Hansen: Tucson caddie, Peete became golf pioneers

He rode for days, through Arizona and Texas and through the Deep South. He didn’t get off until the bus parked in Orlando, Florida.

“I was going to be a PGA Tour caddie,” he remembers now, shaking his head at the memory. “I had no clue.”

Plowman was carrying the bag for one of the scores of PGA Tour wannabe’s, Dan O’Neill, a second-year pro from Penn State. O’Neill would be on and off the Tour in less than two years.

There would be no fame and less fortune in Florida. When Plowman and O’Neill arrived at the Tallahassee Open, O’Neill was the fifth alternate. He went back to a $7-a-night motel and waited for another bus.

Plowman stayed.

“I met a caddie named Preacher and he asked if I had a bag,” says Plowman, now a Tucson attorney. “I said ‘no.’ He asked, ‘Do you mind caddying for a black golfer?’ ”

“Of course not,” said Plowman. Minutes later, he was introduced to Calvin Peete, a PGA Tour rookie.

“I had never heard of Calvin Peete. He was about 5 feet 8 and maybe weighed 140 pounds. He had inlaid diamonds in his front teeth. I thought, ‘What the heck.’ I worked for him in a practice round and he said he’d let me know. I didn’t think I’d ever hear from him again.”

That night, back at the $7 motel, Calvin Peete randomly checked into the room next to Chip Plowman. They shared a few drinks, a few late-night stories and four days later, Peete told Plowman “you’re my guy.”

That’s how Chip Plowman, Palo Verde High School Class of ’68, became a PGA Tour caddie.

Peete died last week in Georgia. He was 71. He won 12 PGA Tour events, including the Tournament Players Championship and the 1984 Vardon Trophy, symbolic of the world’s leading golfer.

In 1976, he earned $22,000 on Tour. He paid Plowman $150 a week and a small percentage of what he won. They were the Odd Couple of the PGA Tour.

“Almost all the caddies were black and almost all the players were white,” says Plowman, who served in the Air Force after leaving Palo Verde High. “It was historical in a way, but we were just friends. Calvin was one of the most honest men I’ve ever known.”

When Peete won a closest-to-the-pin contest at the 1977 Bing Crosby Open, he paid for Plowman to fly to Hawaii. And when Peete completed the Los Angeles Open and flew to Florida for the East Coast swing, he gave Plowman the keys to his pink 1968 Cadillac.

“Meet me in Miami,” he said.

Peete grew up in poverty in Detroit and worked with migrant farmers in South Florida. Plowman was born in Memphis, the son of a career Air Force man, attending a segregated school and shopping at segregated stores. The Plowmans moved to Tucson, where Chip became a scratch golfer during the Age of Aquarius.

Calvin Peete? He was a hustler who barely made it through the sixth grade, a billiards player of note who didn’t start playing golf until he was 23.

Just your typical American friendship.

Through Peete, Plowman periodically caddied for Pete Brown, the first black golfer to win on the PGA Tour. (Brown also died last week, two days after Peete). Plowman caddied for black golfers Jim Dent and Jim Thorpe, twice a winner of the PGA Tour’s 1985 and 1986 Match Play championships, staged on Plowman’s boyhood course, Randolph North.

History? The Peete-and-Plowman team arrived at the 1976 U.S. Open at the Atlanta Athletic Club, where black golfers had not been allowed to play. But because he had qualified for the U.S. Open, Peete became a pioneer in the way Lee Elder did when he became the first black golfer to play at the Masters in 1975.

In the final round of the ’76 Open, Peete was paired with Jack Nicklaus. It was reported that Nicklaus had never played with a black golfer in a sanctioned Tour or USGA event.

“On the first tee,” Plowman recalls, “Calvin walks up to Nicklaus and says, ‘Hello, I’m Calvin Peete.’ ” Jack smiles and says, ‘Glad to meet you, Cal.’ I think it was a bit unnerving for all of us. The crowd was enormous.”

Peete’s career soared. He would win the 1985 Phoenix Open and the 1986 Tournament of Champions. He finished in the top 25 at 131 tournaments, including fourth at the 1983 Tucson Open.

By then, Plowman had returned to school, completing his Master’s and Law degrees at Arizona. The men remained in touch through the ’80s.

“I was five minutes late for a tee time in the 1977 season, which is virtually unforgivable; I thought I was fired,” Plowman says. “I got on a bus in Florida and rode it all the way to Flagstaff. Calvin didn’t know how to reach me. A year later, at the Phoenix Open, he says, ‘Chip, where’d you go? I held the job open for you for three months.”

Plowman, now 64, laughs at the memory.

“Calvin had a heart of gold,” he says. “In the end, it worked out well for both of us.”