No Laying Up - Golf Podcast - 961: NLU Special Projects - Calvin Peete

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

On this edition of NLU Special Projects, KVV brings us a deep dive on the life and career of Calvin Peete. From the famous story of the fall that broke his arm as a boy to his career on tour where he won twelve times including the 1985 Players, we hope you enjoy this look at one of golf's most remarkable stories you might not have heard before. Support our sponsors: Rhoback Yeti The Stack Subscribe to the No Laying Up Newsletter here: https://newsletter.nolayingup.com/ Subscribe to the No Laying Up Podcast channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@NoLayingUpPodcast If you enjoyed this episode, consider joining The Nest: No Laying Up’s community of avid golfers. Nest members help us maintain our light commercial interruptions (3 minutes of ads per 90 minutes of content) and receive access to exclusive content, discounts in the pro shop, and an annual member gift. It’s a $90 annual membership, and you can sign up or learn more at nolayingup.com/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be the right club. Be the right club today. Johnny, that's better than most. How about him? That is better than most. Better than most! Expect anything different! better than most expect anything different ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the no laying up podcast solly here we are back this week with another episode of our historical narratives this one is about the life and career of calvin pete is a story we've been interested in diving into for a long time we decided to turn kvv loose it. As we realized the 40th anniversary of his biggest victory was coming up here.

Next month, we've really enjoyed diving back into the annals of the history of golf, but this was admittedly a blind spot for me and a lot of us. And I think this is, this is a fun one. And I think you guys will really dig it. So here is KVV on the life of Calvin Pete. You probably do. I suspect it's part of the reason you're listening to this podcast. If I was going to travel back in time and explain to my 33-year-old self that I'd someday leave my job at ESPN to work at No Laying Up, the only way I could even begin to stitch it together and give my past self some context that would make sense would be to start with

golf Twitter. Ignore the current state of things. Instead, I want to spiritually revisit 2015, when everything was being upended in media and the rules for who could enter the golf space no longer seemed to exist. It was a wild time, but it was a fun time, full of corny jokes, goofy personalities, and the dumbest best memes. Tiger Woods was mostly MIA from the scene, except sometimes insane things would happen, like pictures of him from Italy would emerge in the middle of the night and he'd be missing a tooth.

We'd laugh and we'd make vines and we'd do whole bits about Phil Mickelson narrowly avoiding his bookies and the feds. Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth were on the rise, Jason Day looked like the best player on the planet, and a whole new generation of golf media wasn't so much waiting to be handed the baton, they were grabbing it and running with it. I had no clue then that golf was about to shape the rest of my professional life, but it doesn't surprise me looking back. Golf Twitter was fun. It was educational. People I'd never even met in real life

felt like old friends when we did connect because we'd spent so much time together digitally. We were shaping the modern state of the game while finding ways to connect to its past. Every day, Golf Twitter was both a comedy show and a history lesson. Most of us had grown up with the game, but spiritually, we were the children of Tiger and Phil and Ernie Els and Adam Scott.

Those were the names that drew us to the game. Some of its history, particularly outside Jack and Arnie, was admittedly fuzzy. I say all this because golf Twitter in 2015 was the first time I remember seeing the name Calvin Pete. He died that April, not long after Spieth won the Masters. I'm a little ashamed to admit I knew next to nothing about him.

Despite winning 12 times on the PGA Tour, he clearly slipped through the cracks of my curiosity. It was a failure on my part, but I can also see how it happened. His biggest victory, the Players' Championship in 1985, took place when I was only seven years old. I'd grown up watching Nicholas and Trevino and Palmer on the senior tour, and I'd even mimicked Chichi Rodriguez's swashbuckling sword fights with my putter. But I didn't know Pete at all. His career on the senior tour had been uneventful and he wasn't someone the game spent much time celebrating. For a lot of my

generation, he was a mystery. When I called up my colleague, DJ Pajowski, to ask if he'd learned anything about Pete during his time working at the PGA Tour, I realized I wasn't alone. I have this vivid memory. So I worked at the PGA Tour for a long time. And whenever you would go, you know, the headquarters was right there at TPC Sawgrass. And so whenever you'd go down that big long driveway at TPC Sawgrass, there'd be these banners on either side of the road. And it's, you know, just people who have won

the players' championship. And so you'd always see, you know, Tiger Woods and Jack Nicholas, and you'd see Craig Perks and be like, oh yeah, that's right, he won the players. And then you'd always see, you know, Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus, and you'd see Craig Perks and be like, oh yeah, that's right, he won the players. And then I would always see Calvin Pete. And every time I would drive by, I'd be like, ah, put that on my list of things to do. Like, I don't know anything about Calvin Pete, man.

Like, what am I doing? I'm calling myself a golf fan, and I just, I don't, it could not be more of a blind spot for me. It's taken a few years to find the right platform for it, but ever since 2015, I've wanted to do a deep dive into Calvin Pete's life and try to educate not just myself, but anyone else from my generation who wasn't around to experience it. Calvin Pete is still a reoccurring topic on Twitter, although it's been 10 years since he passed.

Grainy videos of him are fruitful engagement bait for the aggregators who love to remind you that he was the most accurate driver of the golf ball the game has ever seen and that he only hit one ball out of bounds in his entire career. It almost never goes any deeper than that. Those aspects of Pete's life I I'm happy to confirm, are true. He probably was the game's straightest driver, ever. With balada balls and persimmon clubs, he led the tour in Fairway's hit for 10 consecutive seasons. But that might not make the list of the 20 most interesting things about him. Pete lived a life of adventure and risk and disappointment and determination. Outside of Lee Trevino, it's possible that no American golfer rose up from such humble beginnings.

