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How Sweet It Is!
Senior PGA Golfer Larry Laoretti Loves His Success
and His Cigars
by Jeff Williams
Looking for Senior PGA golfer Larry Laoretti on a sodden, sullen
evening in North Miami Beach, the search ends up on Biscayne
Boulevard. Such a melodic, fanciful name, a name evoking images of
glorious beaches, gracious homes and grand hotels. A name that
suggests the turquoise Atlantic and the golden Florida sun. A name
that speaks prosperity and whispers of untold riches. But you won't
find Laoretti in any of those places. Not here. Not on this stretch of
Biscayne Boulevard. Here, it is just a street, an average avenue of
Americana, a venue for fast food and slow traffic. And as the journey
nears Larry Laoretti's home for the night, the Sea Shanty Restaurant
and the Paradise Motel pass by, slightly blurred by the misty
windshield.
Suddenly, a little triangular sign jumps out from behind an
overhanging live oak tree. KOA, Kampgrounds of America, in black and
red on a white background, a campground spelled with a K. Then, it's a
turn past the orange road cone marking a sinister hole, and heading
east, toward the Atlantic, you know you won't get there. You are
looking for Larry Laoretti, and he doesn't stay on the beach.
Larry Laoretti is the champion of the United States Senior Open. He is
a visible, viable, valuable member of the PGA's Senior Tour. He could
stay along a glorious beach, in a gracious home or a grand
hotel. Instead, he chooses to stay at a campground, campground with a
K, thank you very much. This week, the 38 feet of American Eagle motor
home that is home away from home is in space 87. A battalion of speed
bumps slows the search for the slot, and large women carrying plastic
baskets of laundry block the roadway. Finally, approaching from the
rear of the Eagle, a slight breeze bears the aroma of Laoretti's cigar
and the sound of his triumph. "Aha!" he exclaims. "All right!" The cry
is unmistakable. It's Laoretti, and he's winning again.
The champion of the United States Senior Open has just forged another
heady victory. This one had nothing to do with the game of golf. The
clubs in his hands were accompanied by hearts, spades and
diamonds. The game was gin, the opponent his caddie and friend Bob
O'Brien, the stakes two bucks, with the loser required to do the
dishes, which is the most precious part of the triumph.
Laoretti takes a big puff on his Te-Amo Light and raises a rocks glass
of red wine to his lips. "How sweet it is, Bob, how sweet it is."
The wine is Carlo Rossi Pisano Light Chianti. Its bouquet is an
amalgam of wild berries and landfill. Its attack is mindful of D Day,
its finish that of an exhausted marathon runner. "You know, people
give me thirty-five and forty dollar bottles of wine all the time,"
says Laoretti. "I'd rather drink this. The whole jug is $7.99, thank
you very much."
Just how many times Larry Laoretti says "thank you very much" is
equivalent to how many times he thinks about where he is and where he
has been. A little more than three years prior to this February
evening, Laoretti stood on the first tee of the Links at Key Biscayne
in the first tournament of the 1990 Senior Tour. He had a new wife,
Susan, and a new son, Lonnie. He had $110 to his name and a cigar
between his teeth. Always, a cigar between his teeth.
Here was a man who had been a club professional for his entire adult
life, who had taught swings, sold shirts and looked for
Mrs. Weinstein's missing umbrella from Long Island to Las Vegas, from
Westchester County north of New York City to Houston and Jupiter in
the South. And not once, until the summer of 1989, had he won anything
of consequence until he won both the regular and senior divisions of
the Florida PGA championship.
These were victories that said only that he was better than he ever
was. They did not foretell that within three years Laoretti would win
more than $900,000 in prize money and the Senior Open title at Saucon
Valley in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in July 1992. They did not foretell
that he would win the curiosity and admiration of the golfing public
and a contract with Consolidated Cigar Company that would provide him
with cigars for free and pay him to smoke them. Thank you very much.
"Honestly, I thought I could be a better player if I quit my job as a
club pro and practiced my game," says Laoretti. "I thought I'd have a
chance to qualify for the Senior Tour. Did I think all of this would
happen? No way."
