The event moved to Rancho La Costa resort in California in 1968, but Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus did not attend. Though no longer linked to the tournament, Hughes took their defection as a personal affront--a PR nightmare for which he would be blamed. First he plotted to lure Palmer and Nicklaus--and the event--back to Las Vegas. He would offer Arnie and Jack starring roles in feature films (though Hughes hadn't made a movie in 21 years). When that didn't work, he went to plan B: Destroy them.
In wild, rambling memos to Maheu, Hughes talked of teaching the "prima donnas" a lesson, first by opening a "massive" casino sports book that would feature betting on the PGA Tour. It would "become the bible in determining odds" and "thus the determining factor in the standing of that player in his sport." Then Hughes would catapult another elite player--Billy Casper--into the top slot. "I have been determined to shove these two bastards into the background... With my intimate knowledge of the game, I have settled on Casper as our man."
But he wouldn't stop with king-making. Hughes saw himself as the czar of golf. "It is my desire to establish Las Vegas as the Golf Capital of the World," he wrote. "I am prepared to put up purses that will far exceed anything yet--$500,000 and even $1,000,000 tournaments!"
"It was all the unbelievable world of Howard Hughes," says Maheu, who in 13 years never once met his boss. Instead, they communicated via phone and notes. "He lived in a cocoon, a complete world of isolation. His mind was his only reality. Still, he got lonesome for the past, and he never stopped talking about golf, about the mental side of the game. This from a man who once bought a hotel because he needed a place to sleep."
Adds Michael Drosnin, author of Citizen Hughes, a book chronicling the deranged billionaire's final years, "The obsession with Palmer and Nicklaus went back to who he once dreamed of being. He once wanted to be a Palmer or Nicklaus. Now there was only the nightmare of who he had become."
On June 5, 1974, two years before Hughes died, burglars broke into his Los Angeles headquarters. They expected to find millions in cash and rare coins. They blowtorched through 10-foot-tall, double-steel doors, pried them open and found not riches but relics: flight logs, movie posters, Christmas cards, business documents, letters--and worthless golden golf globes, trophies of a long-lost glory. "They expected to get rich, but they got a roomful of Rosebuds," says Drosnin, referring to the sled in Citizen Kane that symbolized the title character's lost innocence. "They found Hughes's childhood. This was a warehouse devoted to his youth, and in a sense it was all Rosebuds. You see, golf wasn't No. 2 or No. 3 on his list. It was his No. 1."
Richard Hack is the author of 16 books, including Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters. His latest book is Puppetmaster: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover.