Next month will represent the 40th anniversary of Pete's victory at the Players' Championship, and there are plans to honor him at this year's tournament. Until Tiger Woods came along, Pete was the most successful black golfer in the history of the PGA Tour. But it wasn't until 1985 that he silenced some of his detractors, including Johnny Miller, who dubbed him the King of the B-movies for racking up many of his wins at lesser events. Miller's dig ate at Pete, even though he was reluctant to admit it. At the 85 players, he finished the third round tied with Hale Erwin and D.A. Wybring at 8 under par, and luminaries

like Jack Nicklaus and Payne Stewart were lurking only a few strokes back. Calvin was as nervous as he'd ever been, so full of doubt that he couldn't sleep. Years later, he relived that moment with golf writer Andy Reistetter. Now, Sunday night, I was very nervous. I mean, Saturday night, I was very nervous. Went to bed around 10 10 30 But I woke up about 1 30 in the morning and couldn't go back to sleep Got in my courtesy car. We were living way out there on the beach in a condo my wife and I

And I just started driving up and down. They weren't a turn the rearview mirror to my face turn on the interior light and Turn the rear view mirror to my face, turn on interior light, and said to myself glancing not to, I'm gonna take my eyes off the road too long. I say, you know, Calvin, this might be your only opportunity to have a chance to win something close to a major, but it is our major, of course, players, champ, players. And I say, when you plan your best best they can't beat you and I am playing my best that they can't beat me. What happened next was honestly one of the most impressive final rounds in the history of the players. If it happened today it would feel right up there with

Ricky Fowler's 2015 win at the stadium course as one of the most exciting and memorable in history. You can watch some of it on YouTube but to really appreciate it you need to understand everything that led up to it. After the break we're gonna journey back in time all the way back to the beginning and unpack one of the most unlikely success stories in the history of golf. Pete isn't in the world golf Hall of Fame and maybe it's not my place to argue whether he should or shouldn't be but his story might be as interesting as anything the game has ever produced. We'll dig in right after this. You all know Roeback best fit best field is getting to be St. Patty season and we don't think anybody is more ready than Roeback. They just released their St. Patrick's Day

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We wouldn't be talking about it as much as we do if we didn't think they had the best quality out there. So time to load up on some Robac. Code N NLU at Roeback.com gets you a generous 20% off your first order through the end of this week. That's R-H-O-B-A-C-K.com, 20% off pants, polos, hoodies and more with code NLU. Back to the pod. Calvin Pete was born in July of 1943 in Detroit, Michigan. He was the youngest of eight children when he was born, although he would eventually have another 11 siblings, making him, and I'm not even kidding here, one of 19 kids. His parents, Dennis and Irina, were migrant workers originally from Tennessee, but they

moved around through Missouri and Arkansas in the 1930s before eventually settling in Michigan where Dennis got a job at the Dodge automobile plant. Golf riders, you know, guys like me, have always loved to romanticize the humble beginnings of Arnold Palmer, whose father was the head greenskeeper at La Trobe Country Club. But Palmer might as well have been a Kennedy compared to Calvin Pete. Pete's father had a third grade education. His mother dropped out of school in the eighth grade. It worked so much

just to survive that Calvin was raised for the first 10 years of his life, essentially by his older siblings. His parents split up when Calvin was 11, and he went to live with one of his aunts in Missouri. His mother went looking for work in Chicago and promised she'd return when she found some. He never saw her again. She died a year later. Calvin was deemed old enough to work, so he spent that summer in Haiti, Missouri picking cotton, earning four cents a pound. On an average day, he might pick 200 pounds and get paid $8. I want to pause here for a second and tell you there is no way I could have done this podcast without the help of Gordon Hobson, who wrote Pete's biography, Calvin Pete, Golf's Forgotten Star, which came out in 2024.

Hobson, a retired attorney from Columbus, Ohio, had never written a book before, but he got the itch to dig into Pete's life during the pandemic. He essentially tracked down everything anyone had ever written about Pete for his research, then spoke with some of Pete's friends and family for the book.

The book is a finalist for the Herbert Warren Wind Award. You'll hear from Hobson in a bit, but seriously, go pick up his book. When Calvin was 12, he was visiting his aunt Lulu, who was living and working in a migrant labor camp in Sutton's Bay, Michigan. It was part of the seasonal cherry harvest. One day, he climbed a tree, dangled upside down from a branch to impress some other kids at the camp, to impress some other kids at the camp, and he slipped. Every superhero needs an origin story, a setback that, over time, turns into a superpower. And this is the one most frequently cited when people talk about Calvin Pete.

The fall broke his left arm, a triple fracture around the elbow. He underwent surgery and had to have his arm in a cast for six weeks. But when the cast was removed, it was clear something was not right. He couldn't fully straighten it. Doctors thought about re-breaking his elbow to set it properly, but there was a concern

they might have to amputate if a complication arose. They decided to leave it as it was. For the rest of his life, Calvin had to live with a bent arm that could never fully be straightened. He did develop a sense of humor about it, cracking jokes about it later in life when trying to explain his golfing success. You know people always ask me, you know, how you hit the ball so straight with that crooked left arm? I say it's crooked to you, but it's straight to me. I mean. It would be another decade, however, before the story of Calvin's arm had anything to do with golf.

