A Very OK Podcast
Episode 4: “Fore! The History of Golf in Oklahoma”
June 16, 2021
Episode Transcript
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson, and I’m here, as always, with Dr. Bob Blackburn. Bob, how are you doing today?
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Doing great, Trait. Thank you. And it’s a beautiful day in Oklahoma, and we never have any bad weather here. So it’s good to be able to anticipate a beautiful day.
Thompson: Well, with summer coming, people always want to spend a beautiful day outside. And one of the things that Oklahoma has been doing to entertain itself in the outdoors since about 1900 is by playing golf, and that just happens to be the subject of our podcast today, is the history of golf in Oklahoma, and I’m excited to get into this topic with you because as I started doing my research, I really realized that Oklahoma has such a rich history and tradition with the game of golf, and I think it’s going to be really fun to explore this. And I’d be interested to know, Bob, how did you get into the game of golf?
Blackburn: Well, very slowly. I was not a child prodigy, by any means. I had a stepfather named Jim Weatherall, who was a professional football player, two-time All-American OU football, and just kind of a hero. He had a set of long golf clubs because he was 6’4”. Well, as a 14-year-old kid, I said, Jim, can I use your golf club? Some of my buddies and I are going to go play a course. And this would have been in the mid-’60s. And Duffy Martin, who would eventually build courses up in Guthrie, but he had built a little nine-hole golf course on the south side of Oklahoma City called Brookside. And my buddies and I would go out there and put a ball in the golf holder. There were no tee starters, and it was very informal, and we would just hack the ball around that course, and I fell in love with it, played off and on through college, but it was really when my wife was elected to the legislature, my son was 15 years old and losing interest and doing everyday things with his dad. I picked up golf again and met a friend who was playing at Lincoln Golf Course. This was 1996. And for the last 25 years, I’ve played at least once a week at Lincoln and a member at Twin Hills now. So I play Twin a little bit, but playing from the senior tees at my age, but still about, you know, 10-handicap. So it makes it fun. And I’m some days, I have a good day. Some days it’s very frustrating. I say, why do I do this to myself? But most days, I come away with enough good memories, especially the social aspect of golf, which everyone knows. But yeah, it’s been an important part of the quality of life for me.
Thompson: Most every golfer who’s ever played has thought about tossing your clubs in the water and leaving the course and never coming back, at some point or other. And then it seems right about that time you’re ready to give up in frustration, you hit that one shot that just redeems everything, and you think, oh, I’m pretty good at this game, aren’t I?
(laughter)
Thompson: Now, do you remember, what’s your best round? Do you ever, do you remember that?
Blackburn: I shot a 73 on Lincoln West. That’s my best round, so par 72. So I was one stroke, and I had a chance to hit even par. And of course, that’s when you tense up and you kind of choke. But yeah, 73 was the best. And this year, I’ve been in the, oh the mid 70s several times, but also in the mid 80s several times. So that’s kind of the range for me.
Thompson: I picked up the game. I started playing when I was in college, and when I would go back home to work on the farm, it was about the time that my stepdad picked up the game also. And so we started playing together, and we had a little nine-hole course. Our little town, Brady, Texas, was about five to 6,000 people, just depending on what’s going on in the economy at the time. But we had a little nine-hole course. And the very first hole, you started off kind of at the top of this cliff, and then it was a descending hole, and at the bottom was a little creek down there, and you had to hit it over the creek and then get down into the par-4 fairway. And I can’t tell you how many golf balls I have in that creek down there, because, you know, it’s just the very first one to start off with. And it’s kind of intimidating when you when you don’t know what you’re doing. And boy, I toed more golf balls into that creek. The course wasn’t very hard, but it was fun, especially as you’re learning to play the games. The greens were pretty small, so you had to be kind of dialed in to get to the greens.
But that was my first foray into golf. My stepdad bought me a set of used PING i3 golf clubs, which I still have today and still play with whenever I whenever I pick up the game. When I moved to Tulsa, I started playing at LaFortune Park, which is one of the great public golf courses there in Tulsa. And then I also liked to play at South Lakes in Jenks. It was, I think I liked that course because it was very, very forgiving. Not a lot of roughs on that course, and you could hit the ball off to the left and right and not lose your ball. So then I don’t know how many— I don’t hit straight golf shots very often, so.
Blackburn: You work the ball, right?
Thompson: I, you know, I figure that you don’t really get your money’s worth unless you play on all the holes multiple times. Right?
Blackburn: You know, we love nature, so it’s good to be out in the trees and in the sand banks. So yeah, I know the feeling.
Thompson: Exactly, exactly. Well, I, you know, I’m one of those people that have kind of left the game. I, you know, when I started having, we had young kids and got busy with parenthood and all of those kinds of things. So, it’s probably been about three or four years since I’ve swung a golf club, and I might need to be one of those people who goes and rediscovers the game again, and I hope to do that soon, so.
Blackburn: I was in your position for many years. I was at the Historical Society 41 years. And as you know, you had a 14-hour day, I think, yesterday, traveling, you were telling me, but, well, that was fairly common for this job. If we’re not at around the state, we’re not doing our job because we represent all the people in Oklahoma in collecting their stories. And so, one little trick that I would use on myself and with just to keep me motivated, as I said, well, I’ve traveled, I worked Saturday night giving a speech in Muskogee, and then I traveled 10 hours that day, 12. On Friday morning, and the staff knew this, that I would say I will be in by 10 or 11 o’clock on Friday, and I’d play golf on those Friday mornings. We got the first tee time at Lincoln all those years, and that was just a mental trick that I’d play on myself. Yeah, I don’t mind doing those night trips, those weekend trips, because Friday morning, I’m going to get to go play golf, like, and I’m still doing that. Tomorrow morning, I have the 6:30 tee time on the West at Lincoln, and next week I’ll play Twin Hills. So in retirement, I’m enjoying that a little bit more. But it’s a good, good relief and a good part of the week when you can look forward to something like that.
