Donnie Douglas
Columnist
John Sasser McKee III taught me to play the game of golf, with a little help from his best buddy, Gene Douglas, my dad.
John might not want to claim me, but it is a history that can’t be canceled. A half a century ago, John would stand in the hot summer sun, a Marlboro dangling from his lips, watching me hit ball after balata ball, offering solid golf advice that endures today.
“Keep your head down,” he would tell me, and “low and slow on the takeaway.”
He showed me the proper way to place my hands on the grip, very weakly with the left thumb straight down the shaft. That was how his idol, Ben Hogan, held the club to prevent the duck hook. John knew then what Lee Trevino would later say better: You can talk to a fade but a hook won’t listen.
I became an OK player, but not accomplished like John, who finished seventh in the ACC golf championship in 1959 while teeing it up for the University of North Carolina. The year before, while John and UNC were competing in the NCAA golf championships, John saw a fat fellow with a crew cut pounding balls on the range. A fellow Tar Heel saw golf’s future: “That’s Jack Nicklaus. You’ll be hearing more about him.”
I never heard that story from John, or if I did, the part of my brain where it was sequestered no longer coughs it up. But that was John: His stories, which were always packaged with a signature belly laugh, were about others, not himself.
A Morganton native, John had arrived in Lumberton in the late 1960s to work with my dad in mental health. He immediately became one of the top amateurs locally, and his love of the game never softened until his death on Sept. 4, 2018, at the age of 81.
I regret that I never properly thanked him for instilling in me the wonderful world of golf, and for helping me get the ball in the air. I remember vividly caddying for him and my father, carrying two bags for 18 holes and earning perhaps five bucks. That ended when I was about 14, and it was determined that I had enough game to join Dad and John in their foursome. I learned a lot, and I often paid for it. It was then that John started needling me by calling me “Fish,” a recognition that my game sometimes didn’t back up my mouth.
John left behind a ton of buddies at Pinecrest CC, and they and others today enjoy a golf course made much better through the efforts of John and others, including my father. A sprinkler system was installed during that time, and trees planted to toughen the course.
John not only loved the game of golf, he loved its history. On the back nine of his life, he developed a fondness for playing the game with hickory shafted clubs, and helped put together golf tournaments with others who shared that love.
John always wanted to grow the game, and he began an effort in the early 1980s to establish a countywide golf championship. This weekend, the 39th annual Robeson County Golf Championship is being played at Pinecrest CC with about 80 players in the field, from scratch golfers to hackers.
Others were part of that effort, but John was the impetus and the reason that it succeeded. His vision was to bring together golfers from the four county courses — Pinecrest, Scothurst in Lumber Bridge, Flag Tree in Fairmont, and Riverside in Pembroke — in what was then a team competition for which players had to qualify to participate. Even then, turf wars and racial division threatened the effort, but in 1982 the first event teed it up at Pinecrest.
The tournament has evolved into an open competition that only requires a player to sign up, and champions are crowned in the Championship, Super Seniors, Seniors, Regular and Ladies divisions. My dad once won the Senior Division. John never watched a student of his win the championship, but I know one who at least made eventual champions Hal Herring in 1985 and Dyrck Fanning in 1987 aware he was on the course.
I know that John would be proud that the county golf championship has survived him, and that it serves as a legacy to his desire to grow the game in Robeson County while also knocking holes in artificial walls that divided us at that time.
During a time when the past is being canceled or recast, the playing of the county tournament is a good time to honor some local golf history and the man who scripted it.
Well holed, John. Well holed.
Donnie Douglas is the former editor of The Robesonian in Lumberton.