THANKS FOR THE MEMORY
There, on the California desert, Consciousness II and perhaps some leftovers from Consciousness 1½ celebrated the ultimate trivial happening. They came in all shapes and sizes—sausage makers, millers, weavers, builders, bankers, broadcasters, admen—408 of them in all, flying in to Palm Springs on 747s and executive jets from Alabama and Wisconsin and New York to play golf in the Bob Hope Desert Classic. One thing they all had in common: they could afford to spend a couple of Gs for a week of golf. And that's about the minimum it costs to get into the Hope, which is becoming a hotter invitation than one to a prayer breakfast at the White House.
In its last two convocations the Hope has earned a special White House flavor of its own, which might be called the Agnew syndrome. It was just a year ago that Hope himself introduced his new chum, the Vice-President, to the world of big-time sport and accidentally uncovered a novel political weapon—the uncontrollable slice. Playing in his first Desert Classic, Agnew lashed one of these off the skull of pro Doug Sanders, his playing partner, thereby achieving a whole new image for himself. He was a hapless athlete but he was a good sport about it, and the Classic would never again be the same without him. So last week, as a special favor to Hope, he was back.
Nor did the Vice-President disappoint the thousands who turned up at the Bermuda Dunes Country Club on Saturday morning for his encore. Moms and Dads from the desert trailer camps watched with dogs and cameras as the Vice-President strode to the 1st tee, splendidly attired in his yellow Izod shirt, olive slacks and white shoes. The undaunted Sanders, again the Vice-President's pro partner, drove first. Then it was the turn of the three amateurs (the formula in the Hope is one pro and three amateurs in each foursome). Willie Mays—yes, the Willie Mays—hooked badly into the gallery, hit a mulligan down the middle and allowed, "It was the most nervous moment of my life." Bob Hope was next and after a few gags looped a lazy one down the fairway.
Now Agnew. His first swing of the tournament caught the ball on the toe of his driver and sent it into the gallery to the right of the tee, where it ricocheted off the arms of a man and his wife. Agnew cringed. He walked over to the crowd, under the careful surveillance of a few dozen Secret Service men, apologized, kissed the lady, retrieved the ball and tried again. And did it again. On his second swing the ball took much the same route, although this time it struck the ankle of a lady who had to be carted off to the Valley Memorial Hospital for X rays and repairs. Fortunately, this hospital has benefited from some of the $1,692,108.52 raised during the first 11 years of the Desert Classic. With the addition of Agnew's act, the tournament should soon double that amount.
Once under way (he finally decided to start from the 2nd tee), the Vice-President demonstrated a golf game that is not all that bad. He addresses the ball properly and the backswing obeys most of the fundamentals. Coming into the ball, he is a bit rigid and formal, bearing down too hard, with erratic results. The analogy to his rhetoric is too obvious to avoid.
The presence of Agnew at the Desert Classic tended to overshadow the basics of the tournament, much as Air Force Two, which delivered him to Palm Springs, dominated the smaller planes at the airport that brought the less celebrated amateurs. The first whisperings of his imminent arrival crept across the various golf courses late Tuesday, the day before the tournament was to begin. Stragglers driving down from Los Angeles and still trembling from the earthquake had heard that the Vice-President would be out from Washington the next morning to survey the damage. That meant he could reach the desert some 48 hours ahead of schedule. "He'll be at Mollie's on Wednesday night," people whispered.
Mollie's was the cocktail party at La Quinta that Mollie Cullum was throwing in honor of Edgar Eisenhower, Ike's older brother, who is 82 now and still shoots his age on the desert courses when he isn't practicing law in Tacoma. When Mollie throws a party you can be sure that everyone comes. By nightfall all the corporation presidents and board chairmen from near and far were sipping cocktails and munching hors d'oeuvres on the lawn in front of Mollie's condominium—Ed Crowley of Sheraton Hotels, Dick Gelb of Bristol-Myers, Del Webb of Del E. Webb Corp., Carl Loeb of Loeb, Rhoades and on and on. The motif for the evening was red, white and blue. Each arrival was presented with a small American flag and then signed an enormous parchment tribute to the guest of honor that read: "Our Rights and Our Liberties. Edgar Eisenhower, a Real American."
This set just the right mood for the Vice-President, who arrived a bit late inside a cocoon of Secret Service. He stood beneath a eucalyptus tree and greeted those who could wedge their way between his bodyguards, his sad mountain-sheep face looking down benignly on those around him. You would not say he made the party, but he certainly added the romance of power.
A few hundred American executives absent from their desks at one time could leave quite a lot of command decisions unmade by American business in the course of a week. It is a possibility that bothered some of the Hope golfers. "Twenty-five-million-share days," muttered Dick Jones, a partner in the brokerage house of Mitchum, Jones & Templeton. "What am I doing out here cursing at a golf ball?"
Don Durgin, president of NBC-TV, had part of the answer to Jones' question. "As an amateur hacker you get to play four days with four different professionals," explained Durgin. "And of course that quadruples the name-dropping potential. The real thrill, though, is to be close to them and root for them as you play. They're all pretty nice young men, too, and most of them seem to have been to the Arnold Palmer public-relations school. 'O.K., Charlie; O.K., Jim; O.K., Bill,' they say to us amateurs after we hit the ball. Never mind where it went. It makes you feel good.