Thompson: One of the fun things to do is actually to watch movies about golf. And there are quite a few great movies about the game of golf. And do you have any favorites?
Blackburn: Well, you know, it has to be Caddyshack for me, because I love comedy, and I love to laugh. I laugh very easily, and that movie, I can still watch it now, probably seen it 20 times. It still makes me belly laugh, you know, just over. And just, you know, there’s so many sub-stories in that thing, and it’s so packed full of stories all around the game of golf. And it’s just one of the classics, in my opinion.
Thompson: My favorite quotes out of that movie is when Bill Murray is talking about caddying for the Dalai Lama, and, you know, he asked the Dalai Lama after the round’s over, hey, Dalai, how about a little something, you know, a little tip for the effort? And the Dalai says on your deathbed, you’ll have “total consciousness.” And so he says, “well, I got that going for me.”
(laughter)
Blackburn: And the minister on the golf course during the thunderstorm, and he’s playing the the greatest round of his life, and he doesn’t want to quit, and finally lightning strikes him. Oh, just so many little stories that it still makes me laugh to think about it.
Thompson: I think one of my favorite movies is Tin Cup, and this was, this movie is actually 25 years old this year. It came out in 1996. It has Kevin Costner, Rene Russo, also Oklahoma native Rex Linn plays a part in that movie. And that movie is about a sort of washed-up golfer played by Kevin Costner, who is the role of Roy, quote unquote, “Tin Cup” McAvoy, and Rene Russo is the professional psychiatrist who comes to, who comes to take some golf lessons. And early in that movie, one of my favorite parts is she comes out for a lesson, and she kind of toes the ball, and, you know, hits it off to the side, and she unleashes a blue streak of cussing and he says, well, “You’ve got the mouth of a golfer.”
(laughter)
Blackburn: Yeah, that’s a classic. And too, it’s fun to watch movies with flawed characters, and he is a flawed character in that movie. But overcoming those flaws and and just being the character he is playing out, you know, a driving range in west Texas. And then he goes on, of course, gets into the US Open and just his buddies, the Cheech Marin story there, as his buddy and caddy. It’s just, it is a great movie.
Thompson: I printed out one of the quotes from that movie because to me, it really crystallizes the what golf is about. He’s teaching Rene Russo’s character, Dr. Molly Griswold, how to hit a golf swing. And so he goes to this sort of poetry and lyrical description of what a good golf swing is. And he says, “The critical opening phase of this poem will always be the grip, with the hands to unite, to form a single unit by the simple overlap of the little finger, lowly and slowly the clubhead is led back, pulled into position not by the hands, but by the body, which turns away from the target, shifting weight to the right side without shifting balance. Tempo is everything. Perfection unattainable. As the body coils down to the top of the swing, there’s a slight hesitation, a little nod to the gods,” and she says, “A nod to the gods?” And he says yes, “a nod to the gods, that he is fallible.”
(laughter)
Thompson: “Perfection is unattainable.” And once again, any of us who have ever played the game know that perfection is unattainable. But it’s so fun to try to get there right?
Blackburn: It is.
Thompson: So many other golf movies we could talk about. You know, there’s The Legend of Bagger Vance, which is a good one with Matt Damon, Will Smith, and Charlize Theron. There is another one that’s kind of under-the-radar golf movie and was one of kind of a faith-based movie, but it’s got a really good cast, and it’s Seven Days in Utopia, and that one has Robert Duvall in it. And if you’re anything like me, I would watch Robert Duvall read the phone book. So, Robert’s good and everything, and that’s a pretty good little golf movie, too. If anybody ever wants to check that one out.
Blackburn: You know, if you look at what makes art, art and including movies, dramatic tension is always going to be. Even in a comedy, it’s dramatic tension, you know, you get the setup and the punch line, and in a drama, it’s the crisis and the resolution. And so golf is the perfect topic for a movie because of the dramatic tension. You know, can you hit that shot? What’s your opponent going to do? How will you deal with the terrain? And so it’s perfect for the golf medium.
Thompson: Well, and golf is such a mental game. You know, so much of it is about what’s going on in your head, and do you have focus and concentration, and can you put out everything else to just, you know, play the course and play the conditions that are presenting themselves to you, so. Well, let’s get into talking about golf and Oklahoma. And, as we look at golf in Oklahoma, you know, Oklahoma, the land run, the first land run happens in 1889. The cities of Oklahoma City and Guthrie and Edmond and so on and so forth sort of spring up overnight. But the first course in Oklahoma doesn’t come until 1900, and it was actually designed by a Scottish immigrant, Alexander H. Findlay. He was commissioned to lay out the the Guthrie course and was one of the first people to ever play the game in the United States, which is quite the distinction. He was born in 1865 in Scotland, and he came here as a teenager, and he designed golf courses. He went to Nebraska to work on a ranch. He lays out a rudimentary golf course on a ranch in Nebraska. And in 1887, he gives up ranch life, goes to golf life full-time. He comes to Guthrie in 1900, and he designs the Guthrie Golf Club, and it opened on May 10, 1900, still in operation today. And that’s the very first golf course in Oklahoma, and it incorporated some of the classic designs of those Scottish links courses, which we’re familiar with, particularly if you watch some of the international golf events. The golf course opened, and the annual dues were $6 and membership was $22. So, I’m sure that was a good amount of money back in 1900. But today we would say, yeah, sign me up. That’s not very much money at all. So what I’d really be interested in hearing from your perspective, Bob, is, you know—Oklahoma, we had been a territory 18, 10, 11 years at that time. We come in, we’re focused on building a life, building businesses, building careers, building families and homesteads. What allows us, what’s going on in the state at the time that allows us to sort of turn our attention to recreation?