Just what has happened is fairly astounding. Once it was common for
Laoretti to check the contents of his wallet before deciding the
quantity and quality of his cigar purchases. Now, the Senior Tour's
traveling annuity carnival for players over the age of 50 assures him
of a decent living in exchange for decent playing. His Senior Open
victory has provided him with lucrative endorsement contracts with the
Recreational Vehicle Industry Association, with the Desert Inn in Las
Vegas, with clubmaker Spalding and clothing maker La Mode. He is in
demand for corporate and charity outings, with bookings now running
several months in advance.
"I've died and gone to heaven a thousand times," says
Laoretti. "There's no way I could have imagined this would happen. I
thought I could make some money out here. But this? This is pretty
damn terrific."
In 1960, Laoretti turned professional, right out of the Navy. Over the
course of the next 30 years, eight club jobs and two wives, Laoretti
did only one thing to distinguish himself: He played golf with a cigar
in his mouth. That made him rare, not unique. Charlie Sifford, the
first black man to win a PGA event, had been playing with a cigar in
his mouth long before Laoretti smoked his first White Owls while
stationed in Guam in 1957. Decades of fighting racism in the insular
world of golf have left Sifford a cautionary, often bitter man. The
cigar that has been Sifford's trademark is seen by many, however
cruelly and unfairly, as a beacon warning those who see it from a
distance to keep their distance.
Expediency and hygiene are two reasons that Laoretti chooses to keep
the cigar in his mouth while he takes a blistering swing or strokes a
three-foot putt. Those take precedence over whatever anyone else might
imagine to be almost a physical impossibility, what with smoke rising
up from the lit end. Putting the cigar down, hitting, then picking it
up again would put a serious crimp in Laoretti's pace of play, which
is the fastest on the Senior Tour or possibly any other golf tour. His
routine is basically puff, hit, walk, puff.
He also expresses some concern that a cigar laying on the very
manicured grass of a golf course could pick up chemical traces from
the fertilizers, fungicides and pesticides that are used to keep the
grass stunningly green and perfect. When, like Laoretti, you go
through two or three cigars a round, laying them down 60 or 70, or god
forbid, 75 times a round would be a real hassle and would increase
their exposure to the elements--and would definitely slow down your
play.
For Laoretti, however, the cigar doesn't have any of the more negative
symbols that it conjured up when in Sifford's mouth. Unburdened by
such weighty social issues, Laoretti's life has been afflicted only by
the more mundane concerns of domestic instability and financial
insecurity. "I don't think there's anything I'd do different in my
life, except maybe have two less wives," says Laoretti. "Sure, there's
lot of little things along the way that I would change if I could, but
I don't have any regrets. I don't worry about what's past."
Throughout his life, Laoretti has always wrapped a smile around his
cigar and kept at least one hand free for a handshake or a pat on the
back. His earthy and robust personality has survived divorce and the
vagaries of a pernicious, unforgiving game. And his cigar functions
not as a beacon of warning but as a warm fire on a cold night. People
are just naturally attracted to him, and he to them.
You can see this, even hear this, in the tournament galleries. In
the distance is Laoretti, club in hand, cigar in mouth. A puff, then a
swing, then a puff. "Hey, isn't that the guy who plays with a cigar?"
asks one gallerygoer of the other. "Larry something, Larry Lawrence,
what is it, Low-retti?"
Often you will find a number of cigar smokers in the crowd that
is following his group. He gives legitimacy to their love, and not
incidentally, he gives them a wink, a handshake, an autograph, a cheap
joke. Sometimes he gives them a cigar, a Te-Amo Light with its clear
plastic wrapper proclaiming "Larry Laoretti, U.S. Senior Open Golf
Champion."
The golf course is both Laoretti's element and his habitat. In
fact the golf course may be the last vestiges of habitat for the
endangered tobaccus Americanas, or the common American cigar
smoker. Laoretti says that not once has his cigar smoking caused him a
problem, and his newly won visibility has produced only two letters
questioning the advisability of being so public with his passion. To
which he replies: "I never smoked a cigarette and I don't inhale my
cigars."
And he doesn't smoke around Lonnie, at least not very often.
