Love, liquor & lavender - golfer Dave Sanders

Golf Digest, June, 1999

The record never really does speak for itself. If Doug Sanders' did, it would scream, and he wouldn't have to, with every fiber of his ward-robe and being.

By a stroke, Sanders was second to Jack Nicklaus in two British Opens, not just the famous one at St. Andrews in 1970. By a stroke, Sanders was second to Gene Littler in the U.S. Open (1961). By a stroke, he was second to Bob Rosburg in the PGA Championship (1959).

Sanders was fourth at the Masters in 1966, a year when his worst finish in a major was eighth. After winning the Canadian Open as a 22-year-old amateur, Sanders decorated the PGA Tour for 19 summers. He won 20 official tournaments: one more than Tom Kite or Ben Crenshaw, six more than Fred Couples or Corey Pavin, just as many as Hale Irwin, twice as many as Payne Stewart.

Along the way, Sanders beat Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tom Weiskopf in various playoffs. He won back-to-back tournaments in four different years. When Captain Ben Hogan tartly introduced the American side at the 1967 Ryder Cup ("Ladies and gentlemen . . . the finest golfers in the world"), Sanders was among them.

Of course, with the exception of a 30-inch putt, he was famous for none of these things. He was famous for love, liquor and lavender. He was famous for pastel-colored outfits with, most famous of all, matching shoes. He was famous for famous friends and a short backswing.

The backswing came from the same place Sanders did, Cedartown, Ga., in Polk County. Just as the gamblers and moonshin-ers worked their angles around the cotton fields and the Baptist Church, golf at Cedartown's nine-hole course had to be negotiated in the narrow openings between the honeysuckle brambles and the meandering creeks.

For the caddies, speed meant nearly as much as accuracy. They sneaked their own shots whenever their employers were on the other side of the rise. Consequently, Sanders had a swing so short and sudden that it was barely visible to the naked eye.

While a field hand, he had been the kind of boy who slipped stones or melons into his cotton sack to improve the payoff ($2 per 100 pounds). As a caddie, he would find desolate golf balls, fill in their cuts and nicks with soap, cover them over with white shoe-polish and sell them as gamers. Sleeping through most of his school days, he unconsciously majored in metaphors.

"I have always taken care of my cover," he says with breathtaking honesty, "better than my core."

Today's closetful of shoes, as shiny and bright as hard candy, represents no mystery. Sanders didn't have shoes of his own until he was 8. "One left," he says, "and one right."

To the boy tramping 21/2 miles home from the Cedartown course, "the lightning bugs looked like ghosts." They would go with him to all the big cities of the world. "I never got tired of walking up that road," he says. "I just got tired of walking up that road broke."

Sporting lifes who talked Sanders into skipping school ferried him as far away as 200 miles for gambling games. He lost his virginity in a ditch at the age of 11.

In seventh grade, when the teacher stepped out for a moment, he and a girl made love standing up behind a Hammond's Map of the World. He took it for love, anyway.

Even in bib overalls, George Douglas Sanders was a handsome boy. Conscious of his appearance, he starched his blue jeans to emphasize the crease and washed his tousled hair twice a day.

Sanders' older brothers, Ernest and James, had marks: deep and sorrowful ones. Dougie didn't have any, or at least they didn't show. Ernest, the eldest son, was blind. At the age of 4, he was playing in a coalyard and picked up a dynamite cap. James lost a hand with the Marines in Korea.

Their father was a bootlegger. Sanders says, "I can still see Dad and Mom sitting there at the Masters." With a split grip, the old man had attempted only one golf shot his whole life, just to see what all the fuss was about. Since the hit was pretty straight and fairly solid, thereafter he considered it an easy game. He'd tell Hogan, "If you ever need any help, Ben, come see me. I'll show you how to do it."

Mom was a piney-woods linguist-"She spoke three languages," Sanders says. "Fluent Georgian, fluent Texan and a little English." Her features were soft and delicate, but her eyes never completely let go of the cotton mill, the kitchen stove and the Depression. "She was a dream mom. But I'm not sure if Mom ever knew what I did. When I'd leave town, she'd say, 'Son, good luck to you, in whatever you do.'

"I don't know why," Sanders says, "but I wanted to win."

The celebrity carousel

On his first airplane ride, he declined the meal, fearing it was extra. But this was not his style for long. He fell in with Dutch Harrison and Al Besselink and Tony Lema and Jimmy Demaret. "It's only when you're broke," Demaret always said, "that you can enjoy life."

Through them, Sanders found Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby and Bob Hope and Jack Benny and Phil Harris and Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. and Errol Flynn and Gene Kelly and Gene Tierney and Jill St. John. Any carousel that came around, he jumped right on.