Blackburn: Well, we have to remember Muskogee already had a pretty established history by 1900. Muskogee was one of those first towns to be built on the railroad. The Katy Railroad was built through the Indian Territory in 1870 and 1871, as provided by the Reconstruction Treaties of 1866, and with the railroad came the ability to add value to natural resources, whether it was timber, coal, or trade with Indian tribes, you know, adding value is the heart of free enterprise. Well, people found a way to add value because they could afford to ship it out and ship resources in. And the population started growing in Muskogee, starting in 1871.
And then on top of that, I almost have to say that the Scottish influence has been so important in Oklahoma. Even when we get to Perry Maxwell’s story, his partnership with great Scottish golf designers—MacKenzie— is that all of the Five Civilized Tribes had a healthy population of Scottish descendants of the Scottish merchants who moved among the tribes during the Revolutionary War in the 1770s, and married Indian women and had these big families. So in the Chickasaws, the Love Family, Tom Love and Love’s Country Stores. That’s the Scottish family. John Ross, the famous chief of the Cherokees that was Scottish. The McIntoshs, the you know, all of these, La Flores. These are Scottish immigrants. So you have Scottish culture here. And then when golf becomes very popular in America, and it’s really growing in the 1890s, 1900s. So it’s happening nationally, not just here, but we have a mature town like Muskogee, with an elite class of people.
Right now, I’m trying to finish a book on Manhattan Construction and the Rooney family, which is an Irish family. But the Rooneys had already moved to Muskogee. They were established in Manhattan Enterprises, and so there were enough families who had leisure time. They had the capital resources to invest. And, in both Guthrie and Oklahoma City, Guthrie being the territorial, political, and financial center of Oklahoma Territory, founded, of course, April 22, 1889. But it was already a town of 10,000 people. Muskogee about 10,000 people. And we just had enough urban growth and enough accumulation of wealth, the business community, to support this new hobby of golf. And these would have been sand greens. So the low fees would have reflected the low level of maintenance required. Basically, you’d go out and lay out a course and mow the prairie grasses as tight as you could, and then a sand green. In fact, when I was in college in western Oklahoma, 1969, I took a college credit in golf, and we still had sand greens in western Oklahoma in 1969. So if you were on the green, you’d pick your ball up and rake the sand between your ball and the hole. Then you’d putt it on this oiled sand.
Thompson: I don’t think I’ve ever played on a sand green.
Blackburn: I don’t know if any are still around, but that was still fairly common in the 1960s, which would have been a holdover from those early days. And planting grass on a green would have been much, much later. Bermuda greens for a while. But they’d have to mow it so tightly. And then in the summer heat of Oklahoma, of course, trying to keep them alive was a challenge. So in those early days, not much upkeep. The pro would have made most of his income by giving lessons, and people wanted to learn this new game. And so yeah, it started off with the bang in those two cities.
Thompson: In Oklahoma City, organized golf gets a foothold in 1907 with the founding of the Lakeview Country Club. Really, the first course that opened in Oklahoma City was in 1900, and it was located about 12th and Stiles. And that course didn’t last very long. The Lakeview course was the predecessor to the Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club, and business leader George Frederickson was a big influence in getting the Lakeview Country Club going. And he also happened to be a really good amateur golfer. In 1908, he won the gold medal at Lakeview. And so, we have golf that’s getting started in Oklahoma City. And then later on we go, we go on, and we get the Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club.
Blackburn: George Frederickson owned a music company, the Frederickson-Kroh Music Company downtown, and so, music, and this is before the recording industry really takes off. It’s before radio is before, obviously before television. And people played music in the home. Well, Fred, or George did very well and helped charter the Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club and then Lakeview. And I believe the lake that they could view was Belle Isle Lake, established 1907, on the Deep Fork River, and so that’s just north of 50th Street. And this golf club would have been between 50th and 39th Street. Part of present-day Crown Heights neighborhood was built on some of that golf course later. Well, George does well. Just an aside, his grandson, Gray Frederickson, would win an Academy Award for Godfather II, and is still kind of the godfather himself of the movie industry in Oklahoma at the very active role. In fact, we’re working with him on a documentary now.
Thompson: That’s right.
Blackburn: About an Oklahoma company drilling for oil wells in Great Britain during World War II. But, the course does well. You get a couple of other courses. If you look at golf history in the ’20s, it would have been Lakeview versus Twin Hills, and there were a couple of other courses, Edgemere Golf Course, some others that tried to break into that big three. But, by 1928, G. A. Nichols, Dr. Gilbert A. Nichols, who was a developer in town, detached a residential development from the streetcars because by this time people are driving cars. Buses are very common. And he goes way out in the country as far north as 63rd Street and develops Nichols Hills. Options on 2,000 acres of land, develops that neighborhood, and he goes to the leadership at the Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club, which had been farther to the south. And he says, okay, gentlemen, I will trade you. I will give you free land. I’ll build the clubhouse for you. You move the country club up here to Nichols Hills, then I’ll get your land, and I’ll build houses on it, which he did. That is now Crown Heights historic neighborhood. And they built the course there, what we still have. And they reached out to an Oklahoman, Perry Maxwell. Perry was at the height of his learning the craft. He had already partnered with Alister MacKenzie. He knew Bobby Jones, had already been asked to do some national courses. Well, he comes back and designs that course. And just recently, Oklahoma City Golf and Country Club underwent a multi-million dollar renovation, trying to take it back to some of the roots of what Perry Maxwell developed there in 1929, 1930, when that course would open.
