Around The Block With Joe Dey Jr.

"People thought Ben Hogan was absolutely cold and silent," Dey said, "but I refereed his last two rounds at Oakland Hills in '51, and we chatted most of the way around. I remember on the front nine in the afternoon, when he was really beginning to roll, he hit a three-wood off the tee and had only a pitch left to the green. People were flocking all around him, and he said to me, 'You know, golf spectators put up with a lot to watch us play. They park their cars a mile away and come out here and get pushed around by the marshals and police.' And I said, 'Yes, they do, but did you ever consider that they greatly admire the skill you have?' Ben looked at me and then at the club in his hands, and he said, 'You know, I guess it does take some skill to hit a little ball with this thing.'"

Dey turned to me as the phantom of Hogan dissolved into a thousand points of flickering light. "That's good conversation," he said, "and right in the middle of winning the U.S. Open."

At the second corner Dey's ghost turned left, leading me up the middle of another tree-lined street. "Is it true what I've read?" I asked. "That you carried a Bible in one pocket of your jacket and the Rules of Golf in another?"

He pulled a tiny Bible out of his right inside pocket and raised it like an auction paddle. Shifting his shooting stick to the other hand, he fished a dog-eared booklet out of the opposite pocket and waved it. "I almost became a minister," he said, putting the books away. "I taught Sunday school, and when the R&A made me only the second American captain of their club, I preached from a pulpit in St. Andrews, which was a great honor. It's only and finally in God that our hope really lies."

"But you were a stickler for the rules."

"Well, of course." My comment seemed to annoy him. "The integrity of golf is paramount," he declaimed. "If you don't have that, it's no game at all."

"It's just that you had a reputation for...."

"I was in a position"—he emphasized the word—"in which I had to make unpopular decisions. I didn't always enjoy it." He raised his stick and pointed up the street, where another luminescent drama was being played out under a tree. A stocky woman in '50s golf garb was sobbing, surrounded by well-wishers and press photographers. I guessed that the disconsolate woman was the Hawaiian pro Jackie Pung , who was disqualified from the 1957 U.S. Women's Open for attesting to the wrong score on a hole, even though her final-round total was accurate. The ruling cost Pung a one-shot victory over Betsy Rawls .

"I didn't like that one at all," Dey said, "but there was nothing to be done about it. Where the possibility exists for mistakes or cheating, the rules must be shored up." He shifted his attention to the opposite side of the street, where rising clearly from the sidewalk was a chubby phantom in prewar raiment hitting a tee shot. " Porky Oliver in the final round of the U.S. Open at Canterbury, 1940," Dey narrated. "I was having lunch in the clubhouse that day when a messenger came up and told me three fellows had teed off 15 minutes early on the 1st hole, and three more were about to—and did. They just took their scorecards from the box on the 1st tee and went off. There was a storm threatening, and they wanted to get going. Well, Oliver and the other five were told to quit playing in the middle of the 1st fairway. But in the meantime another official, who didn't know what was going on, told them to continue playing and that a ruling would be made. So they played on and were disqualified. It was hardest on Oliver , who had tied for first." Dey shook his head and the scene slowly dissolved as we continued by. "A tragic consequence."

AT THE NEXT corner he turned left again and abruptly stopped. The street was filled with evanescent Vietnam War protesters—spirits from the '72 Open at Pebble Beach , where radicals had chained themselves together in the 18th fairway. Dey's lips twitched, and he gripped the handle of his shooting stick so hard that it made a snapping sound. But he said nothing, and after a few seconds the protesters literally dispersed.