Charlie Owens Helps to Make It a Vintage Field

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. —  The best field ever assembled for an event on the Senior PGA tour will start play today on two courses in the 72-hole, $300,000 Vintage Invitational.

The big names, Arnold Palmer and Sam Snead, and defending champion Peter Thomson, are here. So are the “youngsters”--Gary Player, Chi Chi Rodriguez and Dale Douglass. So, too, are such perennial favorites as Miller Barber, Don January, and two-time champion Gene Littler.

But the man the golfers are all talking about is Charlie Owens, 56. He may not be the darling of the gallery, and it’s true he received a last-minute invitation, but he gets only raves and admiration from his fellow professionals.

The man from Winter Haven, Fla., has overcome a multitude of injuries and ailments to become the newest star of golf. The feeling is that it couldn’t happen to a nicer man.

A year ago, Owens, who walks with a decided limp because of a fused left knee, wasn’t being invited anywhere. In fact, to get into other senior tournaments, he had to earn one of the six spots awarded Monday qualifiers. He qualified 17 times. Nine of those times, he finished in the top 10. He earned $78,158, the hard way.

That’s nothing, though. In three tournaments this year he has two victories, including a playoff win over Douglass, who reached 50 just a few days before the tournament, at Sun City, Ariz. last week. Owens has already exceeded last year’s earnings and leads the tour with $79,000.

Owens’ golf game is about as unorthodox as it could be. He swings cross-handed. You may have seen golfers use a cross-hand grip for putting, but it is almost unheard of as a regular swing.

He has a 50-inch shaft on a putter he calls the Flying Saucer, because of its shape. It’s peculiar only until Owens putts. The results are what counts.

Although he grew up around a golf course where his father was a greenskeeper, Owens didn’t get into the sport until 15 years after a parachute accident while in the service in 1952 began a series of physical misfortunes.

A leg injury diagnosed as a pulled muscle turned out to be so serious that, four operations later, the knee was fused. That was in 1965. Favoring the left leg caused problems with the right knee and there have been three operations on it .

Golf was just about the only sport available for a man with a fused knee, so Owens, at 37, turned pro in 1967. He met with little success, except for an occasional mini-tour victory and one in the Florida Open in 1974.

He didn’t do much better when he joined the Senior tour in 1981, winning only $17,000 in the first three years.

What turned things around?

“I owe it all to God and to my putter,” Owens said after his team had posted a 10-under 62 in the pro-am Wednesday. “I know some people don’t like to hear about it, but God controls and directs my life. He is the reason I have survived.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to survive, either, especially on the tour. I was about ready to give up in 1983, but I kept getting better and better with the new putter I designed myself and had a friend make for me.

“In 1984, I told my wife that if I didn’t make it that year I would have to get a job. We barely made enough to make ends meet, but I began to gain confidence.

“Even though I did well last year, I never expected to win a tournament until I shot a 65 in the first round of the Treasure Coast at Fort Pierce (Fla.). I told my caddie I was going to win it.

“It was a feeling and I just kept knocking in the putts. When I won, I said I prayed to God to win a tournament.”

After winning top prize of $33,700 there, he finished third in the Senior PGA at Palm Beach, Fla. and then won in the playoff at Sun City.

Suddenly, Owens was thrust into the limelight. He was interviewed on two nightly network news shows and was featured in USA Today. Has it changed the affable Owens?

“I won’t change,” he said. “Money don’t make me, I make money. If I win all the money in the world, I will still be Charlie Owens. But it feels good to know you’re known all over the world. If I stay healthy, I can say thanks to God.”

Healthy to Owens means he can drag his aching body out to the first tee and start hitting the ball. It also means that he can see. He has irisitis, which flares up sporadically and makes seeing difficult.

“Until the accident in the Army, I had never had an injury, not even playing football at Florida A&M;,” he said. “Once the injuries start, there’s always a new one cropping up. I guess it’s from trying to favor the injury. Right now, it’s the top of the foot on the fused leg. I must be walking funny because now it’s hurting.”

It seems amazing that a man who couldn’t make it on the regular tour and struggled for four years on the Senior tour, has blossomed into a sensation just when the Senior tour is becoming competitive.

“The only thing I can say is I have become confident,” he said. “You can’t play if you’re worrying who’s out there. You just have to go out and play your game. If I keep shooting 14-under, I’ll win plenty more tournaments.”