Burke still has plenty to teach

HOUSTON --- On a wall of the owner's small office at Champions Golf Club is one of the most famous golf pictures in the world -- or more precisely, out of it.

Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard signed a picture of himself swinging one-handed with his makeshift 6-iron on the surface of the moon in 1971. He presented it to his teacher, Jackie Burke Jr. "Warmest personal regards for your great help with my 'lunar swing.' "

Behind the desk at the other end of the office is perhaps the most well-grounded major golf champion alive. Burke, 88, won both the Masters Tournament and the PGA Championship in 1956. The major double afforded him the luxury of immediate semiretirement from tour life at age 33 to pursue to what he loved most: teaching golf and building a golf club in Texas with three-time Masters winner Jimmy Demaret.

It was a lot more than he ever expected to get out of competing after serving in the Marines during World War II.

"We'd been out because of the war for four years and we weren't all there," Burke said. "You felt like you'd escaped an airplane wreck. So it took a different mentality. It wasn't a mentality of greatness. It was a survival mentality. You were dead broke coming out of the war, and I only had $300 to my name. So your mentality was more that way."

Burke is a straight-talking, platitude-spouting Hall of Famer. He is not the oldest living Masters champion (Doug Ford is six months his senior), but nobody is left who won before his remarkable rally from eight shots down on a windy Sunday in 1956. Like his competitive mentality, Burke continues to survive despite suffering a stroke a few years ago.

He still practices and teaches almost every day. He's much more concerned about the future of the game than he is talking about his past accomplishments.

"All the things you have to go through for whatever a career is, I maintained my teaching ability," he said. "Knowledge isn't knowledge unless it moves forward."

Winning in the wind

Burke was named player of the year in 1956 for winning his two majors. Truth be told, it wasn't his best season.

In 1952, he won five tournaments (including four in a row) and the Vardon Trophy for low scoring average on tour. He finished second to Sam Snead at the Masters.

"I played better in '52 than I played in '56 by far," he said.

The Masters always was a special tournament even when Burke started playing it in the late 1940s.

"I enjoyed Augusta because I got to play with some of the older pros I'd never had a chance to play with like Vic Ghezzi and Craig Wood and George Fazio and Toney Penna," he said. "There wasn't a Par-3 course, so we did a golf clinic for the members and the people coming to the Masters. It was sort of a spring holiday for a lot of college kids. They would come down and see the tournament, and each year it got bigger. Byron (Nelson) and Ben (Hogan) and Snead got it kicked off. They made it. Then along came (Arnold) Palmer and (Jack) Nicklaus and just drowned them."

Between those two titanic eras, Burke ended up winning the first televised Masters.

"I got shown, I think, on the last hole," he said.

It was not the most photogenic day in Masters history. Amateur Ken Venturi began the final round with a four-shot lead over defending champion Cary Middlecoff. Fierce, swirling winds turned it into a battle of attrition.

"The worst," Burke said of the conditions in which he started eight shots back. "You couldn't believe it. Winning wasn't even on my radar. Surviving was my only concern. Hoping I didn't shoot 100. They had some high scores out there."

This was an Augusta National few players were familiar with. On the par-3 fourth hole, the wind was howling straight into Burke's face.

"I hit a driver and a wedge to it," he said. "I couldn't get there. I put the wedge on the back side of the green, where you 3-putt from, and I holed it for par. I hit that driver, and Middlecoff was on 3 green watching that. So when they got there, Middlecoff put it over the green out of bounds because the wind just changed. So you never knew where you were coming from."

Despite the conditions, Burke held steady around par with bogeys on 11 and 14 offset by birdies on 2 and 12. On the 17th hole with the wind hard at his back, he managed to keep his approach on the green with 30 feet left.

"I've played on sand greens before, and the bunker sand was all over that green," Burke said. "So I knew that sand was fast. When I hit my putt I thought, 'God, that ain't even halfway.' I swear the wind blew the damn thing in. The wind or God."

That put Burke under par for the round, a feat that would be matched that day by only one other player in the field, Snead. Playing partner Mike Souchak tried to keep Burke focused for the last hole.

"He came and told me that they were all falling dead behind us," Burke said. "Then I promptly put it in the bunker on 18. The wind was coming so strong across there that if you missed it left you couldn't chip it and keep it on the green. I got it out of the bunker and made the putt for par and shot 71."

That turned out to be just enough to edge Venturi, who bogeyed seven of the final 10 holes to shoot 80 -- one of 29 players to shoot 80 or worse in the final round. The eight-stroke rally is still a record, and his 1-over par 289 total remains the highest winning score (matching Snead in 1954 and equaled by Zach Johnson in 2007).

The victory earned Burke $6,000, a welcome reward on a brutal day.

"I was just thinking about the money," he said. "Middlecoff was in charge of the money because he was leading. If Venturi won, he'd have gotten a cup."

Building Champions

The paycheck was nice, but winning a green jacket didn't change Burke's life the way it does for players today.