Lonnie is his three-year-old son. Lonnie provides a focus for his
life, as much as his third wife, Susan, provides a steady grip on the
matters of family life. It is a family life that Laoretti seeks in the
Kampgrounds of America. It is a family life that keeps him out of the
glitzy hotels and away from the dandy parties. Well, most of them.
"We just think the motor home is the best thing for Lonnie," says
Laoretti. "We have room to bring his toys along with us, he's got room
outside to play and other kids to play with. It's not fair to keep a
little kid locked up in a hotel room. You're always afraid he going to
make noise and make somebody mad in the next room. This is the best
way to go. The people in the campgrounds are real nice, down to earth
type people. We're comfortable in the camper."
There isn't a shred of pretense to Laoretti. He isn't overwhelmed by
fame or addicted to it. He doesn't shy from it, he doesn't seek it
out. And while he's comfortable playing with corporate moguls who ante
up thousands for the privilege of mis-hitting shots in the same
foursome as a champion, he's comfortable with the help. He throws a
party for Senior Tour caddies at the end of the year. When he's on
Long Island, where he spent most of his career as a club pro, he
throws a party for golf course superintendents, or greenskeepers as
they once were called. Plenty of lobsters and Carlo Rossi Pisano Light
Chianti.
You'll find Carlo Rossi Pisano Light Chianti at his home in Stuart,
Florida, in a golf course development called Cobblestone, owned by a
man with whom he served in the Navy. Laoretti is the touring
professional and director of golf for Cobblestone, and his Senior Open
trophy is prominent in the new clubhouse. So is Carlo Rossi Pisano
Light Chianti. Not surprisingly, the red wine of his house is also the
house red wine. Thank you very much.
Laoretti's home is on the tenth fairway of Cobblestone. The course and
its environs are on the fringes of development, set several miles to
the west of the Atlantic and only several yards off I-95. Right now,
it's an isolated little enclave. "We have to drive five miles just to
get a quart of milk," says Laoretti, "and that's why we love it."
Because he lives by the old bromide "a stranger is just a friend I've
never met," his circle of friends has been expanding at about the
speed of light, certainly faster than he can expand his house and put
up new guest quarters. The original guest room also serves as the
family office and trophy room. And despite the fact that his Senior
Open trophy sits 400 yards away in the clubhouse, there is a decent
collection of trophies on the high shelves. Must be 30 or so. Not bad
for a mediocre club pro's career, until you realize that most of them
are Susan's.
There are Susan's volleyball trophies, softball trophies, sailing
trophies, basketball trophies, bowling trophies and three Junior
Olympics medals. Her collection would be even larger if several hadn't
broken while moving.
One of those moves was to Florida from New Jersey in 1985. Wanting to
tune up a discordant golf game, Susan Krulkaski sought the help of the
head professional at Indian Creek, a local public course in
Jupiter. It was a scruffy little place where the driving range was a
pond and golf balls floated. The pro she took lessons from was Larry
Laoretti. Susan's heart was the biggest thing Laoretti ever won at the
game of golf, the Senior Open notwithstanding.
To Susan's mind, the best thing about Laoretti's success besides
solvency is that it allows him to touch so many people. "I knew when I
met him that he was an exceptional person," she says. "I knew it, his
friends knew it. He's friendly and sincere, he's
charismatic. Everywhere we go he's recognized. He's made a hero out of
himself to the common man. The best thing about all his success is
that everybody knows what an exceptional person he is."
Jeff Siegel is Laoretti's agent, and he is an agent to several other
athletes. The one conversation that he's had with every client except
Laoretti is the one on how to deal with all kinds of people. "Unless
you have a hook you're not marketable," says Siegel. "Larry's hook,
first and foremost, is that he's a terrific guy with a terrific
personality. He knows naturally how to deal with people. The cigar is
his 15th club. It's part of the hook. It's part of his life-style. He
takes his golf seriously, but he enjoys life, and the cigar makes a
statement about how he enjoys it."
That statement, should it be inscribed in stone, says, "Thank You Very
Much."
Jeff Williams is a senior sportswriter for Newsday.
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