Thompson: Now, we talked a little bit about, you know, Lakeview. Lakeview was designed by Leslie Brownlee, and then Leslie Brownlee’s stepbrother, which Leslie was Scottish, and his stepbrother was Art Jackson. Now, Art Jackson designed Lincoln Park Golf Course, which has the distinction of being the first public golf course in Oklahoma. That’s a big deal for golf, because up until that point, golf was kind of a private society that the regular person didn’t, might not have had as much access to.
Blackburn: Well, and the reason they had that opportunity, because if you look at the history of Oklahoma City in 1922, it was a boomtown. Oklahoma City had been the fastest-growing city in the nation from 1900 to 1910. It continued that pace, 1910 to 1920. Oil had been discovered across the state. A lot of that wealth was flowing through the city. We had five trunk railroad lines out of Oklahoma City, so packing plants were doing well. The oil industry was pumping money into the banks, and of course, the private clubs were doing well. Twin would have been a private. Oklahoma City Golf would have been private.
But we had the opportunity here because in 1909, some very progressive leaders in Oklahoma City convinced the people in Oklahoma City to pass a bond issue to create a park system around the idea of a grand raceway called the Grand Boulevard. The Grand Boulevard circled Oklahoma City way out in the country with the idea, let’s get people out of the city to enjoy nature. And at the four corners of the Grand Boulevard, they developed parks. Today we know them as Will Rogers Park on the northwest, Trosper on the southeast, Woodson on the southwest, and Northeast Park that we now know as Lincoln. And so, when Oklahoma City Parks Department looked at providing this new recreational opportunity to the public, anyone from any social or economic background, excluding race. Of course at that time, Oklahoma City would have been a segregated community. They had the land, and they not only had land, but they had beautiful park land. In the east side of Oklahoma County is the most beautiful part of this county. You live on, kind of on the in the Cross Timbers area there in Edmond, but lots of trees, rolling terrain, creeks, and water. And they were able to carve out of that wooded area that Lincoln course that would be free.
Now, of course, today we have other, and I have friends who come in from around the country. And if I take them to some of our public courses, the low cost, we’re probably half the average cost of a public course in America. And I don’t know, probably 5% of what it cost to be a private club member in most places. But it really became part of Oklahoma City’s culture. And today, we have numerous courses around town that are open to the public at a very reasonable price. As a senior, I think I pay some like $31 for a round with a cart, which in many parts of the country is just a dream.
Thompson: And you got to figure you get four to five hours of entertainment out of that, right?
Blackburn: Exactly, and friendships that last a lifetime, the social part of that, and just enjoying being out. Oklahoma City is blessed with its public courses, and it started right there with Lincoln.
Thompson: You know, we can’t talk about the history of golf in Oklahoma without talking about Perry Maxwell. Perry Maxwell was born in Kentucky to Scottish parents in 1879. He had tuberculosis, and his doctor recommended that he moved to a more arid climate. So he comes to Ardmore in 1897, and in the hope that the climate there is going to help his condition. And in 1913, he lays out the first of his courses in some land that he had there, and he called it Dornick Hills, which it’s the Gaelic word that he used to name the course because thousands of rocks had to be cleared to lay out his course there. And he starts to realize that he’s got a knack for golf course architecture. And so his wife dies in 1919, and he dedicates himself to studying golf course architecture. And of course, he goes on to design many, many courses in Oklahoma. Some of those include the Shawnee Country Club, the Indian Hills Country Club in Catoosa. I’m sorry, Rolling Wood Hills, which later became Indian Hills, the Muskogee Country Club, Hillcrest in Bartlesville, Twin Hills in Oklahoma City, which is still a very prominent course here. Ponca City Golf and Country Club, OKC Golf and Country Club, and of course, Southern Hills in Tulsa. He also does work redesigning some of the holes at the Masters in Augusta, at Augusta National. And so a very prominent Oklahoman who has had a major, major impact on the history of golf.
Blackburn: Well, Perry had the challenges with his health, lost a wife, but then the opportunity was to design a golf course on very good land. Ardmore is in the foothills of the Arbuckle Mountains, and it’s the oldest mountain range in Oklahoma, limestone-based, great aquifer, and so water seeps out. You know, you have the old Platte National Park over at Chickasaw Recreation Area, and that water just bubbles out of the ground because of the limestone. So water seeps in the limestone. It finds its way out in the foothills. So he had good water. He had the limestone for drama, and an old quarry was on his land so he could refit that and have some very dramatic holes. A lot of professionals still talk about the drama of a few of those holes in Ardmore, but he gets that experience.
Well, a lot of people have, you know, pretty good luck. But his great luck is that he walks onto this scene of golf architecture just as Oklahoma is a boomtown. You know, we go from six congressmen in 1907 to nine congressmen by 1930. So he’s doing it at a time when people are coming here. We are the Denver and the Seattle of that time. So people are coming. Oil has been discovered— 1898, the first oil in Bartlesville. And if you talk about the oil industry, almost every one of those oil towns has a Perry Maxwell course. So you talk about Cushing, Enid, Bartlesville. You know these towns have, Oklahoma City and Tulsa, of course, oil towns, and oil is doing so well. You get the Cushing Field in 1912, the greater Osage later, and by 1916 and flowing. And then the different discoveries and the Three Sands down near, or excuse me, Ponca City. Again, another Perry Maxwell course. The Healdton Field down near Ardmore and Seminole Field in 1927 and then Oklahoma City in 1928, all around Tulsa. So he is here just as people are creating this great wealth. People like Waite Phillips and others have this wealth, and if they want to invest it in quality of life, golf is one of those options that they have at a time when you have the Bobby Joneses of the world making this a new kind of a sport and really coming to the masses, and the impact of film and showing the history of golf and being able to say, hey, that looks like fun, let me try it.
