Interview with 1971 Los Angeles Open Champion, Bob Lunn

 

Lee Ross: The 1971 Glen Campbell Los Angeles Open What are your memories?

 

Bob Lunn: I remember a week of solid golf. I enjoyed playing Rancho Park. Very, very tight kind of golf course, as I remember. I played there a couple of years and I finished pretty well the year before, I think. There might have been a playoff and I think I finished one shot back or something like that. It was a good week – a four-hole playoff I remember distinctly with Billy Casper. That was hard. And what we did when we had that playoff -- we had to wait. It was not televised nationally, but it might have been televised locally or something like that. So when Billy and I went to the tee to wait for the playoff -- the 15th tee, we had to wait like 15 or 20 minutes, you know, for TV to set up their stuff and, you know, we want to play. We went four holes before I was very fortunate to hit a second shot up there, really close, which I did. I had a really good drive on the last hole and hit it up there a foot and a half or something like that. I remember that thrill. A lot of people rushed on the green. Oh, one thing I do remember Lee is when I hit my second shot onto the 18th hole, there in the playoff. A lot of people in the gallery and there were people there on both sides. They started to surround the green and wave holding up their hands. And I asked an official, I said, 'well, what if my ball had come down and it hit a person there and bounced away? That's the way it goes, Bob.' I think that's kind of what they call rub of the green. Fortunately, it didn't, and it landed pretty close and I made the putt for birdie. And that was the deal. That was very, very, very exciting. 

 

Lee Ross: Were you an early-season kind of player? Or was that unusual for you to be that good that early?

 

Bob Lunn: I did play a lot living in Northern California. The weather was OK. We had rain and stuff like that, but I did prepare and play all year long. It wasn't like I was, you know, working and stuff like that on my game. I just played. I enjoyed golf. I still enjoy golf. I tried to keep my game sharp. I love coming to Southern California because the weather basically is a little better than it is in Northern California in January, February, end of December, that type of stuff. So I look forward to it. And a good friend of mine, Dave Stockton, lived down there, so we would get together and play some golf, and I tried to keep my game in shape and I just look forward to going down there. I played well in Southern California.

 

Lee Ross: You won six times on Tour. How does your win at Rancho in the L.A. Open stand out from your other victories?

 

Bob Lunn: Well, it was big and I was thinking about it just a little while ago. I made friends with Glen Campbell and asked him at the time when he presented me with the trophy ‘can we play in the Pro-Am next year?’ And we did the following year and had a good time. So, I really have a lot of fond memories of Rancho Park. 

 

Lee Ross: Talk to me a little bit about your life growing up in San Francisco. You're a California guy through and through and one of the biggest tournaments you

won was a national amateur tournament that happened to be in Sacramento the year you won it.

 

Bob Lunn: Yeah, the National Public Links Amateur. I qualified in Harding Park Municipal Course in San Francisco and there were four spots or something like that. You know, maybe 80 players participated for four spots. So I gained entry there and I played at Sacramento in the National Public Links, which is really a thrill. To win that was a thrill. And going from San Francisco, it's amazing because our temperature range is from about 55 to 65 degrees, basically, and during the tournament in Sacramento, it's like 95-105 degrees. I could hardly take it. But I played and went all the way and won on the 36th hole. And I won one up over a fellow who is also a Northern California guy, Steve Oppermann.

 

Lee Ross: And Rancho Park is also a municipal course. So how is it that you played so well on municipal courses? And what does that say about the quality of your game? 

 

Bob Lunn: Well, I think that I grew up at Harding Park, and that's a municipal golf course. And you learn to play golf out of different lies, different slopes. Harding Park is very, you know, it moves around a lot, and Haggin Oaks is the same way, you know, Haggin Oaks was awarded the Public Links. But I learned to play different shots. You know, knock them down, play these low shots with these high shots, play out of, you know, play out of the rough, do this kind of stuff, you know, no preferred lies early on, you know, learn how to play all that stuff. And then later on it becomes a little easier. You know, you've already done it. When you do it as a younger person, you get a little better at it and you just practice. And it's fun. You make fun of it when you put yourself in a difficult lie and you hit the shot, you feel pretty proud of yourself because you pulled it off.

 

Lee Ross: If you could speak to the importance of the accessibility of municipal golf for the masses at an affordable cost. It's already an expensive sport. But that's the way that most people can only play is at the municipal level. Why is that an important thing to have for any community? Northern California, Southern California, or anywhere else in the country? 

