Given His Handicap, He Played Like a Champion

Bert Yancey played golf about as well as anyone on the tour in his time. He had this gorgeous upright swing, this smooth putting stroke, and he won seven tournaments and was a factor in almost every one he entered, particularly if the track was a tough one. When the ribbon clerks were run out, Bert was one of the high-rollers left in.

But he played in this kind of catatonic state, almost as if he were in a daze or had been hit over the head with a sash-weight before he teed off. We put it down to the kind of competitive funk all the great ones put themselves in, the kind of “What elephant?” brand of golf. He was “in the zone” all top players are supposed to be in.

He walked after the ball like a guy dragging leg chains. He seemed so spaced out there were times you felt like shining a light in his eyes or pricking his toe with a pin and saying anxiously “OK, Bert, did you feel that?” Or asking him what his name was or what day it was. Yancey seemed to have a permanent concussion.

We were, I’m ashamed to say, obtuse. In all the big tournaments where he got out in front, he always seemed to find a way to lose. We thought he was choking. Turns out, we were the ones who were choking. We didn’t do our homework.

Oh, we knew Bert had washed out of West Point for something called a “nervous breakdown,” but we put that down to the stresses of military life. We didn’t realize the demons he had to play through on the course, and they had nothing to do with pot bunkers, lateral water, doglegs, two-way breaks or greens that were 10 on the stimpmeter.

We thought golf was his lithium. The tranquillity of the game, the leisurely pace, we thought, had calmed his torments. We should have known better. A U.S. Open is no place for a guy who already has bad nerves. A six-foot putt is the last thing in the world a mental patient should be confronted with.

I think Bert’s crackup really began during the Open at Oak Hill in Rochester in 1968. He was sailing through that Open. He led by a shot going into the final round. He was hardly ever off a fairway for three rounds. He led Jack Nicklaus by seven shots. He led a golfer named Lee Trevino by one shot, but since Trevino had never won a tournament, we thought it unlikely he was Bert’s real problem. Trevino would probably shoot 80 on the final day. We thought.

Instead, it was Bert who began to unravel. I will never forget how startled we all were when he showed up on the first tee that day. “Look at Yancey,” someone whistled. “He looks as if he just saw a flying saucer.” He was as pale as a prison guard. He looked as if he had just been pulled from a train wreck.

Trevino, meanwhile, was having the time of his life, spitting on his hands, chatting up the gallery, sinking everything in sight. Yancey, playing with him, looked more as if he just heard a noise in the attic.

I remember, on one green, Bert almost made the mistake of a career. He was bending down to move a ball marker, an action I believe might have cost him two strokes or maybe disqualification. Trevino, as I recall it, leaned over, put a hand on his arm and said, “I don’t believe you want to do that, Bert.”

Bert staggered in that day with a 76. Trevino beat him by seven shots. Even Nicklaus passed him--made up nine shots on him. Yancey finished third.

I think we knights of the press got the message that day. There was nothing funny about Bert’s idiosyncrasies.

We had always found it amusing the way Bert fixated on the Masters. Winning the Masters was more than an ambition, it was an obsession. He hankered to win it.

He came tantalizingly close. But, as in the Open, he found a way to lose. In a strange way, maybe he didn’t really want to win it.

Like the race driver, Eddie Sachs, who almost deliberately seemed not to want to win the Indianapolis 500, Bert behaved at Augusta as though he were afraid to win it. He led the Masters after three rounds in 1967, then yipped away the fourth round to finish third behind Gay Brewer and Bobby Nichols. The next year, he did the opposite. He limped through the first three rounds, then shot 65 the last day. Again, he was third. In 1970, he was two shots out of a playoff with Billy Casper and Gene Littler.

Bert began to disappear after that. He made a brief stand in the ’74 Open, but an opening-round 76 undid him there. He began to drift out of the game.

He was on golf’s conscience. The reports began to come in--Bert was caught nude prowling the streets in South Carolina, Bert was climbing a post in an airport. He was seeing things and hearing voices no one else could.

The first tee of a major tournament is hardly the place for a manic-depressive. Like every game, golf has to be played by an athlete with an abundance of mental health, belief in himself. The golf ball takes unfair bounces. Virtuosity is not always its own reward. You need to be able to shrug off a bad hole, a bad round, a bad tournament.

That Bert couldn’t always do it, oddly, seemed a reflection on the game itself. We scribes guiltily pored back through our print archives to see if we had understood or made light of Bert’s personal terrors. It’s easy to do in the give-and-take of the press tent.

Still, Bert loved the game. He found the medication that allowed him to play it, to live life fully. But he never approached stardom again.

Bert died on a golf course the other day. Too soon. But as I’m sure he would have wished. With a driver in his hand and a tournament to be played, a golf course to be solved. It’s where he found what peace he ever could. It’s probably where he came the closest to getting rid of those strange sounds, strange commands ringing through his head.

Golf is a game where you play with a handicap. Given his, Bert Yancey’s net was nothing short of magnificent. I’m sure wherever he is today, he’s looking for the first tee.