Opinion & Analysis

Champagne Time: On the 50th anniversary of the death of Tony Lema

Published

8 years ago

Jul 26, 2016

One afternoon a lifetime ago, in a scraggly bit of park between a suburban New York commuter railroad station and the dire Bronx River, a skinny little young teen was working on his short game. With his trusty 9-iron, the kid hit pitches from target to target: tree, bare spot, piece of litter. And then Masters champion Doug Ford came along, asked the kid what he was aiming at — “That tree there?” — and with the kid’s club stiffed it.

I tell this story to explain, in sentimental part, why I recently tracked down a copy of Ford’s 1963 Wedge Book. (Let me also add that Doug Ford did have local connections, which makes his appearance there in a patch of southern Westchester train-station scrub less golfus ex machina than you might have thought it.) That hard-practicing kid’s once stellar short game has gotten maddeningly erratic, this near-half-century later, and in looking around for guidance I discovered Ford’s little volume, previously unknown to me. It contains advice that is still very helpful — and it also contains, in Julius Boros’s Preface, a sentence that left me nearly as open-mouthed with wonderment as Ford’s no-practice-swing bullseye left my younger self. Boros, himself a three-time major champion, mentions having worked his way up with Ford on the post-war pro circuit “amid some pretty fine company — Jackie Burke, Ted Kroll, Tommy Bolt and Jerry Barber, to name a few.” And then Boros, writing in September 1963, adds this:

“Doug Ford and I both feel that the current crop of young golfers, including Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, and Tony Lema, is the best to come up since that group a decade ago.”

The King, the Black Knight, the Golden Bear — of course the Big Three, all still happily with us, did go on to be “the best” of that golfing generation (and then some). But that there might have been a Big Fourth? What about the last-named member of Boros’s then-young foursome?

Smooth swing

Well, I knew that Tony Lema had a nickname, too — although “Champagne Tony” is definitely under-dressed for keeping company with the Big Three’s era-bestriding monikers. And I also knew that Lema’s nickname accurately reflected his life-of-the-party lifestyle. (As today’s parlance would have it, he owned his choices: “I have never denied myself a drink or a good dinner or a party while I am out on Tour.”) What I had not known, prior to turning from Boros to Wikipedia and beyond, was the extent to which Tony Lema’s tragically-short career had justified lofty expectations, right up to Big Four-dom.

The biographical basics I discovered are as follows. Anthony David Lema was born in Oakland in 1934, five years after Palmer, a year before Player, six before Nicklaus. Raised on the wrong side of the tracks, he learned golf at a local muni, becoming good enough to win the Oakland City championship at 18. He served overseas in the Marine Corps, then came home to work at the San Francisco Golf Club and a Nevada nine-holer. By 1957-58, Lema was out on the pro circuit, with financial backing from Eddie Lowery, otherwise known to golfing history as Francis Ouimet’s 10-year-old caddy at the 1913 U.S. Open.

With, as Peter Alliss described it, “an elegant swing of rare beauty” — so sweet and smooth “you could pour [it] on popcorn,” in another admirer’s words — Lema enjoyed some early pro success. (Video of that swing, with commentary by Hale Irwin, is available on YouTube.)

Lean years followed, but then came the breakthrough. He won three times in the fall of 1962, once in 1963, and in 1964 went on a streak that saw him win the Crosby at Pebble in January, the Thunderbird Classic and the Buick and Cleveland Opens in June, and the Open Championship (by five strokes over Nicklaus in second) at St. Andrews in July. (Lema chronicled his early tour experiences in Golfer’s Gold, which George Plimpton applauded as showing “considerable flair for the written word.”)

A couple more titles followed in 1965, and a final victory in May of 1966. Add a second-place finish at the ’63 Masters; a 9-1-1 record in two Ryder Cup appearances (’63 and ’65 — the best record of any competitor with at least two appearances); 50 percent top-10 finishes from ’63 through ’66; and a win over Palmer, Ken Venturi, and Bobby Nichols at the 1964 World Series of Golf (taking home $50K, which was then the game’s largest purse), and Lema’s career certainly seemed to be tracking toward Hall of Fame status.

Instead, too-soon his time ran out: on July 24, 1966, after his final round in the PGA Championship at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Lema headed with his pregnant wife for Chicago to play the next day in an exhibition in Crete, Illinois. Less than a mile from arrival, the twin-engine charter crashed … on a golf course, just short of the green of a par three.

As veteran N.Y. Times journalist Dave Anderson was to note, Tony Lema’s death “saddened even casual followers of golf because of his appeal.”

