"A Hundred Grand Says You Miss The Putt!"

In the high-pressure world of golf hustlers, big money exchanges--and roguish rules--are par for the course

By Jack Sheehan

The match has see-sawed all day. "It's tighter than an inmate's butt cheeks on his first night in prison," says one of the dozen or so railbirds following along in his electric cart.

The year is 1988, the site is the Dunes Emerald Green Golf Course, and no one watching has the slightest inkling that in five years this golf course and the legendary hotel up front and its phallic neon sign will be turned to dust by a mythical cannonball fired by a modern-day Walt Disney who plans to put a billion-dollar Italian villa and dancing waters on this very spot. Fancy spas and horticulture gardens and celebrity chefs and Picasso paintings will one day occupy this space.

But right now the only thing that matters is the 17th hole, a 224-yard par-3 from an elevated tee and a 15-mile-an-hour breeze from the east.

All eyes are on a Las Vegas gambling legend we'll call Freddie, wondering what kind of long-iron miracle he can construct and whether he can keep his nerves intact for the last two holes of a match that has never seen either player more than one hole ahead. In fact, 12 of the 16 holes have been tied in this $25,000 Nassau bet, and with a back-nine press on the line, whichever golfer can keep his stomach down for the next 30 minutes will walk with a cool hundred grand. Freddie goes with a one-iron, a club Lee Trevino once said even God couldn't hit.

Freddie hits the shot a little skinny, "thin to win," he'll later say, and the ball lands a full 30 yards short of the green but scampers like a lost puppy to its master, stopping just eight feet from the flag.

"Style, I give it a three," says another railbird. "But results, it's a f---in' 10!"

Freddie's competition, a lanky, hipless fellow from San Diego we'll call Brad, whose slacks keep sliding down his rear, shakes his head in disgust. What a time to get lucky.

Brad chooses a four-wood and hits a high cut shot that leaves a good first impression. But he hasn't played enough margin for the wind, and his ball drifts into a front-right bunker. With Freddie in there tight, Brad is forced to get aggressive with his sand shot. The result is a blade job that scoots over the green.

Freddie safely lags his eight-foot putt to within inches--there's no bonus for birdies--and his par gives him a one-up lead going to the final hole.

I'm among the small gallery this day, and am probably the only one on the property without significant action on the outcome. I've been allowed access because I've played several rounds with Freddie, and he's eager to show me what it takes to be a big-time hustler. My palms are clammy because these guys are playing one hole of golf for what I make in two years at the keyboard. But both seem eerily calm. This isn't the first rodeo for either.

The 18th at the Dunes is a slight dogleg par-four with out-of-bounds left and an acre of water right. Freddie has the honor, but before addressing the ball he takes three practice swings, two more than normal. This is usually a clear sign of nerves and uncertainty, but his shot reflects no indecision. It comes off hard and low and directly at the water, then hooks perfectly back to the middle of the fairway. My cartmate, Hughie, applauds vigorously and calls out Freddie's name. Hughie has 10 large smack on Freddie's nose.

Brad responds with a monumental drive, 30 yards past Freddie's, to put the heat back on his opponent.

With 145 yards to the pin, Freddie is torn between the eight and nine-iron. "When it's full pucker time, he'll go with the shorter club and bust it," Hughie whispers.

And that's exactly what he does. Freddie's nine-iron explodes off the club face, hangs for an eternity in the sky, then drops like a butterfly with sore feet a yard from the hole. It's an incredible shot under the pressure.

Brad is so rattled he chubs a wedge shot that doesn't even reach the front of the green. Minutes later they shake hands, and the lanky loser removes from his golf bag several stacks of hundred dollar bills, wrapped in industrial-strength rubber bands, and hands them over.

For Freddie and his merry band of Las Vegas golf hustlers, payday is often just a putt away.

Las Vegas has a long tradition of hosting the biggest money golf action in the world. In 1953, Wilbur Clark and the boys at the Desert Inn put up 10,000 silver dollars for the winner of the Tournament of Champions. The story goes that Al Besselink, the first recipient of this booty, lost it all in the casino before the sun set. Thirty years later, hotel and gaming executives, in concert with touring professional Jim Colbert and PGA Tour officials, came up with the Las Vegas Pro-Celebrity Classic, which offered a $1 million kitty and instantly became the richest stop on the circuit.

