Larry McAtee: The High-Flying Match-Play Maestro

Larry McAtee’s feats on the golf course and in the cockpit put him in a class by himself

By Scott Gardner – February 12, 2013

Three-time U.S. Open Champion and World Golf Hall of Fame member Hale Irwin was back in Colorado last May to accept the Will F. Nicholson Jr. Award for his outstanding contributions to the game of golf. After dinner at the University Club in downtown Denver, he stood at the podium with a long list of people to thank for helping him reach the pinnacle of the game. He cited Dow Finsterwald, Dale Douglass, and the late University of Colorado football coach Eddie Crowder, for whom he played cornerback.

The last individual Irwin would recognize was less familiar to the assembled golf fans, but he and the man at the podium were once considered the two best golfers in Colorado. From a table near the back of the ballroom, Larry McAtee slowly stood up, and flashing a wry smile, peeled off a two-fingered salute to his one-time teammate on the University of Colorado golf team. They were combatants for amateur golf supremacy in the state during the decade of Vietnam, Free Love and Arnold Palmer.

I sat down for lunch with Larry McAtee on a recent sunny November afternoon at Lakewood Country Club. That’s where the journey began for McAtee as a junior golfer in the 1950s and culminated with his induction into the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame in 1992. He arrived carrying binders filled with notes and news clippings. Joining us at the table overlooking the 10th tee box was my father, John R. Gardner II, a long-time Lakewood Country Club member, club historian and Colorado Golf Hall of Famer. Hosting our lunch, Gardner served as both a golf and aviation mentor to the young McAtee and promised to set the record straight if the 69-year-old local legend became too modest in his recollections.

Before even my first question, McAtee pulled from his clippings a letter I wrote him 21 years ago thanking him for inviting me to his Colorado Golf Hall of Fame induction ceremony. “That’s the kind of decorum that is often overlooked in today’s society,” McAtee pointed out with sincere appreciation for the personal touch. It’s also the kind of attention to detail that has served McAtee well in the heat of battle on the golf course and in the cockpit of the Navy F-8 Crusader fighter jet.

McAtee’s exposure to golf began early when he would hit beat-up golf balls with a rusty old club into coffee cans buried in a neighbor’s back yard. The game took on a new meaning for the 9-year-old when his parents joined Lakewood in 1952. Established in 1908, Lakewood enjoyed a reputation for competitive players—in the card room and on the golf course.

McAtee thrived in that environment, thanks in large part to his supportive parents. “I owe so much of my early golf success to them,” McAtee recalled with a smile. “The whole family would be there for big events. My dad made some good money by betting on me with his buddies in the card room, who favored the more established ‘old guard’ players in the big events. There were high expectations on me to win, and I often heard ‘don’t come home if you don’t win,’ from family members who were of course half-joking,”

As a junior golfer and part-time employee in the bag room at Lakewood, McAtee assimilated the fundamentals of the game. His first formal golf lessons came at the age of ten from Lakewood’s head pro Gene Root. He would later spend time with young assistant pro Dale Douglass, who was forging his own career path on the PGA Tour and would teach McAtee the different shots the pros were playing.

“I spent many an enjoyable late afternoon out on Lakewood’s practice green rolling the ball against both Douglass and Root for spare quarters,” McAtee recalls.

In 1956 at age 13, McAtee won the first of five consecutive Lakewood Junior Club Championships. He lettered four years at Wheat Ridge High School and put up some eye-popping scores, like a 65 to win the Denver Post Tournament at City Park, and a 64 during a casual weekend round at Lakewood.

RHYTHM METHOD: McAtee's left-heel lift triggered his powerful downswing.

As McAtee fine-tuned his golf skills at Lakewood, another hotshot junior golfer was setting up camp in the shadows of the Boulder Flatirons. Hale Irwin played golf like he played football at Boulder High School—fearlessly and with attitude. Several years later McAtee and Irwin would meet at the Boulder Country Club to decide who would reign supreme in amateur golf in the state.