He barely understood what golf was throughout his teenage years. At 15, after he finished the eighth grade, he dropped out of school for good because his family needed him to work. But work ended up meaning a lot of different things. He became an excellent pool player, and he and his friends would earn money by hustling in various pool halls throughout Florida. He even did a 30-day stint in jail after he and a friend were caught running a small scam to

shortchange cashiers. At 17, Calvin realized that he could make decent money selling things out of the back of his Plymouth station wagon if he followed the migrant worker camps up from central Florida and through southern Georgia. He would load up on items like cookware and hot plates, suitcases, radios, even fruits and vegetables, and then drive from camp to camp, selling them to farm workers. He also got into the jewelry business and had a pair of diamonds implanted in his front teeth by a dentist to advertise his services. I wanted to show people that there was more to do with diamonds than there was just wearing them on your fingers, Pete explained

years later. So I simply had a dentist chip away at the enamel and cement them into my teeth. People on the route started calling him Diamond Man, which honestly is kind of a sick nickname. I don't think I'm breaking any news here when I tell you that sports riders love to mythologize an athlete's working class roots, but golf often doesn't give them much to work with. I remember a few years ago when Cam Young was asked if he was shaped and molded by the hard streets of New York City? He had to sheepishly correct the reporter and remind him that while he was technically

from New York City, he grew up playing Sleepy Hollow Country Club. If you're not aware, Sleepy Hollow is one of the most exclusive and expensive pieces of real estate in the world. Golf occasionally does have stories of working class grit. Tony Finau hitting balls into a mattress in his garage, Lizette Salas' father hand picking range balls so she could practice. These are great anecdotes, but I'm not sure any of them could hold a candle to anything in Calvin Pete's life. At one point, he and a friend were hustling people with a set of loaded dice in a pool hall when one of their victims finally got wise to the scam, pulled

out a knife, and grabbed Calvin by the throat. The only reason he got away was Calvin's partner hit the man in the head with the butt of a gun repeatedly until they could flee. So the next time someone brings up that Ian Poulter had to work as a club pro, or that VJ Singh hit balls by the shade of a mango tree, or even that Arnold Palmer was a working-class hero from a steel mill town, go ahead and tell them that story about Calvin Pete. By the time he was in his early 20s, Calvin was certainly aware of golf as a sport. He had friends who caddied, and they kept encouraging him to try looping as a way to make some extra money. It was certainly easier than hustling and selling jewelry or hot

plates out of the trunk of his car. But he had no interest in either playing or caddying. He thought golf was, in his own words, a sissy game for old white people and weaklings. The only kids you would see playing golf, you'd look at them as little weaklings, Pete said years later. Golf did not have that rough and tumble of football or baseball or basketball, so I had no desire. It's not like he had a lot of role models to emulate either. If you ever want to wrap your head around how behind

the times professional golf was as a sport, consider this. Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947 in Major League Baseball. He played 10 seasons, made 6 All-Star teams, was voted the National League's Most Valuable Player, and he retired in 1956. It was still another 5 years before the PGA Tour was forced by the Supreme Court to drop its Caucasians-only clause, allowing black golfers like Charlie Sifford to compete on the professional circuit. The direction of Calvin's life was essentially rerouted by a prank that his friends played on him.

They told Calvin that they were taking him to a clam bake in Rochester, New York, a man he just had to come. There would be music and fried fish and women and whimsy. He got into a friend's car expecting a chill afternoon and was livid when his friends pulled into the parking lot of Genesee Valley Country Club. There was no clam bake they confessed, but they did have a tea time. Calvin could either rent clubs or he could sit in the car for the next four hours. After some grumbling, he relented. Years later, he told journalist Pete McDaniel that when he wrapped his hands around a club for the first time, he felt an overwhelming sensation he'd never before experienced.

It felt like his hands belonged there. He had found his calling. It's impossible to say what Calvin shot that day. It does not matter for this story. What does matter is that after the round, his friends drove back to the hotel where they were staying, but Calvin got in his car and drove back to the course. He hit range balls until darkness was settling in, until the manager told him that he couldn't sell him another bucket because he wanted to go home to his family.

Calvin P was 23 years old, but his life was just beginning. More when we return. A big thank you to our friends at Yeti. It doesn't matter if you're looking for hard coolers, soft coolers, cups, mugs, or more, Yeti has it. They also recently introduced two new colorways, the Firefly collection and the Big Sky collection. The Firefly collection and its Firefly yellow is inspired by the lush forest of Appalachia while Big Sky Blue draws its color from working branches of Montana. Yeti has plenty of options to customize their product offerings from bottles to mugs, hard coolers to dog bowls. Yeti can customize it all even their Rambler French presses. If

you are watching this on video, I've got my customized Yeti right here. It keeps me company at my desk all day long. Check their complete offerings out at yeti.com. We appreciate their support. Back to the pod. Where is the line between being hyper-driven to succeed and an obsessive-compulsive disorder? There's likely a clinical answer to that question,

but we don't often address it in the world of sports or with artists because we can't help but admire what gets produced when talented people push themselves to extremes. Here is a statement of fact about Calvin Pete. He forged himself through sheer force of will into a professional golfer. He would beat balls on the range for an entire day. Then he would go home and watch tapes of his practice sessions,

trying to diagnose flaws in his swing. Here's a statement of conjecture about Calvin Pete. He was almost certainly an undiagnosed, obsessive compulsive. When Hobson dug into his life and started talking to some of his friends, associates, and competitors, a common theme emerged. Golf completely consumed him.

He was obviously just OCD. He goes out with a couple of pool hall buddies and has never been on a golf course and says, how does this game work? They trick him into playing and he says, well, what's the objective They trick him into playing and he says, well, what's the objective of the game? They said, well, you see that flag out there, 370 yards away, there's a little hole in the bottom of it and you take these clubs and hit the ball in that hole. And he's captivated by the game.

I mean, he's just, he's out there in the middle of the night hitting balls in the public park and buying a little tripod to study his swing and try and refine his swing. I mean, who does that? 23 years old and you're going to just like out of nowhere, just take up the game of golf and go hit balls all night? Calvin must've read Ben Hogan's book, Five Lessons, a couple hundred times. If he couldn't afford range balls, he would go hit balls in a public park. He particularly liked it when adult softball leagues in Florida

would leave their lights on all night because that meant he could work on his game all throughout the night with no distractions. He didn't have any designs on playing professional golf because, again, who was there to emulate? He didn't watch golf on TV, he didn't attend any tournaments, he wasn't even aware of Sifford's career. The game of golf was, in some respects, just an evolution of his pool hustling days, an easier way to make a living than throwing loaded dice. But that changed in 1968 when a Florida rainstorm forced him to pause his regular Sunday game and seek shelter inside the clubhouse. The American golf classic was on TV, and after 72 holes at Firestone Country Club, Jack Nicholas

found himself in a sudden-death playoff with a 33-year-old PGA Tour rookie named Lee Elder. It was, in Pete's recounting, the first time he'd ever considered the idea that a black man could play golf professionally. He was riveted. Elder was matching Nicholas shot-for-shot, firing at pins, rolling in 25-footers, pushing him right to the edge of uncomfortable. It wasn't until the fifth playoff hole that Nicholas finally made a birdie to win the match. Pete's whole perspective changed. I'm going to play on tour, he told his friends.

