Golf: Making the turn – Cajun Classic and the Dark Days of the Kennedy Assassination

Dan McDonald, Daily Advertiser, Nov. 20, 2013

Most golfers and local sports fans don’t realize the impact that the old Cajun Classic had on the local golf scene, and for one year grabbed the public’s attention in the aftermath of one of the darkest days in U.S. history.

The tournament at Oakbourne was the PGA Tour’s final stop for several years during its 11-year run from 1958-68, and memorably hosted a back-and-forth battle between Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus for the Tour’s money title in 1964 – one Nicklaus eventually won by the sum of $81.13.

But it was one year earlier that the Cajun Classic was an unwitting part of an American tragedy, when the PGA Tour pros took the Oakbourne course on a sunny but breezy Nov. 22, 1963.

Many of the players were in the middle of their rounds just before 1 p.m. when word began filtering around the course of the shooting of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza. Nicklaus himself was walking from the tee to the green on Oakbourne’s challenging par-three ninth hole when he was told of the shooting.

“I remember exactly where I was,” Nicklaus said in an interview many years later when asked about the assassination. “I was in Lafayette, Louisiana, playing in the Cajun Classic.”

Suddenly, sports across the U.S. was pushed to the back burner, much like in more recent times in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The Cajun Classic was suspended for a day on Saturday, and completed in a 36-hole round on Sunday.

“In these days, we might not even have completed it,” said Bob Bass, the long-time Cajun coach who was working as the pro at Acadian Hills at the time. “It would have been like 9/11, when we basically cancelled living for a while.”

Until the 9/11 attacks, the Saturday suspension of the 1963 Cajun Classic was the last time a PGA Tour event was suspended or cancelled for anything except weather problems. Its importance and ranking on the U.S. sports scene at the time becomes apparent from an internationally-distributed UPI excerpt when the Cajun Classic’s suspension is listed in the third paragraph, just below the two then-competing professional football leagues:

“(UPI, Nov. 23) Several professional sports events scheduled for Saturday and Sunday were postponed because of President Kennedy’s death, although the National Football League will go through with its entire seven-game program.

“The American Football League announced Friday night that its entire Sunday schedule would be postponed and there were games called off in certain cities of the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League.

“The Cajun Golf Classic being played at Lafayette, La., postponed the scheduled third round Saturday and will wind up the tournament with two rounds on Sunday.”

Rex Baxter was the winner of that year’s event, but he expressed the sentiment of the entire field. “We played unnoticed today,” he said after Sunday’s final 36 holes when he joined an impressive list of Cajun Classic winners – Billy Casper, Doug Sanders, Miller Barber, Jacky Cupit and Lafayette’s own brother tandem of Jay and Lionel Hebert.

Prominent local golfer Ben Freeman remembered a somber event in 1963 in a later Daily Advertiser story that compared the then-$35,000 purse with the huge purses available today on the PGA Tour.

“All of those players still remember they were at Oakbourne when they heard that news,” Freeman said.

Oakbourne pro Cliff Wagner worked on a history of the course more than a decade ago, and found a large number of local players and members who were either involved or attending the tournament that year. Some had vivid memories of how the news spread around the course, and the reaction of those who were out watching the pros in action.

“You have to remember that Lafayette was a lot smaller in those days,” said Bass. “You didn’t have a diverse group politically, but people here were extremely patriotic, and the idea of a President being assassinated was shocking to say the least. Plus, the community being heavily Catholic, it struck a lot of people because he (Kennedy) was a staunch Catholic.”

Bass was a 23-year-old pro at Acadian Hills at the time, and was taking care of pro-shop duties with plans to head over to Oakbourne to watch the action that afternoon. Those plans changed when the television bulletins began.

“I vividly remember I had just been doing some set-up in the shop, and I never got out there,” he said. “After that first announcement, we were all hanging on the newscasts.”

One year later, the Cajun Classic had its heyday with the Palmer-Nicklaus money battle, one featured in a lengthy Sports Illustrated story at the time. Ian O’Connor’s brilliant book “Arnie and Jack: Palmer, Nicklaus and Golf’s Greatest Rivalry” had this excerpt, still mentioning the 1963 event:

“The Cajun Classic in Lafayette, Louisiana, the final event of the 1964 season, decided whether Palmer or Nicklaus would claim the money title; Arnold entered with $111,703 in winnings, Jack with $111,384.

The duel had this backwater event jumping, one year after the tournament shut down for a day in the wake of the Kennedy assassination. Nicklaus was in the ninth fairway in 1963 when he got word that the president had been shot, a bulletin leaving an eerie silence to sweep across the course like a midnight fog. The 1963 Cajun Classic ended on a thirty-six-hole day that nudged Nicklaus past the $100,000 mark, making him the only man not named Arnold Palmer to break the six figure barrier.”

The Cajun Classic continued until 1968 when Ron Cerrudo won the final title, but when it lost its spot as the year’s final event the field dwindled and the tournament eventually folded. A plaque near Oakbourne’s first tee still lists all 11 winners, including Baxter’s somber 1963 win.

“That year, the tournament became very much secondary,” Bass said.