In 1939, at 21, Bobby Riggs wins everything at Wimbledon. Singles… Doubles… Mixed doubles. Ever the gambler, Riggs maintained that by betting on himself he won $100,000. He was, obviously, a very different kind of amateur.
Bobby Riggs was born in 1918 and grew up in a relatively shitty working-class area of Los Angeles called Lincoln Heights. Long before his historic triumph at Wimbledon, he’d been branded a mere hustler and a gambler and was shunned by the amateur tennis scene at the Los Angeles Tennis Club and beyond.
From 1939 until 1972, he was totally off the tennis stage, such that it was back then, and living in complete anonymity. Of course, the Great Depression had something to do with this as did the fact that Riggs, like all of his contemporaries, were well-beyond their tennis primes by the time the Open Era of Tennis arrived in 1968.
Finally, Riggs or someone else, stumbled upon the battle of the sexes schtick that defined the rest of his life. I wonder who we have to thank for that? Like all schticks, it revived his fame though it did so at the cost of a great diminishment of the impact of the superb play during his earlier life. History, as it so happens, was usurped by notoriety. I wonder how that felt in Rigg’s heart of hearts? To be fair, it wasn’t like he consciously chose fame over his storied history as a player. He simply must have grabbed onto fame like the lifeline it was especially to bespectacled a tennis player in his mid-50s whom few had ever even heard of.
Something about Los Angeles helps to create hustlers and I wonder why that’s true. Trevino & Hogan would have gotten eaten alive out here. Sure, they could handle the heat and humidity of Texas but the glare and grit of Hollywood would have wilted them. Somehow, unlikely guys like Riggs & Pancho Gonzales thrived in Los Angeles, in their ways, at least for a while.
Riggs and Billie Jean King in the early 70s during the Battle of the Sexes Era
Like so many things, the internet is both a curse and a blessing. One way that it’s been a blessing to me has been through its power to introduce me to colleagues and associates I would never have met without this virtual world. Kevin Kenny is one of these. He is a writer, a historian and a kindred spirit.
We both love golf enough to write about it, and that’s saying something. I’m grateful he’s been willing to answer some of my questions about his work.
Paul Cervantes
What was your life’s work before you started to write about golf?
Kevin Kenny
I was involved in a family retail shoe business in Dublin for 28 years. After that, I became a mature student and did three degrees in Scotland (where we lived for a time) in history and politics. Then when we came back to Dublin I taught Social Science with The Open University (a UK based distance-learning institution) for 14 years.
Paul Cervantes:
What was your first golf book and what about the subject motivated you to devote an entire book to the subject? Also, how long did your first book take to write?
Did you find that writing your golf during the Great Depression book motivated you to write more about American golf as opposed to golf in general? What was it about American golf, or American golfers, that caught your interest and sustained it?
Kevin Kenny
Yes, writing about golf in the 1930s started a chain. So, that led me to write a book on Ralph Guldahl whose career I felt had not been properly recognised. And in both of the first two books, I came across Fred Corcoran who was one of the instigators of the LPGA tour and that led me to write about Patty Berg. As to why American golf history and not golf in general- I always felt that there were so many stories in US golf- so many characters- so many wonderful players- it seemed natural to research American golf history.
A further point about my interest in US golf history. In the early 1960s, when I had started golf, my father began to receive golf journals from his sister in America and here I first came across the wonderful writings of Herbert Warren Wind. And we received a copy of Bobby Jones’ Golf Is My Game- for me the best golf book ever. All of these whetted my appetite for American golf history.
Paul Cervantes
I read Golf is My Game long ago. I like to tell people who’ve never heard of Jones about his life even more so than his golf. There’s a kind of magic to his life and education, as it blended with the greatness of his play, I doubt we’ll be lucky enough to see again. He was, of course, a different kind of amateur than those we have today. What parts of Golf Is My Game resonated most for you when you first read it? What are its most enduring messages for you today?
Kevin Kenny
I think Jones conveys an awful lot of common sense about the golf swing and he had an interesting take on putting which he suggested should be a slight slicing action. Not sure too many of today’s gurus would agree with that. But, what resonated with me most were his recollections of his career which his great friend O.B. Keeler divided into the seven lean years and then, gloriously, the seven fat years. His descriptions of his many great rounds, especially playing golf under pressure, were wonderful. And he wrote a short love story to St. Andrews and what it meant to him. Just a wonderful and moving book…
Paul Cervantes
Another player from the mid-1930s you’ve written about is Ralph Guldahl. What made him the greatest player of his era and why was his reign so painfully short?
