Table Of ContentDEDICATION
To my kids, in hopes they will continue the legacy
of one-on-one parenting and the pursuit of generational
friendships that began with my dad
CONTENTS
Dedication
Foreword by Jack Nicklaus
CHAPTER 1 As Famous as Famous Gets
CHAPTER 2 Grass Roots
CHAPTER 3 The Jazz Singer
CHAPTER 4 The War Years
CHAPTER 5 A British Bond
CHAPTER 6 Caddies or Kings
CHAPTER 7 Hogan and the Incredible Match
CHAPTER 8 Family Friends
CHAPTER 9 Crosby and Hope: Road to the Golf Course
CHAPTER 10 The Crosby Clambake
CHAPTER 11 Pirates, Pugilists, Horses, and Hunting
CHAPTER 12 On Parenting
CHAPTER 13 Our Time Together
CHAPTER 14 The World Mourns
CHAPTER 15 Growing Up Fast
CHAPTER 16 Winning for Dad
CHAPTER 17 Aftermath
CHAPTER 18 Dad’s Legacy
Acknowledgments
Photos Section
About the Authors
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
FOREWORD
BY JACK NICKLAUS
One year in the 1960s, I was playing in the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am, and it
was my birthday, January 21st. I had several people in my room at the Lodge at
Pebble Beach, and we were watching tournament play conclude on the
eighteenth hole when the phone rang. My good friend John Swanson was calling
to wish me a happy birthday. Then John handed the phone to someone who
began singing “Happy Birthday” to me. I could not hear it well above the noise
of the crowd in my room and was unable to ascertain who it was. Finally, the
man finished the song. I stood there, a bit impatient, and asked somewhat curtly,
“With whom am I speaking, please?”
“Oh, Jack,” the man on the other end of the line said. “It’s Bing Crosby. I
just wanted to wish you a happy birthday. I guess my voice must have been
hoarse.”
I felt about two feet tall. The most famous voice in America was serenading
me on my birthday, and I was unable to recognize it. It was possibly my most
embarrassing moment in golf—or outside of golf. Fortunately, Bing never held it
against me and certainly not against the PGA Tour.
The PGA Tour is indebted to Bing Crosby, whose contributions to
professional golf and golfers in the earlier years is immeasurable, including his
establishment of the pro-am format that is a staple of every PGA Tour event and
the source of much of its charitable contributions. Everyone in the game viewed
the Crosby Pro-Am as one of the premier events on the PGA Tour. Major
championships were important in those days, but not to the same degree they are
now. The Crosby “Clambake” was close to a major in many golfers’ eyes, closer
certainly than any other tournament on the PGA Tour.
Bing’s contributions were not confined to his own tournament, however. He
was very kind to me and was always interested in what I was doing and how he
might contribute to my own tournament, the Memorial, at Muirfield Village Golf
Club in Dublin, Ohio. He came to the tournament, played in the pro-am, and was
a great member of our Captains Club, a group of the game’s statesmen who
select the Memorial’s annual Honoree, provide guidance on player invitations
and the conduct of our tournament, and frequently meet to discuss topical issues
in today’s game.
I was always appreciative when Bob Jones would come out to watch me play
at Augusta National in the Masters. Similarly, I appreciated it when Bing would
come out to watch me play at Pebble Beach. I was fortunate to have won his
tournament on three occasions.
Bing, incidentally, was a very good player in his own right, having played in
both the U.S. Amateur and the British Amateur. His son Nathaniel was a fine
player, too. Nathaniel’s U.S. Amateur title at the Olympic Club in 1981 would
have been very special for Bing.
One more story: In 1967, the first year that Spyglass Hill was added to the
rotation at the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am, Bing proposed a wager. “Jack,” he
said, “I’m going to bet you five dollars that you can’t break par the first time you
see Spyglass.” I accepted the bet and I shot a two-under-par 70 in a practice
round there. I have a nice $5 bill at the Nicklaus Museum, signed by Bing and
congratulating me on my 70 at Spyglass.
Bing Crosby was absolutely a great ambassador for our game, and I
remember him fondly as a great man and friend as well.
CHAPTER 1
AS FAMOUS AS FAMOUS GETS
Bing Crosby, or Dad to me, was the most popular entertainer in the world in his
day, a day that lasted the better part of five decades. In the last year of his life, he
was still selling out shows in London and New York City. “Just imagine
something five times stronger than the popularity of Elvis Presley and the
Beatles put together,” Tony Bennett, a legend in his own right, said in 1999.
Dad’s influence spanned generations. According to David Sheff’s The Last
Interview, the Beatles’ first hit single, “Please, Please Me,” was inspired in part
by a line in one of Dad’s songs. “I remember the day I wrote it,” John Lennon
said. “I heard Roy Orbison doing ‘Only the Lonely’ or something. And I was
intrigued by the words to a Bing Crosby song that went, ‘Please lend a little ear
to my pleas.’ The double use of the word ‘please.’ So it was a combination of
Roy Orbison and Bing Crosby.”
Billboard called Dad “the most popular radio star of all time.” For five years
in a row he was the number-one box office draw, and in 1944 he won an
Academy Award as best actor for his portrayal of Father O’Malley in Going My
Way.
He ranks among the best-selling recording artists in history with more than a
half billion of his songs and albums in circulation. His recording of “White
Christmas” is the best-selling single of all time and remains a holiday standard.
Late in his career, he delivered another holiday standard, “Peace on Earth/Little
Drummer Boy,” with his unlikely collaborator David Bowie. Generations have
been bridged by this voice, which The Times of London once wrote had been
“heard more often by more people than that of any mortal in history.” Between
1927 and 1962 he had 368 charted records. No one else is even close: Frank
Sinatra had 209, Elvis Presley 149, and the Beatles 68. In 1960, Dad was
presented with a platinum record and honored as “First Citizen of the Record