And so Perry is in the right place at the right time with this natural, instinctive ability to see a piece of land and be able to view it transformed into something else. And he comes up with this signature style of courses. And typically, what a lot of the pros tell me if you’re on a course designed by Perry Maxwell—of course, they’ve all been changed somewhat over the years— but if you see a dip in front of the green, Perry Maxwell liked to keep the regular contour, but he needed to build up the tees because you had to build it up with a certain way so the water would percolate out and you could keep the courses alive. And so he would borrow the dirt in front of the green, and so you get these dips in front of a green. So if you see that at Lincoln or you see it at Oklahoma City Golf, you kind of say, oh, there’s Perry Maxwell’s footprint right here on my course. And so Perry would be one of those stars at the time and would partner with Alister MacKenzie, who was one of the great golf course designers. And he would spend a lot of time in Scotland studying the courses there, so he would bring kind of a links-course attitude. So even at Southern Hills, and I was there last week for the PGA champions. And as I walk around, I looked for Perry Maxwell, and the ghost of Perry still live on those courses. And as they say, and the announcers on the national broadcast would say, the renovation tried to go back and to restore some of the Perry Maxwell influence on that course.
Thompson: One of my favorite stories, when Perry would get to a piece of land, he would sort of, he would walk out into the woods, and he would be out there for hours, and he would walk back out. And upon his return, he would proclaim, “There are dozens of good holes out there. We just need to eliminate all but 18.”
(laughter)
Thompson: I mean, isn’t that great?
Blackburn: That is.
Thompson: He, so a Perry Maxwell course, Twin Hills, hosts the first PGA Championship in Oklahoma in 1935. And so, the PGA came to Twin Hills in Oklahoma City in 1935. So that’s the introduction of championship golf here in Oklahoma. And of course, we’ve had a great run all the way to what you mentioned just this last weekend with the Senior PGA here, Jerry Cozby, who is a pro for 30 years at Hillcrest in Bartlesville, said this. He said, “And back in those days, they had to use what they saw. And to me, that’s what makes them so good. I don’t have much respect for a course where it looks as if somebody had a war, you know what I mean? Maxwell took the natural terrain of what he found, and he built a golf course around it.”
Blackburn: And if I might add a little anecdotal story about Twin Hills, I’m writing the centennial history of Twin Hills, and 1924 is going to be the centennial of that course, when some developers wanted to build this course, hired Perry Maxwell, who designed the first nine holes, and then came back later to revamp the entire course. But they started that, and it quickly ran into trouble. And fortunately, on that scene was an oil man, a man who had built the bridge across the South Canadian River from Purcell to Norman back at the turn of the century, was on the Board of Directors of Santa Fe Railroad. A man named Dorset Carter, and Dorset had a son named Keefe Carter, who was a prodigy. And if you think back to the days, pros would have been kind of the outcasts of the golf world. They were the hustlers. They would have made most of their money gambling on the course, coming into a town for a course. The amateurs were the heroes, the Bobby Joneses of the world. Well, Keefe Carter was this teenager who won the Western Amateur, and at that time, the Western Amateur would have been one of the majors of that time. This is well before Augusta was even on the scene. So, Western Amateur, well this teenager from Oklahoma City won it.
Well, his dad, being a loving and very generous dad, says son, I’m going to buy you a golf course and bought what was there at Twin. They later built the clubhouse that is still there today. He built it out of sandstone—quarried—on a quarry not far from there because it’s all sandstone, Osage Red Bed, Permian-era, underlayment. So they built the clubhouse, and then Perry was there in the beginning, would come back later, and by ’35 the course was good enough to host that PGA in ’35. And so the Gene Sarazens of the world, the Hogans of the world, Arnold Palmer, would come back to Twin in the late ’50s and play in the Oklahoma City Open and win it. And I have an entire chapter in this book about Arnie’s Army. And so I go back into Arnie’s story and the magical impact he had on the game of golf, just as television discovers golf, which is all happening at about the same time. Television is discovering baseball, and you get Mickey Mantle from Commerce, Oklahoma. You get courses like Twin Hills and Southern Hills becoming the stars of this new medium of television of watching the Arnold Palmers and the Gary Players and the Jack Nicklauses and the Lee Trevinos. That’s the golden age of golf because of television, and we have some championship-quality courses in Oklahoma. And we had the opportunity to bring these audiences here and then later to Quail Creek, and later to Oak Tree and The Patriot in Owasso. Some of these great courses we have now, you can’t understand their prominence now without understanding, connecting the dots of history back through television, the golf courses, the oil and gas industry, the growth of cities. But this is a rich history, and Twin Hills, hopefully, people will appreciate it when I write that centennial history in 2024.
Thompson: I think we’ll all appreciate it, and we’ll be lining up to get our copies for sure. Women have had an incredible influence in golf in Oklahoma. In fact, one of the first photographs of a golfer in Oklahoma was taken in 1905 of a woman playing golf. The first golf tournament to be televised in Oklahoma was in 1949, and it was a women’s golf tournament. I didn’t know that before I started doing the research here, but it was the Women’s Western held in Oklahoma City at the OKC Golf and Country Club. And one of the big draws for that tournament was a woman named Babe Didrikson Zaharias, and she had won a record 17 amateur golf tournaments. And not only was she a prolific golfer, but she also had Olympic records in the javelin and the 80-meter hurdles, which is quite the combination of athletic skills, I think. But she was one of the most popular golfers at the time, and so WKY televised that golf tournament. Babe had been named the AP Woman Athlete of the Year six times. She drew thousands of people to come watch her play golf.
