Lee Ross: The 1949 U.S. Amateur Public Links at Rancho Park. What do you remember?

 

Ken Towns: What do I remember? Probably the whole thing. The getting there and the practice. I was young and it was good, good to be out playing in an event. They didn't have that many events back then to play in. You know, it's not like the golf they have nowadays where something's going on all the time for the people who play golf competitively.

 

Lee Ross: How big of an event was the Public Links?

 

Ken Towns: Well, I guess it was the second biggest amateur event in the United States. You know, you have the national amateur and or the Public Links that the people could play in with national ties. That's about all. Well, I can try for the open or that. But the amateurs didn't have much, much to participate in, except a few local, you know, it's the state amateur and your local city championships and county championships, but they were very few.

 

Lee Ross: What memories from your play stick out to you now?

 

Ken Towns: I played the whole tournament without a sand iron, you know, I ground my sand iron down so much -- that I made it illegal before the tournament started. That's what they did back then if you had what they called an illegal club, you know? So that was a big thing and I had to, you know, play sand shots and lob shots with my pitching wedge which I opened it up and do all the things that people did. And it seemed to work out for me, I guess.

 

Lee Ross: The USGA did a write-up on your victory at Rancho and noted that in the 36 hole semifinal match on the last hole you had a putt that came up just short of the cup. But because of the stymie rule, your opponent was snookered. Do you remember that and tell me what was the strategy of stymies?

 

Ken Towns: Well, the strategy with a stymie is that it was one of those types of things that happened when you didn't think that much about it, really. But you know that the guy had to do something magical if it was a good stymie, you couldn't get around it. I wasn't trying. It was one of the facts of what happened along the way in playing golf. You know, I mean, if I would have been that good to be able to place the ball somewhere on my putt that was going to screw him up, why didn't I just sink it? So it was one of the rules they eventually got rid of because it was kind of a fluky thing.

 

Lee Ross: The next day you won the 36-hole final as well, so playing 72 holes in two days. Boy, I tell you that sure sounds like a lot of golf.

 

Ken Towns: Not at that time. I played that many holes every week in a two-day period with practice and all that. We didn't have driving ranges then, you know, and you had to go chase your own balls.

 

Lee Ross: What was the importance of your victory in the Public Links at Rancho and in the years since how has that changed?

 

Ken Towns: Oh, it's a good thing to go along with, you know, Ken Towns the 1949 Public Links champion. Of course, people now can't remember anything like that. Christ, I'm 93 years old. But it's a good legacy to have. That was my first victory in anything. So it was a good one.

 

Lee Ross: You made several attempts on the on the tour with mixed success... 

 

Ken Towns: Yeah, I wasn't playing my best, I guess in those years even though I tried, but I didn't have the mechanism behind me to do it, you know? I mean the money. M-O-N-E-Y. And there wasn't any money to win back in the 50s and in the 60s it got a little bit better. By the time the 70s came around, I wasn't playing that well.

 

Lee Ross: What made it so difficult?

 

Ken Towns: If you're good at anything and you want to perfect it you have to do it and you have to have a regimen to follow. It could be a fluky thing to go out there and think, well, OK, I found it. Now they can rely on anything and everything nowadays. I mean I don't even call it golf anymore. The guys never figure anything out for themselves except to putt. Everything else is done on a machine. They go to a computer and it tells them what to do here and there -- one swing. Instead of going out and hitting 400 balls and figuring out that with my four iron the best swing I can do is to not hit the son of a gun. Use my five iron. It'll take you 400 balls to find that out.

 

Lee Ross: Another player with ties to Rancho Park is Ken Venturi who won the 1959 L.A. Open at Rancho. He was also from the Bay Area. What are your memories of Ken Venturi?

 

Ken Towns: Well, Ken and I drove down together in my car down from San Francisco. And we had a problem -- I only got it going as far as Salinas and I threw a rod and had to go back and borrowed a car and drove down and ended up winning the tournament. With Kenny and I, we used to travel together to play in tournaments. He was three years younger than me. So at that time he was only 18. He had a nice mother and father that loved golf and he was a good player.

 

Lee Ross: And what about his game stood out to you?

 

Ken Towns: Just being able to pull off the shot at the right time. He was a hell of a putter. He hit the ball well. There was a lot of good hitters, you know, good players that way. But the outstanding players were good putters. It's like a salesman. The guy that can close the sale is the best salesman. The guy that can putt -- that's the last thing you do in golf is putt.

 

Lee Ross: In 1949, as today, Rancho Park is a municipal public golf course. How important is municipal golf to the sport?

Ken Towns: Oh, it's definitely the best thing that could happen to the young people, you know? Environmentally, it's very good and the opportunity for people to cost less to go play golf. Even though all of that is going up and up and up and up. And I don't know where in the hell it ends.

 

Lee Ross: For all of us struggling amateurs what's the best golf tip you can offer?

 

Ken Towns: Practice is everything. You're not going to go out and draw your ticket out of a barrel with a bunch of other tickets, you know? I hit so damn many balls when I was younger and I could name some of the older people in L.A. that did the same thing. They hit balls. You played a lot. You played with different people. But now the competition is there and that's what helps people now. Because it gives a chance for the competition to be tested each and every time you go out with somebody who's better than you.

 

Lee Ross: And to wrap up, I want to revisit that magical week you had at Rancho Park. How important was that week at Rancho winning that tournament in 1949? How important has that been to you in all the years since?

 

Ken Towns: It's number one that you can be for an introduction to anybody in business or just in general conversation of having been a champion at something. Nothing beats that. That's something that's instilled in your body and your brain. I was sorry to see what happened to the Public Links. But it happened because of the college players that just wiped out the poor guys that qualified for the Public Links. Because these college players got a chance to play earlier with a lot of competition. I would say just the legacy of being a champion, that's all.

 

Lee Ross: That's a great answer. My last question is how often do you get to talk about that week and that championship?

 

Ken Towns: We have a group that plays and I don't get a chance to talk about it because other people want to talk about it. But that's something that happened in golf, you know, and that's a good thing. Otherwise, we're not talking about the trees in the meadows or anything else. It's either we're talking about politics or golf.