When DSR Brown or the
Rifleman swung a club, even
the pros came up losers

by EDWARD JAY BOYER
Detroit Free Press Sunday Magazine–August 17, 1975

“Looks like it’s boilin‘ down to me and you, boy,” Pierce “Fat Daddy” Cofield says, turning to Bob Ladford, a laid-off auto worker. “You want my business?”

“I want all the business you can bring me,” Ladford shoots back. “You’re my woman. I’m gonna knock you up . . . might even marry you.”

“After I put this whuppin‘ on you, you’ll be gettin‘ a divorce in a hurry,” Fat Daddy replies nonchalantly.

“Well, let’s stick it in the ground,” Ladford says, accepting the challenge.

The scene of this little mini-drama, which is always more ritual than conflict, is the first tee at Detroit’s Palmer Park Municipal Golf Course, a modest par 69 layout which plays 5,729 yards.

Around Palmer’s first tee, golfers “sell more woof tickets” than the course sells green fees, and the psyching, betting and spotting creates a scene with all the frantic activity of a good old-fashioned tobacco auction.

“Here comes your insurance man,” shouts a golfer trying to rekindle hope among losers wanting to win some of their money back. “Better come and get me while I’m still in heat.”

Any weekday, at virtually any daylight hour, the Palmer Park Train – a group of several foursomes shooting at a winner-take-all medal, or low score, – is circling one of the course’s two nines.

“Passengers” on the train, often more than 20 golfers, gather around the first tee, woofing and psyching their way into all the action their bankrolls and golf games can stand. With 20 golfers in at $10 each, the winner could take home $200. Cofield, a mountain of flesh, relaxes on his golf cart after getting his action with Ladford, while another player on the train approaches.

“You want me, Daddy?” he asks.

“Do I want you?” Fat Daddy asks incredulously. “Whenever I want some money I don’t have to give to the Internal Revenue, I want you.”

Another bet is placed, and Ladford, sharing a golf cart with Cofield begins to hold forth on Palmer Park’s uniqueness.

“This is a golf course where a poor man can come and get wealthy,” he says, sticking the needle in Cofield. “Ain’t that right, Fat Daddy? I’m getting rich off you.”

But Cofield, always unflappable, ignores the needle. “Boy, you keep messing with me and I’ll make your pocket slicker than a rat hole.”

Cofield, 48, has only been playing golf for five years, and regulars around Palmer can’t remember when any of their number has undertaken the royal and ancient game with more enthusiasm and dedication. Neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor hail could deter Cofield from his appointed daily round–a round sometimes played in such bitter cold that his ample stomach would become ashen and chafed as his shirt rode up, exposing the flesh.

His legs appear dangerously fragile as they support his 340-pound, 6-foot-1 frame. His game isn’t strong enough to place him in the first rank of golfers at Palmer, but he’ll bet anybody who’ll give him enough shots. He uses an unorthodox cross-handed grip, wields a deadly putter and has been known to hit the finest banana this side of Costa Rica.

For the money, though, he becomes an “undertaker,” “burying” putts from all over the green.

Golfers at Palmer have developed their own vocabulary, a string of expressions that enrich the game’s lexicon. Rather than “tee the ball up,” golfers at Palmer “stick it in the ground.” A good putter is called an “undertaker” because he can “bury” the ball. Shanked shots are called “pitchouts,” and short drives are “bunts.” And woe unto the hapless hacker who pops up his drive from the first tee. Gallery wits will begin shouting in unison: “Run it out. Run it out.”

As the train fills up, players are shouting back and forth across the first tee, getting on side bets. Many don’t even know each other by given names; nicknames are the rule: “Watergate,” “Wash Rack,” “Sugar Jim,” “Tennessee,” “Rifleman,” “Pensacola,” “Mississippi Junior,” “Georgia Boy,” “Baby Gorilla,” “Hookin’ Walker,” “Prime Minister.” “Alabama Red,” “Georgia Red” and “North Carolina Red” could be taken as strains of domestically grown marijuana, but they’re actually just more nicknames around Palmer.

