Ky Laffoon is the newest member of the Ozarks Golf Hall of Fame.
It is a well-deserved honor for the former professional golfer who served briefly as head pro at Miami (Okla.) Country Club and at Joplin’s Oak Hill golf club (now Twin Hills Country Club) and resided for more than two decades in Springfield .
Ky was a fascinating, colorful character, one of the most unique individuals ever to play the game in Southwest Missouri or, for that matter, on the pro golf tour of the 1930s and 1940s.
He could be charming, friendly and funny. I’ve seen him keep groups of golfers captivated and laughing with his stories of the early-day tour and some of his exploits on area golf courses.
But Ky, despite being a great striker of the ball, was most famous for his explosive outbursts. A botched shot or a flubbed putt might result in a flying or broken club as well as a few invectives aimed at himself, his equipment, sand traps, high grass, the weather and anything else handy.
If Laffoon had been able to control his quick temper, he might have reached superstardom. But his inability to manage himself always seemed to get in the way and undoubtedly cost him more than a few championships.
Still, Ky won 10 times on the tour and was labeled by Harold (Jug) McSpaden (one of the famed “Gold Dust Twins” of the 1940s) as the king of the second-place finishers.
That era was the genesis of not only the gradually evolving professional tour, but spawned such titans of the game as Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Horton Smith, Craig Wood, Jimmy Thompson, McSpaden, Leo Diegel and Tommy Armour.
By inducting Ky into the regional golf shrine, the Ozarks Golf Hall of Fame has recognized the impact that Laffoon has had on the fact and folklore of golf as a touring pro, a club pro and a teacher.
I had the privilege in 1979 of getting the last interview ever given by Ky. Our conversations ranged from why he wouldn’t talk to reporters (”When I needed them, they weren’t interested; now they want me and I don’t need them”) to his biggest paycheck ($3,500 for winning the 1935 Cleveland Open) and the relatively puny size of the purses in the early days of what eventually would morph into the PGA Tour.
“We had small purses in those days,” he said. “But we thought we were making big money then. You could stay at the best hotels for $2 or $3 a night, a big steak dinner in a good restaurant was $1.59 and hamburgers were a nickel apiece. I thought I was rich as hell. The dollar today (1979) is worth only about 7 cents what it was in 1930 and 1940.
“I worked hard and invested my money carefully so I could retire. That was 40 years ago and I’ve been retired since. Ben Hogan once asked Leonard Ott (Ky’s cousin who also played on the tour at the time) and I what we were going to do when we retired. I told Leonard to tell him we’d work in the yard, go to bars and chase girls, we’d golf, we’d fish, we’d hunt, we’d cook . . . I don’t think he (Hogan) was interested.”
Ky was known as an excellent teacher. Hogan and Ott were among those that he helped. But he never mentioned Byron Nelson, for whom he had a strong dislike because of an incident involving Ky’s brother and caddie, Billy.
Laffoon also was a mentor of Marshall Smith of Miami , who has taken Ky’s fundamentals and refined them while working with such modern pros as Chi Chi Rodriguez, Walt Zembriski, Gary Player and Craig Stadler.
Stories of Laffoon’s low boiling point are legion and the stuff of legend. He admitted to throwing a putter into a tree after missing a short putt while leading a tournament and then finishing the last several holes putting with a two iron. He lost the tournament.
“I was easily upset,” he said. “The first year I won the long-driving contest in Hot Springs, Ark. , I probably would have won the tournament, too, but I ran out of clubs. I had all my clubs up in the trees. I got mad and threw one club up in the tree and it didn’t come down. So I threw another up to get it. That stayed. I’m really mad so I throw another.
“Now I’ve got three clubs up that damn tree, and I don’t have over three clubs left. How you gonna win a tournament with just three clubs? I finally got a little kid to go back out there, climb the tree and get them down. It rained and those hickory shafts all had warped.”
But, despite his temper, I’ve never heard anyone suggesting that Ky could get offensive or obnoxious. He didn’t get drunk and trash a hotel room or assault anyone or, for that matter, make a distasteful spectacle of himself on or off the course. He wasn’t mean or vulgar. And when he threw a club, he sent it into a tree or down a fairway, not into a crowd. He just got mad at himself and did silly things.
Laffoon had the reputation of being the best Native American golfer of his time, but he wasn’t an Indian. He was born in Zinc, Ark., of French, English and Irish ancestry. He allowed the belief to continue until it took on a life of its own. It actually started when a young newspaper reporter in Boston in 1934 thought that he had high cheekbones and a dark complexion. “He asked me if I was an Indian and I said ‘hell, yes, full-blooded Cherokee.’”
Probably the most famous incident involving Ky had him tying a recalcitrant putter to the back bumper of his car and dragging it cross country as punishment for betraying him in a tournament. It wasn’t true. Well, not exactly. Time, faulty memories and exaggeration have distorted what Ky said really happened.
“We were going to Reno to play in this $25,000 tournament and I needed to grind down the leading edge of this sand wedge,” he recalled. “Well, my wife was driving about 70 miles an hour and I opened the door, leaned out and started grinding it on the concrete.
“But up comes this black Cadillac with Hogan shouting, ‘Ky, stop the car, the car’s on fire!’ Later the story came out that I had dragged my putter clear across the U.S. because it wasn’t performing right.”
As for Ky’s record, he finished first or second 62 times between 1930 and 1953. According to newspaper clippings in his two large scrapbooks, he was leading money winner in 1933 and 1934. He finished tied for third in the 1936 U.S. Open, was fifth at the Masters in 1937 and reached the semifinals of the PGA Championship in 1937 and quarter-finals in 1945 and 1947. He also represented the U.S. on the 1935 Ryder Cup team.
During his retirement years, Ky Laffoon frequently played at Briarbrook Country Club, Twin Hills and Schifferdecker Municipal Golf Course, Miami and Baxter Springs (Kan.) country clubs, Carthage and Neosho golf courses as well as courses all across the Midwest.
I was told that he had a circuit that he followed. It started in Springfield and stretched from Northwest Arkansas , though Joplin and into Northeast Oklahoma and Southeast Kansas , north to Kansas City and back through middle Missouri to Springfield . He was always welcomed wherever he went.
Ky’s life ended at the age of 75 in 1984. Golf today is big, big business run by, as one wag put it, “businessmen in suits.” It is a shame there are no more characters like Ky around to evoke a few more smiles, a lot more chuckles and maybe, just maybe, make today’s good golf product even more entertaining.
Winning hand
Vic Watson, Gary Phillips, Rick Setser and Lenny Nelson finished second with a 64 in a fund-raising tournament for the Missouri State baseball team at Fremont Hills Country Club.
And they never took a club out of their bag.
The tournament, which was held in early October, was rained out. But officials decided to roll a die for each team on each hole. The scorecard for Watson, Phillips, Setzer, Nelson and long-driving pro Dan Boever had few 5s and 6s.
I’ve heard of officials drawing cards to determine a winner and runner-up in a rained-out event, but never of casting a die.
Address correspondence to Clair Goodwin at sports@joplinglobe.com.