And his appeal was considerable

Tall, handsome, and personable, Champagne Tony lived extra-large — with “effervescence,” was Anderson’s memorable choice of adjective, although he could well have simply chosen “extravagance.” Lema boasted that although he finished second in tournament earnings in 1965, he finished “first in spendings.” (He took home just over a hundred thousand in prize money that year.)

With an outgoing style “that let others in on the enjoyment of his victories,” Lema became almost as popular as his good friend, the game’s charismatic King, achieving the type of crossover celebrity not previously enjoyed by professional golfers in the pre-Palmer era. So the nickname Champagne Tony was made to order for such a “colorful and endearing character.” He had been christened with it after his first big win at the Orange County Open in the fall of 1962. An excited Lema, hungering for a validating title at long last, promised the press corps after 54 holes that “if I win this thing, guys, it’ll be champagne all around, not beers, tomorrow.” And next day, sure enough, the playoff victory was Lema’s and the bubbly went to the writers — although, as he later admitted, “all the sportswriters there couldn’t have drunk as much as I did that night.”

(But at least that time he waited: an earlier, unofficial win had come after a playoff for which he’d prepared with three quick post-round highballs, thinking his workday already done. On the other hand, he would later go ahead and tempt fate by serving up the bubbly at the halfway point of his victorious ’64 Open Championship, when he held a two-stroke lead over the field.)

In short, whether taking driver out a 12th-floor hotel window during a late-night party, or exchanging club for baton during a TV appearance at the helm of Lawrence Welk’s “Champagne Music Makers,” Champagne Tony, off the course and away from the game, was always the life of the party.

Memorials

Lema’s friends and fellow pros kept that party going in his honor for many years. Beginning a year or two after his death, and continuing until 1980, the Tony Lema Memorial attracted top names in the worlds of sports and entertainment, as well as many of golf’s greats — 50 celebs, 50 pros, 100 amateurs. The one-day invitational, with gala dinner the night before, was held on Marco Island, Florida, at what was then the Marco Island Country Club, where Lema had been the first, albeit unofficial, club pro. According to local reporter Tom Rife, writing in 2006 in memory of the Memorial, “Not before, and not since has Southwest Florida known anything like it.”

Nor, as it turned out, had that golf-crazy youngster mentioned earlier known anything like the Marco Island course, when he and his father came to tee it up there in the spring of 1969. My scorecards from their two rounds are, I suppose, my most-prized golf mementoes. As the scores themselves attest (125 and 126, 118 and 121), neither I nor my father, whose own recent introduction to the game had opened the door to my taking it up, had ever played such an overwhelmingly challenging course. Indeed, handling the cards, a memory annotates the rounds: so many balls lost in the seemingly-ever-present water we had to suspend play to ride in to get more!

So that, anyway, is why one golfer, on this July 24th, celebrated the half-century anniversary of Tony Lema’s death with thoughts not only about what might have been, in Champagne Tony’s case, but also with reflections on what has been, in the lifetime of that kid who, amazingly now almost 50 years a golfer, is still trying to better his short game.

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Opinion & Analysis

The Wedge Guy: What really makes a wedge work? Part 1

Published

2 days ago

Apr 18, 2024

Terry Koehler

Of all the clubs in our bags, wedges are almost always the simplest in construction and, therefore, the easiest to analyze what might make one work differently from another if you know what to look for.

Wedges are a lot less mysterious than drivers, of course, as the major brands are working with a lot of “pixie dust” inside these modern marvels. That’s carrying over more to irons now, with so many new models featuring internal multi-material technologies, and almost all of them having a “badge” or insert in the back to allow more complex graphics while hiding the actual distribution of mass.

But when it comes to wedges, most on the market today are still single pieces of molded steel, either cast or forged into that shape. So, if you look closely at where the mass is distributed, it’s pretty clear how that wedge is going to perform.

To start, because of their wider soles, the majority of the mass of almost any wedge is along the bottom third of the clubhead. So, the best wedge shots are always those hit between the 2nd and 5th grooves so that more mass is directly behind that impact. Elite tour professionals practice incessantly to learn to do that consistently, wearing out a spot about the size of a penny right there. If impact moves higher than that, the face is dramatically thinner, so smash factor is compromised significantly, which reduces the overall distance the ball will fly.

Every one of us, tour players included, knows that maddening shot that we feel a bit high on the face and it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s not your fault.

