Sunday, May 07, 2000
Racism kept Woods in shadow
Local golfer leaves behind huge legacy
Everyone but Ron Dumas will be wearing a suit Monday evening, when the world says goodbye to Jimmy Woods.
Dumas will eulogize his friend and mentor wearing slacks, a polo shirt, golf spikes and a baseball cap.
A plain white towel will hang from his shoulder, just like the towel he used to clean Jimmy Woods' clubs in the vitally important long-ago.
“I carried his bag on earth,” Dumas says. “I plan on carrying his bag in heaven, too, when I get there.”
Jimmy, who died last week at 80, is already up there, no doubt laying down monstrous bets while playing left-handed and whacking impossible shots from behind prodigious trees.
Those who saw him play swear he was one of the best who ever lived. Problem was, not enough people saw him.
A particular wound of racism is that it denies us the privilege of knowing better someone like Jimmy Woods. By the time we figure that out, it's too late. He's gone.
I met him four years ago, when he was being honored as a Cincinnati Legend of Golf.
A few decades too late, but honored nevertheless. He was at Hyde Park Country Club, of all places, showing the effects of 76 years, diabetes and emphysema. He played five holes of golf and decided the rest of the round was for younger men.
Jimmy grew up in a house behind the fourth green of a Nashville country club, where his father
worked. His first clubs were limbs his dad cut from trees.
Started playing left-handed
He played left-handed, until a pro told him he'd never be any good as a southpaw. He didn't have his own clubs until he bought a set from a Cincinnati pawn shop when he was 30. “Never had my own sticks,” he told me in '96. “Never had my own golf shoes, never had a place to play. But I could beat anybody that would play me.”
You could go to Avon Field right now and in five minutes collect
An incredible shot-maker
“I caddied for him for years there,” Dumas says. “I never saw him make a bogey at that hole. Unless he hit it in the fairway.”
That was Jimmy. He wasn't born living life down the middle. He wasn't allowed to play on the PGA Tour in his prime. Why play golf from tee to green? What's the challenge in that?
“Jimmy made shots other guys wouldn't even try,” Dumas says.
Jimmy's life is a book and a movie. Jimmy lived much too large for the space of this column. Says Dumas, who caddied for Jimmy 15 years, all over the country, “The things Tiger (Woods) is doing now, Jimmy would have done years before. Let's see Tiger play under par left-handed.”
Dumas recalls Jimmy at Sharon Woods one weekend in the early 70s, shooting a 69 right-handed and a 67 left-handed, the same day. At a course in Dayton the next day, he repeated the feat “for money like I'd never seen before,” Dumas says.
The world missed out on that. And this:
Advocated diversity
“We never talked about golf. We talked about people getting along. He wanted more minorities to play at Sharon Woods. He wondered why all golfers couldn't play together,” Dumas says.
They drove great distances in Jimmy's dark blue Oldsmobile 88, in which Jimmy helped raise Ron to be a man.
“Don't run with bad people, Ronny,” Jimmy might say. “Do the right thing. Never give up.”
Dumas listened. He's the assistant pro at Reeves Golf Course now. When he hits a bad shot, he smiles to himself. There will always be the next shot, the next day, is what Jimmy told him.
An appropriate measure of a man is not what he takes with him, but what he leaves behind.
Jimmy Woods lives on, at Avon Fields and Sharon Woods and in the memories of those who knew him.
Part of him stays with Ron Dumas.
“I can remember him walking up 18 at Sharon Woods,” Dumas is saying, “bending over and tired. "Ronny, give me the towel,' he'd say.”
Jimmy will be buried Tuesday in Spring Grove Cemetery. Along with a white towel, gift of Ron Dumas, who owed him so much more.
Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454.
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