Ralph Guldahl circa 1937
Kevin Kenny
For about three to four years, Ralph Guldahl was as good as any player in the world and maybe better. He won successive U.S. Opens in 1937 and 1938 and he won the Masters in 1939. In addition, he won three successive Western Opens, which was as prestigious as the Masters at this time. For this brief period, no other player could match him. Why he lost his game in the 1940s is one of golf’s mysteries and I try to tackle this in my book. Theories range from him writing an instructional book which caused him to think too much about his game — to his wife being tired of the travel involved. Remember, one of the perks of being a U.S. Open champion is that you got to play numerous exhibitions for $300-400 a time. But this took its toll and often he would be on the road for a few weeks at a time. Or maybe he just lost his desire. I became interested in him when writing about the Great Depression. I wondered why we did not know more about him, considering his outstanding record.
Paul Cervantes
That brings me to John J. McDermott, an American golfer we’ve both written about, me in a fact-driven fictionalization and you in biography. What about McDermott got you interested enough to write a book about him? Also, what surprised you most during your research? Finally, are you considering any new projects?
Kevin Kenny
I have a friend in Florida called Marty Kavanaugh- a retired pro and PGA Hall of Famer. He spoke to me a few times about John J. McDermott and suggested it was a subject worth researching and that is how I got started. What surprised me most? Perhaps how young he was to achieve what he did. To become one of the best, if not the best at 19, 20, 21, 22 years of age shows an incredibly strong mind. Hogan’s best period was when he was around the 40 mark. No- I have no plans for any other books- four is enough, but I look forward to reading your next one. Thank you Paul, I have enjoyed this.
The sequel to my 2019 novel, John J. McDermott & the 1971 U.S. Open, is finally for sale at Amazon.
I think I bettered the six months it took John J. McDermott & the 1971 U.S. Open to make it from finished manuscript to published but not by much. It’s a great feeling to be finished writing but a lousy one to anticipate all of the annoying steps that have to be taken before anyone can read your book.
Right now, it’s eBook only. An issue with the cover formatting undermined me at the last minute. Hopefully, you lovers of paper books will be able to grab a copy later in the week.
In the meantime, Cottonwood the eBook is waiting to be read.
Today was another exceptionally clear day. It was also an uneventful day save for the lunch get-together with my siblings. That started the day off nicely. I got to hear about what they were reading and about how their book clubs worked, in terms of what kinds of things they talked about.
There was also some chat about our upcoming family reunion in July. Eureka! continues to have Lady Face Blind Ambition for $4 so I couldn’t resist having one (and then another one). These kinds of family outings don’t last too long, no one’s prone to linger or talk about anything too amusing, so I was on my way home by 1:30, just in time for a quick hike.
Like I said, it was very clear day. Lots of folks were heading out at once so I decided to take a connector trail towards El Escorpion. Once there, I picked up a trail that I was pretty sure would link back to the Victory side. I was right, but the last third of the trail was brutally steep. Had it not been for the light, cooling breeze it may have been too much. But I made it and then found my way to Bible Rock before heading back to the main trail and my car.
Those two beers were not my friend on this hike, but I was happy to have made it out for a couple hours.
I’m getting a little antsy about the book. It’s feeling ripe and ready to publish. I’m ready to move on but circumstances won’t let me quite yet. It’s also a time of anticipation. There are always technical issues, most commonly with the EPUB or MOBI files used for the the Amazon Kindle Version.
It’s rather like the feeling of dreading impending traffic that you know you’ll hit, simply because you’re in a hurry. It makes you wonder why you’re in a hurry and then you remember.
There’s time enough but none to waste.
Tonight’s writing soundtrack is another LP. This time it’s an oldie and a scratchy one at that. It’s Paul Desmond’s That’s Jazz. It’s from 1961 and it’s pretty much the epitome of California Cool. Desmond’s playing is impeccable as always. There’s never been anyone better at this kind of stuff. His tone and articulation were effortless and he was rhythmically faultless and nimble to boot. Still, in some strange kind of way this LP reminds me that I really don’t much care for jazz anymore. The best jazz was universally played in the past and if you can’t find a reason to look ahead toward even the possibility of new and better days, a genre can really become mundane. It’s always amazing to me that these straight-laced looking guys like Desmond and Bill Evan were relentless self-abusers, Desmond with booze while Evans favored heroin and later cocaine. It makes their music perfect time capsules of another era when jazz was perfected and before its inevitable entropic decline.
