Golfer Rockefeller

One misty morning in 1900 on a Cleveland golf course, a stoop-shouldered man of 60, his bald head shining like a knob of burnished marble, smacked drive after drive off a tee. Seven caddies returned the balls, patted down little sand tees, scurried down the course as the man kept poling out drives like an automaton. Suddenly from another part of the fairway came a shrill cry of warning. Without hesitation the man dropped his club, scampered into a clump of nearby bushes. Few minutes later there came another cry. The man returned, resumed his work.

This description of John Davison Rockefeller Sr. at play 36 years ago was divulged last week by his onetime golf teacher, Joe Mitchell, now professional at the Lake Shore Country Club in Chicago. Oilman Rockefeller had taken up the game when his horseshoe-pitching arm went dead, wished to keep his preparations secret from Mrs. Rockefeller, who already played a respectable duffer's game. Accordingly Instructor Mitchell was brought to the course every morning in Mr. Rockefeller's own closed carriage. The strange cries which occasionally sounded over the course came from guards posted to warn Mr. Rockefeller of his wife's approach. That this elaborate deception worked was illustrated a few weeks later when Golfer Rockefeller strolled up to the tee where his wife was preparing to swing, casually remarking: "I think I'll play with you this morning. It looks as if it might be a nice game." Mrs. Rockefeller, amazed at the 160-yd. drive which her husband thereupon shot down the fairway, cooed: "John, I might have known it. You do things better and more easily than anyone else."

From then on Mr. Rockefeller took the game seriously. Whenever he missed a putt he would practice until one ball plunked the bottom of the cup. He never walked around the course. As soon as he hit a shot, a caddy would bring him a bicycle. Tucking his feet on the handlebars he would have the caddy trundle him up the fairway. Unlike his friend Andrew Carnegie, who got hopping mad when he misplayed, pious Golfer Rockefeller merely bowed his head at adversity clucked: "Shame, shame, shame."

Joe Mitchell last week recalled that Golfer Rockefeller, a stickler for rules was slightly perturbed one day when his physician teed his ball a full foot in front of the markers. With painstaking care. Rockefeller teed his own ball exactly on a line with the red marker, dryly observed: "I always play the full course, Doctor." Equally hateful of waste, he once drove a brand new ball into the rough, hunted it for ten minutes, finally asked his caddy what his cronies would do in a similar situation. The caddy retorted that they would look for a minute, then drop a new ball. "Huh!" snorted Golfer Rockefeller. "They must have barrels of money."

Now 96, Golfer Rockefeller can indulge in his sport only when feeling particularly spry. (He has not played this year.) Donning earmuffs, he may pat a half dozen balls off the tee of his private course at Ormond Beach, Fla. His only regular exercise consists in puttering around his estate for 30 minutes each day, going for an occasional automobile ride. Yet he still remembers with glee the day he fooled Mrs. Rockefeller, sends Professional Mitchell a wire every year on his birthday. The last one read: "The old friends are best."

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