 

Bob Lunn: Certainly. Absolutely. It's important for everybody to go out. My parents couldn't -- my father was a police officer in San Francisco and, you know, didn't make a lot of money. This is the only place we can go for fun and recreation. And you know what I found out about it was the people that were employed at the municipal course is very friendly, so they welcomed the young kids out and this is where we went to play. This is where we spent the afternoon, you know, after school and weekends and stuff like that. I think it's just absolutely ideal for kids to get away and well, myself, my gosh, myself, and my brothers went out there all the time. I couldn't play the other courses -- the country clubs and private clubs and stuff like that. And it was convenient for me. I just absolutely loved Harding Park. We also had Lincoln Park in San Francisco, which is a municipal golf course, and played over there. In fact, our high school team played over there and we had good players over there. Johnny Miller played. We were on the same golf team, Johnny Miller, myself, and we had a couple of other guys that played really well and Sharp Park Golf course was just a little south. They were all three municipal courses in San Francisco. That's where we played. And I'll tell you, it was just ideal. Just ideal. 

 

Lee Ross: Going back to your victory at Rancho Park, to beat Billy Casper in a playoff you really had to be on your game. As proud as you were at that time. I can only imagine you must think back and say, 'wow, I was pretty darn good.' 

 

Bob Lunn: Well, yes, I was. And you have to have that. You have to have a belief and you have to have that confidence in yourself. I remember one time I played at San Diego, the Andy Williams San Diego Open maybe a couple of years before and I played the fourth round. I was paired with Jack Nicklaus and Charlie Sifford. OK, so we tee off, we play a few holes and stuff like that, and we're playing it. Charlie Sifford turned to me and said, 'Hey Bob, you can play with these guys.' I was just a young kid. I had just come out on tour, you know? And he told me, 'You got game to play with these guys.' That meant so much to me you believe it. You have to believe in yourself. And it's not that I had a cocky personality, but I believed in myself and I can play against these guys. 

 

Lee Ross: I'm glad you just mentioned Charlie Sifford. He won at Rancho in the LA Open in 1969. What should we know about Charlie Sifford? What do you remember about him? 

 

Bob Lunn: You know, I thought that he was just a neat guy. I enjoyed playing golf with him a lot. I know that he smoked a cigar, you know, and Lee Trevino could mock him to no end with his cigar. But Charlie was a neat guy, played great golf. But what he said to me that time at Torrey Pines meant the world to me at the time because I was just starting out. So that's the biggest thing that I remember about Charlie. 

 

Lee Ross: And the other player from that time who has a close connection with Rancho Park is the great Arnold Palmer. What are your memories of being around and playing with Arnold? 

 

Bob Lunn: Arnold was a class act. I can say that and go on and on about that. We played a lot of practice rounds together. And once I won a tournament I would be paired on Thursday/Friday with other winners and I got paired with Palmer quite often. And I just really, really enjoyed it because he was just a really neat guy. I won in Florida one time and Arnold finished second. We played 36 holes the final round because we were rained out one day, so we played 36 holes together. And we come to the last hole and I made par. I had a long putt, you know, 40-footer, and I knocked it up about six inches and tapped it in. And Arnold had about a 28-footer and he ran it by about four feet or something and missed the putt. And that allowed me to win the tournament. And you know, Arnold wants to win. He doesn't want to lose. Arnold wants to win and he didn't win. We went in the scoring tent afterward, sign the scorecards and all that kind of stuff. He didn't congratulate me. He was still angry over him not winning the tournament. He did later on in the week at the next tournament, come over and say, 'Hey, nice victory Bob.' But that's Arnold. He wanted to win every single event he played in, which is, I think that's great. But, you know, it's just fun thinking back about that. And I have a photograph now that I keep of Arnold missing that putt, you know, knock-kneed and he's grimacing kind of how Arnold does. 

 

Lee Ross: The last thing I want to ask is to take advantage of your expertise for tips on playing the two types of grass that are dominant at Rancho Park, which are poa annua greens and kikuyu fairway and rough. 

 

Bob Lunn: Keep it out of the kikuyu, for sure. Well, poa annua greens we suffer for that. We have that here in Northern California, and it's OK in the morning when you cut it down and it's really good. So get out there early and play. But when it starts blossoming or you get those little things to come in and it gets bumpy. So those putts around the hole one and two feet, they bounce all over the place. You have to be aggressive. That's the thing. You've got to be aggressive. I do remember playing a lot down there in kikuyu and what I would look for is the closest way back to the fairway if I got in the rough, you know, way outside. You can't advance it very far, but you've got to hit a lofted club. You have to sacrifice distance and just get it back into play. You know, you don't want to say, 'OK, I can hit this four iron or I can hit this hybrid out of here.' Baloney! Hit a lofted club. Get it back into the fairway, play and just go on.