You give me six or seven years and I'm going to play on the PGA Tour. One of the most charming things about golf is for whatever reason, it encourages delusion. People convince themselves that they could totally do it if they just devoted the time to it. It's a bit like writing to be honest. There's this famous anecdote about Margaret Atwood that I love. Supposedly she was at a party once and a brain surgeon

learned that she was the author of the Handmaid's Tale. And he said, you know, I was thinking I might try to become a writer after I retire. And she allegedly responded, well, that's nice. I was thinking I might try brain surgery when I retire," and she allegedly responded, "'Well, that's nice. I was thinking I might try brain surgery when I retire.'" But here's the thing. Calvin actually did it. He became the sports equivalent of a brain surgeon. He attacked practice like he was trying to make up for lost time. He could not generate a ton of speed with the physical limitations of his left arm,

but he could square the club face with body rotation like a metronome. He would literally hit balls until his hands bled. Something that people like to say as a golfing cliché, but in this case it's actually true. Calvin would buy Dr. Scholl's foot pads and cut them into pieces, sticking them in his glove to try to absorb the pounding and stop the bleeding. What he honed over thousands of hours was arguably the most repeatable swing since Ben Hogan. In 1969, at the age of 25, he entered his first golf tournament, the North South at Miami Springs Country Club in Miami, Florida.

He was, at the time, one of the premier events for black golfers in the United States. Elder and Sifford, along with Teddy Rhodes and Jim Dent, competed in the professional division. Celebrities like Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis, and Nat King Cole competed in the amateur division. Calvin finished sixth in the amateur division. That alone would make for a pretty good story, but Calvin was just getting started. He kept entering amateur tournaments and in 1970 he won for the first time, capturing the Hollywood Lakes Championship by 11 shots. He played in a few Pro-Am's and when he held his own against a few pros, that was enough to convince him that he could do this for real. Five years after he touched a golf club for the first time, Calvin Pete turned professional.

Now, let's be clear about something. Turning professional and playing on the PGA Tour are very different things, and that was even more apparent in 1970. If you wanted to make it on the tour in 1970 you needed to fight your way through Q school and even if you did that only the top 60 players were exempt each week. These days there is plenty of frustration from PGA Tour players who are ranked outside the top 50 because they feel like they're being denied playing opportunities and they don't have a fair chance to get into signature events. We've made our fair share jokes on this podcast about how Ryan Armour accidentally dubbed them the mules. But in 1970,

the mule class of professional golfer live the kind of existence that isn't even fathomable to today's current crop. They were nicknamed the rabbits. And every week they weren't guaranteed a single thing. Everyone outside the top 60 on the money list had to show up on Monday and play their way into the tournament. If they missed out they had to race to the next city paying their own expenses the entire time and try to get ready for the next Monday qualifier. In the early 70s you could be the hundredth best golfer in the world and absolutely have negative income for the year.

Calvin was a rabbit in every sense. In fact, it took him years just to reach rabbit status. He failed in his first three attempts to get through Q school, and when he finally did earn his card in 1975, he was essentially broke. He drained all his resources to get there. Hobson was fascinated to learn in his research that Pete was possibly on his way to becoming something of a real estate magnet before the golf bug bit him. What happened is, is once he starts playing golf regularly,

he's out on the golf course and he meets an attorney, Michael Widoff, and I think this is down in Fort Lauderdale. He's out on the golf course and he meets an attorney, Michael Widoff. I think this is down in Fort Lauderdale. He starts playing golf with this guy and he tells him, yeah, my dad is 71 years old and he owns all this rental property in Fort Lauderdale and he wants to sell it off. I should introduce you. So Calvin's introduced to this guy, Benjamin Widoff, and Widoff likes the guy. He says, you know, I can see a lot of myself in Calvin. You know, not very educated, not from much, and he gives Calvin one of his properties,

helps him finance one of his properties and Calvin goes and rehabs the thing himself and went off very impressed and says, I'll sell you another one. And I think Calvin, like over the next few years, got up to having 50 rental properties in Florida. So he was making an income back then way beyond what he was getting as a peddler. And that's because he took up golf and he met, started to meet middle-class people on the golf course, you know, and the deal was done. And he probably wished he'd never gone to Q school. Because he was, I mean, he came home after, you know, after all that, and he's flat broke.

Divine Intervention arrived in the form of a phone call. Lowell Beggs, a grocery store owner from Illinois, reached out to Calvin with an offer. He'd seen him play and was impressed with his poise. He wanted to sponsor him. He'd give him $25,000 a year in exchange for a majority of his tournament winnings. Seeing as how you could make the cut on the PGA Tour in 1975

and earn somewhere between $300 and $500 for the entire week, it seemed like a pretty good deal to Calvin. The deeper I dove into Calvin Pete's story, the more I began to wonder, how the hell did this never get made into a movie? His first season on tour in 1976, he struggled a bunch early on, but by June, he'd racked up a 15th place finish at the Jacksonville Open and a 10th place finish at the IVB Bicentennial

Classic. Eight years after seeing Lee Elder play against Jack Nicklaus in a playoff and deciding that he was going to be a professional golfer, Calvin got paired with Jack freaking Nicklaus in the final round of the U S open at Atlanta athletic club. Despite his nerves, he was actually a shot better than Nicholas on the front nine before he ran out of gas on the back firing a 73 to Jack 68.