Today was busy like the old days. Things rapidly came together with a new client and I had to do a phone interview and write a follow-up memo. It doesn’t sound very time consuming (it is). It also doesn’t sound especially interesting but, again, it is. Many of our clients are desperately ill. I describe myself as the tip of the arrow since I’m often the first one to really get to know a new client and their history, as well as their family.
Much of what I do is about sizing up the client in a lot of different ways. Sometimes, as it was today, it’s about getting a sense of the client’s vitality, especially his memory and mental sharpness. The client has faced a terminal diagnosis and has undergone a very risky surgical procedure with chemotherapy to follow. It is not an easy time in the life of the client or the family. The first time I spoke to this client (after his diagnosis but before his surgery) he sounded fantastic. Rather than sounding anything like a typical 80 year old he sounded 60…maybe even younger. I knew that 4 weeks after his surgery he would sound like a completely different person, and he did. But, he’s a tough guy and shows no inclination to going gentle in to this or any good night. He’s an easy guy to root for.
Recapitulating a long phone call like that is tricky. It’s a memo that’s likely to be read in haste even though it was written with great care. That’s just the way things work in this business; the best of efforts are not always appreciated for what they are, yet it’s still critical that one’s best effort is put forward. This being anything but my first rodeo, I am Ok with all of that. I sleep well knowing we’re on the right side of the cases we pursue and that there’s not a long line of people who can do what I do in quite the way I do it. All of my work today was done in no more than 3 hours but it felt much longer and took a good deal of starch out of me. There’s no getting used to speaking to the very ill shortly after a diagnosis. Feeling like an interloper or an opportunist is easy. Finding a way to always be regarded as a positive force during a very negative time for both the client and the family is an art. I’m not perfect at it, but I’m better than most, or at least I think I am.
I’ve been warned about leaving out the writing soundtrack in my posts. Sometimes I need a soundtrack but occasionally all I can stand are the clicking sound of my laptop’s keys. There’s no real formula to it though I have to say I have a much lower tolerance to audible distractions than I used to. Anyway, tonight’s soundtrack is drowning out the keyboard clicks and that’s a good thing. I’m listening to Empty Hearted Town from Warren Zevon’s posthumous (2007) record, Preludes: Rare and Unreleased Recordings. There are 16 tracks here. Some are a marginal versions of marginal songs but the track I mentioned and Tule’s Blues and Studebaker, among a handful of others, make the collection more than worthwhile. Anyway, thanks for listening.
Long story short, I did not come up with a workable idea for the ending to the story I’m considering. The fact is I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it today. So, I suppose my progress on the idea is directly proportional to the time expended on the task. I was busy today, at least off and on. The day didn’t feel totally wasted but except for going to the post office I was at home and working in my office from around 9 until 3. At 3 a friend of mine called and we met for a while.
That was a relief; it’s hard to spend much more time than that indoors.
Then came dinner and then came the last episode of the first part of season 4 of Ozark. It’s not my favorite show but I would say that the fourth season is the best so far. My sense is that they divided the fourth season into two parts to finish out the series this year but what the heck do I know?
I don’t have any great ambitions for tomorrow but I am hoping to be outside more. The weather is supposed to be good, if good is defined as clear and mild. There’s wind forecast for Friday. Here’s hoping they missed on that one.
Today I finished my various Crosby-Nash, CS&N, CSN&Y and Stills-Young Band LPs (Buffalo Springfield was last week). That was a relief. The three-LP CS&N Carry On present particular trouble, though I’m not sure why. I was just scattered enough mentally that I keep losing track of what I had uploaded and what I hadn’t. The cherry on the sundae was me forgetting about one side entirely and letting the record spin for hours after it was done. Nice.
Great for the record and for the stylus of the EVO 3…not.
Anyway, tomorrow’s another day. In the meantime, tonight’s writing soundtrack is another LP, Deep Sea Diver’s Impossible Weight. I really like Jessica Dobson’s voice and playing. Not every song on this record is as raw, elemental and powerful as the last one, Run Away With Me, but they’re all good enough for me to enjoy. Anyway, check out that orange vinyl and Jessica’s signature!