That tournament is now called the Invensys Classic at Las Vegas, and it boasts the heftiest purse in golf ($4.25 million) among the regular, non-major stops on the Tour. Last October, Billy Andrade, in danger of losing his professional playing privileges because of his low ranking on the money list, took home first prize of $765,000 and reawakened a slumbering career. Zero to hero in five days.

But if you want to talk about some real money changing hands on the golf course in Vegas, you have to peek behind the television towers and the leaderboards, back where IRS agents, manufacturers' reps, and sportswriters are forbidden. You must venture to the land of the looping swing, the steel nerves and the sharp pencil. Far removed from the public eye, in the crooked shadows of the Joshua trees, where the cicadas scream their mating song from the branches of oleanders. That's where they play for money that'll stop your heart.

The Professional Gamblers Invitational (PGI) was one tournament that developed its own mythology and, believe me, Tiger and Jack and Arnie would not have been inclined to tee it up with those boys, most of whom can go toe to toe with the likes of our friend Freddie. As Doyle "Dolly" Brunson, a two-time winner of the World Series of Poker and founding father of the PGI, says, "The pros on Tour certainly know about pressure, but it's a different kinda stress. They're always playing for somebody's else's money. See, when David Duval hits a putt for a hunnerd-and-fitty thousand, he don't have to reach into his Dockers and come up with the cash if he misses it. We do."

Amarillo Slim, who has witnessed many PGI events, says the gamblers' tournament challenged a golfer's level of moxie. "Some guys roar like a forest fire in their hometown," he says, "but when they come to Vegas and put up the big money, so much dog comes out in 'em they could catch every possum in Louisiana."

The tournament director of the PGI for years was Jack Binion, part owner of Binion's Horseshoe Casino, but probably better known in these tabloid times as the older brother of the late Ted Binion, celebrated murder victim. Back when he was running the Horseshoe, Jack Binion--in the tradition of his father, Benny--prided himself on accepting any bet. (Jack once approved a gambler's request to make one roll of the dice at the craps table for a million dollars. The house won. A couple of months later, the losing gambler committed suicide, although Binion swears it had more to do with a busted love affair than the lost wager.)

The PGI started in 1974 as a way for Binion and Brunson to keep their poker friends in town for the summer, after the World Series ends in June and before they all have to return to their home turf to crunch the numbers for the upcoming football season. The tournament field typically consisted of 64 golfers, all professional gamblers, who were paired and handicapped by Binion. The format was match play, and the minimum bet was a $500 Nassau. Another $100 per player was put up for "carts and cocktails." (For those uninitated in golf-huslter lingo, a Nassau is actually three bets that encompass the front nine, the back nine and the overall 18-hole match. Thus, a $500 Nassau is actually a $1,500 wager.)

But, as Binion said in an interview a few years ago, "The base fee in this little gathering is just spare change, stuff to mark your ball with. We're not interested in some guy who comes to us and says, 'I've saved up $1,600 and want to play in your tournament.' We want guys who like to juice it a little. It's not uncommon to see a guy drop a hundred grand in a match."

So how did Binion handicap the matches, knowing that the national debt of Upper Volta could be on the line? "Most of the fellas were regulars, so we knew what they could do," he said. "But with a new player, we checked him out pretty good. If he bluffed us once--said he had a 12-handicap and ended up scarin' the life out of even par--we'd adjust and make it tough on him from then on. It's hard to be a bandit in this league. The whole group ought to be wearin' masks."

You could never find a lot of USGA rule books floating around the PGI. According to Binion, "common sense" is the best guide to settling gambling disputes. "The 14-club rule is ridiculous," Binion said, "so we let 'em take as many weapons as they wanted. And the stupidest rule ever is that a guy can't putt between his legs. We allowed almost any style of putting. One time a guy got down and used the grip end of his putter as a cue stick. As I recall, we outlawed that. We don't really care how a guy does it as long as it vaguely resembles a golf stroke."

Unlike at PGA Tour events, you would never find officials sporting armbands and two-way radios at a PGI match. And players need not bother inquiring about a free drop, no matter where their ball came to rest. "We always played it where it lay," Binion said. "Even cart paths and sprinklers and outhouses. Made for some fun shots."

