but please don't let me die like this."
He was 33 when local and sectional qualifying put him in the 1964 U.S. Open. He played the first two rounds in 72-70 before Saturday's 36-hole final.
"There was no breeze. The heat was brutal," said Ray Floyd, Venturi's 21-year-old playing partner the final day. "We had people dropping in the gallery."
Venturi shot 66 for Saturday's first 18 holes, but the heat, which hit 106, took its toll. Between rounds lay on the locker-room floor with Dr. John Everett, a Congressional member, serving him liquids and salt tablets.
"A lot of people have told me that the doctor said, 'I recommend you don't go out there. It could be fatal.' "
Venturi ignored the advice. "But this has all been told to me many times, that when he said it could be fatal my answer was, 'It's better than the way I've been living.'
"I'd been in a slump for a couple of years. I was flat broke and had nowhere to go. ... I'd come this far and gotten this close. Maybe it was stupid, but in competition you do things you don't normally do."
Venturi began Saturday's second 18 trailing by two. When he approached No. 18 he noticed his was the only name in red (under par) on the scoreboard and realized he led by at least two. He won by four. As he holed out after blasting from a bunker he fell to his knees, weeping.
"I don't remember going to the first tee. I can't remember one single shot Ray Floyd hit," he said. "I just handed him his card and said, 'I don't know what you shot.' I only signed mine because (USGA director) Joe Dey told me, 'Sign it, Ken. It's correct.' "
Venturi won twice more in '64, was PGA Player of the Year and Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year. It was his last really good year. By the end of it he was losing feeling in his right hand and had an operation in 1965 and again in '68 for carpal tunnel syndrome.
After the second surgery CBS producer Frank Chirkinian asked if Venturi would be interested in broadcasting. Venturi did some guest commentary and, two years later, after a third operation, Chirkinian resumed his pursuit. "He said, 'If you quit the tour I'll give you a full-time contract.'
"The surgeon knew me well. I asked him, 'Will I be able to play golf again?' He said, 'Ken, you'll always be able to play golf. But competitively you'll never play up to your standards.' So I quit cold turkey."
It was 1967, maybe '68. Venturi was in a Palm Springs, Calif., restaurant, and he fell in love with the hostess. A year later they began dating. The wedding was in 1972, and Beau and Ken were married 25 years. She died of brain cancer in July 1997.
In the spring of 2000 Venturi was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He told only his son and Nantz, and delayed treatment until October, after the President's Cup, in which the United States defeated an international team.
"I didn't want to detract from what I was doing, didn't want to detract from the President's Cup and I didn't want people asking me (about the cancer) while I was going through it," Venturi said. The treatment was successful; he is cancer-free.
He and Beau had moved to Marco Island in 1976. He plans to move back to Palm Springs, to do charity work and design a few courses.
"There's family out there, a lot of friends. It's a good place to retire," he said.
"After losing Beau there's nothing to keep me here. If she was still alive I probably wouldn't retire. She traveled with me quite a bit." He paused. "When the fun is out of it, it's time to say goodbye."
Venturi recalled a dinner long ago in New York with friend and fellow golfer Joe DiMaggio.
"I asked him why he'd retired, that he'd still had some good years left," Venturi said. "He made a great statement, which I never understood until it came to pass with me. He said, 'Ken, when you're good, you can always get in. It's knowing when to get out.'
"Now is the time for me to get out, with people saying what they're saying about me now instead of waiting longer and hearing, 'He should've gone a long time ago.' I'm totally at peace with myself."
-- Staff writer Bob Harig contributed to this report.