Former U.S. No. 1 tennis player Cliff Richey is starting to prove that he is more accomplished at golf than he ever was at tennis.
The three-time major singles semifinalist and hero of the 1970 championship-winning U.S. Davis Cup team scored his second hole-in-one in nine weeks – and his fifth of his life – last Saturday at the Southwind Golf Course in Garden City, Kansas.
Playing a “six-some” along with former World Series Most Valuable Player Ralph Terry of the New York Yankees, Richey holed out on the 150-yard ninth hole with his 27-degree utility club. Richey went on to shoot 77 on the day. On May 23, Richey hit a hole-in-one in Phoenix, Ariz., at Cave Creek Golf Course on the 160-yard par 3 13th hole – using the same club, his 27 degree utility club – and witnessed by his friend Bobby Brower. He went on to shoot a round of 75.
“My hole-in-ones seem to happen close together,” said Richey, whose memoir ACING DEPRESSION: A TENNIS CHAMPION’S TOUGHEST MATCH was released last year. “Two out of my first three 20 years ago were also within weeks of one another. My calculation is that in those 20 years, I have played at least three thousand rounds, which probably computes to 12,000 par threes that I have played so the way I see it, I was overdue!”
Richey first took up golf at the age of 31 and became a scratch golfer within four years. He competed on the Celebrity Golf Tour and still competes in celebrity and fund-raising events around the country. The following is an excerpt from ACING DEPRESSION ($19.95, New Chapter Press, www.CliffRicheyBook.com) where Richey discusses his golf game and how it has helped him in his fight against depression.
A ”mulligan” in golf is a second chance. You can buy a mulligan in a golf game so you can take another shot on a given hole. But unlike in a golf game, you can’t buy a mulligan in real life. It has to be given to you by God. I have been given so many second chances in my life. I started taking Zoloft on my 50th birthday, New Year’s Eve of 1996. That was the first of many rebirths. The beautiful thing is that in recovery, almost everything in your life becomes a second chance. Hope is the foundation of our great country of America. Hope is such a driver of the normal human condition. The sum total of my awful disease was “loss of hope.” That’s the truly awesome thing about recovery: once you come back, your whole life after that feels like a second chance.
I first took up golf in July of 1977. I quit the regular tennis tour in 1979. I had no idea then that I would ever get serious about golf. It’s not another career for me to the degree that tennis was. But in July of 1991, I was watching golf on TV and saw the Celebrity Golf Championship at Lake Tahoe. I saw flitting across the screen a logo for the Celebrity Golf Association, the CGA. I immediately thought, “They might be on to something here.” The event was broadcast on NBC Sports with the main announcer for that tournament being Charlie Jones, a gray-haired guy with a great TV voice. I knew Charlie from childhood since he had interviewed me in the past. They mentioned in the course of the broadcast that Caesar’s Palace Tahoe was the host hotel for the event. I figured that was where Charlie had to be staying, so I called the hotel and left him a message.
When he called me back, I asked if he could give me info on whom to contact about the CGA. He said, “Send me your résumé and I will give it to the right people.” He did that, but by autumn, I still had not heard from anyone. I knew I needed to call the tour director just to see what was going on. I called him and asked to be given a chance. I knew they had some huge names, and I would not claim to put myself in that category, but I had noticed that there weren’t many tennis players represented. He said they didn’t really divide it by fields, but just tried to get the best celebrities around. We talked for about 45 minutes and at the end of our conversation, he said, “I’m going to put you in the tournament.” He was one leg of a tripod which supported that event in Lake Tahoe, along with NBC Sports and a management firm. Those three entities met later to determine what the field of players for the next year’s event was going to be. John Miller of NBC said at the meeting that he had ball-boyed for me in Washington, D.C. in 1970. So I knew a couple of key players in that political scene.
By the start of 1992, I knew I was going to play my first celebrity golf tournament. They were offering a $400,000 total purse, with $75,000 as the first prize. I recalled that the year before, a score of five over par had won the event. I told my local club pro about the tournament and asked him if I should give up my amateur standing. He asked me if I thought I could play five over par for 54 holes. I said I thought I could. He told me to go for it—to play for the money and not worry about losing my amateur status. I knew there would be pressure on me with TV cameras and big galleries and such. To prepare, I went and played in five mini-tour events in the Texas area in the senior division, 45-and-over. I knew I had to get used to making those three-footers when it actually meant something, for a change.