I had a wonderful Valentine’s Day (yes, I know it was actually yesterday) for a very simple reason. I was lucky enough to spend some of it with my valentine, at least a few hours of it. She took the whole day off, so from 10 until 3:30 we hiked and talked and enjoyed a gorgeous day. We don’t get many chances to share even part of a weekday so it was an especially rare treat.
The only problem was that our time together was all too short, as it always is.
Our time on the trail gave me a chance to think about the book idea I that occurred to me yesterday. I can see the span of time. I can see some of the interesting events but I can’t really see the story, let alone the all-important ending. My concern is that there might not be a complete story to see. The last thing I want to do is jump into a story without even knowing the ending.
No good can come from that.
So, I’m going to do a little brainstorming about how my new story might end. Since there are biographical elements it’s all too easy to imagine that the story just goes on but that won’t work with a book. If I come up with some ideas between now and tomorrow I am thinking about writing the beginning of the story as tomorrow’s post. If I don’t, I’m not going to start writing. It’s not important for my idea about the ending to be the one I end up using. It’s only important for me to have an idea, even if I eventually change the ending, before I get started.
Ideas come along when they want so this may take a while.
Reliably, my endless babbling typically goes nowhere. But today I was telling stories of another era of my life, probably for the 10th time. When I finished I found myself thinking that there could be a book in the stories I told. It would be set in the 1980s. It would be somewhat biographical and somewhat of a period piece. As an aside, I am continually disappointed by the way stories from the 70s and 80s are told in today’s television and movies.
I have no doubt that it is ever thus, but it’s still distressing. Most efforts seems so enamored with the styles of hair and clothes as to ignore entirely the differences and similarities that the era portrayed has to today. As another aside, I would cite an exception with Mad Men. Any series that could actually make a teenage girl quit watching because the relentless sexism of the series was so distressing was definitely doing a lot of things right.
Let’s just say I’m not lining up to see Licorice Pizza.
Like a lot of other folks my age are thinking (and saying), fuck that…I lived it and it was a hell of a lot more entertaining, believe me.
Anyway, my idea would go from the mid-1980s to the mid-90s, ending in the genuine purgatory I endured living in the Santa Clarita Valley.
Without realizing it, I relive that decade a lot. To paraphrase Jackson Browne, you don’t know the big reasons of your life until after they’re gone.
Wait. I also got the second concept for the cover of Cottonwood tonight. Like the first, it’s not quite in line with what I wanted, but I love it. I called a bit of a timeout since we don’t yet know the thickness of the spine. That dimension will affect how much of the cover image has to wrap around to the left. It will be give me time to choose between wonderful and wonderful.
Finally, tonight’s writing soundtrack is Poor Ellen Smith by Gillian Welch & David Rawlings from their 2020 record, All The Good Times (Are Past & Gone). Finally, tonight’s writing soundtrack is Poor Ellen Smith by Gillian Welch & David Rawlings from their 2020 record, All The Good Times (Are Past & Gone).
Today I got an email from a would-be client of mine.
I gave her an assignment a few weeks back with a two-week deadline.
Here’s her email:
Paul
I am so sorry that I have neither followed up (yet) on your wonderful suggestions not let you know. As soon as we’d spoken I did some research into the subject then got stuck with a project I need to finish ASAP. I have to make (within the next few weeks!!) enough content for one quarter from 3 or more text books on the infinite topic of History of Golf.
So, that’s what I’m killing myself doing, especially on weekends. During my work, I was so happy to come across a couple of paragraphs dedicated to your friend (thought to myself – hey I know this guy!!), and excited that it will go into my powerpoints:
In 1911, Johnny McDermott, a brash young pro from Philadelphia was addicted to gambling at golf, ended the foreign and foreign-born dominance of the U.S. Open by becoming the first American-born winner of the event. At age 19 years, 10 months, and 14 days, he is still the youngest player ever to win the U.S. Open and the second-youngest ever to win any of the four modern majors. Only Young Tom Morris, who won the British Open in 1868 at age 17, was younger. As if to prove that his victory in 1911 was no fluke, McDermott won the US Open again in 1912 at the Country Club of Buffalo, where he became the first player to shoot a sub-par score in the US Open. Unfortunately he disappeared from the golfing scene as quickly as he had appeared. In 1914, at age 23, he collapsed and suffered a nervous breakdown in the clubhouse of the Atlantic City Country Club where he was the club pro. He never recovered from the incident and spent the rest of his life in mental hospitals, rest homes, and living with family members in Philadelphia, suffering from a mental illness.
