CAREER AMATEUR BILLY JOE PATTON DIES AT 88

The US Masters of 1954: left to right - Billy Joe Patton, winner of the leading amateur trophy, Ben Hogan, who beat Sam Snead (third left) in a play-off for the title, and Bobby Jones (from the GolfWeek website).

MORGANTON, North Carolina: Billy Joe Patton, a fast-swinging, gregarious career amateur who nearly won the 1954 Masters, died on January 1. He was 88.
William Joseph Patton, a lumber broker in his native Morganton, was one of the most accomplished amateurs of the post-World War II era. He won three Carolinas Amateurs, three North and South Amateurs and two Southern Amateurs - the last at age 43 - among his many championships and played on five United States Walker Cup teams from 1955 to 1965. He captained the American team in the 1969 Walker Cup match.
Patton won 11 of his 14 Walker Cup ties, an outstanding record.
In 1982, the USGA honoured the long-hitting Patton with the Bobby Jones Award for sportsmanship.
The Billy Joe Patton Trophy goes to the winner of the North Carolina Amateur, which Patton won in 1964.
Yet, for all of Patton’s accomplishments on the course, his claim to fame might be for a tournament that he failed to win: the 1954 Masters, one of his 13 consecutive trips to Augusta National.
In the final round, he made a hole-in-one at the par-3 sixth hole to surge into contention before dumping his second shot into Rae’s Creek at No. 13 en route to a double bogey. He would fall one shot short of figuring in a title play-off between Ben Hogan and eventual champion Sam Snead.
Patton didn’t let his brush with a green jacket bother him. He was quoted at the time as saying to the gallery, “This is no funeral. Let’s smile again.’’
Patton, a Wake Forest graduate and Navy veteran of World War II, was a widower. He is survived by three children, five grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

Patton: Almost the last of a dying breed of US

amateur golfers who could compete with pros

OBITUARY By Ron Green, senior
rgreenjr@charlotteobserver.com
Billy Joe Patton, the most endearing and colourful amateur golf star to come smiling and slashing out of North Carolina, is gone.
He died Saturday in Morganton, his hometown.
There has never been another like him and there likely never will be.
He came down out of the foothills of North Carolina, where he sold lumber for a living, and played golf for fun. He had a name out of a country song, Billy Joe. He talked like Sheriff Andy Taylor. He played to a gallery like he was on a stage, gabbing away with the people between shots, and he was not above milking a little extra drama out of a trouble shot.
He had a homemade game with a backswing so fast it was nothing more than a steel blur. Later in life, he said, "You can tell I'm gettin' old: You can see my backswing now."

It was a swing that often put him in close touch with the creatures of the forest, but he was a magical escape artist and he had a putter that was as good to him as a doting mother.
Patton was 88 years old at the time of his death. It had been several years since he had been able to play golf. A few years ago, he told me that most of his trophies were scattered here and there "but I still have the memories."
There was a lot to reminisce about.
For all his wins, Patton neared the end of his competitive years without having captured the US Amateur, but in 1962 it was played on the No. 2 course in Pinehurst. Perfect. Billy Joe had won the Southern Amateur there in 1960 and the North and South Amateur there in 1961 and 1962. In the national championship, he ran his winning streak on Pinehurst No. 2 to 20 matches, which brought him up against Labron Harris in the semi-final.
Billy Joe struggled in that match, and when he came to the 13th hole he was two down. He needed to make something happen. He hit his approach shot 6ft from the hole. He studied the putt for a while, then went to his golf bag. Trying to change his luck, he pulled out a battered pair of glasses that were so crooked, they looked like he had sat on them. Which he had, the night before.
He hung them on his ears, then dug around in the bag some more and pulled out a wrinkled hat that looked like it had been reclaimed off a garbage truck. He pulled that hat down over those glasses hanging sideways on his face. Finally ready, he crouched over that putt and nailed it to win the hole. Billy Joe being Billy Joe.
The magic didn't last. He won the 14th to even the match but eventually lost, breaking a lot of Carolina hearts.
When Billy Joe was enjoying a great run of success in the Augusta Masters in the 1950s and 1060's, Ken Venturi took note of the way Billy Joe loved the crowds and fed on the adoration. "If they locked the gates and didn't let anybody in but the players, Billy Joe wouldn't break 80," Venturi said.
By the early 1950s, Patton had a nice resume: one Carolinas Amateur championship, one Carolinas Open Championship and a Carolinas Open co-championship that he shared with the renowned South African Bobby Locke. He had been named an alternate on the Walker Cup team, which at that time qualified him for an invitation to play in the Masters. But for all of that, he was a relative unknown outside the Carolinas.
And then, he nearly won that 1954 Masters, missing a play-off for the green jacket by one shot. Sam Snead beat Ben Hogan 70 to 71 in the play-off. That was great stuff, but the story of that tournament was Billy Joe Patton. The folksy, loquacious 32-year-old lumberman had already stolen the show, had become a national folk hero unlike any that golf had seen in this country since Snead himself came down from the mountains.
Billy Joe, taking chances, hit the ball into the water twice on the final round and still came within an 18ft putt of making the play-off.
Driving to Augusta, he had rehearsed an acceptance speech, in case he won. No amateur had ever won the Masters, but Patton, confident and naive, thought he might.
At the presentation ceremony, Bobby Jones presented him with his award for being low amateur and Snead said, "Billy Joe, you nearly got the whole turkey."
Over the next decade, Patton was a fixture in the Masters, led the U.S. Open after one round at Baltusrol and set a 36-hole record in the U.S. Open at Inverness, along with winning a couple of Carolinas Amateurs, a couple of North and South Amateurs and a Southern Amateur and making a long list of international teams.
"Full bore, full guts," is the way Billy Joe once described his golf. It often got him into trouble, but he seemed to always find a way out of it.
After the dedication of bridges across Rae's Creek on the Augusta National course, honouring Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson, Bobby Jones' wife said, "Bob, I think we should dedicate something to Billy Joe Patton."
Jones, recalling Patton's watery fate on the 13th and 15th holes in 1954 when he lost by a shot, said:
"I told her that Billy Joe doesn't like anything that spans water. I remember the first time I ever saw Patton. It was in the woods to the right of the 14th fairway. I think it would be a fitting tribute to him to name those woods the 'Patton Woods,' and I'm going to suggest it to the board of governors." He was joking, of course, but it would have been appropriate.
Billy Joe played swashbuckling golf, happy golf, golf that was splendid only in its result. He played golf that substituted soul for mechanism, golf that always had a dramatic uncertainty to it, golf that had a joy to it that we don't often see any more among the best players. And in 1982, he was presented with the Bobby Jones Award in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship in golf, one of the game's most revered awards.
Patton's last significant victory came in 1965 when he won the Southern Amateur for the second time in Pinehurst. He was 43 years old and had gone three years without winning a tournament. He knew twilight was settling over his game, and he needed to prove he had one last victory in him.
A few years later, he said, "My wife thought it was just another tournament I had won. My kids felt about the same way. But that victory did something to me. I was alive.
"After I accepted my trophy, I got in my convertible, put the top down and drove out of Pinehurst. When I got on the highway and there was just me and the pine trees shootin' by, I let out the damndest yell you ever heard. I kept shoutin' and drivin'. I let it all out."
Along the way, through his glory days, down all the fairways and through all the brambles and brush, he did just that. He let it all out.