A Southern Hurricane-Watts Gunn
1905-1995
By Todd Sentell

Watts Gunn died again today. Was alive. Was telling ancient golf stories. Barking drink orders. Then one day he fell down, went to the hospital, came back home, didn't get better, and went back to the hospital and died. Just up and dies on me. Died on us. Do you remember? Ten years ago? Every day he does this to me. Up and dies. Watts Gunn ain't around any more and I'm still mad about it.

Remember the first time you saw someone who became an intimate part of your life? Your wife? Husband? Golf pro? Sometimes it's a fuzzy memory, but I have to admit I was ready for Watts Gunn. I remember the first time I saw him. Vividly. In 1990, I was serving on a charity golf tournament committee benefiting Atlanta's Senior Citizens Services. The committee voted to offer honorary chairmanships to great Georgia golfers, preferably older ones. For this tournament they picked Watts Gunn. The real chairman called to ask me if I'd be willing to pick up Watts at his home and bring him to the party the night before the tournament. Watts Gunn, I thought? He's still around? Well, yes he was, I was told, and here's his address and phone number. Call him and pick him up. His wife, Jane, is coming, too. And guess what, during lunch before the tournament, you're going to make a speech about him, so hit the books Mr. Golf Historian.

Watts Gunn, the great Georgia amateur. Bob Jones' college pal. The guy who was runner-up to Jones in the 1925 United States Amateur at Oakmont. 1925? Born in a fairly modern year, I couldn't conceive such a time. Still can't. As I drove down West Conway in the heart of old Buckhead, then turned onto his winding, pea-gravel driveway, I wondered what he'd look like now. I wondered if we'd hit it off. A wide-eyed fan and the old grizzled veteran. He was 56 when I was born. I was nervous, I admit. Watts Gunn was a celebrity in my book. He was already standing at the end of the walkway that came out of the sunroom where we would spend the next three and a half years together, catching up. There in his grey slacks, button-down shirt, rep tie and camel hair jacket. And a green felt hat. He looked like a Brooks Brothers model. I got out of the car and introduced myself to the man who to this day holds the record for holes won in a row in a 36 hole international competition:15, set at the 1925 Amateur.

After that tempest, the Yankee press immediately dubbed him, 'The Southern Hurricane.' I introduced myself to the man who's best known, though, for that week in 1925 with his pal, when the two of them put another tidbit in the record book: never before in a U.S. Amateur have the champion and runner-up been from the same town, the same college, the same club, who rode up there and back on the same train. I introduced myself, then said, 'Nice chapeau.' Watts Gunn looked at me a little sideways. I knew he was wondering, who's this cat. This cat was your new best friend, like it or not. We liked it, and I loved him. I got to know all of his nicknames, all ancient. 'Wattsie.' 'Jeeps,' because he always reacted to something with 'Jeepuhs Creepuhs.' That old-world Southern accent was right out of central casting, but it was real, and crusty. He got called, 'Old Boy.' 'Old Man.' He had a portfolio of toasts, one of which he laid on a gal at the pre-tournament party. Before he took a sip of his all-time favorite cocktail-The Gunn Shot: vodka, water, and a couple of dashes of Angostura bitters-he said, 'Keep your head down and your tail up!'

With raised eyebrows, she asked, 'Mr. Gunn, are you talking about golf or sex?'

'Why golf, of course!'

At that moment I had no idea if he was telling the truth. Years later I came to know the truth: the old cat meant both.

Don't ever think you can save someone from themselves when they're real comfortable with who they are and what they like to do. It ain't going to happen. I knew Watts was waiting to die. There was no doubt in my mind. He never wanted to do anything. You had to cajole him into getting dressed up and going somewhere. Sometimes we had to force him to walk around the house. One time I asked him if he wanted to do some stretches. I thought he might slug me. So you had to make a huge, planned effort.

One bright February afternoon in 1992, I packed him into the car and took him to his old East Lake Golf Club. The club was having a 'reverse' tournament where you teed off near a green and putted into a hole in a tee box. Watts, the purist, thought the idea of a reverse tournament was the silliest thing he'd ever heard, but he was excited about seeing the old place, but driving anywhere in town was a harrowing experience for him.

I'd push his feet and legs into the foot well, then pull the seat belt around him. He was always amazed at the traffic, even in normal conditions. It was as if he'd never seen a jogger, a guy standing close by the curb at a street corner. On the downtown connector, even in light traffic, he'd clutch some part of the console with his left hand and the door handle with his right. He flinched the whole way there. Barked for me to slow down. I turned left onto Second Avenue. I looked over at him once you could see the golf course to the right. No reaction. He's just looking at it. I asked him how long it had been since he'd been here. He couldn't remember. I glanced over at him after I turned onto Alston. Nothing. It seemed like he was soaking it in. In his own way. He had to be. I didn't press.

I put him into a golf cart and drove him around the course and up close to East Lakers hitting approach shots, putting out, standing on tee boxes. Some of them openly gawked. They thought Watts Gunn was dead. They asked if he'd stay and join them in the bar. He did. Tommy Barnes walked in. Watts began to cry. He wiped his tears with his shaking, feeble hand. Watts let himself get over served, and then we got back into the car. The emotion was still thick. I knew he was thrilled at what just happened. I would have given a lot to know what was going through his mind at that moment. I turned right out of the front gate and told him I was taking him up the street to show him the house he lived in when his family moved from Macon sometime in 1923 to East Lake when he was a student at Georgia Tech. It's across Alston from the 11th green.

'Naw,' he growled. 'Let's go home.'

