Thanks for the memories: Golf stars and moon shots on Hilton Head Island

You may call this confessions of a hooker.

Not my confessions, mind you, but we’ll get to that.

What I can say is that the galaxy of stars the RBC Heritage Presented by Boeing will bring to our little sand spit this week are not our first suitors.

Golf has star power around here beyond the 54th edition of our prized PGA Tour event to be played over the Harbour Town Golf Links in Sea Pines.

In fact, golf was so important to the early settlers of today’s version of Hilton Head that if you asked them where they lived, they wouldn’t say a street, they’d say, “We’re on the 16h hole.”

Which led to people traipsing around in the dark, looking for houses, bumping into trees, and scaring off raccoons by dousing them with whiskey sours.

Yes, the Heritage has brought them all to our doorsteps — Tiger, Arnie, Jack, Phil, Dustin, Rory, Ernie, Bubba, Zach, Justin, even the old ball coach Steve Spurrier.

But golf has brought many other stars here, as well. One of them saw our universe’s actual stars up close and personal.

These stars also have helped shape who we are.

Which brings us to that magical time that Bob Hope came to see us.

You may remember his book about the game he so loved, “Confessions of a Hooker.”

FOR CHARITY

The night I met Bob and Dolores Hope on Hilton Head remains a precious memory.

He was here to play in the Lee Elder Invitational Celebrity Pro-Am golf tournament at Shipyard.

His was a traveling show, but celebrity golf has deep roots here.

For 32 years, local volunteers staged the Hilton Head Island Celebrity Golf Tournament, raising $4 million for local children’s charities.

It raised to stardom some New York City firefighters and Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort veterans who had returned from duty in Iraq.

And it brought to the island’s tee boxes Johnny Bench and Curly Neal, Pat Boone, Bob Newhart and Cheech (and Chong) Marin, Branford Marsalis and James “Bonecrusher” Smith, Chris Farley and Lee Majors.

It also brought to our earthly hazards a quiet man with a golf stick in his hand named Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk on the moon.

Golf on Hilton Head is still seeking one giant leap for mankind. The Heritage Classic Foundation, which stages Hilton Head’s signature event, has used it to give $47.5 million to charities since 1987.

Bob Hope came to the island along with Calvin Peete and Johnny Mathis to help out Lee Elder, the man who broke the color barrier at The Masters.

But he also came because it was Hilton Head, and it was golf.

“When you’ve got five or six of the best golf courses in the country, you’ve got me,” Hope told me in 1985.

BOB HOPE

To hear Sports Illustrated tell it, Bob Hope did as much for golf as Arnie Palmer, who won our first Heritage in 1969.

“Hope was more than a progenitor of the pro-am, which he pioneered with Bing Crosby, his co-star in seven road movies,” Cameron Morfit wrote in Sports Illustrated when Hope died at age 100 in 2003.

“He also had a hand in many of the other defining moments in the game’s development over the last half century.

“Alan Shepard’s moon shot? Hope’s idea, as he liked to tell it. He had held on to his driver — Shepard called it Hope’s pacifier — throughout the taping of a TV show at NASA headquarters in 1970, giving the moon man the inspiration for his lunar six-iron.”

By always holding onto a golf club, Hope “spread the gospel of golf,” Morfit wrote, “whether he was entertaining the troops, playing with any of the six presidents with whom he teed it up, or hosting a Christmas special …”

On Hilton Head, the Lee Elder tournament featured a fashion show one night at the Cottages in Shipyard.

After the show, Bob Hope ambled to the stage before a small group, including Bill Russell, Ernie Banks and Joe Morgan. He used golf to make us laugh.

“You should try playing this game with Billy Graham,” he said. “He prays and I cheat.

“Of course, he cheats, too. How would you like to have it raining, but just on you?

“And then he says, ‘He who is without sin take the first ball.’ ”

He turned to his good friend Gen. William Westmoreland and said: “There’s a man who knows how to play golf. He puts the ball down on the green, snaps to attention and yells, ‘Fall in!’ ”

And he teed off on our 38th president, Gerald Ford.

“I love it when Gerry Ford comes to Palm Springs,” Hope said. “He has a black belt in golf. We have 73 courses and he doesn’t know which one he’s playing until he tees off.

“When we get up a foursome, it’s Gerry Ford, myself, a paramedic and a faith healer. I get a caddy who has my blood type.”

Then Dolores Hope came on stage and sang “It’s Wonderful” with her husband doing a soft-shoe on the fashion show runway.

“Dolores has been doing that for 50 years,” Hope said. “She’s great. She’s had great confidence in me as a lover and as a comedian. I just wish she’d remember when to stop laughing.”

We thank our lucky stars for the memories.

David Lauderdale may be reached at LauderdaleColumn@gmail.com.

This story was originally published April 10, 2022 at 1:00 AM.