After reading of Jack Burke Jr.’s death last week at age 100, I thought about a day in October of 2018 when I got to spend a few hours with the man himself at the Champions Golf Club.
My friend, Tommy Wertz, drove me to Houston and introduced me to Burke, touting my credentials as a member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. Burke, suitably, was not so impressed, which fit his crotchety yet lovable personality. Nonetheless, he agreed to sit down for about an hour visit in his office, and he then surprisingly joined Tommy and me at lunch in the club’s dining room.
Burke was revered at Champions Club. He was a two-time major champion. He won the 2004 Bob Jones Award, the USGA’s highest honor that goes to an individual who demonstrates the spirit and sportsmanship of the award’s namesake. He owned 16 PGA Tour victories. He was also a co-founder of Champions Golf Club with fellow Texan Jimmy Demaret in 1957 – a year after he won both of his major championships. In 1956, he won both the Masters Tournament, rallying from eight strokes back, and the PGA Championship in a match-play format, defeating Ted Kroll 3 and 2.
He told me of a teacher who made an impression on him as a youth. It was a Father Higgins of St. Thomas High School, a Houston Catholic school founded in 1900 by a few priests from the Congregation of St. Basil. As a teacher might do, Burke, who mentored major champions Hal Sutton, Phil Mickelson, Ben Crenshaw and Steve Elkington, said his teacher wrote “50” on an erase board and wrote “51” on another.
“’If you’ve got this much,” Father Higgins said to our class, “pointing to the 50, ‘never spend this much (pointing to 51).’ I learned first things first from Father Higgins.”
Burke’s disciple Sutton, a Shreveport native and 2009 Louisiana Sports Hall of Famer, lives in Houston and operates a golf academy there. “I remember when Hal was an amateur,” said Burke, “and he wanted to know about the pro circuit and what it was like. He was standing on a ledge there and I kind of pushed him and he was balancing himself. I said, ‘That’s what it’s like; you feel like you’re on the edge of a cliff all the time and somebody’s about to push you off.”
When Sutton was named the USA team captain for the 2004 Ryder Cup, he quickly persuaded Burke to serve as assistant captain. Speaking to Golf Channel after Burke’s passing last week, Sutton called him “a protector of golf.”
Burke was born into the game since his father, Jack Sr. was the teaching pro at River Oaks Country Club in Houston.
“I don’t ever remember not being in golf,” he said. “I shot a 69 when I was 12. I came up in the Black caddie yard because I wasn’t a member of the club. My dad was an employee. I was shooting dice at 9.”
A combat instructor in the Marine Corps, he had a martial arts degree and taught that at Camp Pendleton. “The first weapon I picked up was in the Marine Corps,” he said. “There were no guns in our house.”
His life was about golf and he loved talking about it. He reminded me at times of eccentric rancher and golf instructor Johnny Crawford (Robert Duvall) in the movie “Seven Days in Utopia.”
“You learn a lot playing golf,” Burke said. “You learn how to create. Timing, tempo, tension and trust – you trust your swing. You don’t try to control it or guide it. You don’t try to show somebody how good you are. If you do, you’re just pretty stupid. It’s about balance and timing. Everything is about balance and timing. Surgery is about balance and timing.”
On his favorite golf hole: “My favorite hole? The one I’m on. I don’t have favorites.”
On the best golfer ever: “I don’t know any that was the best. They might have been the best that day. It just varies. Good goes back and forth.”
On caddies: “I can take a target and judge distance wherever I am. I can see that green down there, and I know what it’d take to carry over there. I can tell you the club. I don’t need a caddie. I tip caddies heavily if they’re never on the green with me, and I keep ’em two club lengths from me.”
On how he’d like to be remembered: “Remembered? I’m not gonna be remembered, and neither are you.”
There aren’t many who can disarm you and leave you laughing or feeling the wiser for it. Jack Burke Jr. was one such man, and, yes, Mr. Burke, I am remembering you for that.
Bob Tompkins enjoyed a 43-year newspaper career as an award-winning writer and editor, serving the last 39 years at the Town Talk in Alexandria ending in 2015. He is a member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame as a 2016 winner of the LSWA’s Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism. An Alexandria resident, Tompkins is a contributing columnist sharing his talents weekly with Rapides Parish Journal readers.