Dick Groat was the type of dogged competitor who made ‘every swing count’ - a family trait

Before the 1966 Masters, Herbert Warren Wind, doyen of golf writers, visited Arnold Palmer’s home in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. In classic New Yorker magazine fashion, he forensically detailed the memorabilia decorating Palmer’s recently enlarged game room, a sprawling facility built a level below the rest of his house.

Aside from all the photographs, trophies, flags, and other “objets d’Arnie”, Wind’s eye was taken by a glass case containing a cherished baseball bat wielded by Dick Groat of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1960 World Series.

Palmer liked to tell a story about his unfortunate cameo in that particular campaign. During his beloved Pirates’ pennant race with the Milwaukee Braves, he popped into the locker-room before first pitch one day to wish Groat the best, then he played a bit part in his good friend subsequently getting his wrist fractured in the batter’s box.

“Just before Dick got hit by that pitch, he paused and looked over at me and some other friends from Pittsburgh,” said Palmer. “I guess you’d say he eye waved us. The next thing you know, Lew Burdette fired, Dick wasn’t ready to pick up the ball and I heard it hit bone. I was sick, just sick.”

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Groat recovered to contribute hugely in the Pirates winning the Series and, that winter, he and Palmer, who had just won the Masters, the US Open, and Golfer of the Year, finished tied in a vote for Pittsburgh’s outstanding sportsman of 1960. The stature he enjoyed.

The next month, the duo partnered in the Bing Crosby Pro-Am at Pebble Beach, a tournament that offered the short-stop a glimpse into the pressures his great pal endured in a very different sporting arena.

“That first hole was awful,” said Groat. “There was a big crowd following Arnie, of course, and I was never more nervous in my life. When I went to make my first putt, I froze. I couldn’t swing. Finally, I said to myself, ‘You can’t just stand here forever.’ So, I swung and, by a miracle, the ball rolled close enough for a tap-in.”

After his death at 92 last week, every obituary for Groat touched upon his humility and popularity. They also mentioned his baseball pedigree, two World Series wins, eight All-Star appearances, and one National League MVP, and the fact he was grand-uncle to Brooks Koepka, the controversial four-time Major winner who pocketed a reported $100 million to join the LIV Tour.

There was plenty more to his sporting resume. Like how, when the Big East tournament at Madison Square Garden was one of the pre-eminent fixtures in the NCAA calendar, Groat and his co-commentator Bill Hillgrove used to turn Rosie O’Grady’s on Seventh Avenue into the unofficial headquarters for travelling University of Pittsburgh fans.

In his own pomp, he had a record-setting college basketball career at Duke University that prompted the institution to retire his number 10 shirt and to hang it from the rafters in storied Cameron Indoor Stadium. His simultaneous exploits with the school baseball team had his hometown Pirates also on his trail and they threw him into the majors without even the traditional development stint in the minor leagues.

While taking his first tentative steps on the diamond, he was selected third in the 1952 NBA Draft by the Fort Wayne Pistons. Throughout the following winter, he commuted to Indiana to play shooting guard in the fledgling pro league while still trying to finish his studies in North Carolina.

“I never practised with them,” said Groat. “I was still trying to get those credits from Duke, and the Pistons would fly me from school to games in a private plane. I loved pro basketball. Basketball was always my first love, mainly because I played it best and it came easiest to me.”

His hoops career was interrupted by two years military service, at the end of which Branch Rickey, the Pirates’ general manager, made him choose between the two codes. He opted for baseball, the sport that had given him a signing bonus of $40,000 (half a million in today’s money).

Although a defensive powerhouse and solid hitter, it came harder to him than basketball and in interviews he regularly mentioned how he regarded it as work rather than play. Yet, he played 16 seasons in the majors, and, along the way, he and team-mate Jerry Lynch purchased an orchard farm and built Champion Lakes golf course in Bolivar, Pennsylvania, a place where he could still be found working until his death.

“Dick is the reason why, in my opinion, Brooks is playing golf,” said Bob Koepka, father of Brooks and Chase (another player on the LIV Tour), and Groat’s nephew. “I got my interest in golf by coming up and visiting and hanging out with Dick’s three daughters – Tracy, Carol Ann and Allison – for three weeks during the summertime. I fell in love with the game of golf at Champion Lakes and now it’s carried over to my two boys.”

When Brooks, quite the baseball player himself in his youth, made the cover of Sports Illustrated following his US Open win in 2017, he was following in his grand-uncle’s footsteps. Groat graced a May 1963 edition for his exploits with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Like every profile of him in that era, it describes him as the type of dogged competitor who made “every swing count”. Definitely a family trait.