If your wedges show a wear pattern the size of a silver dollar, and centered above the 3rd or 4th groove, you are not getting anywhere near the same performance from shot to shot. Robot testing proves impact even two to three grooves higher in the face can cause distance loss of up to 35 to 55 feet with modern ‘tour design’ wedges.

In addition, as impact moves above the center of mass, the golf club principle of gear effect causes the ball to fly higher with less spin. Think of modern drivers for a minute. The “holy grail” of driving is high launch and low spin, and the driver engineers are pulling out all stops to get the mass as low in the clubhead as possible to optimize this combination.

Where is all the mass in your wedges? Low. So, disregarding the higher lofts, wedges “want” to launch the ball high with low spin – exactly the opposite of what good wedge play requires penetrating ball flight with high spin.

While almost all major brand wedges have begun putting a tiny bit more thickness in the top portion of the clubhead, conventional and modern ‘tour design’ wedges perform pretty much like they always have. Elite players learn to hit those crisp, spinny penetrating wedge shots by spending lots of practice time learning to consistently make contact low in the face.

So, what about grooves and face texture?

Grooves on any club can only do so much, and no one has any material advantage here. The USGA tightly defines what we manufacturers can do with grooves and face texture, and modern manufacturing techniques allow all of us to push those limits ever closer. And we all do. End of story.

Then there’s the topic of bounce and grinds, the most complex and confusing part of the wedge formula. Many top brands offer a complex array of sole configurations, all of them admittedly specialized to a particular kind of lie or turf conditions, and/or a particular divot pattern.

But if you don’t play the same turf all the time, and make the same size divot on every swing, how would you ever figure this out?

The only way is to take any wedge you are considering and play it a few rounds, hitting all the shots you face and observing the results. There’s simply no other way.

So, hopefully this will inspire a lively conversation in our comments section, and I’ll chime in to answer any questions you might have.

And next week, I’ll dive into the rest of the wedge formula. Yes, shafts, grips and specifications are essential, too.

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Golf's Perfect Imperfections

Golf’s Perfect Imperfections: Amazing Session with Performance Coach Savannah Meyer-Clement

Published

2 days ago

Apr 18, 2024

GolfWRX Staff

In this week’s episode, we spent some time with performance coach Savannah Meyer-Clement who provides many useful insights that you’ll be able to implement on the golf course.

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19th Hole

Vincenzi’s 2024 RBC Heritage betting preview: Patrick Cantlay ready to get back inside winner’s circle

Published

5 days ago

Apr 15, 2024

Matt Vincenzi

Just a two-hour drive from Augusta National, the PGA TOUR heads to Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head Island, S.C. Hilton Head Island is a golfer’s paradise and Harbour Town is one of the most beautiful and scenic courses on the PGA TOUR.

Harbour Town Golf Links is a par-71 that measures 7,121 yards and features Bermuda grass greens. A Pete Dye design, the course is heavily tree lined and features small greens and many dog legs, protecting it from “bomb-and-gauge” type golfers.

The field is loaded this week with 69 golfers with no cut. Last year was quite possibly the best field in RBC Heritage history and the event this week is yet another designated event, meaning there is a $20 million prize pool.

Most of the big names on the PGA Tour will be in attendance this week with the exceptions of Hideki Matsuyama and Viktor Hovland. Additionally, Webb Simpson, Shane Lowry, Gary Woodland and Kevin Kisner have been granted sponsors exemptions.

Past Winners at Harbour Town

2023: Matt Fitzpatrick (-17)
2022: Jordan Spieth (-13)
2021: Stewart Cink (-19)
2020: Webb Simpson (-22)
2019: CT Pan (-12)
2018: Sotoshi Kodaira (-12)
2017: Wesley Bryan (-13)
2016: Branden Grace (-9)
2015: Jim Furyk (-18)

In this article and going forward, I’ll be using the Rabbit Hole by Betsperts Golf data engine to develop my custom model. If you want to build your own model or check out all of the detailed stats, you can sign up using promo code: MATTVIN for 25% off any subscription package (yearly is best value).

Key Stats For Harbour Town

Let’s take a look at key metrics for Harbour Town Golf Links to determine which golfers boast top marks in each category over their past 24 rounds.

Strokes Gained: Approach

Strokes Gained: Approach is exceedingly important this week. The greens at Harbour Town are about half the size of PGA TOUR average and feature the second-smallest greens on the tour. Typical of a Pete Dye design, golfers will pay the price for missed greens.

