The entirety of my first-hand experience is the Sunday of the 1974 PGA Championship at Tanglewood in Winston-Salem, N.C. A friend got us tickets and we wandered the course and then hung at one green to watch all the leading groups come through.
My memory of the day is beyond fuzzy. What I do remember is being up a hill way beyond the 18th green as Jack Nicklaus and Lee Trevino, in the last group, stood what seemed like several hundred yards away in the fairway. Each of their shots dropped out of the sky, a few feet from the cup. I remember thinking: "How did they do that?"
Each man shot 69 on the final day. Trevino won it, finishing with a 4-under 276. Nicklaus was a shot behind. Trevino earned $45,000. No, I remembered none of that other than Trevino won it by a shot. The rest of it I just looked up.
Hanging at Aronimink
After trying to get in the main entrance shortly around 11 a.m. yesterday and being rebuffed, I was sent a few hundred yards down St. Davids Road to Lot C. Which, as it turns out, is a large field right next to the action.
I wandered over to the Tennis Pavilion to get my credential and, a few yards from the entrance, noticed a few parking places with name tags. The first one was for my friend Joe Juliano of the Inquirer. The second one was for Kern. I was shocked to find that Mike does not drive a Mercedes. Very disappointing. Apparently, he spends all his spare cash on golf equipment.
But my man has a serious spot, right next to Associated Press golf writer, Doug Ferguson. The New York Times and Washington Post were next in line.
To the course
