If we’re being honest, enough folks in our area have made the August pilgrimage to soak in the ambiance and fun of the ponies so that Saratoga Springs, N.Y., ostensibly qualifies as a New England community.
That sentiment is fortified when you consider how many of us have journeyed in that direction to Lake Placid for youth hockey or to Cooperstown to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame or relish in a week of Little League baseball at Dreams Park.
We’re talking a large swath of pure Americana love about that region of our country. Which partly explains how it is that New England came to embrace Dottie Pepper so warmly. OK, in the early years she was “Dorothy” and if you’re going to do archive research you best know that, but the point is, Pepper was a young and talented golfer who followed sound advice that “if you can drive, you can play.”
So, drive she did. To New England Junior Amateur tournaments all over, including Stratton Mountain in Vermont, and to USGA qualifiers wherever they were set up from Saratoga Springs to New Jersey.
Having won all that was to be won at the local and regional area, Dottie Pepper concedes that she was “champing at the bit to take my game to bigger competitions locally, in the state and beyond.”
Dottie Pepper went through years of letters to produce this labor of love.
|
Enter the man behind the advice that guided Pepper in those formative years and whose mentorship has stayed with her so distinctly that she has written a book about him. “Letters to a Future Champion: My Time with Mr. Pulver” is Pepper’s superb tribute to the late golf professional, George Pulver Sr., who seemingly defined humility and dignity.
The man had a passion for golf and a priceless ability to gift his knowledge to others. Pepper was about 6 or 7 when she first met Pulver at a course he designed, Brookhaven Golf Club. She had been playing the game for a few years, having been introduced to it at a nine-hole pitch-and-putt and driving range facility that her father, Don Pepper, built.
There, she hit golf balls “till my hands bled," and there, she developed a talent that Pulver spotted and nurtured.
As her skill set improved, Pepper thirsted for a wider net of competition. Pulver encouraged it but stressed the importance of “finding wins near home” before straying far away, and Pepper followed his words of wisdom. Her junior and amateur tournaments were mostly ones to which she could drive.
The fact that Pepper got to stand on a couple of big golf stages in the Boston area went a long way toward making her feel like she was among friends. As an 18-year-old, Pepper was low amateur at the 1984 U.S. Women’s Open at Salem CC and a few in the gallery made it their mission to adopt her.
So loyal were these fans that they showed up the next spring at New Seabury to cheer on Pepper (she finished second) and the Furman women’s golf team at the NCAA Women’s Championship. “They’ve started a Dottie Pepper Fan Club,” said Pepper to Boston Globe reporter Jackie MacMullan.
Five years into her LPGA career, Pepper won the 1992 Welch’s Classic at Blue Hill CC. It was the fifth of her 17 LPGA wins and one of four victories in a season that included a major title and Player of the Year honors.
In 1992, Pepper, then 27, won the Friendly’s Classic at Crestview CC in Agawam. Everything pointed toward a WD that week – she was sick and couldn’t generate any energy – until she discovered that her aunt had driven three hours from Saratoga Springs.
“You have to play hurt, you have to play sick,” Pepper said that day. “You don’t wake up feeling perfect every day.”
True enough. But here’s something you can count on – reading this book and feeling perfectly warm and inspired. Cheers to Pepper for her loyalty to Pulver’s guidance, for her dignity to his rich legacy. Cheers to Pulver for giving endless time to a young golfer, to upholding the honors and traditions of golf.
Cheers to both of them for putting pen to paper (or fingers to typewriter keys) and leaving such a flavorful reminder that as we all have a responsibility to leave the game better than we found it, mentors and teachers are integral.
During the summer lockdown of 2020, with her CBS job on hiatus while the PGA Tour rested, Pepper looked at all the letters she and Pulver had exchanged over the years.
It is a veritable treasure chest of wisdom, simple convictions, and life lessons. Pulver, who was born in 1898 and served in Belgium and France during WW I, became a golf professional in 1924, observed his 50th year in the business in 1972, and was still mentoring Pepper when he died at 87 in 1986.
“He always told me it’s not the wins and losses, but rather the manner in which you search for excellence that remains to the very end,” Pepper writes in the book, which oozes with pride – not for the brilliant career she scripted, but for the relationship she was blessed to have had with Pulver.
Letter-writing, sadly, is a lost art, so Pepper should be commended for saving so many priceless relics. The notes are both typewritten and handwritten, and there are a multitude of gems. Two of my favorites:
Pulver, to Pepper: “In my humble view, your natural manner of attacking a golf ball is an excellent one and has already hardened into a very effective method.”
Later, Pulver was on target with what made Pepper so relentlessly good: “She does not shrink from sweat and toil.”
Often, Pulver would end his letter thusly: “With every good wish, George.”
Well, here’s our wish, George – that people purchase this book and discover through your letters (and Peppers’) that our golf can always get better and our character stronger.
