“We gon’ eat steak today, Home?” Hayes Thornton wants to know.
The practice tee upon which Worley and Thornton stand, at the Cog Hill Golf and Country Club in southwest suburban Lemont, is one of the largest in the Chicago area–200 yards wide, with hitting positions for 100 golfers. Later this cool June morning, dozens of golfers will be swatting balls off the tee, salting the range with their shots. Now, though, at 7:15 on a Monday, there are only Worley and two others. It’s not unusual for Worley to be one of the first golfers at a driving range, or one of the last to leave; since he first swung a golf club, at age 11, Worley, now 28, has spent countless hours on courses and practice tees, hitting, by the estimate of Thornton (his coach throughout those years), two million shots. He’ll hit two million more without complaint if it’ll get him to the pro tour, his dream since he was 14. “He would sleep on the golf course if there was a bed out there,” his wife, Kiva Worley, says.
At ten to eight Worley hands his driver back to Lindsey, pulls his putter from his bag, and heads for the putting green. He has already hit about 100 balls today. Most of his competitors, bearing in mind the 36 holes ahead of them, won’t hit half that many shots on the practice tee. But Worley is unconcerned; his muscles are accustomed to the swinging of a golf club over and over; it’s like breathing. He jogged four miles a day last week, along the south lakefront and on the streets of South Shore, as a special protection against weariness. “If you’re not in shape and you play 36 holes, your legs get a little tender near the end, and they move all over,” he has said. “You can’t have all that movement, you got to be steady. When you’re in shape, you feel refreshed the whole way, like a 12-year-old again.”
About 350 pro golfers carry memberships in the regular men’s tour–memberships making them eligible for the PGA’s weekly tournaments, with purses that last year totaled more than $42 million. The PGA says it doesn’t know how many of the 350 are black; fewer than 20, it estimates. But of the 226 members pictured in the tour’s media guide–golfers who actually compete at least occasionally in tour events–only two are black, Calvin Peete and Jim Thorpe.
Mike Muranyi, 38, got his first taste of golf competition at age five, when he batted a ball around for a few holes in a father-son tournament at the golf club to which his father belonged. Before Muranyi had turned ten, he had put in many practice-tee hours at that club, hitting balls with the junior set his father gave him, absorbing the instruction of his father, a top amateur player. Like Worley, he dreamed of reaching the tour. He competed in the qualifying tournaments in 1978, and took one stroke too many to realize his dream. “Then I gave her up. I figured, if you’re not good enough, you’re not good enough.” He has been a club pro since, at Monroe Country Club in Monroe, Wisconsin.
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Worley’s enthusiasm for the game soon was boundless. He liked baseball and basketball too, and was pretty fair at them. But nothing gave him a thrill like smacking a golf ball. He began using his caddie earnings for greens fees at Jackson Park. People Worley caddied for knew how much he loved the game, and continued donating things they had no more use for–battered clubs, smiling balls, a tattered bag, a timeworn pair of shoes, a glove, a hat, a towel. In the summer, he’d be out at the course at six, caddie a round or two, then play 18 holes or more. On days he had enough saved, he’d play from sunup to past sundown; when it was hot and the course uncrowded, he’d frequently get in 54 holes. He often skipped breakfast and lunch on these days. “Some people get on about the fourth hole, and they say, ‘Well, I’m hungry, I can’t play unless I eat.’ But it didn’t matter to me at all. My mind was tuned in to golf.” Sweltering weather didn’t deter him either. He’d loosen up with an early-morning round, playing alone, then tee off at noon with Blockoms and another friend. Long about the sixth hole, Worley’s playing partners would declare it goofy playing under the beating sun–and Worley would finish the round himself. When darkness reigned, there were quarters to putt for with friends on the second green, by the light of a nearby arc lamp. He’d call it a day around 9:30. But that was no vandal people on 67th Street sometimes spotted on the fifth green at midnight or past; that was a sleepless Worley, trying to sedate himself with a few putts.
Among the few things that could keep him from the golf course in the summer were TV golf tournaments. Jack Nicklaus became his idol, and majestic Augusta National–home of the Masters–his land of milk and honey. He could picture himself out there, dressed so sharply, striding down one of those elegant fairways toward his ball, the multitudes behind the ropes straining for a peek at him, pounding their palms, a caddie toting his handsome bag. He vowed, at 15, to be a pro one day and make it to that most venerated tournament. That almost every player in it, and almost every fan, was white–that the Golden Bear had hair unlike anyone in the neighborhood–bothered Worley not at all; it didn’t stop his eyes from misting when the Masters came on. “I don’t know why it affected me that way. Golf was just sort of creeping inside of me I guess.”
