by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
From picking cotton in Missouri to picking winning shots at professional golf tournaments, Calvin Peete has lived a life that most professional golfers couldn’t fathom.
Peete, winner of the 1985 Players Championship, spoke at the Meninak Club luncheon Monday about his life and unusual success on the PGA Tour.
Though now remembered for his win at Sawgrass and his selection to two Ryder Cup teams in the 80’s, Peete said he never imagined that his life would turn out the way it has.
“By all statistics, I shouldn’t be here,” Peete said, “I should be out somewhere trying to break into your house.”
The story is one of golf’s best-known and will be retold this week as the now-retired Peete visits The Players Championship to renew acquaintances.
Peete’s breaking-and-entering comment was a reference to his childhood growing up in Detroit’s inner city. Peete was one of 19 children between his father’s two marriages; he said his family was poor but he never thought about it “because we were kids and we had fun.”
After his parents divorced when he was 10, Peete was sent to live with his grandmother in Missouri where he later worked in the local cotton fields.
“That was a real culture shock — pumping water, outdoor plumbing and working in the cotton fields,” he said. “I thought cotton was manufactured in a factory. I didn’t know it grew.”
Though the move was a “culture shock” for Peete, his experiences of being a field worker put him on a track that would lead to his career in golf.
After living in Missouri for a few years, Peete regained contact with his father and moved to South Florida where he became a migrant worker and traveled across the country looking for farm work. After working as a migrant worker, Peete became a traveling merchant and specifically sold his merchandise to farm workers.
Working as a traveling salesman, many of the people he met on the road were golfers. Peete said he was often asked to join them for a round but he never saw the point in the game.
“I couldn’t understand (golf,)” he said. “Why would any young person want to walk around in that hot sun and chase a little ball around trying to get it in the hole?”
But Peete’s friends were persistent and his first-ever round of golf was played in Rochester, N.Y. against his will. He said a group of friends came to his hotel and invited him to a clambake in the park as cover for the golf outing.
“Instead, we ended up on the golf course,” he said. “They said, ‘Calvin, you can play golf or you can sit out here in the car for four hours until we finish.’”
Peete grudgingly decided to play and that day would change his life forever.
“I rented a set of clubs and was hooked from the moment they tried to teach me to work the club,” he said. “The club just felt good. The way my hands fit around the club, it was natural.”
Peete said his first round was as shaky as any beginner’s first effort but he knew he had found his sport.
“In the back of my mind I said, ‘This is a game I could learn to play and learn to enjoy.’ Little did I know that it would turn out the way it did,” he said.
And the way it turned out reads like something out of a storybook. Shortly after his first round, Peete returned to Florida and picked up a beginner’s set of clubs. Six months later, he entered his first amateur tournament and shot a 76, a feat many golfers have never accomplished.
“I was very happy to break 80 after playing for only six months,” he said. “I didn’t know. I thought the game was easy.”
More tournaments and many more low scores were soon to follow. Within the next two years, Peete said he became a scratch golfer.
Soon after shooting 65 in a tournament, Peete said he watched a tournament playoff on television between Lee Elder and Jack Nicklaus.
“I said, ‘God. There is a black man playing with the best golfer in the world.’”
That tournament would give Peete a driving idea that would lead him to try out for the PGA tour.
Eight years after his first round of golf, Peete went for the PGA Tour. Though failing to qualify for the tour twice, Peete eventually received his Tour card in 1975 and went on to gain 12 PGA wins, two Ryder Cup selections and his most memorable win - the 1985 TPC win at Sawgrass.