Silhouette of a golf caddie
Aspiring golf professionals need a training ground, and there's nothing like learning the trade while working for one of the best in the business at a busy club. Many Canadians who went on to successful careers did that at the Maple Downs Golf and Country Club, under the guidance of the late Irving Lightstone. Lightstone died Friday in Toronto, five weeks before he'd have turned 81, on Masters Sunday. His funeral was held Sunday, followed by a reception at the club where he worked from 1956-2001, all of 45 lively years. I couldn't attend, because I'm still in Florida, but I'd bet that everybody there had a story about Lightstone.
Irv had gusto. He radiated gusto. I can see him now at Maple, which I had enjoyed as a guest and where I've been a member for 10 years. He's dressed in sharp threads. His shirt collar is turned up, and he's wrapped a sweater around his shoulders. He calls me into his office at the inside left of the pro shop – a dogleg, as it were. He wants to tell me stories.
But first, he wants to tell me how his protégés are doing across the country. He wants to tell me about Al Chud, who worked for Irv and who went on to be involved in the development of the Heritage Pointe club in Calgary and Wooden Sticks in Uxbridge, Ont. He wants to tell me about the wonderful young pro Gary Bowerman, who worked for Irv and died far too young; what a stylish player he was. He wants to tell me about Rob Roxborough, the head pro at Magna Golf Club in Aurora, Ont., and about Phil Hardy, the long-time head pro at Beacon Hall in Aurora. He wants to remind me of something that was always important to him. He wanted his assistants to be players. He insisted on it. What a short game he had, by the way. He was the Ontario and Canadian Assistants' Champion in 1959, and he would always have a soft spot for assistant pros.
"If you can't play, you can't work for me," Irv, a member of the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame, always said.
Irv was Maple's number one ambassador. He cornered me many times when he learned that the course hadn't made ScoreGolf Magazine's Top 100, and he was thrilled when it finally did, although he felt to the end it should be ranked higher. When he left Maple after 45 years he said, "How can I not be sad at leaving my job? When I came here I was a baby."
Irv knew everybody in golf, or so it seemed. He knew the famous and the not so famous. It's a cliché, true, but he was a people person – all people. He was at Maple Downs in the late 1950s when the club hired a couple of brothers as superintendent and assistant superintendent. These were the brothers Rene and Charlie Muylaert. They went on to design some 40 courses around Ontario, including Peninsula Lakes, DiamondBack, Horseshoe Valley, and the original Richmond Hill. Irv felt they didn't get enough credit for their work, and he wanted that known. One important fact that should be known about Irv was that he was the first PGA of Canada head pro to hire a female as an assistant. That was in 1960, when he hired Sharon Scollard at Maple Downs.
Irv was a storyteller. I loved hanging around the 19th hole to hear his stories, and also meeting him here and there to talk golf. I was a teenager when I first met him at his Toronto School of Golf. The school was in a storefront in Lawrence Plaza at Bathurst St. and Lawrence Ave. On desolate, freezing winter nights I'd whack balls into a canvas maybe ten feet away, stop and drink coffee that had gone cold, and listen to Irv as he told stories about journeys to the Masters with Moe Norman. I'm sure the stories I heard from him influenced my writing, and helped me turn to golf writing as a career. Golf had to be a wonderful game to generate such stories.
I learned that Irv worked as the winter pro at Doral, where he taught Ed Sullivan. I learned that he got to know Jackie Gleason, and it was just like Irv to be smitten with the wording on and look of Gleason's cart. It said, "How sweet it is" on the front, and "Away we go" on the back. The cart was equipped with its own bar, and a phone long before the days when everybody carried a phone in their hip pocket or golf bags.
Irv was involved in the game, really involved. He was instrumental in getting Al Balding the job as the first director of golf at the National. Harvey Kalef, Gil Blechman and Irv Hennick, all Maple members, started the National. Harvey was responsible for finding the head pro, or director of golf as he was called. Irv was invited to look at the candidates' resumes. But he knew that the owners wanted Balding, and that he also wanted the job. Irv mentioned Balding to the owners, but they said he hadn't applied. Balding told Irv that if they wanted him, they knew where they could find him.
Irv turned himself into a matchmaker. After a month or so, he invited the owners and Balding to lunch at the Inn on the Park. But he didn't tell the owners that Balding would be there, nor did he tell Balding that the owners would be there. Everybody sat down, and Irv took over. He asked Harvey, "Do you and the boys want Balding for your head pro?" They said he hadn't applied. He repeated the question. They finally said, "Yes, we do." So he asked Al, "Do you want the job at the National?" His reply was, "They haven't asked me." Irv was persistent. He asked again if he wanted the job. "Yes, I do."
Irv turned to Harvey, Gil and Irv Hennick and said he would like to introduce their new Director of Golf at the National, Al Balding. And that was that. Pure Irv Lightstone.
Irv loved the camaraderie of the game, that's for sure. He sent me articles he wrote for Fairways Magazine before publication, and I'd look at them and ask, or should I say, plead, that he give them a rewrite because they weren't always factual or grammatical. I was half-kidding, because, of course, he wasn't a writer. He told stories, and he had 10 lifetimes worth of them. So I'd help him prepare his pieces for publication. He wrote about qualifying for the 1953 Canadian Open at Scarboro when he was an amateur. He didn't carry a sand wedge, but the great Scarboro pro Bob Gray gave him an old Wilson R-90 with its brown shaft. Irv hung out on the short 19th hole and hit 40 wedges that spun like crazy. He played a practice round with Ted Rhodes, one of the first black players on tour in a time when the tour wasn't friendly towards blacks, and a golfer Irv believed had the silkiest swing he'd seen. He got in eight holes with Jackie Burke Jr., who at first thought he was a caddie. Irv said he loved every minute of that Canadian Open.
But when I think of Irv, I see him most clearly many years after that Canadian Open when he was still an amateur. He's on the range at Maple Downs during a clinic that Moe Norman was doing. Irv accompanied Moe to the Masters when Moe played there in the late 1950s. Moe, of course, was very different than any golfer you could meet. Irv had a great deal of affection for Moe, and more important, he felt compassion for him. Irv was watching Moe and speaking to the members who had gathered to watch this ball-striking wizard. Then Moe stopped to grab a bite. He was famished, and soon he was tearing into a hamburger. The mustard was getting smeared on his face. Irv took a napkin and gently wiped Moe's face clean. He was like a parent looking after a child, a parent caring for somebody he loved.
That's how I see Irv. He's immersed in the golf world, looking after the game, the people, and the club with which he had fused. He injected Maple Downs and its members with a kibitzy spirit that remains and thrives there. I'm glad he came into my life many years ago, and I know golfers – both amateurs and pros, across the country and beyond – are also glad they came into Irv's orbit. It was an orbit to revel in, and to savour revolving around with the man who made it spin.
RELATED LINK: More blogs from Lorne Rubenstein
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Lorne Rubenstein has written a golf column for The Globe and Mail since 1980. He has played golf since the early 1960s and was the Royal Canadian Golf Association's first curator of its museum and library at the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario and the first editor of Score, Canada's Golf Magazine, where he continues to write a column and features. He has won four first-place awards from the Golf Writers Association of America, one National Magazine Award in Canada, and he won the award for the best feature in 2009 from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada. Lorne has written 12 books, including Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters (2003); A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, with Jeff Neuman (2006); This Round's on Me (2009); and the latest Moe & Me: Encounters with Moe Norman, Golf's Mysterious Genius (2012). He is a member of the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. Lorne can be reached at rube@sympatico.ca . You can now follow him on Twitter @lornerubenstein