In the PGI, and other big games around Vegas, grease is usually allowed on the club face. A little slippery elm or K-Y Jelly or Vaseline--one player even pinched a jar of marmalade out of the grill room--can go a long way toward straightening out a nasty hook or a runaway slice. Grease also increases distance off the tee as filled grooves diminish backspin on a ball, thereby increasing carry and roll.

The grease rule can inspire some lively post-round conversation. "On 14 I had about 167 into a zephyr with a furry lie," said one participant spread over a corner booth at the bar of Las Vegas Country Club. "I'm thinking I'll hit a dry six-iron and try to keep 'er low. Then the wind stops, so I decide to hit a moist eight and let that puppy hunt. Course I hit it fat. Took me 10 minutes to scrape the mud off."

Binion said the most he ever saw lost in a PGI match was $312,000 in 18 holes. "The guy who dumped it couldn't break 90," he said. "But then, the guy who won the money couldn't either."

No one ever kept statistics at the PGI, and even if they did you couldn't trust them. In deference to the tax man, five out of six players would tell you they lost their shirt. Those who won big tucked the rolled hundreds into the umbrella pocket of their golf bag and walked quietly into the sunset. The losers usually hung around the bar complaining to Binion that they needed more strokes.

While the PGI hasn't been contested for the last few years, due primarily to Binion family disputes and tragedies and Jack's diminished ownership in the Horseshoe, less official gatherings still take place regularly, with the usual suspects more than willing to bet the cost of an average new home on the outcome.

So how are these matches handicapped? It depends whom you ask.

Puggy Pearson, a 1973 World Series of Poker winner and former scratch golfer, says, "It all comes down to this. A gambler is a guy who's looking for the 60-40 end of a proposition. He feels things out cheap and then talks it out until he thinks he's got the best of it. I've won 90 percent of my bets on the first tee."

Falling into the 10 percent category was a match Puggy played against a young "flat-belly" several years ago at Las Vegas Country Club. "None of us had ever seen the kid before," he recalls. "We watched him warm up and he had a big, long swing and smooth putting stroke, but we figured he'd get a wrinkle in it if the stakes were high enough. We settled on a $5,000 Nassau and he gave me one stroke a side. The boy had 11 birdies and shot a course-record 61.

"Now Dolly was watching us, and he decided to take the guy for a partner and go steal some money at the Desert Inn course. Wouldn't you know the kid ends up tankin' Dolly? They dumped about 30 grand, and there's no question the kid got cut in for half the action on the other side."

Not surprisingly, that young stud hasn't been seen around Vegas in years. If he should someday surface on the PGA Tour, he'd better have a bodyguard. The boys here never forget a face, or a golf swing.

I wondered, how does Puggy define "talent"? He thinks for a minute, then removes a graphite cigar--extra-stiff shaft--from a face that looks like it got French-kissed by an earthmover. "Talent is a young redhead, about 20, wearin' high heels and a halter top," he says.

I try again. How about his definition of pressure? "Oh, maybe having 12 kids and no job," he says. "I don't feel pressure with either golf or poker, because I know the worst that can happen is that I'll go broke, and I've been broke a jillion times anyway. When a top player goes broke, he just goes back to the smaller games where the pickin' is easy and works his way up to a good bankroll again."

There's little debate over the identity of the biggest pigeon ever plucked on the green fairways of Las Vegas golf courses: casino owner Jay Sarno. It's been said that no one cried harder at Sarno's 1984 funeral than his regular foursome. One of the pluckers was even forced back to common labor once he was deprived of his reliable Sarno stipend. The stories about ways in which the colorful developer of Caesars Palace and Circus Circus was kept on the hook by his golfing buddies are legion. Here's a classic:

Once, when Sarno was convinced one of his opponents cheated him, he confronted the miscreant with his suspicions. "I know you moved your ball from behind that tree," Sarno alleged.

"But Jay, how can you say that?" the opponent responded, his face longer than a basset hound's. "You know I'd never cheat you."

"Then take a polygraph test," Sarno said. "With an examiner of my choice."

When the suspected cheater passed the test with flying colors, Sarno apologized profusely and gave him a big hug. "I'm ashamed that I would think such a thing about you," he said. "You're my best friend."