But another person who played in that golf tournament was an Oklahoma native golfer who was born in Norman, and her name was Elizabeth Jameson, and Jameson was born in 1919. She started playing golf in 1930 at age 11. She had 13 professional wins during her career, and she was co-founder of the LPGA. One of the interesting things to me about Jameson, the website Pro Golf Now ranked all of Oklahoma’s golfers and who, men and women, who was the best, and they said Jameson is the best golfer to ever come out of Oklahoma. And they ranked her right above Tommy Bolt, who won the 1958 US Open at Southern Hills. And she won 13 events, including three majors. She won the US Women’s Amateur in 1939 and 1940. She won the Women’s Western in 1940 and 1942, turned pro in 1945, won the US Women’s Open in 1947, and was the first time a female golfer scored below 300 in a 72-hole tournament. Unfortunately, she did die in 2009. Quite an influence in female golf.
Blackburn: One of the women I wanted to talk about, native-born Susie Maxwell, Berning later, learned from UC Ferguson at Lincoln. She comes off the public links courses, not out of the country club, where her dad could afford to hire a lesson. She learns the hard way. But you see, saw some talent there. She’ll be inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame this year. Great prolific golfer, great community leader, and advocate for making golf accessible to others. But I think even more important in the world of golf, what Arnold Palmer did for men’s golf and television and popularity, Nancy Lopez did for women’s golf because Nancy, who was not from Oklahoma, but she came to University of Tulsa, played golf, and then launched her pro career from there. And I remember her on television, you know, I’m old enough now to remember when I first saw Nancy, she had that charisma that an Arnold Palmer had. There was something about Nancy, and she would show her emotions on the course. And then she was such a great player and had power, so she would have been the John Daly of her time and hitting it farther than anybody else. And Nancy had all of the skills and the personality to then do an interview and really made women’s golf popular through the medium of television, which, of course, brings the money into the course that encourages more women like Susie Maxwell and others to say, this will be my profession. And it just created opportunities for young women. And now a lot of people say, if you want your daughter to get a scholarship anywhere in the country, teach them to play golf at par or better, and they’re going to get a scholarship. And that opportunity was opened up because of people like Susie and Nancy.
Thompson: Probably not a lot of people realize, but an Oklahoman broke the color barrier in professional golf, and that was Bill Spiller. And he was born in Tishomingo in 1913, and he started playing golf really late in life at age 30, which is later than most people that become professional take up the game. But he started winning Black amateur golf tournaments in the 1940s. He was denied entry by the PGA into the 1948 Richmond Open, because the PGA at that time had a “Caucasians only” policy, and so he brings a lawsuit. He sues under the Taft-Hartley Act, because he was denied to earn a living because the PGA was a closed shop. The PGA settled and said, okay, we’re going to end the discrimination. But they didn’t keep their word. Basically, they went to an invitational-style tournament where they just made it where the individual tournaments could set their own rules, and all the individual tournaments kept that “Caucasians only” policy.
And it was finally, when he was invited to the 1952 US San Diego Open, but they didn’t know that he was a Black man. And when he got there, they denied him entry into the tournament, and he was disinvited. He threatened to sue again, but the policy remained. Finally, the California Attorney General got involved. California Attorney General says, okay, you’re not going to come play any of the public courses in California because of this policy. And the PGA kind of says, well, we’ll move to all private courses and the California Attorney General says, well, I’m going to come after you there, too. And so finally, that forces the PGA’s hand, and they remove the “Caucasians only” clause by 1961. So if it wasn’t for the actions of Oklahoma golfer Bill Spiller, who helped bring that along, who knows how long that might have taken. And the PGA finally granted posthumous membership to Spiller in 2009. But really, really important person when it comes to breaking the color barrier in golf.
Blackburn: Yes, and of course, when I was watching golf on television as a young man, Calvin Peete was one of those golfers that I always enjoyed watching, who was just charismatic again, and helped advance the game and open the doors for others.
Thompson: And even today, there’s only about four out of 260 PGA players that are African American. And so I think, you know, everybody had hoped with Tiger Woods in the late ’90s and into the 2000s that that would spur minority populations into golf. And I think there’s still some barriers there with bringing women and minorities into the game that the PGA, you know, has said in some articles that I’ve read that they are trying to work on. And so still some progress to be made. You know, we might want to talk about some other players from Oklahoma.
Blackburn: Oh, gosh. The Oak Tree boys have to be mentioned. Really, starting in the 1960s, you get a generation of golfers like Bob Tway and Danny Edwards, and Danny and I were friends. I went to Edmond High School, Edmond Junior High. Danny had been the quarterback on our junior high football team. I was an end, so we got to play together. And I always thought it was odd because he gave up football, and he was a quarterback and would have been the quarterback for the next four years, but he went to golf, and he said, no, no, I’m going to be golf. And he was an All-State basketball player. So just all around talent. Well, Danny went on to OSU at the time that OSU was really growing as a powerhouse, Labron Harris was the coach, and Danny and Bob Tway, who came back to Oklahoma State to play golf, and the Gill Morgans of the world. And we had so many top players in the ’60s and ’70s, I would say was probably the golden age of Oklahoma-born and trained golfers. Of course, now you look at a Rickie Fowler with that OSU legacy and some of the players today. You know, any more on golf broadcasts, you see the college emblems next to their names. People are proud of their golf heritage. But OSU, OU both, they were in fact, just a couple of years ago, Rickie made a documentary about OU versus OSU golf in one season, and it’s a dramatic documentary people should find. But the Oak Tree boys have made a difference in golf in Oklahoma, and they’re still contributing to the culture across the country.
Thompson: And speaking of making a difference in golf, we have one of your longtime friends with us here today.
Blackburn: Steve Carson is the director of golf operations at Lincoln here in Oklahoma City, and Lincoln is approaching its centennial next year. So Steve and I were talking about that recently, thought it might be a good time to bring on as our guest today, Steve Carson. Steve, welcome to A Very OK Podcast.
Thompson: Steve, we’re really happy to have you here.
Steve Carson: Well, thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be on with you.
