Sport: Happiest Man Alive

A chartered, twin-engined plane circled the golf courses around Davenport, Iowa one bright morning last week, then landed at the city’s new airport. Above a nearby hangar streamed a banner proclaiming: “Congratulations, we’re proud of you, Jack.” Below the banner hung a 20-ft. cardboard putter. Out stepped a lanky, lean, tired man in blue slacks and white sweater. A thousand welcomers cheered. Unashamedly, the weary man wept. Jack Fleck, 32, a week after leaving Davenport as one of the nation’s most obscure golf pros, was home as the city’s No. 1 citizen —rocketed from nowhere to glory as the darkest horse ever to win the U.S. Open golf championship (TIME, June 27). Mopping his tears, Hero Fleck told his greeters: “It’s been a long, tough week, and it looks like I have a tougher one ahead. I can’t go into hiding now.”

If he had considered hiding, Fleck soon found that his life will be very public for quite a spell. With his pretty blonde wife Lynn and four-year-old son Craig at his side, he was whisked off, in a new white Cadillac, through Davenport and his birthplace village of Bettendorf (pop. 5,000), as thousands more huzzahed. At home on East Street, he riffled through a2-ft.-high stack of telegrams. Then, swamped by offers for endorsements, interviews and public appearances, he telephoned Fred Corcoran, professional business manager for professional athletes, became a Corcoran client. Later in the day the local Ford dealer dropped around toinsist that Jack try out a Thunderbird, al though he already owns a 1955 Buick and an aging Chevrolet. Finally, at 10 p.m. — after two full days of transcontinental pandemonium, highlighted by a 5-minute chat with President Eisenhower in San Francisco, Jack Fleck turned into his own bed for the first night’s sleep since beating the great Ben Hogan in the Open’s playoff.

The hero-worship might have over blown a less elastic man than Golfer Fleck. But the operator and pro of Davenport’s two municipal golf courses, as unpretentious as an ear of Iowa corn, has seen too much adversity in golf to let one victory, even though golf’s greatest, pop his sides. After years of luckless touring on the winter circuit (in 1953 he won a total of $13-75), how did Jack Fleck win the big one in San Francisco? The trick-turner was the change in his putting. Although he once offered up to $1,000 to other pros if they could cure his woes on the green, Fleck suddenly realized early in the Open that “everyone putts his own way.” He promptly sank a 22-footer, went on to three sparkling rounds of 30 putts or less.

Last week Jack, still red-hot, deadly on the greens, fired a sizzling 68 on a local par-73 course. He clearly regarded himself as the happiest man alive. In a head full of dazzling prospects, he also found room for a little philosophy. Said he: “I like the word self-composure. Golf is a feeling—80% of it is in your mind. Composure is the one thing I ever tried to copy from Ben Hogan.”