That guy could get up and down from a trash can. Nicholas told reporters when asked about Pete, he's a nice guy. Sure did scramble. Well, Calvin finished 23rd, tied with Gary Player and a shot ahead of Hale Irwin, two future Hall of Famers. My guy Gary may have been 41, but he was still a year away from winning the Masters, his final major championship.

A few weeks after the US Open, Calvin got paired with Arnold Palmer. I'm sorry, I just have to pause again here and point out that there isn't anything equivalent to this in other sports. Imagine if I was watching television one day, growing up and basketball was on and I was like, who is that?

And someone said, oh, that's Steph Curry. And I was like, oh, I think I might try to do that instead of selling NFTs or fart coins out of my digital wallet, or like whatever the modern equivalent of selling jewelry out of my station wagon would be. And then like eight years later, I was in the NBA playoffs trying to guard Steph Curry.

Maybe that's evidence golf isn't a real sport, but to me, it's evidence it might be the best sport. I'd love to tell you that that round with Nicklaus was a springboard to what came next, but in reality, it was more like a small stepping stone on a slow, methodical slog up a mountain. Playing with Nicklaus was the greatest thing that ever happened to me, Pete said. I learned how far I am from being a super golfer. Despite some success, Calvin was still a rabbit the following year.

Most weeks, he had to earn his way into tournaments through Monday qualifiers. He was bringing in less than $1,000 a week, and that was before expenses. Doubt began to creep in. He told his wife, Christine, that maybe God had not meant for him to play professional golf. It's not God, Calvin, Christine told him. You are letting yourself down. She wanted to send him a message. He'd gotten complacent. It was time to get out the video camera and get back to the grind that had earned him a spot on tour. When we come back,

I'm going to tell you how Calvin went from being a rabbit to the king of the B-movies, and eventually an unlikely Ryder Cup badass. Stay tuned. I know I've been teasing it, but I am back stacking officially as of today, the day of recording this. I had to take a little time off for some live stuff, but I am so glad to get back into the stack program. You've heard me say so many great things about it. I gained 10 miles an hour of clubhead speed. And that might sound like a lie. But that is actually what the data is

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golf. And we actually called them up and asked them if they want to sponsor us because we love the product that much. The stack system.com code no laying up gets you 10% off. Back to the pod. code no laying up gets you 10% off. Back to the pod. ["The Pitcher's Lamentation"] In 1983, Calvin Peach showed up for his PJ Tour season without his signature diamonds embedded in his front teeth. He was trying to seem more professional, trying to adjust

to the culture of the sport, and so he had them removed. On some level, I understand why. It's hard when faced with pressure to conform to continue to be yourself. But that anecdote can't help but bum me out a little. The diamonds were quintessential Pete. They were a link to his past, and in a lot of respects, a harbinger of what was to come in culture. Lamar Jackson, Jamar Chase, Justin Jefferson, John Morant, all of them sport a more extensive and expensive version

of the diamond grill that Pete revolutionized back in the 70s. He had exceptional flair. He loved wearing bright colors, including a pair of red pants that became his signature look. How much more fun would it have been if golf had seen Calvin as a trendsetter

instead of someone who had to be tamed? The Diamonds, however, were still in place in 1979 when he broke through and won for the first time, capturing the Greater Milwaukee Open, beating Lee Trevino and Jim Simons by five shots. He became just the fourth black golfer to win on the PGA Tour, and the coverage of his victory was glowing. Countless newspaper articles announced that the Diamond Man had at last arrived.

Some of the pros of this era, I just wanna mention is shockingly bad. A lot of forced puns about collard greens and putting greens, but I will add, it's at least trying to be complimentary. At this point, it's pretty obvious that golf is continuing to lag behind the times when it comes to social progress, and there is hope that Pete could be a sign of things to come. By finishing 11th in the US Open in 1979, he qualified for the 1980 Masters,

meaning he would become just the second black golfer in history to earn an invitation. An army of golf journalists rushed to share the story of how a former migrant worker and jewelry salesman was going to drive down Magnolia Lane. Calvin even borrowed a Rolls Royce for the occasion, but he didn't really see himself as a pioneer. He didn't have much interest in being anyone's symbol. Privately, he felt uncomfortable with Augusta's entire vibe. Hobson said he learned years later that Pete had at one point considered skipping the Masters entirely, at least according to Chip Plowman, one of his original caddies. Plowman told me that back in 76, or was 75, when Lee Elder got in the Masters for the first time, that Calvin talked about that then and said, you know, if I ever make it to the Masters,

I'm not sure I'm going to go. I may just skip the whole thing. You know, just those people down there are so ridiculous. And so he had that thought about which, of course, any black golfer would have that thought about, you know, they clearly don't want us down here. They're doing things to keep us from, from playing. So he, he went there, I think with some of that attitude. If that was the case, he didn't show it. He struggled early,

but shot a 67 on Sunday to finish tied for 19th. Once again, I have to point out that 11 years after he entered a golf tournament for the first time, Calvin finished 19th at the friggin' Masters. Someone please get me Bob Iger and Michael B. Jordan on the phone. I feel like we've got an Oscar winner here and I'm even willing to play Craig Stadler if it helps. Anyway, Calvin was, as the 80s unfolded, starting to figure stuff out. He was not, by his own admission, a particularly good green reader, which made those wisecracks about collard greens by white sports writers feel all the more strained. But something happened around the time that raised his floor and lifted him into another

tier. He started occasionally working with Dolphus Golf Ball Hall, Raymond Floyd's regular caddy. ["Dolphus Golfball Hull"] A part of me feels like this entire podcast could be about Hull, arguably one of the greatest caddies in history, and inarguably one of the game's best characters. If you want to go deeper on golf ball, I implore you to pick up a copy of Michael Bamberger's book Men in Green where he

devotes an entire chapter to the man. But I'll do my best to summarize him. Hull was rail thin, hailed from Jackson, Mississippi, and he sported a gold chain around his neck that read, Sexy. He wore a pork pie hat, walked with a strut, and spoke his mind. Floyd fired him at least six times, bailed him out of jail at least once, and hired him back seven times. Sometimes he wouldn't show up for work because he felt like going hunting instead. He once purposely misread a short putt his player needed to make the cut because he wanted to party all night and didn't want to get up the next day.