"If it helped, it helped," he said. "I enjoyed winning it -- you felt like you accomplished something."

His life really changed later that year when he won the PGA, beating Ted Kroll 3 and 2 in the 36-hole, match-play final. In addition to a check that bounced, the PGA victory earned him a lifetime exemption from weekly qualifying on tour and let him play on his own terms.

"So that allowed me to build this," he said of Champions Golf Club, which he founded with Demaret in 1957. "I was married and had three children and was tired of singing Happy Birthday from the Holiday Inn. So I knew I had to get out of that and I knew how to teach."

Burke and Demaret wanted to build their own model golf club from scratch in their hometown of Houston. They attracted 500 charter members to put up $600 each, banking the entire $300,000 sum before building the course in 1959.

"I knew better than to start without a full membership," Burke said. "So we've had a full membership ever since."

Their idea of a golf club differed greatly from what Clifford Roberts and Bobby Jones established at Augusta National.

"Cliff saw the game from an executive standpoint; I see the game from a family standpoint," Burke said. "Because I think if you're not training kids, you're not doing anything. We teach 200 kids a year here, and our kids all have a card in their pocket that tells them if they mess around they're going to have to go back with daddy for six months. They are all good players and know where the out of bounds is. I think that's important."

Champions has 36 holes and 1,000 members, all with required handicaps of 14 or better. Four club members walked on the moon and three others won major championships (Chick Hebert, Dave Marr and Steve Elkington). It has played host to a Ryder Cup, U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur and four Tour Championships, among many other pro tour and amateur events.

Passing on life lessons

Burke learned the game from his father, Jack Burke, who was the teaching pro at Houston's River Oaks Country Club. An asthmatic child, he would sit on the golf bag and listen as his father gave lessons to Babe Zaharias, Henry Picard and other pros and amateurs who came through town.

He honed his skills in the caddie yard, cutting holes in the ground with a knife and wagering whatever change he had in his pockets.

"I gambled all my life," he said. "You have to have gamble in you to even play."

Burke sharpened his teaching skills working for Claude Harmon during summers at Winged Foot.

"Pretty much all of the guys out there were teachers," he said of the bygone tour pros. "It's a simple matter: You can only do what you can teach. If you can't teach it, you sure can't do it. Today they hire teachers."

The modern infatuation with swing coaches, psychologists and the technology arms race runs contrary to Burke's simple philosophy about golf.

"Trying to dominate the game is the most foolish thing in the world," he said. "We haven't dominated checkers yet. But they think there's an answer out here. How can there be an answer when everybody's different? They haven't cloned anybody yet."

Burke aspires to "achievable goals" and believes a golfer should "be great at one thing." For him, that was putting.

"I could putt with anything," he said.

Back before Phil Mickelson won his first green jacket in 2004, it was Burke who taught the left-hander the putting-clock practice routine that elevated his short putt accuracy.

"Put 10 balls three feet from the hole and putt 100 in," Burke said. "If you miss one you go back and start again. Phil said, 'I'll do that today.' I said for how much? He said 'I'll bet you the best dinner in Houston that I'll do it right now.' He missed the fourth ball. So he said, 'I'll bet you breakfast.' I said I'll be eating off you the rest of your whole damn life. He called me from Phoenix and said that he had done it about two months later. He got to be better than a bunch of people."

So was Burke in his day -- winning 17 pro tournaments and competing in five Ryder Cups, twice as a playing captain.

The recognition keeps coming for one of the last survivors of golf's golden age.

Behind the desk in Burke's office are some of the honors he holds dearest -- the 2004 Bob Jones Award for sportsmanship presented by the USGA; the 2003 Lifetime Achievement Award presented for outstanding contribution to the PGA Tour; his Hall of Fame obelisk presented at his induction in 2000. He keeps the engraved silver cigarette box given to him for winning the Masters at his house.

"I think there's a time in sports you've got to get out of it," he said of retiring early. "You can't keep hanging on to what you've done 20 years ago."

Burke has surrendered some to age and makes fewer trips to Augusta.

"It's really unbelievable how hard it is to just go to dinner," he said.

He'll make what might be his last trip to the Masters this week, attending the Champions Dinner on Tuesday before being honored with the William D. Richardson Award for outstanding contributions to the game at the annual Golf Writers Association of America banquet Wednesday.

If any of the 99 men participating in the 2011 Masters find Burke socializing under the tree behind the clubhouse, the teacher will be happy to offer some sage advice that helped win him a green jacket and a lifetime locker he shares with Tiger Woods.

"Guys trying so hard to not make a mistake never win," he said. "You can't fear it or think you're going to be disgraced if you don't win the Masters. If you go out to try to win the Masters, that's some pretty poor thinking. You better go out and try to play the Masters. There better be a lot of play in you."

Luckily for the game, there's still a lot of play left in Jackie Burke Jr.

BURKE ON GOLF