In 1961 McAtee finished second in the state high school tournament and was named the Colorado Junior Golfer of the Year by the Colorado Section of the PGA. University of. Colorado golf coach Les Fowler offered him a scholarship, and McAtee went on to play varsity golf at CU, twice earning All Big-8 honors.

By summer of 1963, McAtee’s game had matured along with his 6-foot, 165-pound frame. The Colorado State Amateur Match Play Championship took place at Valley Country Club in Centennial. In the semi-finals McAtee faced Colorado golf legend Jim English, a nine-time U.S. Open qualifier who had previously won the Colorado Match Play and Colorado Stroke Play three times apiece.

The intimidation factor was lost on McAtee as he kept control of his game, displaying a jeweler’s touch around the greens in route to posting a 4&3 win to advance into the finals, where he defeated Bob Douma of Colorado State 3&2.

That 1963 State Match Play tournament was a watershed moment in amateur golf in the state. Ralph Moore, of The Denver Post and Dave Nelson of the Rocky Mountain News, labeled the tournament as “Custer’s Last Stand” and “Changing of the Guard” as a tribute to the young core of golfers led by McAtee and Irwin (winner of the Stroke Play by a cushy 15 shots) who were now schooling veteran golfers such as English, Fowler and Tom Reed.

One of the benefits of winning the match play title in 1963 was receiving an invitation to play in that year’s Denver Open, then a regular stop on the PGA Tour, at the Denver Country Club. A wide-eyed McAtee played his Thursday round in the same group as Charlie Sifford, one of the Tour’s first African-American players.

It didn’t take long for Sifford to make an impression on the young match play champion. On the first hole McAtee put his approach shot inside of Sifford’s and proceeded to mark his ball with a shiny new dime.

“Before hitting his putt, Sifford walked up to my coin and laid a dull looking penny on top of it,” McAtee recalls. “Leaving the green, Sifford, told me through a haze of cigar smoke, ‘Son you keep this penny. I don’t want to see that dime come out of your pocket again today. I’ve got enough distractions to deal with.’” (He was likely referring to the occasional racist heckler.) From that day on, McAtee always used pennies— preferably dull ones—to mark his ball.

The ‘64 match play championship played out in similar fashion to the ’63 tournament. For the second consecutive year McAtee reached the semi-finals of the match play and faced another young gun in the form of Hale Irwin, who had successfully defended his stroke play title earlier that summer and was the hottest golfer in the state.

“I was up to speed on Irwin,” McAtee reflected. “He had the game and the ‘IT’ factor. He carried himself with a confidence on the course that everyone noticed, and you could tell he didn’t care much for losing.” McAtee came out of the blocks fast in his match against Irwin, birding the first two holes for a two up lead. As the two golfers made their way off the ninth green at Hiwan, McAtee held a 1-up lead. Irwin evened the match with a par on the difficult par-3 12th hole. After halving the 13th hole the two players stood on the 14th green all even. McAtee had a 70-foot putt that he rolled across the green and into the cup for a 1-up lead.

“I could tell from Irwin’s body as he walked briskly to the next tee that the putt I dropped on fourteen had made an impact on him.” After Irwin carded a bogey on the par-5 15th hole, McAtee went 2-up and when the two halved the 16th hole, McAtee had a 3 & 2 win and a date with his CU golf coach, Les Fowler, in the championship.

“I was looking forward to be playing Coach Fowler in the finals,” McAtee admitted. “It’s not every day you have a chance to beat your coach.”

The final match was a testament to how the fortunes of match play can change. Fowler came out intent on showing his student that he still had some gas in the tank. After the morning 18, Fowler held a comfortable 4-up lead. In the afternoon round, Fowler’s putting touch disappeared and McAtee closed within a hole.

As the gallery circled around the 18th green Fowler needed to halve the hole to win. But he missed a 10-footer as McAtee tapped in to send the match to sudden death. On the first extra hole Fowler’s frazzled putting touch again let him down as he three-putted. McAtee two-putted for par to win his second straight state match play title.

“I was overtaken with emotion at the awards ceremony,” McAtee admitted. “I had worked so hard on my game in preparation for tournament and to have pulled off the win was a great relief to me.”