He once quit working for Jerry Pate because, he said, without a whiff of hesitation or remorse, he didn't appreciate being treated like a slave. He was cocky and funny and mysterious and maddening. He once borrowed Floyd's Cadillac and didn't return it because it just disappeared. He couldn't remember what he did with it. But golf ball was also a genius. It's possible that no one understood the wind and the lie and a player's psyche better than him.

He was also one of the best quotes in the history of the PGA Tour. Asked once to describe what made Calvin great, he replied, he goes flag on you. Whenever Floyd took a week off, golf ball would hop on Calvin's bag, and together they were Lenin and McCartney. I know Pete can win consistently on tour, Hall told reporters. The only thing about him is he doesn't have enough confidence in himself.

But every time Hall would hop back on Floyd's bag, Calvin's flaws would reemerge. Lenny Watkins ended up playing on two Ryder Cup teams with Calvin, and they ended up becoming quite friendly over the years. But there were times when Watkins couldn't help but feel for Calvin, because it often felt like something was holding him back from ascending to the next level, usually strategy.

No one hit the ball straighter, to the point where other guys on tour nicknamed him Xerox Because every swing looked like a copy of the previous one, but on the greens it became an adventure Surprisingly didn't seem to be a very good greens reader His caddies used to read a lot of green scoring, you know Where is you know all the other great players really good players that I watched, you know They may get advice but they had a feel for how they were reading greens, which tells me maybe Calvin didn't obviously didn't play a lot as a kid growing up.

Because that's, you know, really where you learn green speeds, green reading, you know, what you're going to see in putts. So I thought that was the one thing he was probably missing repertoire wise in his game. I always felt I got paired with Calvin in the 82 PGA that Raymond Floyd won at Southern Hills. I actually finished second to Raymond, but I played with Calvin the first two days. I thought he could have won that tournament, but I thought he made a really bad strategic mistake. Calvin was a beautiful four wood player. And for some reason, he came out this week, did not have a four wood, and had a one iron. And I'm looking at it, going around, and I'm playing a four wood.

And I want to say like the ninth hole or something, either eighth or ninth hole at Southern Hill was a big par three that was a four wood shot. And it's like Calvin was trying to get it on the green with a one iron. He wasn't having much success. Then about the 13th hole was a par five, par four that I ended up hitting forward to several times and Calvin was at the same place. And because he didn't have four wood, he ended up laying up short of the creek on a par four and not putting it over the creek because he couldn't get the one iron standing here

and three wood was too much. I remember talking to my caddie, why the hell is Calvin carrying a one iron? I've never seen him carry one iron before and he's carrying one this week when he should be carrying a four wood. On courses that had a lot of rough, you know, forward was a great club play out of the rough and stuff. So it is one of those things that I remember that week. I still remember today.

I think he finished a shot behind me, maybe tied Fred couples for third. And I was second by myself, but I kept thinking, man, Calvin gave away a lot of shots that week. Watkins memory is correct. Calvin did finish in a tie for third at the 1982 PGA Championship. It was, until Tiger Woods came along, the best finish ever for a black golfer in a major. Who knows if it might have been different if golf ball was on Calvin's bag that week instead of Floyd's?

It was Floyd's third major championship. It was also another third major championship. It was also another stepping stone for Calvin. When he was on, he could blow away the field. In 1982, he won the Greater Milwaukee Open for the second time and the Anheuser-Busch Classic. He then went on to win the BC Open and the Pensacola Open, both victories by seven shots. Ever since he's taken the diamonds out of his teeth, he's playing better golf, Fuzzy Zeller told reporters. If we can get a dentist over here tonight, maybe we can get them put back in.

Okay, I know what some of you are thinking. Oh, what a surprise that Fuzzy Zeller made a culturally offensive wisecrack about a black golfer. Who could have seen that coming? I hear you, but I will note that Fuzzy might have been Calvin's closest friend on tour. Calvin was right there when Fuzzy made that joke and he laughed, so I'm putting it in a different bucket than his infamous fried chicken comments about Tiger Woods. Although your mileage may vary.

Anyway, with four wins in one year, it was clear Calvin Pete was in serious contention of playing his way onto the U.S. Ryder Cup team. There was just one thing still holding him back. The PGA of America said he would not be eligible because he didn't have a high school diploma. I think of all the things that I learned about Calvin Pete's life for this podcast, this might have been the most insane. Think about all the things Calvin had to overcome in his life to get to the point where he was clearly one of the 12 best golfers in the United States, and yet an organization whose stated mission it is to promote golf in America decided it would not budge when it came to tearing

down a meaningless hurdle. His attorney suggested they file a lawsuit against the PGA of America, but Calvin wouldn't hear of it. I'm not gonna break any rules, he said. The people who came before me lived up to that rule. I will too. That is how Calvin Pete, on the Saturday before the Buick Open in 1982, ended up back in Detroit in a high school classroom for the first time taking his GED exam. His hands were sweating and he was more nervous for it than he'd ever been standing over a birdie putt. But he'd been studying with his wife, Christine, for months leading up to this moment. He passed.

