GOLF / MAL FLORENCE : Zembriski Irons Out Niche on Senior Tour

Walt Zembriski has had some success on the Senior PGA Tour, and he said he will be the subject of a book. Asked the title, Zembriski said with a straight face: “The Iron Man.”

That would seem appropriate for the game he plays, but it doesn’t suggest any club he uses. Zembriski is an iron man, having worked in construction for several years. Unlike other players who learned the game at country clubs or who were sponsored on the tour at an early age, Zembriski has come up the hard way.

Actually, he has come down. A former steelworker who worked on skyscrapers, he is now hitting irons crisply instead of maneuvering them high above the ground.

Zembriski, 55, is a study in perseverance, a player who faltered on the regular PGA Tour in the late 1960s, a veteran of mini-tours who finally found his niche on the senior circuit when he turned 50.

Zembriski will defend his championship in the GTE West tournament at the Ojai Valley Inn and Country Club March 1-3.

An unassuming man with a refreshing sense of humor, Zembriski has achieved a degree of notoriety as a senior golfer. However, there was a time when the other players regarded him as an outsider, someone who had just walked in off the street.

Now that he has won three tournaments, has the attitude of the other seniors changed?

“Yes, it was a different attitude when I first went out there,” Zembriski said. “My first tournament was at Lake Tahoe, and I was leading after two rounds. Billy Casper walked up to me and said, ‘Who are you and where did you come from?’ And so did Gay Brewer. They didn’t know me from the caddie in the caddie yard.”

Zembriski has had other slights in an career that kept him anonymous until middle age.

After making the cut in the 1978 U.S. Open at Cherry Hills Country Club in Denver, Zembriski was resting on a bench in the locker room. He was wearing red slacks and a white shirt, the attire worn by locker room attendants.

Tom Weiskopf tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to open Weiskopf’s locker and have his shoes shined.

“I have the locker next to yours,” Zembriski said. “And if I’m not mistaken, I’m a shot ahead of you, too.”

Weiskopf apologized to Zembriski after verifying that he wasn’t dealing with an impostor.

It was in the same tournament that Zembriski, playing by himself in the final round, recorded the fastest round in Open history--2 hours 13 minutes.

Zembriski has a weather-beaten face, as one might expect from someone who once earned his living on high steel beams.

He said that when he got out of the military service, he didn’t have a job and his wife’s father was in the construction business. Considering the perils of the job, someone suggested that his father-in-law didn’t like him very much.

“I never thought about that,” Zembriski said.

As in any other sport, there is pressure in golf. Considering Zembriski’s background, he may adjust to it better than others.

He recalled that in 1971 he was sent to fix a pulley on a crane about 400 feet high.

“They sent me up there because I was the smallest,” the 5-foot-8, 160-pound Zembriski said. “The wind caused (the crane) to sway back and forth. It was scary, and I had to take a 30-minute break.

“I had continued playing golf at the time, and that experience helped influence my decision to try the mini-tour. I knew the pressure of a five-foot putt would never bother me.”

Zembriski grew up near the Out of Bounds Club in Mahwah, N.J., where his father once caddied for Babe Ruth and where the younger Zembriski taught himself to play as a caddie.

The Z-man, as his peers call him, didn’t win a Senior event last year, but he had 11 top-10 finishes and earned $276,292. He has exceeded $1 million in career earnings.

He vividly recalls his first big payday, a check for $135,000 after winning the Vantage Championship in 1988.

“I had never seen so many zeroes in my life,” Zembriski said. “I hand-carried the check to the bank because they never would have believed me.”

Because of his steelworker background, Zembriski comes in for some ribbing from the other golfers.

He played in the Chrysler Cup in Sarasota, Fla., in 1989, which matched U.S. seniors against an international team. After nine holes, Zembriski was losing his match, and Arnold Palmer took him aside and said jokingly, “Get your butt in gear, or we’ll send you back on the steel beams catching hot rivets again.”

Zembriski responded by winning his match and clinching victory for the U.S. team.

Appropriately, Zembriski soon will represent an overalls company on the tour, but he said he won’t wear the product on the course. “I’d look pretty funny wearing them,” he said.

Zembriski said he still sees his old friends in the steel business when he goes back to the New York area.

“I talk to some of them and they say that they can’t believe what I did (leaving the high-rises for the high life on the tour). “I was working with them one month, and then the next month I’m gone. They didn’t know I was playing golf in between.

“And they didn’t believe me when I said I was going out on the tour. They said, ‘You better stay here and make a living.’ ”

He prefers now to stay on the ground, a bunker shot being less hazardous than a swaying steel beam.

Golf Notes

Jim Gallagher Jr. of Marion, Ind., a member of the PGA Tour, and his family have been named the National Golf Foundation’s family of the year for 1990. Previous recipients included the families of Jack Nicklaus, Nancy Lopez, Jim Cook and Pat Bradley. . . . Jerry Anderson has been elected president of the Southern California PGA.

Defending champion Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Gary Player and Chi Chi Rodriguez will compete in the Senior Skins game Jan 26-27 at the Mauna Lani Resort on the big island of Hawaii. . . . The Redhawk golf course in Temecula will be open to the public March 1. . . . Holes in one by Samuel Oschin, 75, within five days (Dec. 24 and 29), at Tamarisk CC in Rancho Mirage and Brentwood CC have been verified. . . . The Golden State Golf Tour has started its ninth season with prize money anticipated at $1.5 million.