A Calcutta That’s Not in India

When it was first proposed in 1953 by the club pro, Howard Capps, it was such a good idea no one thought it would ever work.

At that time, golf tournaments were democratic institutions, and almost anyone with a handicap of two or under could shoot his way into one via Monday morning qualifying.

Capps proposed a meeting at the summit, a contest featuring the best of the best: tour winners only, no others need apply.

It’s hard to hit 18 consecutive greens or drive the ball in the fairway on all par fives in this game. It’s hard to shoot a 62 or have a round during which you chip in on three holes.

But the hardest thing to do in golf is win a tournament. Players play for 25 years, but only the great ones win 20 or more times. Lots of fine players won only one in their lifetimes. Some won none.

Golf at the time put the emphasis on money won. A cop-out. A guy could go through a season collecting fifth or sixth money and end up with a bigger bankroll than a player who won tournaments. Largely because the guy who won disdained the safe approach and ended up with two or a 12, scorning the wimpy way to the clubhouse.

But money won loomed larger in the scheme of things in those days. It got you in the majors. And we produced a generation of golfers who would, in a sense, fold three aces when the game got hot.

Howard Capps’ idea changed all that. His format honored the risk takers and proved so dynamic that other tournaments began to adopt it, most notably the Masters. The Masters, at the time, was a tournament a South African could get into but a black American couldn’t. It was an invitational, you see, as exclusive as a cotillion.

So, the Masters, smarting under the criticism that it fostered racial bias, adopted Capps’ idea. You could now shoot your way into the Masters. And black players did.

Since it was Las Vegas, Howard Capps’ noble experiment was accompanied by a gaudy sideshow--a Calcutta. A Calcutta, a golf auction, has always been a part of golf, albeit sub-rosa. It is a gambling adjunct in which the clubhouse high rollers bid for the golfers in a tournament. There had always been a closed-door, smoke-filled-room Calcutta at the Los Angeles Open, but it was penny-ante stuff compared to the Vegas Calcutta.

What your punter does is, he bids on a player at the auction. It’s kind of like the office pool on the Kentucky Derby.

The Vegas tourney, which became the Tournament of Champions, lent itself uniquely to this form of wagering. There were only 30 players or so. But they were quality players. The longest longshot in the field brought $3,000 on the auction block. The superstars, such as Sam Snead, brought $20,000-$30,000. The pot reached well up into six figures.

It became a story within the story. Gene Littler won the tournament three years in a row. But singer Frankie Laine, who bought Littler in the auction, made far mor money out of Littler’s victories than Gene did. And never had to sink a putt. Laine made almost as much money out of Littler as he did out of “Mule Train.”

Golf and gambling are as made for each other as dice and gambling. Golf pros are, by and large, the modern successors to the pool-hall hustlers of yore. They have to be, and are, guys who will play the blue chips and push them all out on the turn of a card or the break of a putt. Show me a golfer who won’t bet the wife’s fur coat on par five for all the money, and I’ll show you a golfer who will fold on the back nine. Who isn’t really a golfer.

The Calcutta was perfect for golf. You got a real measure on the worth of a player. This wasn’t an AP poll where a golf writer in Duluth could vote in his buddy. This was where you backed your judgment with your money. If Sam Snead drew a $25,000 bid at the window and Chandler Harper, $3,000, you didn’t need a wire-service poll to tell who could play.

It was Ben Hogan, of all people, who dropped this colorful adjunct from the tournament. Hogan felt that the association of Vegas and golf already was bad for the image of the game, and he had refused to play in the Tournament of Champions to begin with. Then, he publicly deplored the brazen promotion of what heretofore had been a clandestine part of the sport of golf, the Calcutta, and it was dropped at the insistence of the then-commissioner of the game, Joe Dey.

They didn’t stop having the Calcutta. It just adjourned to the back room.

A pity. Howard Capps’ invention, now the Infiniti Tournament of Champions, reconvenes again this week at Rancho La Costa in Carlsbad. This is its 40th colorful year and, presumably, it has shucked its checkered casino past.

But if you see a pale, perspiring guy in the gallery at 18 this week with a pained expression on his face as Fred Couples stands over a seven-foot putt and he implores, “Please, Freddy! Take your time! We need this!” don’t bet that the Calcutta isn’t alive and well and living down by San Diego. Under an assumed name.