THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 23, 1994 TAG: 9410210341
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 18 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Sports
SOURCE: Bill Leffler
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
IN 1950, CHANDLER Harper won the Tucson Open.
During that tournament, sponsors sold $5 raffle tickets on a new $6,500 Chrysler.
They asked the tournament champion if he would draw out the winning ticket.
One of the pro golfers then approached Harper and offered him $1,500 to pull out his stub.
``I laughed,'' said Harper. ``And asked how I could do that. He said, `It's easy. I've got it in my hand. Put it in your hand, close your hand over it and reach down and pull it out.'
``Naturally, I got away from him as fast as I could.''
That's just one of dozens of happenings Harper recalls in his book, ``My First Seventy Years in Golf,'' which went on sale last week.
The retired 80-year-old Portsmouth pro, with the assistance of Donning Company editor Diana Bailey, has put together a 156-page chronicle of his golf career. It sells for $16.95 and all proceeds will benefit the Holiday House.
Harper has dedicated the book to his wife, Essie, ``whose indefatigable courage and desire to help others have meant so much to me as I tried to make my life worthwhile.''
Two-time U.S. Open champion Curtis Strange wrote the foreword. Strange came under Harper's golf tutelage in 1969 when he was 14 and his dad had just died.
``When I won my first PGA tournament in 1979 at the Pensacola Open, his (Harper's) was the first phone call I received,'' wrote Strange.
``There is one thing in particular I'm grateful to him for: he shared my will to win and helped me realize it was a strength, not a fault.''
Through years of covering tournaments at Bide-A-Wee, the course Chandler founded and operated from 1955 until 1992, I thought I had heard all the Harper stories.
His book reveals many we had never shared.
I knew his sister, Lily, had won the Virginia State Women's Championships seven times, six in succession. But I learned when she was 28 and her husband died from a heart attack, she never hit another golf ball. She was 73 when she died in 1989.
The first time Chandler ever saw Sam Snead was an afternoon in 1932 just before Harper and Ace Parker led Wilson to the state high school golf championship. There was a driving contest, won by Parker with Harper finishing second. ``Snead didn't figure in the driving contest because he didn't get one in the fairway,'' said Harper. ``My, how things would change.''
Shortly after Harper lost the Tam O'Shanter World's Championship in 1953 on a last-hole miracle wedge shot by Lew Worsham, Harper's brother-in-law gave him and his wife a cocker spaniel they named `Wedgie.' Harper wrote that the name was in memory of the shot that deprived him of being the country's leading money winner. When the dog had to be put to sleep in 1964, the Harpers buried him on the fourth hole at Bide-A-Wee.
Harper named Elizabeth Manor but not Bide-A-Wee. ``Since the clubhouse sat in close proximity to the Western branch of the Elizabeth River, I suggested Elizabeth Manor,'' he wrote. It was the only name considered. There were several suggestions for a name for Bide-A-Wee. Harper asked builder Fred Findlay to recommend one. He said when he was a youngster in Scotland he started to run away from home but his mother advised, `you had better bide-a-wee.' It meant stay a little longer or linger awhile.
Sprinkled in among the stories of his years on the pro tour, on his way to being selected to the PGA Hall of Fame (``the finest award of my life''), Harper passes along a tale of talking with Jesse Jones, then the Secretary of Commerce, at a tournament in Houston.
``He told me about a couple of multimillionaires playing each other for just a dollar. On the last hole, when the match was all even, one of them drove into the rough. They looked for the ball for a long while and couldn't find it. The other fellow's ball was in the fairway, so he walked toward it. Suddenly, the player whose ball was in the rough shouted, `I found it' and hit it onto the green. The other player said to his caddy, `What can I say to an SOB like him when I've got his ball in my pocket?' ''
Harper had autograph signings Monday at Commerce Bank, the book's official sponsor. Another is scheduled on Saturday, Oct. 29, from 10 a.m. until noon at the Smithfield Downs Golf Course and one will be held on Sunday, Oct. 30, from noon until 2 p.m. at Cypress Point Golf Club in Virginia Beach.
The reading of the book is almost as pleasurable as listening to Harper relive those moments.
``When I was establishing my career, there were no great riches accruing from golf,'' he wrote.
He has riches money can't buy. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by D. KEVIN ELLIOTT
Golfing legend Chandler Harper signs autographs to promote his
book.
by CNB