The ’65 match play tournament was to be played at the now defunct Green Gables Country Club in west Denver. McAtee carried into the ’65 match play tournament a 12-match winning streak and he saw no reason why he couldn’t keep the competitive furnace stoked with his winning ways.

McAtee sent future Colorado Golf Hall of Famer Ron Moore home with a 3&2 victory in the semi-finals. McAtee sat under a cottonwood tree as he watched fellow Buffalo Hale Irwin lose to Jim English 4&3, giving English a chance to avenge the defeat McAtee dealt him two years earlier. “After defeating English in ’63, I knew he would like nothing better than to knock me off the block and skin my elbows in the process,” McAtee admitted with a smile.

The final match at Green Gables was a display of consistency by both players as McAtee got his nose out in front after the morning 18 with a 2-up lead. English was one down to McAtee on the 34th hole of the match when McAtee made a careless bogey. The 17th hole was halved and when English failed to win the 18th hole, McAtee held off English to win his third straight match play championship, (63- ’64-’65). Years later English would confide that the ’65 loss to McAtee was one of the two most disappointing losses he had suffered in his state amateur career. Irwin also went on to win his third straight stroke play title that year to set up the Irwin vs. McAtee showdown of 1966.

As 1966 rolled around, McAtee was looking at graduating with a BS in business and enlisting in the Navy AOCS (Aviation Officer Candidate School) to become a naval aviator. The last big goal McAtee wanted to accomplish before enlisting in the Navy was to win his fourth straight match play championship which would tie him for consecutive state match play victories with Walter Fairbanks, who won four straight match play titles in the early 1900s.

The site of the 1966 match play championship was the Boulder Country Club. Both McAtee and Irwin took care of business in their early round matches and when McAtee tripped up Joe Lynch 2&1 and Irwin edged out Warren Simmons 1-up on the 19th hole in the other semi-final match. Golf fans in Colorado got the matchup they were hoping to see.

Both players had their camp of supporters as the tee shots were struck off the first tee in the 36 hole final. McAtee was riding a 23 consecutive match win streak going into that final match. Irwin wanted to avenge the defeat that McAtee dealt him at Hiwan in the 1964 championship.

Though there wasn’t bad blood between the two, both wanted to pull out of the parking lot with the tournament trophy riding shotgun.

The 36-hole final match between McAtee and Irwin was not what McAtee’s supporters came to see. Irwin played inspired golf and McAtee’s match play locomotive had run out of steam. When the final putt of the afternoon dropped, Irwin had earned a 5 & 4 victory. At the awards ceremony, McAtee graciously proclaimed, “You can mark my word ….Hale Irwin will be recognized as a world-class player.”

Irwin would go on to win the 1967 NCAA championship and leapfrog onto the PGA Tour. As for McAtee, he too was ready to start a new chapter in his life. “I had a plan. I wanted to serve my country, fly jets, play some military golf and, if in one piece after five years in the military, play on the PGA Tour.” Having earned his private pilot’s license in college, McAtee was put in an accelerated phase of basic flight training where after 18 months he earned his “Wings of Gold” as a jet trained Naval Aviator.

“There was special pride in meeting the challenges of Naval Aviation. Military flying was the perfect example of being ‘in the moment,’” McAtee explains. “As the only one in the cockpit of a high performance jet, you had to be focused mentally physically and emotionally. You had to incorporate all these things, because your life depended on it.”

FLAT-HATTER: McAtee buzzed Arnold Palmer during the 1969 Kemper Open.

McAtee’s golf game also enlisted in the service and he won the All-Navy championships in ’67, ’69 and ’70 as well as the Douglas MacArthur Memorial Tournament in 1969 beating out a local hotshot amateur named Curtis Strange. He was also the 1970 World Wide Interservice champion, setting the competitive course record by four shots with a 65 and winning the event by a “Tiger Like” 10 strokes on the same Las Alamitos Naval base course that Tiger Woods played with his father as a junior.

In 1970 McAtee was granted leave and qualified for the U.S. Amateur. He went on to place 28th, finishing one shot behind a promising up-and-comer by the name of Tom Watson.