Blackburn: Steve, Trait and I were talking earlier. We were talking about our favorite golf movies. If you had to say one movie, you know, is in your memory, you say, hey, I’ve got, you know, a week to live, and I’m going to watch one more golf movie. What would that be?
Carson: I really enjoyed Bagger Vance. I just thought that was a very inspiring golf movie.
Thompson: Yeah, and the cast in that movie is incredible. You have Matt Damon, and Will Smith, and Charlize Theron, and you get to harken back to the older time in golf, also right after World War I. So that is a fantastic movie, and one of my favorites as well.
Blackburn: And Steve, that does not surprise me with your answer, because you’ve dedicated your life to teaching and making golf accessible to so many people through the years, and your impact on that beautiful clubhouse, the course— I still think it’s the greatest public course and one of the great courses in all of Oklahoma. But let’s start first with your walking onto the stage of history, and your ability to do all of that. Tell us a little bit about your life in golf, when you first picked up a club, the mentors, the competition, and how did you get to Lincoln?
Carson: Well, that all probably started back when I was about 10, 11, 12 years old, growing up in Midwest City. My dad was in the Air Force, and he’d just left active service and went in as the director of logistics out at Tinker Air Force Base. So my across-the-street neighbor played golf, a little bit older than me, and I kind of took a fancy to the game and went to the golf course, the little nine-hole golf course in Midwest City that’s still there. It’s in the, it’s on kind of the west side of Midwest City, I guess you say, and love the game. And there was a golf professional there named Eddie Abbott, and my dad set me up that summer with a series of lessons from Eddie. And I’ve just loved the game ever since. It is just, I think it’s the best, best game a person could take up.
Thompson: What captured you about the game, Steve? What really, what was that thing that just made you where you couldn’t get enough of it?
Carson: I love the individual challenge. I just love the aspect of the challenge of not necessarily beating your opponent, but trying to beat the golf course. And you learn to play the golf course, and it’s a game that can never be won, but it’s certainly a game that can provide a lot of satisfaction and a lot of frustration, at times.
(laughter)
Carson: So, I went on to play high school golf in Midwest City. Coming out of my senior year at Midwest City, I went to work for Norman Fleischman over at Trosper Golf Course in Oklahoma City and worked there basically part-time for a while, to start. My first job was 50 cents an hour, picking up the driving range.
Thompson: Wow.
Carson: And I graduated from the driving range to the cart barn, and then I was able to graduate into being the cleanup guy in the evenings for the for the clubhouse. So I’ve done it all, and then I went on to Oklahoma City University. Was planning on going to actually playing golf there, but shortly after school started, Norman Fleischman needed an assistant golf pro, and he said, would you be interested in that job? I said, well, it’s better than 50 cents or a dollar an hour, I think. So I became assistant golf professional at a very young age of 18, worked my way through college in Oklahoma City, graduated in five years. The same year I graduated from college, I was able to work my way through the PGA program and became a PGA, Class A member of the PGA in 1975. The very next year, Mr. Fleischman resigned as the golf professional at Trosper. Here I was about 26 years old. The golf commission installed me as the interim golf professional, then Mr. Ferguson at UC Ferguson at Lincoln Park decided to retire in 1990, and I was selected to be the golf professional, head golf professional at Lincoln Park in 1990, and been here ever since. Loved every minute of it.
Blackburn: I was having lunch with Mick Cornett recently, who’s on your golf commission, and we were talking about you and your legacy there. And let’s talk a little bit about the history of Lincoln. You’re coming up on the centennial, 100 years.
Carson: Let me give you the nickel tour real quick: 1922, The Civitan Club of Oklahoma City worked out a lease agreement, I believe, with the city at that time, to build and operate an 18-hole golf course here at Lincoln Park. And in 1933, they decided to add another 18 holes. Back in ’22, they actually hired a golf professional out of Scotland named Arthur Jackson. He and a young man named Perry Maxwell laid out a lot of the holes that are now on the east golf course, some of them on the west. But at that time it was a north-and-south design. So, but Perry Maxwell was actually building Twin Hills in the early ’30s. The word is that Perry collaborated with Arthur to lay out the new 18 holes at Lincoln Park. In 1960, it became an east-west design because they built a new clubhouse at that time, which is in the current location of the clubhouse at Lincoln. And that brings us up to 2015. We built the new clubhouse. The old clubhouse was almost 50 years old, needed to be replaced, and the Oklahoma State Golf Commission decided to build a new clubhouse in 2015, which you have now. And it is a wonderful asset to two wonderful golf courses. Both golf courses have been known to provide a lot of recreation, a lot of good facilities for the public.
Blackburn: What you designed, and the architects did a wonderful job of not just the construction itself, but the sighting. And I always enjoy, you know, coming up 18 on the west and looking at that clubhouse from different angles. It’s as good as any private clubhouse in the region, in my opinion. And it’s for the people of Oklahoma. You know, the public can get on, and you get a lot of play there. You know, believe me, I get an early tee time when I play because it gets so crowded by 8 o’clock. And I’m just so amazed. And I just wanted to add one thing about the course, one reason it’s, to me, one of the most beautiful courses in Oklahoma is that it was built in a park established in 1909, in Oklahoma City, when the people of Oklahoma City passed a bond issue, created the Grand Boulevard and the four parks on the four sides out of the, way out in the country. And of course, Northeast Park became Lincoln Park. And so it was built in a heavily wooded area of Oklahoma County with the rolling hills and the creeks. And I can imagine those early designers just walking into those woods and seeing the different holes appear as they cleared and moved. And pretty much most of it follows the contours of the land, which would be another, you know, telltale sign of a Perry Maxwell influence. So it’s just a gorgeous course, and you’ve done a great job there.
