Golf Oddities From Around The World, Part Two

DEATH ON THE GOLF COURSE:

Not a week goes by without there being a report in the news about someone who has been injured or killed with a golf club or a cart. Sometimes it’s an accident; other times, it’s a criminal assault (think Jack Nicholson). Fortunally, only rarely is it associated with the actual playing of the game. Several years ago in Boston a rather odd incident occurred when a teen found a club on a city street and decided to see what would happen when he hit a nearby fire hydrant. Surprise, the club snapped and a piece stabbed him in the neck. Tragically he died a short time later.

Growing up in the mid 50’s, Saturday night television and the Lawrence Welk show meant the ‘Lennon Sisters’, and nobody loved the Lennon sisters more then Chester Young a former Air Force officer. Young became a stalker of the girls, especially Peggy, getting the attention of the Secret Service when he threatened then President Johnson for not intervening to allow him to marry Peggy. On August 12^th, 1969, the same week the Manson family would garner world wide attention for their murder spree, 53 year old Bill Lennon, the father of Peggy and her ten other brothers and sisters was leaving his job as a golf instructor at the 9-hole Venice Golf Club (now, the Penmar G.C.) hard by the Santa Monica Airport. Lennon knew Young from his frequent visits to the family’s home and had words with him. Young brandished a gun as Lennon was putting his clubs in his trunk, his first shot wounded Lennon who began to beg for his life, Young’s second shot to the head, excutation style was fatal. Young escaped, two months later Young’s body was found in the trunk of his car in the mountains of Northern California. He had rigged a hose to kill himself with carbon monoxide, when that failed he turned the murder weapon on himself. In his suicide note he referred to Peggy as his ‘’wife’’.

The views are magnificent from the tee box and fairways of Hawaii’s Pali GC at the base of the Ko’olau Mountain Range 7 miles from downtown Honolulu. The course features breathtaking views of Kaneohe Bay and the surrounding emerald green hills. Hardly the setting for murder and mayhem but on the sunny afternoon of January 7^th, 2004 that’s exactly what happened when three armed men approached three golfers just ending there round and started shooting. One of the victims died in the parking lot the other two made it to the first tee where the second victim was shot and killed, the third man was shot in the face and critically wounded but still able to identify the shooters. It would turn out to be all about racketeering and the operation of an illegal gambling business. The shooters were attempting to regain control of security of the gambling operation. They were found guilty and sentenced to life. (Life In . . . Hawaii! they couldn’t send them to N. Dakota?)

Few entertainers loved the game of golf as much as “Der Bingle.” Although he made his name as a singer, vaudeville performer, and movie star, he would probably prefer to be remembered as a two handicap who played in both the British and U.S. Amateur Championships, a five-time club champion at Lakeside Golf Club in Hollywood and as one of only a few players who have aced the beautiful 16^th at Cypress Point, Pebble Beach, Ca. It’s 220 yards over the inlet, into the wind on this par 3. Crosby was inducted into The World Golf Hall of Fame. On the afternoon of October 14, 1977 Bing was playing at the La Morajela golf course near Madrid, Spain. He finished 18 holes with a score of 85 and with a partner, defeated two Spanish pros. After his last putt, Bing bowed to applause from the small gallery and said, “It was a great game fellas.” He was about twenty yards from the clubhouse when he collapsed from a massive heart attack. His three golfing companions remarked that he did not look tired and was even singing around the course though he seemed to be favoring his left arm near the end of the game. They thought he had slipped; they carried him to the clubhouse where Bing Crosby was declared dead at the age of 74.

In San Leandro, California there’s a golf course named Monarch Bay, it wasn’t always called that, old timers still know it as Tony Lema Golf Course. Tony Lema, who would garner the nickname of “Champagne” Tony from the sports writers he liked to hang out with was a popular local boy that could have had one of the most successful careers in professional golf. At 32 Lema had won 10 PGA tournaments and the British Open, beating Jack Nicklaus by five shots. Lema was flying to an exhibition match in Chicago, to be held right after the 1966 Championship in Akron, Ohio. He, his pregnant wife Mary, the pilot and her husband the co-pilot lost their lives, when unbelievably the charted twin engine Beechcraft Bonanza ran out of fuel, and in a stroke of irony, actually crashed in a water hazard short of the 7^th green of Lansing Country Club in Lansing, Ill. Lema and his wife were buried in the Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Hayward, Ca.

It was getting to be late in the day on Sunday, October 12, 1997, when the group on the long par five, #12 at Pacific Grove Golf Course, on the Monterrey peninsula, a popular municipal track known locally as the poor man’s Pebble Beach, were startled by the sound of a popping airplane engine and a reduction in engine noise, in horror and disbelief the golfers watched as a small plane made a steep descent from 500 feet and plunged straight into the ocean and quickly disappeared under the waves. At the age of 53, the voice of John Denver was stilled forever. In an eerie comparison to Tony Lema’s accident, Denver was also suspected of being distracted while trying to change the fuel from one tank to another and literally ran out of gas.

Its been more then a decade since Payne Stewart’s private jet a Lear 35, crashed in a field outside Mina, S.D. easily the most bizarre air crash involving an athlete ever. Stewart, flying from Florida to a tournament in Texas along with five others including Jack Nicklaus’s top designer all died when the cabin of their plane depressurized shortly after takeoff. Everyone on board lost consciousness and may have asphyxiated or froze to death in the ensuing hours-long flight, as the plane was shadowed by jet fighters until it ran out of fuel and crashed in a field.

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