One of McAtee’s more infamous performances came at the 1969 Kemper Open, a tournament in which he didn’t even play. While stationed in Virginia Beach, he was flying to Cecil Air Field near Jacksonville. By sheer chance, he flew over the event at Quail Hollow Golf Club in Charlotte. He spotted a huge gallery and it occurred to him that it might be the fans of fellow flying enthusiast Arnold Palmer.

McAtee couldn’t resist the temptation to salute the “King” so he turned off the IFF transponder and swooped down in his F-8 Crusader and buzzed the course. Making his getaway McAtee executed a victory roll as he kicked in the after-burner and headed down the coast.

In that month’s issue of Golf World there was a story about a rogue jet buzzing the course at flat-hatting altitude, causing Palmer to back off his putt. “I wonder how Arnie likes a taste of his own medicine?” the article’s author asked. Palmer was known to buzz the golf course upon leaving tournaments after his final round.

In 1972, his naval commitment finished, McAtee was determined to create a buzz as a golfer. He entered that summer’s state match play tournament at Greeley Country Club. The previous two years, Bill Clark Jr., and Tony Veto, also members at Lakewood Country Club.

“Lakewood Country Club was home to some of the best amateurs back in the Sixties and Seventies,” he remembers, “and I was thinking it would kind of cool to bring the trophy back to Lakewood for a third straight year.”

McAtee worked his way through the field and reached the finals of the ’72 match play championship. With some 200 fans waiting on the first tee, he shook the hand of Mark Achziger of Fort Morgan and went after his fourth title match play championship in a contest that unfolded like a “psychological circus.”

The match was accented with both good and poor play from both players. By the 34th hole, the former navy pilot was down one and losing altitude fast. McAtee won the 35th with a gritty par. Both players made clutch putts on 18 to send the match to sudden death.

On the second playoff hole, a 192-yard par 3, McAtee put the pressure on by hitting a crisp 3-iron to the center of the green. Achziger followed with a semi-shank that came to rest short and to the right of the green. He chipped 20 feet past the hole. McAtee calmly two-putted and was the state match play champion for the fourth time.

Later that summer McAtee set his sights on making it through the 1972 PGA Tour Qualifying School. He reached the final stage, but contracted severe mononucleosis. He played anyway and failed to earn his card.

In order to get ready for the 1973 Q-School McAtee moved to Florida and played the mini-tours. He earned some money but never his Tour card. He started to fight his game and lose confidence. Ultimately McAtee decided to return to Colorado and chart a new course as business manager of Mr. Mack of Neusteter’s, the beauty salons his father had started. Located within Neusteter’s department stores throughout the greater Denver area and along the Front Range, Mr. Mack also had a number of free-standing locations.

McAtee continued his association with Lakewood and enjoyed his weekend $5 Nassau games. On occasion he would get a wild hair and ask if I wanted to caddie for him in a local US Open qualifier or the Colorado Open. The last time was at the 1976 Colorado Open at Hiwan, where he had a disappointing finish after posting a nice 68 in the third round. Still a little hot under the collar and south of a few cold ones in the clubhouse, McAtee took us on a thrilling ride down I-70 to Denver in a silver and black ’69 Pontiac GTO he drove as if it were an F-8 Crusader. As we came up on the car in front of us at 80 mph, McAtee eased up with a foot of clearance.

“She’s pumping her brakes to back me off,” he said with a laugh. “She doesn’t know she’s got a naval pilot used to flying a high performance, supersonic jet in tight formation.”

McAtee has faced some physical battles in recent years with Parkinson’s, but as he approaches his 70th birthday he stays active. If you go to the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame awards each summer, you’ll see him chatting with an old adversary like Jim English. McAtee twice defeated English during state match play tournaments en route to becoming one of only three men in the event’s 112-year history to have won it four or more times.

He also leaves a legacy in some parting words for the reader: “So much in life is within your reach. Never underestimate your own potential and remember an honest pursuit of achievement stands worthy… Enjoy the ride!”