At my very first celebrity event there in Tahoe, I shot five over par and came in sixth. I managed to hit the number right on the nose of what had won it the previous year. I won $10,000. Coming down to the last few holes, I was only three shots out of the lead. I was right there in the hunt to win the tournament! There were all these great celebrities playing such as Michael Jordan and former Vice President Dan Quayle. I already knew some of them. One of the players in that tournament, Maury Povich, had interviewed me in 1971 in Washington, D.C. for his TV show, Panorama. I saw Maury in the elevator. He said, “I hear you’re a ringer” (meaning that I could really play golf), so that was even more pressure! Some of the celebrities were nice to me at first; others weren’t. Some gave me the polite brush-off. When it became evident that I wasn’t going to win the tournament, my goal became instead just to beat Jack Wagner, the actor, because he had thought I was a fan and brushed me off earlier in the week. And I did! He didn’t even know who I was.
Coral Springs, Florida was the last real tennis tournament I played, in December of that very same year. It only happened one time that I packed my suitcases to play both a golf tournament and then a tennis tournament the next week. That was the only time I had to take both golf clubs and tennis racquets on the plane. It was a seamless transition from one sport into the next. Right as my tennis career was ending, all of a sudden this golf opportunity sprang up. Since then, I’ve won two events and earned an average of $3,000 for each celebrity golf tournament I’ve played. When the CGA dissolved, I became one of the founding members of the Celebrity Players’ Tour which arose to take its place. It was almost miraculous! I’m not a fatalist, but it was such perfect timing. For reasons I don’t understand, God has blessed me beyond belief.
I give God the credit for the timing, but I was also ready when it came along. I developed the talent He had given me. I don’t consider my golf an absolute second career. I don’t feel the same drive for golf that I did for tennis but precisely because of that, golf has given me the chance—in what’s still a competitive situation—to undo some of the dysfunction that happened in those years. You see, in golf you don’t ever lose; you just finish. You’ll never read a headline that says, “Tiger Woods upset.” Golf is a better sport to play if you’re depressed because you rarely, if ever, suffer an absolute loss. Anybody who makes the cut has a “finish.” You just finish in a certain position. Nobody “loses.” In tennis, when you’re shaking hands at the end of the match, it means you’ve either won, or else he’s beaten your lousy ass. Golf does not produce such a harsh psychological blow.
The great thing is, I’m out on the golf course and enjoying being there. On the tennis tour, I was in pain. One of the sad things I don’t like from my tennis scrapbooks is: it would have been almost impossible to enjoy that phase of my life. In that tennis arena, I never thought, “Boy, people paid money to watch me play today.”
You’re not enjoying it the way you wish you could, or even the way most people think you do. All you see is an opponent and a court. You just want to get the job done. You’re never “here.” You’re always living in the future, “over there.” That’s why I don’t like to look at the albums. What an unbelievable fairy tale life, not to have enjoyed it! Every time I think about it, it makes me sad. The up side is, without the tennis, I would never have been given the chance to play celebrity golf. On the Celebrity Players’ Tour, we entertain corporate America. It’s a very specialized job. They have your résumé posted on the golf cart. You tell stories. You train yourself to remember CEOs’ names and to get involved in their world. You come back to the same tournament the next year and see the same people. Our pro tournaments usually take four hours. The pro/am days (when the pros play with the amateurs) tend to be a little longer and more grueling. That part can take up to six hours or more because, naturally, the amateurs are slower. You know that they’ve paid thousands of dollars to play with you. Sometimes I’ll give them my player card or an autographed racquet. At an age when most people are just getting a chance to settle down, I am now traveling more than ever before. I still enjoy life on the road. In many ways, ironically, I am retracing my steps from my tennis career—going to some of the same cities, the same resorts. What a different experience, though! I actually have friends on the tour now! Inside Richey, Inc., we didn’t have time for friendships. We didn’t have time for anything else. Now I am returning to some of the same places, but enjoying it more than the first time around. Golf probably saved me. I reached a point where I could not play tennis any more. It’s too physical of a game. Golf gives me a healthy reason to wake up every morning. Even though it was a cause, to a degree, of my last major episode of clinical depression, it still has been a huge part of my recovery. Rod Steiger, the actor, also had bad clinical depression. He used to have a license plate that said: “Keep Moving.” Golf helps me do that, to keep moving. Golf means I still have something I can be creative in. It’s with different toys, and it’s not as physical a game, but I’m trying to enjoy the ride this time.