Sorry, we were already there, sitting at the end of the driveway. At the other end, by the house, was an old Volkswagen van. The grass in the front needed to be cut and the bushes around the house needed to be clipped. But the house was still beautiful. It was still grand. There were huge, crooked magnolia trees in the front yard. 'Let's knock on the door and see what happens.'

'Naw.'

'I'll tell them who you are and maybe they'll let us see your old room. C'mon.' I was getting excited.
Two sentimental adventures in one day.

'Naw.'
   
I knew he meant it. He really wasn't interested. One the way back through town I had another idea. I announced that we were going to visit The Georgia Institute of Technology. That we'd take a spin through
campus and why not try to find his old frat house. Watts Gunn smiled. He said, 'Chee Fee.'
   
'What?'
   
'I was a membuh of Chi Phi. We used to call it Chee Fee.'

I grew up outside of Atlanta and went to Tech football games as a kid, but I had no idea where frat row was. Thank God I found it. We were both about to have a life experience.

I stopped the car in front of a set of steep, brick steps. It was hard enough to get Watts up three steps, and now that he'd had a few I wondered if he'd make it. But we started up, as slowly as you can imagine, with his left hand in my left and my right arm wrapped around his back. Just after we saw the Chi Phi house looming above us we also saw faces appear in the front, one by one, in the lower windows. The guys were smiling. I honestly felt at that moment that they knew what was happening.

It was so natural, so sweet, their expressions for this unexpected moment. Here's some guy hauling up the steps some ancient brother. Here for a final visit. Then they walked out of the front door, five or six of them. I said, 'Fellows, this is Watts Gunn, class of 1928.' One of them said, 'Welcome back, Mr. Gunn,' then they swept us inside. In the living room Watts watched as others came through side doors and from down the staircase. At least 20 young men gathered in a semicircle in front of Watts, then a fellow who I assumed was the president came forward. It was as if they had rehearsed this moment. I was struck by their instant formality, but they were smiling. The fellow introduced himself, then I introduced Watts again. 'Gentlemen, this is Watts Gunn. Chi Phi. Class of 1928. Commerce. Watts was Bob Jones' protégé.'

The fellow in front of Watts said, 'We know.' And Watts Gunn cried again. His tears welled to the size of golf balls, then rolled down his cheeks.

Birth of your children? First time you broke 80? That time you avoided a car accident that would have killed you? Top-10 life moments? Make that February afternoon at the chee fee house a Top-3.

He fell at his house on West Conway, where he and Jane lived since 1950. You could see only part of it from the street. It was tucked back in there under enormous pine trees. Watts' face hit the hardwood floor by the front door. Nothing cushioned his fall. That horrible moment began the quick decline. The nurse, Elizabeth, who spent the day, seven days a week, with Jane and Watts, went into action. She was surprised it hadn't happened sooner. She called the fire station just half a mile up West Conway. The firemen and the paramedic had been to 610 many times before. They took Watts to Piedmont Hospital. A day later he came back.

I don't know why, but he came back, and was propped up in the bed where I tucked him in a few times over those years. He was back but he was not good. He drifted in and out. He wasn't comfortable. He couldn't speak. His lips and nose were swollen. Elizabeth had had enough and got him back in the hospital again and I went to see him. Better, but the end was near. I phoned the house from the hospital room and had him speak to Jane. 'Dear,' he said, 'I love you so much I can't tell you.'

When he died five days later, at 89, he was the oldest living U.S. Walker Cup team member. In his day, he was one of the world's finest amateurs. His golf records and his friendship with Bob Jones always intrigued me and his friends-it surrounded him, really-but Watts was humble until the end. During our friendship, he never uttered a word about his accomplishments unless he was asked-and I asked him a lot. He always chose to talk about his old golf pals, over and over: Jones, Francis Ouimet, Jess Sweetser, Roland Mackenzie, and his friend and chronicler of all great Georgia amateurs, O. B. Keeler.

Watts is buried in Macon at the old Riverside cemetery. For all that he did, his small granite marker is plain: name, birth, death. Watts is there by his mother and father and six other Gunns. Jane passed away seven years later. Jane Forrester Gunn, the Sewickley, Pennsylvania beauty. There too. In her own way she was just as much fun as Watts. At the time of his death, they had been married for 57 years. They had no children. Every once in a while they'd both get that look in their eye and admit they tried like hell. Those two. Incredible fun. And from time to time I remember an odd bit about Watts: he had no middle name.

After a hurricane passed through the Southeast, I went to visit Watts and Jane. It was a sunny, fall-like day in summer. Vivid blue sky and puffy white clouds. After a moment gazing at their markers, I wondered what makes you turn away for a moment. I guess to gather yourself. Too many memories at once. Odd thoughts. Guilt at not having done as much as you could. I turned away and gazed at an ancient magnolia tree a few yards away. A flock of starlings dove into the canopy from the left, and the clouds above were whipping along from the right. At that moment I knew there were no answers to any of this. Just keep remembering Watts and Jane. That's easy. So easy it's natural now. But it hurts.

In my work I entertain people on the golf course. Men bond out there and no matter what they shoot, they carry good feelings into the men's grill. Before we clink our glasses together, I always offer up a toast, a toast handed down to Watts Gunn by O.B. Keeler. The toast was Watts' favorite. 'Here's to Hell,' I say. Clink…clink…clink. 'May the stay there be as pleasant as the way there.' I always have to repeat it. Always laughter after the second act. Unasked, I tell my guests that the toast was the favorite of the great old Georgia amateur, Watts Gunn. It never fails: one of them will swallow, squint, then ask, 'Who's that?'

Todd Sentell is an award winning golf writer and Director of Sales and Marketing for The Golf Club of Georgia.

Reprinted with permission by Golf Georgia.

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