Will follow-up on your ideas soon as this job is done.
Do you go to the Genesis Invitational?
Signed, Would-Be Client
And my reply:
Dear Client
You’re lucky.
I was about to send you a friendly-reminder email.
Glad you’re busy, hoping you’re not too busy.
Yeah, I got some JJM bio stuff from the USGA’s head historian. Nice guy, tho I cannot recall his name. Oh, yeah, it’s Mike Trostel! Not all of my memory is gone, thank goodness.
What is most interesting about JJM is that there are NO authoritative contemporaneous accounts of his decline. Some sources include what you have mentioned, others say bad financial decisions preceded his illness and still others point to the trauma of surviving a near-catastrophe at sea while sailing home to the United States.
I guess this kind of vagueness is an omnipresent feature of most lives, even of some noteworthy folks like JJM. My mother was dead less than a week before her own daughter inadvertently misstated some well-known facts about my mother’s life during a eulogy.
In the back of the church I muttered to myself, “And we wonder why there are so many biographies of the same person.”
Anyway, it’s great to hear from you.
Please keep in touch and be well!
Cheers.
Paul
The italicized paragraph is about John J. McDermott, a main character in my first novel. I was especially taken that my client presented what she did as authoritative. It may have been, but I doubt it. Whether it was JJM’s life or the life of my mother, people come and go and then we set about to say what happened in their lives. Sometimes we’re right. Other times, not so much. So, the word for the day is humble, as in be humble when citing facts about the lives of others, living or not.
John J. McDermott and one of his two U.S. Open trophies
Another LP is spinning for this evening’s writing soundtrack. It’s my single favorite solo guitar record ever. It’s by one or two-off virtuoso, George Cromarty and it’s called Wind In The Heather. It is a superb pressing with some of the best and best recorded acoustic guitar I have ever heard. I need to add Cromarty to my list of missing musicians.
This is also a rare flood survivor as the stained and damaged cover show. Happily, and I mean very happily, the record itself was spared. I never even had to clean it with the Nitty Gritty. I tried to get a little too arty with the processing on this, but what can you do other than try?
The valley to valley idea is predicated on being able find a way to hike from one valley to the other. One emphasis is on the word hike but the second is find. I knew that fire roads are everywhere in the foothills of Los Angeles County. I’m glad they’re there but hiking on them is more like walking than it is like hiking. And, since they all go somewhere there’s very little duty for navigation. The only question is how far do you want to do in any one direction?
If the challenge is only the hike it loses some appeal. It’s not that far and it’s not that hard. Surely others have done what I propose but I don’t really want to know how they did it since I assume there are a number of different routes, starting points and ending points. But worse, it would shatter the possibility of discovery…maybe the discovery of an error and maybe the discovery of something that works better than what others have done. In this case, crowd sourcing is the last thing I want to benefit from.
So, I am trying to minimize the use and influence of the experiences of others and of maps. A too map and a fire road map would tell the whole story. But as is so often the case it’s not the story that matters it’s the way that it’s told or in the case of the valley to valley hike how it a route is found and how it’s hiked.
The last time I was hiking west from the Victory Trailhead I saw a single tower in the distance. When I got home, I succumbed to temptation and found it on Google Maps. It’s called Tower 45 and it’s said to be a 3.5 hour hike from Woodland Hills and a 3.5 hour hike from the Conejo Valley. That’s useful, but it’s also more than I wanted to know. What I didn’t have to read was the obvious conclusion that Tower 45 was connected on both east and west by a big, wide fire road.
So, I took a little trip today to an area that I suspected was not far west of the tower, east of Westlake Blvd. I took a trail through a local park and caught up with an eastbound fire road. After about a mile and a half it looked like this:
By my reckoning I should have been close enough to see Tower 45, but it was nowhere in sight. The trail toward the right center rose steeply and on another day I might continue on this trail to see if Tower 45 lays beyond. The foothills were plenty tall enough to obscure a tower, even a tall one so I shouldn’t have been surprised.
Surprise. That’s part of what I’m trying to preserve. I am hoping to be surprised by. something in the planning of the hike but it’s beginning to seem more and more like all trails will lead to the common. The game’s not done yet. There’s more to discover and more to my study but I can sense surprise slipping away bit by bit.
Tonight’s writing soundtrack is Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Session from way back in 1988. And, since I’m listening to this superb record on vinyl it merits a snap of the LP rather than another cover photo.
Paul Cervantes 