Carson: Well, thank you very much. We rebuilt the west golf course in ’99. We had an architect named Randy Heckenkemper who’s done jobs all around Oklahoma and all around the country, actually, and one of the one of the big features that we wanted to make sure we included when we did the rebuild, we rebuilt all the greens complexes. We rebuilt all the tee complexes, and all the bunkers, and a new water system. But Randy was very sensitive to making sure that we used the contours of the land in our new design, so that we didn’t want to stray from that, natural feel that you have when you play the golf course.
Blackburn: And speaking of other golf courses, Steve, just some of your memories of playing different golf courses around Oklahoma, both private and public.
Carson: I’ve always enjoyed Perry Maxwell golf courses. I mean, you take Prairie Dunes up in Hutchinson, Kansas. You take Southern Hills, Dornick Hills in Ardmore, Muskogee Country Club, Ponca City. Every one of those golf courses are just a pleasure to play. They really are. They’re fair, but they’re not easy by any means. And I was just up at Southern Hills this last weekend for the Senior PGA, And the job they did on their redesign and refurbishing is fantastic. I love the bunker work. It does reflect the original bunker work that Perry Maxwell put in there. The tee complexes are quite interesting. They’re more natural. You don’t have structured tees built. The tees kind of flow in with the natural ground level at the site. So it’s fun to play those golf courses because the golf courses use what is there to provide the challenge.
Blackburn: You know, one thing about that design that is a signature of Perry Maxwell, he wanted golf to be fun for everybody, whether you were a novice, first time picking up a club, or a professional. And so the tee boxes are kind of stretched out. And I know at Lincoln you now have senior tees, which, as a senior, I appreciate, by the way.
(laughter)
Blackburn: But those senior tees, you know, on a few holes, especially on the west, a couple of holes give you quite an advantage, some moderate. But I think Perry Maxwell would be very pleased with the options that you give players to play according to their ability, to be able to reach the greens and regulation within their ability. And I think Perry Maxwell liked that approach.
Carson: The different opportunities that his golf courses give you, they even give you opportunities as a course operator. If you want to hold some kind of a junior event, you’ve got areas out in front of the standard tee boxes where you can create a junior tee that you can utilize for kids, you could utilize for people that have some disabilities, but they’re able to get out and really enjoy being outdoors and enjoy the facility and have a good day with their friends.
Thompson: Bob had mentioned, you know, that the Perry Maxwell gives people of all different abilities to play the course and be successful. I’m really interested in, did you all see, because of the pandemic and people wanting to get outside and that golf does offer a good opportunity to social distance, did you see more people taking up the game over the past year or so?
Carson: We’ve seen a lot of people taking up the game. We’ve seen a lot of people coming back to the game. But with the pandemic, there wasn’t a lot of things to do, so golf really provided that opportunity for people to be with their friends, social distance, be safe. You know, we took extra precautions here, and all the golf courses did, to make sure that our facilities were clean. We maintained a very safe environment for people to come out and enjoy golf, and boy did people come out. Our business was up 20 to 40% over previous years. People have really enjoyed being able to get out.
Blackburn: I am one of those, Steve. Trait and I were talking about some of our personal experiences. Of course, I remember the first time I followed Arnie at Quail Creek in the mid-’60s. And I remember at the PGA in Tulsa, oh, I don’t remember the year now, about 15 years ago, I was following Gary Nicklaus around, and up walked Jack Nicklaus. So I got to walk a couple of holes with Jack Nicklaus—the great. What, let’s just, because Arnie is such a magical figure in this profession, what’s the first time that you either met or saw Arnie play?
Carson: Well, it was actually at Twin Hills way back when they had the tour team championship at Twin Hills. They played Twin Hills and Quail Creek that year. You may remember that, that was back in the ’60s. And I, our golf team from Midwest City went over, and we actually volunteered and did some things. And I got to meet Arnie then, met Lee Trevino, Gary Player, met Nicklaus. There was just an aura about Arnold Palmer. He was your friend as soon as you met him. And I got to meet him again when we had the seniors event out at Quail Creek. I worked in the scoring tent a couple of years out there. When Arnie would come in, he would take the advantage of the scoring tent to kind of relax for a few minutes before he went back out to sign autographs and meet the press. So, one day he came in and signed a scorecard, and there was a chair off to the side. He goes, I’m going to just sit here a few minutes if nobody minds. Of course, nobody was going to tell Arnold anything different. Be our guest. So he grabbed a bottle of water and sat down on the chest, and we just all kind of chit-chatted for a few minutes, and he just wanted a little break before he got back out to meet the public. But he was just always a pleasure, and I was able to even attend the dinner that the PGA had for Arnold when they recognized him at the PGA Championship a few years ago. It was up at Southern Hills and was able to talk to him again then. And, you know, he acted like he knew who I was. So, and I know there’s no way, you know, but still couldn’t have had a better asset for the game of golf. I mean, he oozed...
Thompson: I just finished listening to an interview that John Erling did with George Mattson, who was known as “Golf Shop George” at Southern Hills for his Voices of Oklahoma series. And George went on and on about how much he loved Arnold Palmer and how nice he was to everyone in the clubhouse, everyone from the caddie and the cart guy all the way up to the, you know, to the people that you would expect, you know, someone to be nice to. So that seems to be a consensus on Arnold Palmer, that he was a genuinely nice person.
Carson: You got that right.
Blackburn: Well, Steve, thank you so much, and I want to congratulate you on a long, productive career, and we’ll be watching the news as you approach the centennial and drawing attention back to this great game.
Carson: You guys are doing a great job on the game of golf. I appreciate it.
Thompson: You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast hosted by Trait Thompson and Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by Ryan Green. I encourage you to go out and like us and subscribe to us on whatever podcast app that you use, and please rate us. And if you liked what you heard today, please go recommend us to a friend, and we’ll see you next month for our next episode. to a friend, and we’ll see you next month for our next episode.
