Growing up in the rolling mountains of eastern Kentucky, Pat Tallent was introduced to golf on a nine-hole course with sand greens doused in motor oil. When a competitor got on the green, they had to take a drag – a 3-inch pipe with a roof bar welded to it – and walk a path between their ball and the hole to make the sand fine enough so a putt could roll smoothly. Since high-lofted wedge shots would plug right where they landed, the smart play was to take an 8-iron and hit a punch shot that rolled along the firm bunker-less fairways until reaching the much slower sand green.
For a $1.25 a day, Tallent played as much golf as he wanted to and still had enough to eat a bologna sandwich and a Moon Pie with a Dr. Pepper on the side.
He loved every minute of it, but golf wasn’t his top sports passion. Not yet.
“I was a golfer only because it was something to do in the summertime,†Tallent said. “I used it to get in shape for basketball. My dad had a golf cart and I would just run around the golf course.â€
Basketball took priority in the early part of Tallent’s life, and for good reason. He was a shooting guard who grew to 6-foot-3 and averaged nearly 40 points a game for Maytown High School in Langley, Kentucky – he’s being inducted into the Kentucky High School Basketball Hall of Fame this summer – and then scored 1,725 points in a storied career at George Washington University before getting drafted in 1976 by the NBA’s Washington Bullets, now known as the Washington Wizards.
Tallent’s pro basketball career was short-lived as he was the last player cut in training camp and he took an accounting job with Price Waterhouse. But it wasn’t the end of his athletic pursuits. Far from it.
In golf, the sport that patiently waited in the background, Tallent discovered success that mirrored and perhaps even exceeded what he accomplished on the hardwood. Getting there took time. He walked onto the golf team in college while he wasn’t playing basketball and started to learn a foundation for how to play the game, but it wasn’t until age 34 when he qualified for his first USGA championship, the 1987 U.S. Amateur. At 61 years old, playing in his 27th USGA championship in 27 years, he captured the 2014 U.S. Senior Amateur at Big Canyon for the biggest title of his career. The year after, he won the British Senior Amateur at Royal Dornoch.
This week, at 67 years young, he’s being inducted into the National Senior Amateur Golf Hall of Fame. It’s a milestone in a remarkable career that has seen Tallent compete in 35 USGA championships, earn low-amateur honors in the 2004 U.S. Senior Open and capture titles like the Middle Atlantic Amateur (1997), Maryland Amateur (2000), Virginia Amateur (2007), Crump Cup Senior (2009) and Coleman Senior (2010).
“I look at the names on that Hall of Fame list and I realize that these are all the great senior amateur players that I know and the ones that came before me that I heard about. ... You have to have done something to be there, and it’s quite an honor to be a part of that."
Pat Tallent
Tallent is a Larry Nelson-like figure in senior amateur golf. His competitive pursuits did not begin in earnest until well into his adulthood, but what he accomplished is made all the more impressive because of it.
“I look at the names on that Hall of Fame list and I realize that these are all the great senior amateur players that I know and the ones that came before me that I heard about,†Tallent said. “There are no charlatans on the list. You have to have done something to be there, and it’s quite an honor to be a part of that.
“I was always a guy coming from the outside. I was never a country-club guy. Some guys have been great golfers their entire lives, All-Americans in college. … I was not a golfer. I was a basketball player. I identified myself completely differently, but I was still able to win a lot of tournaments. We’ll go have a few beers and everyone can tell stories about all the times they beat me and I’ll tell stories about the few times that I beat them.â€
Tallent’s competitive golf career is mostly over because of knee and back injuries, but his journey will go down as one of the great stories in senior amateur annals. After graduating from college he moved to Vienna, Virginia, and prioritized family and business while keeping a respectable handicap of 5 during occasional weekend games with friends. The turning point came when colleagues at his office proposed him for membership at Congressional Country Club just outside Washington D.C., a move that sparked a competitive fire.
He played in his first club championship at Congressional in 1980, losing in the championship flight to Jack Vardaman, the noted attorney who also served on the USGA Executive Committee. The next time he played in the club championship, he practiced a little harder and made it to the semifinals, but Vardaman beat Tallent once again. The next year, Tallent reached the finals.
“And who am I playing? Jack Vardaman,†Tallent remembers. “I told Jack, ‘I’m sick and tired of losing in this damn thing,’ so I decided to work a little more on my golf game.â€
That tenacious mentality would be the hallmark of Tallent’s career. In 1987 when a fellow Congressional member suggested on a whim that he and Tallent drive to Richmond, Virginia, to play for one of four openings there to get into the U.S. Amateur, the unassuming Tallent and his friend nonchalantly grabbed two of the spots.
Tallent walked into the clubhouse to see a group of disgruntled players he didn’t know. Vinny Giles, the amateur legend who made the cut in five major championships and won the 1972 U.S. Amateur and 1975 British Amateur, looked in Tallent’s direction as he said something to the effect of, “I’ve played in 22 straight U.S. Ams but this is the first year I’m not going to make it.â€
“He’s a bulldog. If he gets his foot on your throat he’s going to put a little pressure on,†Giles told Global Golf Post last week about Tallent. “He’s a grinder, he’s a competitor. He was never the most talented in terms of pure pretty golf with a pretty swing, but I would take a player with a lot of heart and a lot of stomach over the pure player every time. I look at Pat as a guy who is not scared of anybody.â€
That respect is earned. Paul Simson, another senior amateur stalwart from North Carolina and a longtime friend of Tallent’s, remembers playing the final hole of stroke play tied with Tallent for the lead at the 2010 U.S. Senior Amateur. Knowing that there is a curse of sorts with being a medalist at the tournament, Simson was partly relieved when Tallent birdied the last hole to grab the top overall seed.
Tallent wasn’t nearly as fazed. He rolled through all of his matches and reached the finals, which ended up being a dramatic 2-and-1 victory for Simson.
“You have to stay focused the whole time or he is going to get you,†Simson said. “When you are in a match with him, you are going to be in a match with him because he doesn’t give up. He keeps coming and keeps coming.â€
Tallent would get his moment on the victorious side of the Senior Am final. He survived a playoff to get into the match-play portion of the event in 2014 and then rode his “Yes! Natalie†long putter to a championship win against Bryan Norton, this time the 2-and-1 margin being in his favor. A year later at the British Senior Amateur, his putter proved crucial again.
“He was an average at best putter, but when he went to the long putter, he became a good putter,†Giles said. “I think that took him from a B-list player to an A-list player.â€
Given all of his success, it could be assumed that Tallent’s greatest golf pride is winning massive senior titles in consecutive years. But ask Tallent what gives him the most pride and his voice slows down to explain a memory not of his own game but of his family, which includes his wife Cindy, often his caddie in big events, and his three daughters.
“In 1995, I played in the U.S. Amateur at Newport and I was the first one off in the early morning of the first round,†Tallent said. “I’m a dew sweeper and there they all are – my three girls all in matching outfits with my wife watching me. My family loved watching me play.
“It was great winning the events, but it was even greater for Cindy and our family to be able to spend so much time together having fun at wonderful places.â€
When the National Senior Amateur Hall of Fame induction takes place this week, those who know Tallent best will recall how singular his legacy in the game is and always will be. A great basketball player from rural Kentucky who learned how to be a great golfer, all while succeeding as a family man and businessman.
There won’t be any others quite like him.
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