OMED: Michael, during his most recent round on a golf course, made a six foot putt for the first time in his life and prommptly dropped dead.  This improved his handicap.  Eventually recovering from his stroke, he returned to the sports desk of the Tillamook Headlight Herald   Once a legendary actor who starred in such classic films as The Attack of the Alien Rutabaga Women and the unfortunately named but critically acclaimed South to Alaska, he now sifts the dunes for stories of note. Recently, he discovered that someone who actually can play golf had moved to the area. (Photo: Publicity shot of Mike O'Brien during his days as a star of Hollywood flops.) 

One of Oceanside's newest residents, George Archer, was headed for a possible basketball career in 1953. Archer, who stands 6'6", was a big kid and played the game well.
   Like others of us who grew up in those times, Archer earned his princely sum of $8 a day caddying at the nearby Peninsula Golf Club in San Francisco. Quite often, an established caddy would get the same bag, weekend after weekend, and Archer was impressed, at an early age, with one of his customers' happy manner.
   One day, he ventured to ask the gentleman whose bag he was packing, "Where does that wonderful glow you have come from? You really seem to enjoy yourself out here three days a week when you're golfing." The gentleman replied, 

   "Actually, George, it's seven days a week. You see, I belong to three clubs and play somewhere each day. That, and my love of this game, puts the glow in me. I'm retired and plan to do this into my eighties."

   That answer stuck with Archer, and he began to ponder his future in terms of golf, rather than basketball. So, as a freshman, he turned out for the golf team and missed the cut. The next three years, he did the same and made the five-man rotation at the high school. He decided to see how good he could get by practicing and playing hard up to the age of 22, when he married his wife Donna, despite concerns from her dad that he was a "golf bum."
   In 1969, his win at the Masters was just one more in a career that finds him currently with 12 PGA Tour victories, 19 Champions Senior Tour wins and six more international titles, and at the age of 64, he's not done yet. More importantly, he got the glow he was after and is the first to say, "What counts in life is enjoying and doing what you like."

   Wife Donna, who has been, in Archer's words, "The biggest thrill of my life," had been a support to him through nearly 40 years of golf travel, seven major surgeries, and the upbringing of two daughters, Elizabeth (The first female caddie at the Masters) and Lynne, had always had the dream of living at the ocean. Archer decided it was her turn to live a dream, and in the process of visiting grandchildren in Tacoma, the two began to look at places on the Oregon Coast. Residents of Incline Village, Nev., the pair were used to desert heat and nearby golf, so it was new territory, this coastal climate.

   "The desert was fine," said Archer. "But it was, like everything else, getting overcrowded, and we came exploring in September. We looked at four places around Oceanside and Cape Meares, knew we liked the area, and bought the fourth one we saw." The new residence is above Oceanside, and the Archers hope to spend several months a year relaxing, when golf slows down. Archer had always had a place in his heart for Carmel, where he once won the Crosby at Pebble Beach and played much of his high school golf. Donna told him, "George, we found Carmel 100 years ago," describing their new residence.

   Nearly 40 years of life on the PGA tour has given Archer a wealth of great experience and wonderful stories. But it was not always easy. He required hand surgery in 1975. Back surgery followed, laying him up in 1978-79. And then, in 1996, he went through the drama of getting a hip replacement, only to become the first ever to come back and win on the Champions Tour after such a surgery.
   In 1964, when Archer started his professional career, a player needed to make the top-50 to get an exemption from qualifying on Mondays for every event. Archer finished 51st, one dollar and 88 cents short of the top-50.
But it works the other way, too. One Monday, Archer beat 120 other guys for one spot in the L.A. Open, and he spent an entire day in 1980, thinking he had missed the top-125, which was now the exemption list, only to learn later that he had the last spot at 125 and would have his Mondays free for the next year.

   At the halfway point (three months) of his hip-replacement recovery, Archer got a call inviting him to Alaska, where a pro invitational was being played. He told the promoter he couldn't golf yet, but took the invite to come and go fishing with Billy Casper and his son, and enjoy the company and experience of a new venue. Midweek, there was a nine-hole "shootout" planned, and Archer felt like giving it a try. "I played the first nine holes OK, and decided to try 18 more in the next-day pro-am portion of the event."
   Before he knew it, he was in the event, full tilt, for all 72 holes. And he shot 63 in the final round to finish two-back of the winner. But two events later, the pain came, and Archer finally had to sit out his remaining three months before coming back.

   When George was a caddy and a young aspiring golfer, he met Bing Crosby (OMED: A golfer from Spokane, Washington) and asked him if he thought he could ever be a pro golfer like the ones that came to his tournament. Bing said kindly, "You're going to have to hit a lot of balls, George." So, in 1969, when George walked off the 18th green at Pebble Beach as the Crosby winner, he had a nice "wink" with the man in the network booth behind the green, Bing himself.

   If you guessed, as this reporter did, that winning the Masters would be the highlight of any career, well, you'd be wrong, in terms of being thrilled, at least. "That year I was having a great season already, had won three times in recent outings and, to tell you the truth, the thrill of winning at Augusta couldn't hold a candle to other things that had happened along the way. "Probably the biggest was winning my first pro tournament at Harding Park in San Francisco in a playoff in the fog in 1965. Donna was there, my sponsor was there, and all the people I had grown up with playing that course were there," said Archer. "Actually, winning my first high school tournament was a bigger thrill on the scale. It has a lot to do with the moment involved."

   But being a Masters champion has its smiles. George goes back for the champions dinner and enjoys himself. "That course isn't what you see on television. It's a roller coaster, huge hills and hardly any flat lies," said Archer.
One of Archer's many stories involved Augusta National and the great Ben Hogan, known as the "Iceman" for his close-lipped efficient manner on the golf course. In 1967, Archer and Hogan were to play together in the third round, both in the hunt. Archer could hardly sleep, wondering what it would be like to be out there with the "Iceman," a hero of his. When the two teed off, Archer had already prepared for a round of silence and respect, when Hogan came wandering over and started talking to Archer as he walked down the first fairway, which drops about eight stories and then climbs back up. "He just went on and on, told me how nice my win had been at Greensboro, and such, for the entire day," recalled Archer. "It was a total surprise and marvelous experience."

   Three years later, after Archer had won the Masters in 1969, his job was to prepare the winner's banquet the following year. When it came time to do seating arrangements, Archer wanted to be next to Hogan and set the table as such. Throughout the night, Archer would glance over and notice Hogan was drawing elaborate winged horses on the tablecloth, not really involved with what was going on. "They were beautiful, I should have kept that tablecloth," said Archer.
   After his own presentation as winner, Archer told the crowd," I'm sure Mr. Hogan would have something to say." "Suddenly, the air just went out of the room. You could have heard a pin drop from the shock of the crowd," said Archer. Well, gentleman that he was, Hogan got up and said a few totally uncomfortable words to the crowd and sat back down. Archer felt badly, but realized that Hogan didn't like crowds or stages, but had always liked him. "There was no comfortable way to apologize to him, but he handled it very well, as he did everything else in his life," recalled Archer.

   The stories are many, the experiences vast. There was the time on 1964, at Archer's urging, when the entire lounge room at a southern country club got up, went outside and ate in a windstorm with Charlie Sifford, when the first PGA black player, was refused admittance and told he would have to eat outside. The club changed its policy on the spot.
   Golf has been good to George Archer and his family. It has, as he hoped for 50 years previously, put the glow in him. It's visible to anyone paying attention.

© 2003 Michael O'Brien