The PGA of America, in its infinite wisdom, told him he was now eligible for the 1983 Ryder Cup team. There was just one catch. None of his accomplishments prior to getting his GED would count towards his point total. Gotta love the PGA of America, man. They have such a fascinating history of finding different ways to consistently step on rakes. But you know what? It didn't matter to Calvin. He made the Ryder Cup team anyway. He played really well. He went 2-1-1, pairing well with Tom Kite and Ben Crenshaw in team matches, and he won his singles match on Sunday over England's Brian Waits. When Lanny Walken stuffed a wedge on the final hole and essentially

clinched the cup for the Americans, it was Calvin who met him in the fairway with a giant grin on his face and threw an arm around him. The celebration was just getting started. I do remember him at the one thing I remember distinctly, uh, when we won the rider cup in 83, you know, we had a bunch of guys partying in there afterwards and Calvin and Raymond dancing. This would have been a sight to see if you could have had a camera on the wall at this point in time.

I mean, I think Raymond one time was dancing with his wife and Calvin's wife. We were all having a big it was pretty as about as good a celebration as I've ever been involved in and Calvin was right in the middle of it I tell you. Even with his Ryder Cup success and even after he won the Varden trophy in 1984 for the lowest stroke average on tour he didn't stop a few players from trying to downplay his achievements. Johnny Miller who at that point was in the twilight of his playing career, dubbed Calvin the king of the B-movies, the implication being that while he might be collecting victories, none of them were among the game's most prestigious events. When I called up Curtis Strange to talk to him about Calvin, I couldn't resist asking

if he remembered Miller's dig. He did. length off the tee. It wasn't that he couldn't win a US Open or a big golf course, but he had to be very, very, very good that week because of his length off the tee. You see the ones he won were medium length golf courses. I don't think that's any indication that he couldn't play big golf courses. It was tough on him. He won the tournament of champions, hell of a tournament, hell of a win. Phoenix Open was hell of a win. I don't look at that as a B movie type thing. I look at that as somebody who won 12 top-notch or a lot of guys that would give their right arm for this record, for this career. If there was one place that Calvin's lack of length off the tee hurt him the most, it was Augusta.

It was not a course where he ever felt particularly comfortable for a variety of reasons. Calvin didn't love being seen as a symbol of progress in America. He wanted to put his head down and play good golf and let that speak for him. He kept to himself often and tried not to say controversial things. When reporters asked him to talk about racial issues, he often chose platitudes and non-controversial clichés as a response. But there was one exception. In the third round of the 1983 Masters, a combination of wind and rain made the course exceptionally hard, and Calvin Peat struggled mightily, shooting in 87, the worst round of his career. When he met with the media, he was candid in his

assessment. I stunk. I was terrible. It was humiliating. It occurred to me to withdraw, but I think if I did that, I'd have a bad mark against me. You have to take the bitter with the sweet, though I have no excuses today. I might go home and get drunk. If I come out tomorrow with a hangover, I can't do any worse than I did today." When a reporter tried to pivot to ask about masters' traditions, Calvin became understandably annoyed. It was one of the few times in his career he spoke in anger. Until Lee Elder, the only blacks at the Masters were caddies

or waiters. To ask a black man what he feels about the traditions of the Masters is like asking him how he feels about his forefathers who were slaves. The following morning, Calvin Pede began the day in last place among the players who had made the cut. Usually, when an uneven number of players makes the weekend at Augusta, one of the members of the club will join the final pairing as a marker. It's a ceremonial role that Jeff Knox was famous for playing, at least on golf Twitter, in the modern era.

But in 1983, when Calvin arrived at the first tee, the starter informed him that he would be playing alone. The member who was supposed to play with him had declined to show up. The message seemed obvious. When we return, we'll bring this ship home with the story of the 1985 Players Championship and what it meant to a kid named Eldrick watching back in California. Hey friends. watching back in California. exclusive content like our monthly NEST podcast, as well as the chance to sign up early for our Roost events held all around the country. Go to nolayingup.com slash join to get started. Back to the show. When Calvin Peach showed up at the players championship in 1985, he did not have high

expectations. He was coming off a missed cut and he was not striking the ball particularly well. That week I really wasn't expecting it wasn't that I went out to win a golf tournament because I had been struggling with my game for a few months really and I was kind, you know, in between what shaft I wanted to play. As a matter of fact, Wednesday of the player championship, I changed my clothes, because the shaft that I had, I just couldn't control the ball. The guy said, well, Calvin, I'm in the lead. I said, man, you've got to do it.

So, okay, I'll take care of that and put them in your locker. So I went out with brand new shafts that Thursday. And well, obviously played good. And I was really surprised, man. Shots was going the way I wanted them to go. Calvin climbed into the top 10 on day one with a 70, then hung around with a 69 on Friday. He was cruising on Saturday, five under on his round and two shots ahead of the field when he came to the infamous 17th hole. He could not commit to a club. He tried to hit a soft eight iron and it was a disaster.

He dunked it right in the water. Double bogey. He finished with a 69 but was now tied with D.A. Wybring and Hale Irwin. If he was going to win the biggest tournament of his life, he would need to go out and get it. Nothing would be handed to him. Jack Nicklaus, a mythic figure who had inspired and intimidated him for years, was just four strokes back.

If you ever think about Calvin P. in the years to come, I want you to think about the moment 40 years ago when he spent a couple hours driving in the dark up and down the A1A, just looking into the rearview mirror, trying to convert a desire into a belief. We love stories of certainty in professional sports, stories where someone is so confident in their own abilities, what happens next feels like destiny. But just as interesting to me are stories about doubt, about wrestling with the idea that you might not be good enough, and the only way to shake it is to tell yourself over and over you are worthy of this opportunity.

On the first hole on Sunday, Calvin rolled in a 25-footer for birdie. He birdied the second hole after reaching the green in two. He birdied the seventh to take a three-stroke lead. But on the 10th hole, he flared his drive to the right, genuinely one of his worst drives in years, and found himself in the trees. He had a window, but a tree was in the way on his follow-through.

