I attended the Haggin Oaks Golf Expo in Sacramento last weekend. For those of you who have never stopped by Haggin Oaks, it is one of those extremely active municipal golf complexes with a little bit of something for everyone. There are 36 holes at Haggin. The original 18-hole course was designed by Alister Mackenzie (Augusta National, Cypress Point, Pasatiempo). There is an enormous driving range with 60 stalls on one end and a similar amount on the other end, some 400 yards away. There is a putting course, the Arcade Course is also open for foot/soccer golf, the cart barn is enormous, and there is a large chipping area.
Haggin Oaks also has one of the largest pro shop complexes on planet Earth. There is one separate building just for golf shoe sales. The main pro shop is bigger that a Safeway and it has just about as much variety. There have been only two head golf professionals in the history of Haggin Oaks, which opened in 1932. Tommy LoPresti was the head man for close to 40 years and Ken Morton has been with the complex for more than 40 years of his professional life. Morton also has been recognized as the PGA of America’s merchandiser of the year.
The Golf Expo takes on a carnival-like atmosphere each year with hundreds of vendors. You can take the Bridgestone Golf Ball Challenge, you can get fitted for the latest in Titleist equipment or Ashworth apparel, and along the way you can learn that the OnCore golf ball is “the straightest ball in golf.” There is a pavilion area with guest speakers. This year’s seminars included a Dave Stockton putting clinic, Dan Pohl talking about getting fitted for wedges, and a Hall of Fame ceremony recognizing the greats of Sacramento area golf.
I specifically went to the Golf Expo for the HOF ceremony. In past years they have recognized and inducted such Sacramento-area linksters as Mr. 59 and former PGA champ Al Geiberger, LPGA star Natalie Gulbis, and tour pros Bob Eastwood, Kevin Sutherland, David Sutherland and Scott McCarron. They also have inducted local area icons such as past NCGA president John Nakamura, two-time United States Amateur Public Links champ Verne Callison, and Haggin Oaks’ PGA professionals LoPresti and Morton.
This time around the HOF class of 2015 would include Franck Minch Sr. and Frank Minch Jr. They served as the head professionals at Del Paso Country Club for a combined 55 years from 1925 through 1980. Also recognized was Bob E. Smith, who won the California State Amateur in 1967 as well as two Porter Cups and two Western Amateurs. He had a solid career on the PGA Tour as well. Dick Lotz also would be inducted. He was part of a famous golfing family alongside brother John, who won the State Am in 1962 and three times on the PGA Tour.
The final inductee was Bob Lunn, who was the Dustin Johnson of his generation. He was the leader of that great Lincoln High School golf team in San Francisco that included Johnny Miller. He won the 1963 Public Links at Haggin Oaks and after graduating to the PGA Tour, he won six times during a 15-year pro career. Lunn won in Atlanta and Memphis in 1968, at Hartford in 1969, the Florida Citrus (now the Arnold Palmer Invitational) in 1970, the Los Angeles Open in 1971, and again at Atlanta in 1972. Five of his six wins were against the greats of the game, finishing just ahead of Lee Trevino, Dave Hill, Arnold Palmer, Billy Casper and Gary Player. When he won a playoff to beat Casper in Los Angeles, he appeared later that evening on the Glenn Campbell Good Time Hour television show as Campbell was the host of the L.A. Open.
My minor connection in all this is that I caddied for Lunn when the Western Open came to Beverly Country Club in Chicago in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At that time Lunn was the protégé of LoPresti. Our head professional, Charley Penna, was very close to the LoPresti family. I was one of the more analytical caddies at Beverly. In other words, I did more than just carry a bag. Penna had personally asked me to “caddie for LoPresti’s boy, Bob Lunn.” As I mentioned earlier, Lunn was a Dustin Johnson-like bomber and his style of play didn’t exactly fit the Donald Ross-designed Beverly. Yet Mr. Penna was my boss, he was always good to me, and while golfers such as Bert Yancey or Dale Douglas, or for that matter Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, always played well there, the best Lunn ever did was a tie for 34th in 1970.
Lunn walked away from professional golf in 1980 and played sporadically on the Senior Tour when he turned 50 years of age in 1995. He has been an emeritus golf pro at Woodbridge Country Club just south of Sacramento for a number of years. With all this background information, I was really looking forward to his induction into the Sacramento Golf HOF. I had last talked to Lunn during the U.S. Open at the Olympic Club in 1987 and I thought there might be a chance that I could reintroduce myself, shake his hand, and perhaps get some great tidbits for my column. After all, the guy did beat Arnie by one stroke in an event now named after Arnie.
Just before the start of the ceremony, the inductees and their families started gathering to the left of the stage. Everyone was there except for Bob Lunn. Mrs. Lunn was there, but Bob wasn’t. I went over to Ken Morton, reintroduced myself and asked him about Bob Lunn’s participation in the ceremony. Morton sighed, thanked me for attending after driving a long distance and stated that Lunn had contacted him and “had declined to attend.” He also told me a couple of old-time stories about Charley Penna and his merchandising skills with the Beverly members. I talked briefly to Mrs. Lunn, who turned out to be the former Mrs. Lunn. She and I talked briefly about the difficulty of travel in those days when the Lunns toured the nation by car with a young family. She minimally remembered me and said she recalled that I worked at that “really nice course in that really rough neighborhood.”
So while the Haggin Oaks Golf Expo was once again an extravaganza, I left disappointed. Lunn had just turned 70 last Friday and it’s not like he’s hospitalized or out of sorts. It seems that he just happened to blow off the ceremony. I don’t know why and in some ways I don’t want to know why. He was from an era when the pros of the day were less savvy about media relations and had minimal contact with the corporate world. They played the game and had to scramble to make ends meet. Yet it’s too bad for Bob Lunn. He would have or should have appreciated all that was said about him last Saturday. He was a successful professional during golf’s golden era. He won on tour over Gary and Billy and Arnie and Lee. He had a lot of talent.
