George Archer: Straight as an Arrow

George Archer is 6-feet-5, maybe taller, but he does not stand out in a crowd. Never has, never will. It’s just not his style.

The defending champion of the First American Classic has won a lot of tournaments in his career, none perhaps bigger than his victory in Augusta at the Masters in 1969.

Already back then, he knew that he came up short in the glamour department.

“People tell me to grin more,” he said at the time. “Smile at the TV cameras, show some emotion, wear flashier clothes. But I can’t do it. It’s just not my style.”

Time Magazine once described his style as “calm verging on coma.” So cool, he seemed almost frozen. “He never blows up over a bad shot. He never celebrates a birdie,” wrote Time. “He does not smoke, drink, or swear. Before a match, he is often in bed by 9:30 p.m.”

Once, when an onlooker cried, “Nice shot, honey!” he muttered, “Thanks lady,” totally unaware that it was his wife Donna. “Maybe,” said Archer, “I should take acting lessons.”

Archer has what can only be described as an unflappable temperament. He plays the kind of steady, conservative golf that wins few fans, but wins tournaments. He credits his demeanor to his days as a youngster caddying at public courses around San Francisco.

“I was fortunate to be around some very good competitors when I was young,” said Archer, “and I saw the way you should try to conduct yourself on the golf course.”

Archer spent a lot of time at the Peninsular Golf Club in San Mateo, California, where he caddied for Harvie Ward when Harvie was the best amateur in the country. “He influenced me more in terms of falling in love with golf than anybody else,” Archer said.

Occasionally, he carried the bag of the club pro, Bud Ward, who like Harvie had won the U.S. Amateur title twice. “A lot of great players came to the club, guys like Byron Nelson, so I saw some of the very best golfers in the world play when I was young,” Archer recalled.

The lessons Archer learned involved more than how to hit the ball long or how to stroke a putt. “I learned that when you got mad, you’d lose more strokes,” he said. “If you hit a bad shot, it’s just a bad shot. You don’t live and die on every shot. You learn to take it all in stride.”

The long stride of Archer has been a familiar fixture on the Senior PGA Tour in recent years. He finished among the top four on the money list in 1993 for the fourth straight year. Archer has won roughly $4 million since joining the gray hair circuit in 1989.

Golf, however, is not his only passion. When not on the links, Archer might be found quail hunting in Texas or more likely fishing somewhere around the globe. During the week leading up to this past Memorial Day, he was casting his luck for tarpon in Florida. “I never really landed one officially, but I had some good fights,” he said. “It’s very difficult fly fishing for tarpon. They’re very tricky fish.”

Archer has had his share of aches and pains over the years. Recently, he has been fighting a sore hip, but during his career he has overcome hand, shoulder, and knee operations. At age 38, he had back surgery. He has steel rods in his back to show for it.

“My game has been a lot of things, mainly because of all the injuries,” he said. “After my back operation, I had to build a totally different swing. Some people said I had a better swing after the operation.”

One part of his play that has not changed is his putting. Archer is regarded as one of the game’s best.

“I did a lot of putting when I was younger,” explains Archer. “I’m not going to say that I’m a bad putter because bad putters don’t win tournaments. But I think my game is more than just putting. A few years ago, I won the contest for hitting the most greens and I was the best sand player two years in a row.”

While Archer is noted for a solid stroke, he readily admits that his putting success is due, at least in part, to his mental attitude. As he told Newsweek upon winning the Masters, “I believe if you think you can do something, do it.”

A firm believer in the power of positive thinking, Archer remembers attending an inspirational lecture by the famous Norman Vincent Peale. “The place was packed, but everybody seemed to have white hair,” he recalled. “I thought, this man shouldn’t be talking to people who are two minutes from the grave, he should be motivating kids in college.”

Archer maintains that belief must be matched by effort. “If you don’t believe and you don’t work hard, nothing’s going to happen,” he said. “Just having the belief is not enough. People go to Vegas and throw the dice, saying, ‘I believe it’s going to be a seven.’”

Life, as a whole, has been good to Archer, who had 27 tournament wins going into this year, including 15 victories on the Senior Tour. But it hasn’t gotten any easier, no matter how cool and collected he appears.

“I think we all have little pre-round jitters,” he said. “I’ve heard that actors even in their 80s throw up before opening night. There’s pressure for anyone who performs on a stage. We all have that vanity that we don’t want to make a fool out of ourselves.

“I’ve been fortunate that when I get to the closing performance, it’s usually easier. I get more nervous before the start, but once I get into the game, my thoughts and concentration take over.”

Archer showed his closing round skills last year at the First Of America Classic when he claimed the title on the third hole of a playoff with Jim Colbert and Chi Chi Rodriguez. His other 1993 tournament wins came at the Ameritech Senior Open, Raley’s Senior Gold Rush, and the PING Kaanapali Classic.

One thing that Archer has always had to face is his height. “When I bend my legs to get down there, I don’t look like a golfer. I look like a giraffe trying to play the game,” he quips.

He came to realize how awkward a tall man can look with a golf club when he was paired in a Philadelphia pro-am last year with Julius Erving, the 6-foot-7 basketball legend known as “Dr. J.”

“I watched him address the ball and try to swing the club,” Archer recalled. “I thought to myself, ‘This man has no chance. He’s too big to play this game.’ Then I stood next to him and I thought, ‘For god’s sake, I’m his size!’”

The ideal size for a golfer, Archer contends, is probably somewhere between 5-foot-7 and 5-foot-10. History backs him up. “I’d go to the Masters dinner,” he says, “and I’d look at guys like Sarazen, Palmer, Hogan, Snead, and Nelson, and they’re all the same damn height!”

Archer long ago came to the realization that there was not much he could do about his size. “I couldn’t go back and say, ‘Hey, make me shorter and cut four inches off my legs. I want bigger shoulders and a stronger chest. I want a Craig Stadler body!’”

And yet the fact will always be that Archer is much more comfortable being a giraffe than The Walrus. Just excuse the man if he shrinks from the spotlight. It’s just not his style.

Originally published in August 1994.