Total SG: Approach Over Past 24 Rounds

Scottie Scheffler (+1.27)
Tom Hoge (+1.27)
Corey Conners (+1.16)
Austin Eckroat (+0.95)
Cameron Young (+0.93)

Good Drive %

The fairways at Harbour Town are tree lined and feature many dog legs. Bombers tend to struggle at the course because it forces layups and doesn’t allow long drivers to overpower it. Accuracy is far more important than power.

Good Drive % Over Past 24 Rounds

Brice Garnett (88.8%)
Shane Lowry (+87.2%)
Akshay Bhatia (+86.0%)
Si Woo Kim (+85.8%)
Sepp Straka (+85.1%)

Strokes Gained: Total at Pete Dye Designs

Pete Dye specialists tend to play very well at Harbour Town. Si Woo Kim, Matt Kuchar, Jim Furyk and Webb Simpson are all Pete Dye specialists who have had great success here. It is likely we see some more specialists near the top of the leaderboard this week.

SG: TOT Pete Dye per round over past 36 rounds:

Xander Schauffele (+2.27)
Scottie Scheffler (+2.24)
Ludvig Aberg (+2.11)
Brian Harman (+1.89)
Sungjae Im (+1.58)

4. Strokes Gained: Short Game (Bermuda)

Strokes Gained: Short Game factors in both around the green and putting. With many green-side bunkers and tricky green complexes, both statistics will be important. Past winners — such as Jim Furyk, Wes Bryan and Webb Simpson — highlight how crucial the short game skill set is around Harbour Town.

SG: SG Over Past 24 Rounds

Jordan Spieth (+1.11)
Taylor Moore (+1.02)
Wyndham Clark (+0.98)
Mackenzie Hughes (+0.86)
Andrew Putnam (+0.83)

5. Greens in Regulation %

The recipe for success at Harbour Town Golf Links is hitting fairways and greens. Missing either will prove to be consequential — golfers must be in total control of the ball to win.

Greens in Regulation % over past 24 rounds:

Brice Garnett (+75.0%)
Scottie Scheffler (+69.9%)
Corey Conners (+69.0%)
Shane Lowry (+68.3%)
Patrick Rodgers (+67.6%)

6. Course History

Harbour Town is a course where players who have strong past results at the course always tend to pop up.

Course History over past 24 rounds:

Patrick Cantlay (+2.34)
Cam Davis (+2.05)
J.T. Poston (+1.69)
Justin Rose (+1.68)
Tommy Fleetwood (+1.59)

The RBC Heritage Model Rankings

Below, I’ve compiled overall model rankings using a combination of the five key statistical categories previously discussed — SG: Approach (24%), Good Drives (20%), SG: SG (14%), SG: Pete Dye (14%), GIR (14%), and Course History (14%)

Shane Lowry
Russell Henley
Scottie Scheffler
Xander Schauffele
Corey Conners
Wyndham Clark
Christiaan Bezuidenhout
Matt Fitzpatrick
Cameron Young
Ludvig Aberg

2024 RBC Heritage Picks

Patrick Cantlay +2000 (FanDuel)

With the exception of Scottie Scheffler, the PGA Tour has yet to have any of their star players show peak form during the 2024 season. Last week, Patrick Cantlay, who I believe is a top-5 players on the PGA Tour, took one step closer to regaining the form that’s helped him win eight events on Tour since 2017.

Cantlay limped into the Masters in poor form, but figured it out at Augusta National, finishing in a tie for 20th and ranking 17th for the week in Strokes Gained: Ball Striking. The former FedEx Cup champion will now head to one of his favorite golf courses in Harbour Town, where he’s had immaculate results over the years. In his six trips to the course, he’s only finished worse than 7th one time. The other finishes include three third places (2017, 2019, 2023) and one runner-up finish (2022). In his past 36 rounds at Harbour Town, Cantlay ranks 1st in Strokes Gained: Total per round at the course by a wide margin (+2.36).

Cantlay is winless since the 2022 BMW Championship, which is far too long for a player of his caliber. With signs pointing to the 32-year-old returning to form, a “signature event” at Harbour Town is just what he needs to get back on the winning track.

Tommy Fleetwood +3000 (FanDuel)

I truly believe Tommy Fleetwood will figure out a way to win on American soil in 2024. It’s certainly been a bugaboo for him throughout his career, but he is simply too talented to go another season without winning a PGA Tour event.

At last week’s Masters Tournament, Fleetwood made a Sunday charge and ended up finishing T3 in the event, which was his best ever finish at The Masters. For the week, the Englishman ranked 8th in the field in Strokes Gained: Approach, 10th in Strokes Gained: Ball Striking and 16th in Strokes Gained: Putting.