Of course, what Jay didn't know was that his "best friend" had slipped the polygrapher $5,000 to give him a passing grade.

It's also a fact that greenskeepers and sprinkler-changers at the Las Vegas Country Club were known to pick up a couple hundred dollars from time to time by kicking Sarno's ball behind trees on blind holes, or even changing the pin location on the green once Jay's drive had been hit to ensure that he had the most difficult angle to the pin. This was done via walkie-talkies held by observers watching from the tee or along the fairway, all of whom had placed wagers on the hustlers.

And there were other tricks as well: magnetic ball markers that could subtly be lifted by the sole of a putter and moved closer to the hole, souped-up British golf balls marked with the Titleist logo to look legit, the hiring of a stacked woman to bend over in a low-cut blouse when Sarno was lining up a putt. Nearly every trick in the book was used on poor Jay.

But at least one long-time hustler says Sarno was nobody's fool. "I believe Jay knew what they were doing to him," he says. "And even though they fleeced him for probably a couple million dollars over the years, they didn't come close to bustin' him. The thing was, Sarno loved to play golf, and these were his companions, and I think he was afraid that if he protested too much they wouldn't play with him any more. Brilliant as he was, he was kind of an isolated and lonely guy. As long as they let him win one time out of 10, I don't think he really cared that they were robbing him the other nine times."

"Ninety-nine point nine percent of the fresh meat that comes to town looking to get rich on the links goes home barbecued," says Freddie, who is generally considered to be the best money player in town, if not on the planet. "Every so often a new face will show up in the poker rooms, telling people he can play a little and would like a game and the word spreads like wildfire," Freddie says. "But the regulars aren't going to jump into anything big with a stranger right away. They'll play with him a few times for tiny stakes, like a dime [thousand-dollar] Nassau, to see what he's got, where he's strong and where's he's weak."

From there it's a matter of the hustler finding the pigeon's choke point--the sum of money that is high enough to take the pigeon's mind away from the mechanics of his golf swing and onto the consequences of his losing every bet. That number might be $100, or it might be $100,000.

"I've always been a great putter," says Freddie, with absolute conviction, "but just a run-of-the-mill ball striker. But because every hole finishes with a putt, I feel like I'm always going to prevail in the end. And I want to get my opponent thinking I'm going to drain every putt I look at, because that turns the heat up on him. If I can get him really watching my game, then I know I'm blurring his focus on his own ... and then I got him by the short-hairs."

When asked about cheating, another hustler we'll call Robby says it's no different than in marriage. "Cheating doesn't cause a lot of aggravation with a man until his wife catches him," he says. "Then the shit hits the fan. Same thing in our games. You might try it, but you sure as hell better get away with it or you're history."

Exactly what does "history" mean?

"Nowadays it just means you'll never be able to get another game here because everyone will hear about it," Robby says. "But in the '60s and '70s the consequences were much worse. One guy who nudged a ball in bounds with his foot on the last hole at the Dunes course was never seen again after that match. I'm guessing he's buried in a sand trap somewhere, maybe right next to Jimmy Hoffa. To steal a line from Goodfellas, 'That man is history, and he's in the process of becoming geography.'"

Most of the gambling golfers say the number of hustlers thriving in Las Vegas has diminished since the late '70s and early '80s. "The corporate takeover of the hotels has had an impact," Freddie says. "There aren't as many colorful characters and renegades as there once were. And the breakup of the Binion family has taken a toll as well. I'd guess there are no more than 12 guys making a handsome living on the golf course today, whereas 15 years ago there were about 50."

But that doesn't mean that the action has totally dried up. Longtime Las Vegas golf professional and lounge singer Don Cherry, who achieved national notoriety in both fields and was a five-star hustler himself until a few years ago, says the welcome mat is still out.

"Every few years, a ripe one rolls into town," he says. "A guy with lots of cash who thinks he can play a little. Word spreads mighty quick and everybody can smell the action. Travel agents all over the country start booking flights into Las Vegas. Sometimes, the pigeon stays for a couple of days, sometimes a couple of months. It all comes down to how flush he is, and how long his money holds out.

"I'll tell you this," Cherry adds, with a wide grin. "The man will never have trouble finding a game in this town."