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Ken Venturi Dies

I had the good fortune to play a few holes with Ken Venturi in the early 1990's on the Blue Monster at Doral. The company I was working for at the time was a sponsor of the American Cancer Society Golf Championship. The ACS tournament was a national four-man scramble event where each of the fifty state champion teams played the finals at Doral. Sponsors got to play the course the day before the championship.

Venturi lent his name to the event and would cruise around the course in a cart loaded with beer and would play a few holes with each group. As I recall, he joined my group on the 13th tee and played 13 through 16 with us. The only shot of his I remember was at the par three 15th where he hit one about 18" from the hole.

He was just as nice as could be and talked a lot with all of us. He also liked his beer. And I agree that he was a great commentator, both with Summerall and with Nantz.
 
Jim Nantz was on PGATour radio just a couple days ago talking about how he had spoken to Venturi that morning and he was fine and looking forward to making it to the World Golf Hall of Fame Ceremony in 2014 to give his acceptance speech that he missed out on this year.

RIP
 
Arnie is one of my hero's so I always thought Venturi was a dick for accusing Arnie of cheating in the '58 masters.

Still, he was a great announcer who didn't mince his words.
 
Sgt Hulka said:
Arnie is one of my hero's so I always thought Venturi was a dick for accusing Arnie of cheating in the '58 masters.

Still, he was a great announcer who didn't mince his words.
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Care to expound on this? Not familiar with that story
 
In the late 50's Palmer was playing with Venturi and on number twelve he and claimed he was entitled to relief for an embedded ball. He played a second ball and made par instead of a double playing it without relief. He won the tournament by a shot. Venturi challenged Palmer and basically said he cheated because he only played a second ball after he had made a double. Venturi thought Palmer should have been DQ'd. They were not exactly best buddies after that.
 
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