Mean-looking was his determined look; a smile would ruin it

Monday, Sept. 8, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Tommy Bolt, one of the most colorful golfers to ever play the game, died recently at the age of 92. The Desert Inn’s Tournament of Champions was one of Tommy’s favorite stops. It was also one of the favorite topics of the Sun’s founding publisher, Hank Greenspun.

Hank wrote four columns in 1958 about Tommy’s exploits at the Tournament of Champions. We ran the first installment Sunday and are continuing the series today through Wednesday.

April 25, 1958

By Hank Greenspun

It’s real easy to advise another. The difficult thing is to know one’s self.

I like those guys who give advice on a golf course and who have nothing to lose if it is bad.

Tommy Bolt is 2 under going into the third hole in the Tournament of Champions which is pretty good shooting in any league. He three putts the third green from 15 feet which is pretty bad shooting even for me, and some joker comes up to him and says: “Why don’t you smile?”

That’s when I lost my temper! When a fellow is bleeding, it’s not the appropriate time to give cheerful advice.

Nothing looks worse on a mean-looking man than a smile. It just isn’t becoming! And I wanted Tommy to look good and he only looks good when he looks mean.

Of course, Tommy just looks this way, but at heart there isn’t a sweeter-tempered player on the whole professional golf circuit. He only throws a club once in a while to limber up ... sort of get the kinks out of the muscles and there happen to be times when he gets real kinky so it may take more than one club to unwind, but that’s how the game should be played ... relaxed-like!

I think the greatest compliment ever paid Bolt was by golfer Jackie Burke who looked Tommy squarely in the face and frankly stated: “I’m just as mean as you Tommy but you just look meaner because you’re ugly.”

Aren’t those sweet words of praise from a competitor who had just been beaten? There can be no finer display of sportsmanship.

I’m like Mrs. Bolt. I prefer Tommy’s looks to any man in professional golf. He’s lantern-jawed all right, but it comes from grim determination and not meanness. He is the most determinedly discontented man in the business and he has the scores to prove it. His is not the discontent that whines because such discontent is the lack of self-reliance that has ruined many lives.

Tommy Bolt’s discontent denotes ambition. He’s like Alexander the Great who lived and died discontented only because he could not conquer the world. But Alex was a genius who looked up at the stars and said that he was ashamed to look at all those other worlds when he had barely conquered this one little world on which he lived.

Determined men are not smilers. Ben Hogan was the most determined man in the business and one of the greatest until he went to a few psychiatrists after his accident and they advised him to learn how to smile. He finally managed a little grin and he hasn’t been the same since.

You just can’t grin a putt over little mounds and valleys into a tiny hole 20 feet away. It takes grim determination ... the discontented kind that mean–looking Tommy Bolt has.

Bolt is a determined man. He shot a 69 yesterday and barely lost his temper four or five times. When I asked him how he expected to win the tournament with 65, 66, and 68 scores already posted, he replied simply, honestly and meanly, “I’ll shoot 67 tomorrow, 68 the next day and 71 on Sunday which should be enough to win.”

I think he can do it but only because he says so and I never underestimate a determined man. But just to insure it, I intend to pay the guy who has been following us around telling Tommy to smile to spend some time with Billy Casper, Frank Stranahan and Gene Littler.

These fellows are shooting too good and can use some advice. And if our suddenly acquired adviser can be as much help to them as he was to us, Bolt will win the tournament which could conceivably make not one but two mean-looking guys smile. We might even laugh out loud seeing as how I just happen to have Mr. Bolt in the Calcutta.