Donald Ross Cherry
Born: Wichita Falls
Residence: Las Vegas, NV
I’m proudest of being selected to the Walker Cup. All the rest of the stuff I did, I screwed up.

A tweedy Scotsman pulls two shillings out of his pocket and buys an official programme for the 1955 Walker Cup match at The Old Course at St. Andrews, Scotland. Who to watch? The man opens the booklet to see who the Yanks have brought this year. Playing for the U.S. in the first foursomes (alternate shot) match, he sees, will be Mr. E. Harvie Ward of Tarboro, North Carolina, and Mr. Don Cherry of Wichita Falls, Texas. Cherry, the man reads, “[is] a professional singer of popular songs, has made many gramophone records and he appears on radio and television networks and at theatres and night clubs throughout America.” I say, the Scotsman says to himself, didn’t I hear Don Cherry on the radio this morning? He’s the bloke who sings “Band of Gold.” The man decides to join the throng watching Cherry.

He sees a thrilling match. Joe Carr and Ronnie White of Great Britain take a one-up lead after Cherry misses a short putt on the fifteenth, the thirty-third hole of the thirty-six hole match. Then Cherry drives into the left nostril of the Principal’s Nose, the infamous set of steep-sided fairway bunkers on the sixteenth hole. Ward wades into the pit, thrashes at the ball, then climbs back out. The ball remains. Cherry repeats the procedure and barely manages to move the ball out of the hazard. Ward’s subsequent shot to the green is not a good one; the Americans lie four, seventy-five feet from the hole. The Brits lie two, about thirty feet closer.
“Where you gonna play it?” Ward asks his partner.

Cherry gives Ward a look. “I’m just gonna hit it,” he says, and does. The ball goes in; the crowd roars. The unnerved British team three-putts to halve the hole.

The Americans birdie the seventeenth, the Road Hole, one of the toughest holes in golf, and the match is even. The British side three-putts again on the eighteenth and final green, to give Ward and Cherry an unlikely, unforgettable win.

The next day the two teams line up on the steps of the massive stone clubhouse of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club for the closing ceremony. Lord Brabazon, concluding his remarks to the crowd of ten thousand, says “At last we have a golfer who can sing.” There is hearty laughter at Brabazon’s reference to Bing Crosby, who had played in the British Amateur at St. Andrews the year before. “Mr. Don Cherry,” his lordship says, “would you honor us with a song?”

Cherry remembers the moment vividly. “The wind stopped. There was utter silence. I did ‘I Believe’. They gave me the biggest ovation of my life.”

There is an interesting complexity to Don Cherry that goes beyond his success in the disparate fields of golf and singing. He is a family man but has been married—and divorced—four times. His closest friends—Dean Martin, Phil Harris, Jimmy Demaret, Bobby Layne, Mickey Mantle—were all noted imbibers, but Cherry has never smoked or drank. He is a self-described introvert, yet has made his living on the stage. And despite his Las Vegas cool/West Texas friendly personality, (Cherry had a temper on the golf course that was devastating.

“I actually took the game of golf and got the minimum out of the maximum,” Cherry says. “I could have really done something with golf. I did the same thing with singing.”

Cherry is given to such introspective comments lately because he is working on a book, the story of his life. He’s made hours of tapes, recalling, for example, his marriages (the first was to Miss America of 1956; the second lasted less than a day; the third was to Miss Nevada of 1967) and the times Demaret led groups of nightclubbing golf pros in organized disruption of his performance.

Cherry has asked his friends for contributions to the book. Jack Nicklaus sent a witty one-page letter. Amold Palmer sent a paragraph. Darrell Royal’s contribution seems brutally honest; Jack Burke’s missive is enigmatic; and Larry Gatlin’s and Mickey Mantle’s notes are funny.

The best guest writer is Willie Nelson, with whom Cherry is recording an album. Nelson’s R-rated letter includes a possible song lyric (“It was only an old Titleist 2/But it did what it was intended to do... “) and concludes “P.S. And he can sing and he can play golf. What else is there?”

Don Cherry won “about eighty” amateur tournaments, including the 1953 Canadian Amateur and played on two Walker Cup teams. He finished ninth in the 1960 U.S. Open. Cherry played the tour from 1952 (he turned pro in 1962) until 1978.