"It's completely social," Durgin added, putting down the suggestion that an amateur might use the Hope for ulterior reasons. "In most cases you've never met your amateur partners before, so you ask them where they're from and what's their business, and your wives chat. That's about it. I'm playing with a fellow named George O'Neill, who's in the greeting-card business in Elgin, Ill., and he tells me his business has never been better, because when times aren't so good people send greeting cards instead of presents. When another amateur finds out I'm with NBC, about all he wants to know is what Johnny Carson is really like."
Naturally, not everyone was as low-key about it as Durgin. Harold Hutton, a Far Eastern oil tycoon who did not even want to play in the tournament, donated $50,000 to the Eisenhower Medical Center in Palm Springs for two invitations, one of which was for Lieut. General Ibnu Sutowo of Indonesia and the other for Hutton's son-in-law, who was designated Sutowo's "interpreter." The more common rate for an invitation, however, is either $500 or $1,000, which goes to the desert charities, too. Each of the four participating golf clubs this year—Bermuda Dunes, Indian Wells, La Quinta and Tamarisk, which alternates with Eldorado—received 64 invitations. These were sold for $500 apiece. Ernie Del Monte, an industrial builder from Rochester, N.Y., joined Indian Wells a few years ago just to make himself eligible for this category.
In theory, the remaining hundred or more invitations sell at $1,000 apiece to non-club members, but that can be just the beginning. Bill Yancey, a retired Air Force general who runs the tournament for Hope, is conveniently vague about the exact requisites for one of those $1,000 bids. "We just kind of see what they want to do for us," he says, us meaning the tournament and the Eisenhower Medical Center. Gerald Zornow, president of Eastman Kodak, drew one of the $1,000 jobs this year for the first time, but he sweetened the kitty by donating Kodak Instamatics to the gift package given to each of the participants when he registers. Also in the gift package are a pair of Florsheim shoes, so R.A. (Tony) Heider, executive vice-president of Florsheim, gets to play, as does Harold Florsheim, retired son of the founder. So does Sydney White, the distributor of Tanqueray gin and John Begg Scotch, both represented in the gift package.
In years past, the public face of the Desert Classic has been an age-old partnership among Hope, NBC and Chrysler—a TV triumvirate as seemingly indestructible as the Three Stooges. Chrysler, of course, would get 20 or so invitations, just as Hope would get 20. But, business being what it is, Chrysler decided that this year it wanted only half the sponsorship of the tournament telecast. That posed a problem. Then, last November, Bill Conway, vice-president for advertising of the Celanese Corporation, happened to be in Los Angeles and decided to pay a visit to the harness races at Hollywood Park. There he bumped into Ed Crowley, a golf nut who helps Hope with the Classic.
"Ed," said Conway, "I've got to have another invitation to the Hope. It's for a guy I absolutely promised. You've got to get it for me."
"No way, coach," said Crowley, who likes to call people coach. "You've got yours, as usual, but there's no way I can get you another."
Before the last race Crowley and Conway ran into each other again. "I just happened to think," Crowley said. "There is a way you can get that invitation. Chrysler is picking up only half the show this year. Goodyear has taken a quarter, and if you can get Celanese to pick up the other quarter, I can get you six invitations."
"Sold," said Conway, thinking they were putting each other on. But the next morning there was a man from NBC on the phone seriously quoting a price of $162,000. Conway gave it another thought and asked for a 10-day option while he discussed it with the home office. They ran it up the flagpole, and when it got off at Darien they firmed up the deal.
Conway, a lover of golf and his fellow golfer, could hardly wait to dispense the five invitations he now had in addition to his own. He picked with care. One for Jack Fisher of Deering Milliken. One for John Meon of Avondale Mills. One for Ed Bacchi of Arrow shirts. One for Ed Haggar of Haggar slacks. One for Hank Milliken of Klopman Mills. All great fellows and all with products that could be pushed in the commercials. Then the phone rang in Conway's New York office. It was Bill Yancey. "I've got bad news for you," said Yancey. "Two of your invitations were to be from Hope's 20, and he just sold all of his for $10,000 apiece. That leaves you only four." Conway was pondering this stunning development when Milliken phoned to say that his boss was going to Europe and he had to stay in New York to mind the store. Conway managed to wangle one more invitation and was off the hook. Last week he and his Celanese group were happily located in the Erawan Garden Hotel, playing golf with their professional companions until midafternoon, spending the rest of the day around the pool with their wives, hitting the cocktail-party circuit at Eldorado and Indian Wells and La Quinta, ribbing each other about their golf and stopping in midsentence whenever anybody walked by in a fabric that caught their eye.
It was that kind of a week, and if the Eisenhower Medical Center didn't clear 400 grand out of it, your name is Ted Agnew.
Oh, yes. A fellow named Arnold Palmer won the tournament, his first since 1969.
THREE PHOTOS
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Agnew offers inspiration to Arnold Palmer at a party, watches intently as tournament host Bob Hope tees off, and then cringes when his own errant drive hits a spectator.
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Liquor distributor Sydney White provided gin and Scotch for players' gift packages.
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Tough Richard Forbes is top adman at Chrysler, main sponsor of tournament telecast.
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Moroccan General Mohamed Medbouh was in a tie for second in amateur division.
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Wayne Hoffman, 6'7" head of Flying Tiger Line, has home on Eldorado course.
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Bill Conway of Celanese arranged to sponsor telecast, had four clients as guests.
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Courtly Oscar Mayer Jr. is the grandson of the founder of Wisconsin meat-packing firm.
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Developer Thomas Culligan constructs golf courses, plays annually in Hope tournament.
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Easterner Ernie Del Monte joined the Indian Wells club just to enter the Hope.
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Jim Ling forgets about losing control of Ling-Temco-Vought to concentrate on shot.