Ted
Kroll: Ahead Of His Time
Originally published 12/25/01
By JOHN PITARRESI
Observer-Dispatch
Ted Kroll got his start hitting golf
balls as a little boy, fashioning a club
out of a stick.
He grew up to become one of the PGA Tour’s
top players for many years before settling
down to a series of club pro jobs, and
he seems to have enjoyed every minute
he spent on fairways and greens across
America and around the world.
“Oh, it was great,” said the
New Hartford native, now 82.
A cancer survivor who now is battling
Parkinson’s disease, Kroll had a
great run. He hasn’t played golf
in two years, but would love to one more
time — in the Legends of Golf Senior
Tour tournament in April in St. Augustine.
“If I could stand still long enough
to make a shot, maybe I could do something,”
said Kroll, who suffers from tremors in
his legs.
Not that Kroll really needs to add to
a lifetime of golfing memories. He won
nine times on tour, including the first-ever
Insurance City (Hartford) Open in 1952,
a $50,000 win in the World Championship
of Golf in 1956, and the Canadian Open
championship in 1962. He was the Tour
money leader with more than $72,000 in
1956, when he also won the Philadelphia
News, Tucson and Houston opens and was
fourth in the U.S. Open and second in
the PGA Championship.
Inducted into the Greater Utica Sports
Hall of Fame in 1992, Kroll also was featured
on Shell’s “Wonderful World
of Golf,” and played on the Senior
Tour through 1989, cashing some good checks.
It all started on Wilbur Road in New
Hartford, just a driver and a wedge down
the road from the Yahnundasis Golf Club.
Perhaps inspired by the play nearby, Kroll
began hitting golf balls at the age of
six or seven, using a tree branch for
a club. Not long after, he was caddying
at the Yahnundasis “after school,
Saturdays, Sundays and on holidays.”
His first competitive round of golf came
when he was about 10 years old in a caddies’
tournament at the club.
“The caddie master told me I wasn’t
old enough, but I said I was going to
play anyway,” he said. “They
had an A Class, B Class and C Class. I
shot 96 and was low in C Class.”
There was no golf team at New Hartford
High School, where Kroll was a member
of the basketball team, but he remembers
reaching the finals of a match-play high
school tournament one year — losing
to Charlie Brykala of New York Mills.
After that, he played locally and in
some pro tournaments. He played in the
1941 U.S. Open in Fort Worth, but then
was off to the war. He served in the Italian
Campaign, was wounded four times, then
returned home and went to work at Drumlins
Golf Club in Syracuse. He then moved to
Philmont Country Club outside of Philadelphia,
working for New York Mills native Matt
Kowal and playing on the winter tour for
several years.
He joined the PGA Tour in 1950 —
members at Philmont helped finance his
first season — and earned his first
victory with a three-stroke win over Jimmy
Demaret in the 1951 San Diego Open. That
was good for $2,000 in a tourney in which
New York Mills native Ed Furgol finished
fifth. Furgol went on to win the 1954
U.S. Open.
The win at Insurance City, now the Canon
Greater Hartford Open, helped Kroll finish
14th on the money list in 1952. He also
finished second at Hartford in 1956, when
he lost a playoff to the young Arnold
Palmer, who was claiming his first Tour
victory.
Today’s top players earn millions
of dollars in a single season, and in
2001 the PGA Tour offered more than $184
million in purses. It was different in
Kroll’s heyday. The total prize money
didn’t reach $1 million until 1958,
but he didn’t mind.
“We made a good living, hell, yeah,”
Kroll said. “I thought so, anyway.”
Kroll also played on the American Ryder
Cup teams in 1953, 1955 and 1957, but
by the early 1960s, with a growing family,
he felt being a club pro would be a better
fit. He started an odyssey that saw him
work clubs from Florida to Michigan and
back, up to Long Island and back to Florida
again.
The golfing life was different then.
No private jets or first-class lodgings.
Many players drove to tournaments by car
and stayed in motels, and their families
tagged along with them.
“It was more friendly,” Kroll
said. “We often ate with the fellas
at night; just get out of the car and
barbecue a steak.”
Jane Kroll knows. The former Jane Piekielniak
of New York Mills raised her daughters
— Deborah, Darlene, Donna and Danita
— partly on the road.
“I enjoyed it to a point,”
she said. “But I was traveling with
the kids, so it wasn’t too exciting
for me. The kids would have to have their
naps; I had to make sure they were comfortable.”
The Krolls made many friends on the Tour
— the Middlecoffs, Shirley and Gene
Littler, Marilyn and Doug Ford, Ginny
and Lou Worsham, Armen and Julius Boros
— among others.
“The people were very nice on the
Tour,” Jane Kroll said. “It
was a family situation. We kind of helped
each other.”
Kroll, just 5-foot-8ª and 152 pounds
in his prime, obviously was a gifted player
capable of very hot streaks. He shot a
60 in the 1954 Texas Open, which was tied
for the low score in Tour history until
Al Geiberger’s 59 in 1977.
What made him such a strong player?
“I enjoyed it, so I really hit a
lot of golf balls when I was young,”
he said. “I used to analyze it (his
swing) myself. I tried to straighten my
own shots. I never had a coach.
“I think that I was a good iron player.
I was good with the woods and all the
clubs. I wasn’t the best on the long
putts and I wasn’t that good on hilly
greens. My ball came in there too low.
The Masters ... Augusta wasn’t made
for my game.”
Kroll did compete well in the PGA and
U.S. Open, however. In fact, in the 1956
Open, played at Oak Hill in Rochester,
he led by a stroke with four holes to
play. Then ...
“I just fell asleep,” he said.
“I didn’t think too well.”
Cary Middlecoff won the tournament, and
Ben Hogan and Julius Boros passed Kroll
to tie for second. Kroll went down to
the wire in the PGA that year, too, losing
to Jackie Burke in the finals of what
was then a match-play event.
Kroll competed with some of the greatest
names in the history of golf — Ben
Hogan, Sam Snead, Byron Nelson, Gene Littler,
Lloyd Mangrum, Jack Nicklaus, Middlecoff
and Palmer, among many others.
The best?
“You’d have to say Nicklaus,
because of his record,” he said.
“But Snead won 82 or 84 tournaments.
And Hogan won the Open four times in a
row (actually four times in six years,
missing a year because of his near-fatal
auto accident). Nelson, Palmer. They were
all great.”
Kroll’s opinion of today’s
players, especially Tiger Woods, is very
high.
“Holy mackerel!” he said. “I
want to see him hit a golf ball. I want
to see him in person. It’s amazing
what he’s done. I don’t understand
it. Well, I do. He has a very good golf
swing. His advantage is he is longer than
the other fellas. If you can hit an 8-iron
instead of a 3-iron, you have a big advantage.”
Of course, today’s players are aided
by space-age equipment, intense coaching,
personal trainers, agents and advisors
of every stripe.
“What a difference,” Kroll
said. “We didn’t care that much.
We were out there making a little bit
of money. These guys carry a briefcase
with them.”
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