Sanderson Farms Championship: If this is the last one, thanks for the memories

“So, how far do you go back with the Sanderson Farms Championship?” a friend asked the other day.

The answer was easy: All the way back.

Back to 1968, when it was known as the Magnolia State Classic and was played at the Hattiesburg Country Club. That’s where I was making lots of bogeys for my high school golf team as a 15-year-old 10th grader.

I caddied in the first round of the first Magnolia State Classic. My pro shot 83 that day, knocking the bark off of several pine trees and cussing his way around the beautiful, old course. Red-faced and still cussing, he slammed his clubs into his car trunk afterward, and I never saw him again. He would have had to shoot 57 in the second round to make the cut, and, trust me, that wasn’t happening. I showed up for the second round, and he did not. Never paid me for the first round either.

I watched PGA rookie Mac McClendon, a 22-year-old fresh out of LSU, win the first Magnolia, beating 52-year-old Pete Fleming in a nine-hole playoff after they had already played 36 holes that day. As McClendon sank the winning putt at dusk, cars were already streaming out of the parking lot, all with their lights on.

This week will mark the 57th playing of what has become the Sanderson Farms Championship. I’ve seen and covered the large majority of the previous 56, except for about 10 years when I assigned myself to go cover another little tournament, the one they call The Masters.

Matter of fact, I have covered Mississippi’s only PGA Tour tournament under all eight of its different names. Here’s the list: The Magnolia State Classic, the Magnolia Classic, the Deposit Guaranty Classic, the Southern Farm Bureau Classic, the Viking Classic, the True South Classic, and, of course, the Sanderson Farms Championship, which it has been since Joe Sanderson saved the tournament in 2013.

I covered it in Hattiesburg, at Annandale in Madison and at the Country Club of Jackson. I covered it in April, in May, in July, in September, October and November. I’ve covered it brutal heat and, much more often, in monsoon-ish weather fit only for frogs, fish and ducks. At least twice, I have gone to cover the tournament for the sports department and wound up covering a flood for the news department. Once, at Annandale, we in the media center narrowly escaped an evil tornado.

From its humble beginnings — the total purse in 1968 was $20,000 — the tournament has grown into an $8.2 million, full-fledged PGA TOUR event. That’s right: Several caddies will make more cash this week than McClendon made in ’68. 

Truth is, I have covered some of golf’s greatest players before they became household names. I covered Johnny Miller when he was, as they say, a can’t-miss prospect straight out of BYU. I covered Tom Watson when he was fresh out of Stanford and sported a mustache. Somebody back then told me back then I had to see Watson’s rhythmic golf swing, and so I went to see it. I found him on the fifth hole, the most difficult at the grand, old Hattiesburg Country Club course. I was standing behind the green, looking down the fairway, when a golf ball, hit from the left rough, took two big bounces, rolled about 10 feet and dropped into the cup. There was no roar from the gallery. Hell, I was the gallery. Watson came bouncing up to the green looking all over for his ball.

“Check the hole,” I told him.

He did and then he flashed that gap-toothed smile that would become famous worldwide.

Watson didn’t win in Mississippi and neither did Miller, but Payne Stewart surely did. That was before he wore knickers. I saw future Mississippian Jim Gallagher Jr. win it long before he married Cissye and became a Ryder Cup hero. I saw the late, great Chi Chi Rodriguez play in it and thoroughly entertain all who watched him.

I walked the fairways with John Daly, back when he was a skinny, chain-smoking rookie just back in the states from having honed his game on the South African Tour.

I covered Pro Ams that included the likes of Dizzy Dean, Clint Eastwood, Glen Campbell, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Joe Namath and so many more. Dizzy Dean beat his pro in the 1970 pro-am, taking only 73 shots, nearly all of which started far to his left and moved far to his right.

”How come you slice the ball so much?” someone in the gallery hollered at Ol’ Diz.

Dean answered laughing, “Podnuh, if you had to swing around a belly as big as mine, you’d slice it, too.”

He had a point.

In 1980, Roger Maltbie, a helluva player and later a famous golf broadcaster, shot a first round 65, then sat through three days of torrential rains that flooded Hattiesburg. He sat through most of the storms in EJ’s, a bar at the Ramada Inn on Highway 49. That’s where I found him after he was declared the winner on a rain-soaked Sunday.

“How much do I get?” Maltbie asked.

“Five thousand,” I answered.

“Hell,” Maltbie said, “that’ll barely pay my bar tab.”

It has been widely reported — accurately, I am afraid — that this could well be the last Sanderson Farms Championship, which for so long has been Mississippi’s only PGA Tour tournament. That’s a shame on many fronts, but mostly because the tournament has donated nearly $25 million to Mississippi charities, most for Children’s of Mississippi, which provides medical care for nearly 200,000 children a year. If it goes out, it should go out with a bang. The weather forecast is perfect. The field is excellent with such established stars as Matt Kutcher and Rickie Fowler headed this way.

Here’s hoping a new sponsor appears out of nowhere — as Joe Sanderson did — and saves the event. If not, please allow me to say publicly about a tournament I have come to appreciate like an old friend: Thanks for the memories.

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