A father, a son, an unforgotten moment

This article written by Dave Kindred was published April 16, 1984.

His boy would win the Masters and Charlie Crenshaw loved it. He’s an old man now, 70, who has seen his boy hurt too many times. Ben Crenshaw was to be the next Nicklaus. He won the first pro tournament he played. But in a decade of frustration, he never won a major championship. No Opens, no PGAs, no Masters. His marriage fell apart and Ben blamed himself. The game owned him. His swing fell apart and a hundred friends tried to put it back together. Then, late on a lovely Sunday afternoon, Charlie Crenshaw knew his boy would win the Masters and the old man wept.

Spring days die softly here. Sunlight fades to the pink of a baby’s cheeks. When the sun sits behind a stand of strong pines, the trees dark in greens and browns, the dying light moves across the ground in random patterns that, if we are lucky, paint a picture we will remember always. Such a light, filtered through the pines, fell across Ben Crenshaw’s face shortly after 5 o’clock Sunday afternoon.

He had won the Masters. There were three holes to play. But he had won it. He had a three-stroke lead. He had made a 12-foot birdie putt at the 15th hole. There his father, Charlie, a Texas lawyer with the face of a rancher who has looked long into hard winds, allowed himself a small celebration. He threw his fists wide, for just a second, and then clasped his hands behind his back again.

Only three holes to go then, and Charlie Crenshaw stood by a pine tree a dozen yards from the 16th green, a little hole with a pond guarding its left side. ‘Keep this one dry, baby, ’ Charlie Crenshaw said. He said it to no one and to everyone. He said it to himself and he said it to his boy 170 yards away. Ben Crenshaw would win this Masters unless, by his own failings, he lost it.

He had lost other big ones he wanted. He came to his game loving it. He ran his hands over maps of the Old Course at St. Andrews, where the game was born. He knows about Old Tom Morris and Young Tom Morris, Francis Ouimet and Bob Jones. He can show you the spot at Augusta where Gene Sarazen did it. But it seemed, in the cruelest turn, that this man loved too much. Maybe it would be easier to win if he came to work stone ignorant rather than knowing where the footprints led.

List of runner-up finishes a long one

‘When you lose the PGA in a playoff … when you hit it into the water on the 71st hole of the U.S. Open and miss a playoff by a shot … when you double-bogey the 71st hole of the British Open to lose that tournament, you start wondering.’

Ben Crenshaw said those words an hour after winning Sunday. He spoke of 1975 in the U.S. Open at Medinah, 1979 in the PGA at Oakland Hills and ‘79 in the British Open at Royal Sandwich. Six times in the majors twice here Crenshaw has finished second.

‘You start wondering if you can hold yourself together.’

Keep this one dry, baby.

Charlie Crenshaw stood there by the 16th hole. His boy had put his tee shot on dry land. Then Ben Crenshaw walked to the green. With thousands of people applauding, with the sweet sound washing over him, Ben Crenshaw smiled and his daddy, next to a pine tree behind a thousand people, said, ‘It’s great when they cheer for your kid like that. Man.’

With his heavy hands, Charlie Crenshaw wiped away tears.

This was it. ‘Lady Fate or Dame Fortune takes somebody by the hand and leads them through, ’ Charlie Crenshaw said then. ‘She’s been with Ben all week. He’s hit shots through trees and out of trees… . He’s had the greatest putting round I’ve ever seen. That one at 10, my Lord…. When David Graham made two putts in the PGA just to stay in the playoff, to keep Ben from being a champion, it couldn’t have been David Graham by himself. That lady just has to be with you.’

Charlie Crenshaw laughed a little. ‘That lady has been all over Ben so many times this week.’

A 60-foot putt provides the clincher

At the 10th, Crenshaw made a 60-foot putt that broke eight feet. If Graham beat Crenshaw with two playoff putts, Crenshaw beat Tom Kite with that 60-footer. Kite botched the 10th hole five minutes later and dumped a killing shot in Rae’s Creek 15 minutes after that.

When the 60-footer fell, Ben Crenshaw said he thought, as his father had, ‘Maybe this is my day.’ This is what they wanted for 20 years. Charlie, never more than a hacker himself, bought his son a putter for his 15th birthday at home in Austin. Ben still uses it, though with a new shaft (‘It got broken when I was 16. It ran up a tree, or something.’)

This is the day Charlie Crenshaw thought of two years ago when his boy was in trouble. Ben fell to 83rd on the money list. The boy who would be king was a sad commoner. A hundred friends, earned by his humility and kindnesses, tried to help. He tried a hundred new swings. Then he tried what always had worked. He talked to his father.

Charlie Crenshaw remembers. ‘I told him the Lord gave him his swing. Just like He gives a gift to a great artist or a pianist. I told him, ‘Just go up and hit it, don’t analyze it.’ ‘

So in 1983 Ben Crenshaw won his first tournament in three years. And now, at age 32, he has won the Masters, the creation of Bob Jones. He stood in the dusk at a victory ceremony where he thanked his friends (‘If I could cut out a piece of my heart and give it you, I would’) and said, ‘I am so happy my father is here. I am very fortunate to have the father I do. He’s a gentleman and I have tried to live the life he would want me to.’

Ben Crenshaw’s last piece of work Sunday was to sign his scorecard in the tent just off the 18th green. As he came out of the tent, the champion saw his father and walked to him, arms open. They hugged for a long, long time, with the boy burying his face in his father’s shoulder.