For Howard Robard Hughes, golf was never just a walk in the park. He was 9 when he first held a club, a gift from Howard Sr., an oil wildcatter from Texas for whom golf was an entree into Houston's elite social circles. The family joined Houston Country Club, and young Howard became a fine player. One day, the ambitious boy scribbled his three life goals on the back of a haberdashery receipt:
Things I want to be:
The best golfer in the world
The best pilot
The most famous producer of moving pictures
For Hughes, each swing was a test, a chance to better his last. He routinely played hooky from school to try to beat his previous round--and to network with Texas politicians, judges and businessmen. They knew Howard Hughes only as the shy, gangly boy whose father struck it rich by patenting a granite-busting drill bit that became standard for oil wells around the world. Howard Sr. and his germ-conscious socialite wife Allene spoiled their only child, giving him a $5,000 monthly allowance--about $50,000 in today's dollars.
In 1922, when Hughes was 16, Allene died suddenly of a hemorrhage during minor surgery. Two years later, his father suffered a fatal heart attack during a business meeting, leaving their 18-year-old son the family heir. Howard's aunt, Annette, became his de facto guardian, and she expected her nephew to proceed with his plan to study business at Rice University. For the young Hughes, however, life was to be enjoyed, and that meant playing golf--all day, every day.
It was on the clipped fairways and greens of Houston Country Club where Hughes found emancipation from his family's control and set his singular and ultimately tragic adulthood into motion--courtesy of his golf buddy, Judge Walter Monteith. The judge found the squeaky-voiced youth charming and insightful. When Hughes petitioned a Houston court to claim the family's swelling fortune, Monteith wore the robe, and on December 24, 1924--his 19th birthday--Hughes was declared an adult "of full age." The pair celebrated with a quick nine on Christmas Day.
The orphaned millionaire soon turned to his most pressing priority: becoming a champion golfer. He exchanged his hickory-shafted clubs for new steel-shafted models popularized by A.G. Spalding Co. The hollow shafts had holes drilled in them to reduce the clubs' weight. When the Spaldings were swung, wind blew through the holes, hence the club's nickname: the Whistler. Hughes, already a long hitter, was now driving the ball up to 300 yards and could reach most par 5s in two, though eagles were rare: He was a mediocre putter. An inventor at heart, he tried welding pieces of different shafts together to create a 47-inch driver, an unheard-of length at the time. Hughes also experimented with golf balls, cutting them open to analyze their cores, convinced that a cork center would improve a ball's flight.
By 1926, Hughes had taken his new bride, 22-year-old debutante Ella Rice, to Los Angeles, where he could fly, play and break into pictures. Ella hated golf, hated the time her husband spent on it, hated that he would sneak away from their suites at the Ambassador Hotel to practice on Wilshire Country Club's greens.
For his part, Hughes hated the club's bentgrass greens, particularly the way they hardened and turned brown during L.A.'s arid summers. Even as he hired reigning U.S. Amateur champion George Von Elm to help his game, the millionaire began doing his own experiments with Bermuda grasses, convinced that irregular greens, not his stroke, caused his putting woes. Ella watched in horror as Hughes planted patches of grass along the Ambassador's fence line, protecting them with cheesecloth draped precariously from bamboo poles, in his quest to create the ultimate smooth grass surface.
Hughes practiced hour after hour, day after day. Though shy, he thought nothing of pushing his way into games with startled strangers. He often angered the Wilshire management by showing up without a tee time and demanding a caddie. He brought outsiders to the club, and when the brass protested, Hughes simply bought his guests memberships on the spot.
Things I want to be:
The best golfer in the world
The best pilot
The most famous producer of moving pictures
For Hughes, each swing was a test, a chance to better his last. He routinely played hooky from school to try to beat his previous round--and to network with Texas politicians, judges and businessmen. They knew Howard Hughes only as the shy, gangly boy whose father struck it rich by patenting a granite-busting drill bit that became standard for oil wells around the world. Howard Sr. and his germ-conscious socialite wife Allene spoiled their only child, giving him a $5,000 monthly allowance--about $50,000 in today's dollars.
In 1922, when Hughes was 16, Allene died suddenly of a hemorrhage during minor surgery. Two years later, his father suffered a fatal heart attack during a business meeting, leaving their 18-year-old son the family heir. Howard's aunt, Annette, became his de facto guardian, and she expected her nephew to proceed with his plan to study business at Rice University. For the young Hughes, however, life was to be enjoyed, and that meant playing golf--all day, every day.
It was on the clipped fairways and greens of Houston Country Club where Hughes found emancipation from his family's control and set his singular and ultimately tragic adulthood into motion--courtesy of his golf buddy, Judge Walter Monteith. The judge found the squeaky-voiced youth charming and insightful. When Hughes petitioned a Houston court to claim the family's swelling fortune, Monteith wore the robe, and on December 24, 1924--his 19th birthday--Hughes was declared an adult "of full age." The pair celebrated with a quick nine on Christmas Day.
The orphaned millionaire soon turned to his most pressing priority: becoming a champion golfer. He exchanged his hickory-shafted clubs for new steel-shafted models popularized by A.G. Spalding Co. The hollow shafts had holes drilled in them to reduce the clubs' weight. When the Spaldings were swung, wind blew through the holes, hence the club's nickname: the Whistler. Hughes, already a long hitter, was now driving the ball up to 300 yards and could reach most par 5s in two, though eagles were rare: He was a mediocre putter. An inventor at heart, he tried welding pieces of different shafts together to create a 47-inch driver, an unheard-of length at the time. Hughes also experimented with golf balls, cutting them open to analyze their cores, convinced that a cork center would improve a ball's flight.
By 1926, Hughes had taken his new bride, 22-year-old debutante Ella Rice, to Los Angeles, where he could fly, play and break into pictures. Ella hated golf, hated the time her husband spent on it, hated that he would sneak away from their suites at the Ambassador Hotel to practice on Wilshire Country Club's greens.
For his part, Hughes hated the club's bentgrass greens, particularly the way they hardened and turned brown during L.A.'s arid summers. Even as he hired reigning U.S. Amateur champion George Von Elm to help his game, the millionaire began doing his own experiments with Bermuda grasses, convinced that irregular greens, not his stroke, caused his putting woes. Ella watched in horror as Hughes planted patches of grass along the Ambassador's fence line, protecting them with cheesecloth draped precariously from bamboo poles, in his quest to create the ultimate smooth grass surface.
Hughes practiced hour after hour, day after day. Though shy, he thought nothing of pushing his way into games with startled strangers. He often angered the Wilshire management by showing up without a tee time and demanding a caddie. He brought outsiders to the club, and when the brass protested, Hughes simply bought his guests memberships on the spot.