Harbour Town is a perfect layout for Fleetwood, and he’s had relative success at this Pete Dye design in the past. In his four trips to the course, he’s finished inside of the top 25 three times, with his best finish, T10, coming in 2022. The course is pretty short and can’t be overpowered, which gives an advantage to more accurate players such as Fleetwood. Tommy ranks 8th in the field in Good Drive % and should be able to plot his way along this golf course.

The win is coming for Tommy lad. I believe there’s a chance this treasure of a golf course may be the perfect one for him to finally break through on Tour.

Cameron Young +3300 (FanDuel)

Cameron Young had a solid Masters Tournament last week, which is exactly what I’m looking for in players who I anticipate playing well this week at the RBC Heritage. He finished in a tie for 9th, but never felt the pressure of contending in the event. For the week, Young ranked 6th in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee and 6th in Strokes Gained: Ball Striking.

Despite being one of the longest players off the tee on the PGA Tour, Young has actually played some really good golf on shorter tracks. He finished T3 at Harbour Town in 2023 and ranks 20th in the field in Good Drive% and 16th in Greens in Regulation in his past 24 rounds. He also has strong finishes at other shorter courses that can take driver out of a players hand such as Copperhead and PGA National.

Young is simply one of the best players on the PGA Tour in 2024, and I strongly believe has what it takes to win a PGA Tour event in the very near future.

Corey Conners +5500 (FanDuel)

Corey Conners has had a disappointing year thus far on the PGA Tour, but absolutely loves Harbour Town.

At last week’s Masters Tournament, the Canadian finished T30 but ranked 20th in the field in Strokes Gained: Approach. In his past 24 rounds, Conners ranks 3rd in the field in Strokes Gained: Approach, 3rd in Greens in Regulation % and 24th in Good Drive %.

In Conners’ last four trips to Harbour Town, his worst finish was T31, last season. He finished T4 in 2021, T12 in 2022 and ranks 8th in Strokes Gained: Total at the course over his past 36 rounds.

Conners hasn’t been contending, but his recent finishes have been encouraging as he has finished in the top-25 in each of his past three starts prior to The Masters, including an impressive T13 at The PLAYERS. His recent improvement in ball striking as well as his suitability for Harbour Town makes Conners a high upside bet this week.

Shane Lowry (+7500) (FanDuel)

When these odds were posted after Lowry was announced in the field, I have to admit I was pretty stunned. Despite not offering much win equity on the PGA Tour over the last handful of years, Shane Lowry is still a top caliber player who has the ability to rise to the top of a signature event.

Lowry struggled to score at The Masters last week, but he actually hit the ball really well. The Irishman ranked 1st for Strokes Gained: Approach on the week and 7th in Strokes Gained: Ball Striking. As usual, it was the putter that let him down, as he ranked 60th in the field in Strokes Gained: Putting.

Harbour Town is most definitely one of Lowry’s favorite courses on the PGA Tour. In his six starts there, he’s finished in the top 10 three times, including third twice. Lowry is sensational at Pete Dye designs and ranks 7th in Strokes Gained: Total in his past 36 rounds on Dye tracks.

Lowry is perfect for Harbour Town. In his past 24 rounds, he ranks 5th in Strokes Gained: Approach, 2nd in Good Drive% and 5th in Green in Regulation %. If he figures it out on the greens, Shane could have his first win in America since 2015.

Lucas Glover +12000 (FanDuel)

This is one of my weekly “bet the number” plays as I strongly believe the odds are just too long for a player of Glover’s caliber. The odds have been too long on Glover for a few weeks now, but this is the first event that I can get behind the veteran being able to actually contend at.

Glover is quietly playing good golf and returning to the form he had after the understandable regression after his two massive victories at the end of 2023. He finished T20 at The Masters, which was his best ever finish at Augusta National. For the week, Lucas ranked 18th for Strokes Gained: Approach and 20th in Strokes Gained: Ball Striking.

Over his past 24 rounds, Glover ranks 9th in Strokes Gained: Approach and 13th in Good Drive %. Harbour Town is a short course that the 44-year-old will be able to keep up with the top players on Tour off the tee. He’s played the course more than 20 times, with mixed results. His best finishes at Harbour Town include a T7 in 2008, but recently has a finish of T21 in 2020.

Glover has proven he can contend with the stars of the Tour on any given week, and this number is flat out disrespectful.

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