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Sporting News, The, April 17, 1995 by Dave Kindred

Thirty-six years ago, a little blond boy named Ben Crenshaw put his hands on a golf club that had been cut down to his size. The club was a mashie, an antique even then, a rusty stick brought out of the pro shop's storeroom. An old man named Harvey Penick didn't tell the boy how to hold the club; he showed him.

"He put my hands on the club," Ben Crenshaw said.

Then the old man gave the boy a cutdown putter and one ball. He sent him out to a practice green with a simple instruction. "Chip onto the green and putt," Harvey Penick said. "You're playing golf."

On a happy day 36 years later, telling the story, Ben Crenshaw moved his hands together. He held that cutdown mashie again. He felt the old man's hands on his again.

He went to see him in Texas two weeks ago, the old man in bed by then, 90 years old, a decade's relentless pain almost over. Crenshaw loved Harvey Penick the way a man loves his father because what Penick gave Crenshaw was the stuff of life. The old man gave the little boy a cutdown mashie and a passion that made his life's work joy.

There at Penick's bed, Crenshaw had come to see Harvey one more time. The club pro had been his teacher and become his friend. With his family, Crenshaw often stopped by Penick's home to visit. Now time was short. Everyone knew it. So Crenshaw came to his friend's bedroom to see him.

Crenshaw allowed as to how he wasn't playing well; in particular, he wasn't putting well. The old man who lived to teach said, "Can you please get a putter and show me how you're stroking the ball?"

From a back room, someone fetched an old Gene Sarazen-model putter. "Now, take two good practice strokes," Penick said. "Trust yourself -- and don't let that clubhead past your hands."

Harvey Penick's reputation was built on teaching. He touched the fives and games of great players and great teachers alike. It is no stretch to say that people in golf revered him. The world at large learned why when, at 86, Penick allowed a writer to publish his life's notebooks. The resulting "Little Red Book" made Penick rich and famous. Not that he much cared; when told there'd be a $50,000 advance for the book, Penick was so sweetly naive he believed that meant he had to pay to publish the book. "Maybe," he said, "we can mortgage the house."

The Sunday before the Masters, Crenshaw took a phone call at dinner from Tom Kite. They were Penick's golf children, students first and champions later, always devoted to the old man. Kite told Crenshaw of Penick's death. They would fly to Austin for the funeral on Wednesday, the day before the Masters.

The beauty of Harvey Penick was simplicity. You're Playing golf He told students, "Take dead aim." By those three words, Crenshaw would say, Penick told his students everything. Take dead aim. "He meant "Trust yourself. Don't think of anything going on in the world. Let your muscles and instincts take over. Feel with your heart and soul you're going to produce that shot.'"

The Sunday after Penick's death, Crenshaw came to a shot that might win the Masters -- or lose it. He came to it at the 14th hole. He had pulled his tee shot into trees along the left side of the fairway. All week he had made no mistakes on Augusta National Golf Club's last nine holes. Now was no time to start.

So Crenshaw hit what he called "a shut-faced 8-iron with a little turn on it." We need understand no golf jargon to know this was a shot born of heart and soul. The ball bumped against the 14th green just the right way, skipped a bit and rolled to a stop 12 feet from the cup.

Crenshaw is a romantic who believes the ideal is possible. A student of golf history, he can tell you the geological evolutions that created St. Andrews by the sea. He can tell you why his relationship with Harvey Penick was more like the Stewart Maiden-Bobby Jones relationship than the Jack Grout-Jack Nicklaus relationship.

On this Sunday when he won the Masters, Ben Crenshaw also will tell you he felt a hand on his shoulder. Harvey's. I believe in fate," he said. He thought of Harvey all day all the way around Augusta's hallowed grounds. "He was with me all week."

All he needed to win was a little putt at the last hole. Maybe a foot and a half. Or 36 years. Thirty-six years after the old man put a putter in his hands and told him to go play golf, Ben Crenshaw stood a foot and a half from winning the Masters. He won the tournament 11 years before and in the time since had come to wonder if he might ever again do anything so wonderful. A foot and a half now.

The week had been magical. He had finished no better than 40th in any tournament this year. But on Tuesday he had found a swing that worked. Putts began to fall. "Harvey always said there's nothing like holing a couple putts to build your confidence," Crenshaw said.

Suddenly, from no game at all, he had created a champion's game. "I don't think I've ever had a quicker transformation." He smiled a little smile of wonderment and said softly, "I don't know how it happened."

He touched that little putt at the last hole and it went in. And there, under a beautiful spring sky, Ben Crenshaw leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees and put his face in his hands. Happily, he wept.