He and Caddy Golfball talked it over, and he decided to hell with it. He was going for it. I was worried about breaking my club or breaking my wrist, Calvin said later. I figured 162,000 was worth either one. He lashed at the ball and knocked it on the green. It led to an easy par. Wybring thought if he played the back nine in two under, he might have a chance. He played it in four under, and he still lost by three because Calvin kept making birdies. There was, however, one final hurdle for Calvin.

He came to the dreaded 17th tee. The wind was swirling. His throat was dry, but he was too nervous to grab a drink of water. He knew if he made double bogey like he did on Saturday, he'd be fighting for his life on the 18th hole. Years later, he told the story of what happened next in a presentation at the World Golf Hall of Fame. By the time I got to the 17 tee, my knees were doing this. I don't know, I was thinking about the 8-9 hitting the water, but I stepped off to the side of the tee and said, what the hell is wrong with you, man?

You hit this shot 10,000 times. Don't give me, and don't excuse my friend, don't give me this shit. After I finished that sentence, I went to that tee and I did not feel that anymore. And that was the greatest shot of my career. He decided to hell with finesse. He was going to hit a hard eight iron.

Cal Pete with an eight iron. The crowd falls absolutely silent. He didn't hit a soft rock this time. And that's right at it. What a great stroke. The ball landed four feet from the flag. Other than Rickie Fowler in 2015, it's hard to think of a better shot by an eventual winner on a Sunday.

A birdie got him to 14 under par, and a par at the last was good for a 66. Under the circumstances, it was my best round ever, Calvin said. The victory would finally earn Calvin Pete the validation he'd worked so hard to earn, although he probably deserved it regardless of the players. From 1979 to 1986, no one won more times on the PGA Tour than Calvin Pete. There has never been a big push for him to be included in the World Golf Hall of Fame, but maybe there should be. Back home in Cypress, California, an adolescent boy named Tiger, who just happened to be dominating the junior circuit, was watching closely. I think what he did was was truly

incredible. I mean it's was armed the way it was and obviously that's a physical impairment. He was never going to create power. And this is a person that, I mean, God, he hit it straight. It was ungodly how straight he hit it. The ball just didn't move. And this is back in the old blotted days when the ball did curve a lot and his ball never curved. I mean there's a stat that I don't think not too many people are aware of. At Merrifield Village, he didn't miss a fairway for two and a half years. I mean over ten rounds without missing a fairway. Okay you're gonna hit one bad shot somewhere in two and a half years. But he never missed a fairway for two and a half years.

Certainly he's one of the guys I looked up to certainly. Person of color and be able to do it especially at the time when there weren't that many out here. You know Charlie was pretty much done, Lee was was pretty much done, Jim Dent didn't really come out of the scene he was kind of here and there but it was basically just Calvin so for as for me as a person of color it meant something to me to really come onto the scene. It was kind of here and there, but it was basically just Calvin. So for me as a person of color, it meant something to me to watch him do well. It would be poetic if we ended Calvin Pete's story there, in a moment of triumph, but that is not the way life works. One of the reasons golf fans of my generation never really got to know him is because he didn't have the lengthy career on the senior tour that he'd hoped for.

His health started to deteriorate and symptoms of a mysterious illness became pronounced. It wasn't until 1999 that he was diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome, but his doctors suspected it had plagued him for much of his adult life. I was amazed that he had Tourette's the whole time. And his, one of his early caddies,

Chip Plowman told me that when he caddied for him in Jacksonville in like 19 I don't know 75 or 76 that he noticed it then that he would make this weird jerking motion sometimes and so you know if you want to talk about remarkable, some guy with Tourette's going out and having the career he had too, and even, like, when he won the players, he's thinking, he's thinking fade when he wants to draw the ball and vice versa. I think the game is hard enough without having to do that, right? As his health deteriorated, so did his game. He joined the senior tour but never had much success.

He and his wife, Christine, divorced in 1987, and Pete admitted that he drank often to deal with the stress. He got remarried in 1992, and he and his wife, Pepper, had two daughters who both went on to play college golf. In 2014, at age 71, he was diagnosed with two forms of cancer, lung and pancreatic. At some point, he became estranged from his family, and he was staying at a friend's house. A friend told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Pete was living in a house with no furniture,

sleeping on a mattress on the floor and eating peanut butter out of a jar, probably because his Tourette's made it difficult to swallow. He was able to move into a hospice facility in Atlanta for the final months of his life, but he died in April of 2015. Calvin Pete was never all that interested in talk of legacies. He got a lot of pleasure out of teaching clinics to inner-city kids at every stop on the PGA Tour. He was once late for a dinner with Jack Nicklaus because he wanted to keep giving lessons to kids who'd never swung a golf club before.

He didn't like the idea of being seen as a great black golfer, but he is, to this day, the second most successful black golfer in the history of the game. Author Pete McDaniel, who was working on a biography of Calvin when he died, calls him the king of black golf. He was beyond shadow of a doubt the first black player who proved that we could dominate the game of golf, McDaniel said. But in the end, he was just a regular guy who loved life and his family. There is a good chance you will see Calvin Pete's name and image pop up on social media next month, when the 40th anniversary of his player's victory arrives. You will hear the

statistic about how he was the straightest driver in history, how he only hit one ball out of bounds his entire career, and how his left arm, broken when he fell from the tree as a boy, became his eventual superpower. Those are fun tidbits, and they are worthy of sharing. But at least now you know the story of Calvin Peat's life is much richer and fuller than any tweet could ever begin to unpack. I'm Kevin Van Volkenberg, Editorial Director at No Laying Up. This podcast was written and researched by me with an assist from Gordon Hobson, the author of Calvin Pete, Golf's Forgotten Star.

You can pick up a copy of his book on Amazon or order it from your local bookstore. Additional story editing by DJ Pajowski, Chris Solomon, and Todd Schuster. Sound editing and music by Justine Pyhouski. Thanks for listening. We'll see you again soon.