One of the most outlandish names around the course is “Clean” Hunkey Clay, a 55-year-old golfer who can hold his own on the train. “My given name is Clarence Hunkey Clayton,” he says.

“They call me ‘Clean’ because of my bald head, but there is a birth certificate in Mobile, Alabama with my real name on it. I must be the only black man in the world named Hunkey.” But Clay does not renounce his somewhat anomalous middle name. On his big, red golf bag, he has painted in bold letters: “Clean Hunkey Clay–The Bald Eagle.”

Bringing order to all that first tee chaos is Vernell Dykes, a starter at Palmer since 1947. A pleasant, attractive woman with an even temperament, she controls horseplay on the first tee by simply picking up her microphone and saying: “Please don’t do that.” The phrase comes out in soft, honey tones, but it has an edge that embarrasses grown men as much as a mischievous child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

“You have to be cashier, ranger, starter, and general information center,” says Mrs. Dykes of her duties at Palmer. Everybody wants to know who has been here or whether they’ve missed their game. I keep them under control by using the mike and knowing who they are. But they will still try you. You can see that I’m as nutty as a loon.” She smiles broadly when she says that. If the Palmer Park golfers have driven her nutty, it rarely shows on her calm exterior.

Palmer sits just east of the posh 36-hole layout of the Detroit Golf Club in near northwest Detroit. While the DGC can boast of its immaculate fairways, impeccable greens and the services of one-time PGA tour star George Bayer, Palmer easily provides the best free show in this town, staggering under a 23 percent unemployment rate. Leonard Thompson and Jack Rory, head pros at Palmer, perform their tasks without the benefit of PGA credentials, but that in no way diminishes their enthusiasm.

Fifteen years ago, being head pro at Palmer was tantamount to taking a vow of poverty. The course has always been heavily played, but few of the hackers were taking lessons–the linchpin of any golf professional’s livelihood. The late Marion “Chris” Williams (he died last year following a heart attack) survived the lean years at Palmer, and he was around to see golf’s appeal to Motown’s masses and celebrities create a bull market in lessons.

The boom began in the mid-1960s when some of Motown’s biggest stars–Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye–began frequenting Palmer. Hard on the heels of the recording stars came the Detroit Lions’ Lem Barney and Mel Farr, and the rush was on. Now, when Palmer Park wits shout, “Here comes the judge,” they mean it literally. Traffic Court Judge William Hague is a course regular as are Recorder’s Court judges Henry Heading, Dalton Roberson, Robert Evans and Samuel Gardner. The celebrities also attracted a “sporting crowd” to Palmer, elaborately outfitted men of whom it can only charitably be said that they live by their wits.

Even before the searing summer sun can burn away the dew from the greens and fairways, the Eldorados, Fleetwoods and Mark IV’s begin pulling into the course’s parking lot. By noon, the lot is rapidly filling as the more modest cars of blue-collar workers join the sleek limousines. But all status and prestige are left in the parking lot. The only prominence gained on the course comes from what a player can do with his “hammers” (clubs).

Spring rains and warm weather have been kind to the course this year, and the train has been playing balls from “Nellie’s Belly” (playing it as it lies rather than turning it over). But replacing divots is often more the exception than the rule, and by mid-summer the course’s fairways look like the world’s longest Morse Code message. Even with all the woofing done around the first tee, several players prefer playing “library games” (no talking) once they’re on the course. But no amount of calls for library games can ever stop all of the psyching.  

Without question Palmer’s master psych artist had to be Dave “DSR” Brown, a Detroit bus driver who died a few years back. Brown’s nickname came from the city agency that ran the buses—the Department of Street Railways, DSR. A legend around Palmer, Brown rarely bothered to go home and change clothes before going to the course lest he miss a good bet. More often than not, he could be found around the course in his bus driver’s uniform. When DSR Brown would play a hacker who was having a hot round, he’d walk over to him with phony admiration, saying, “Man, I don’t know when I’ve ever seen a golfer who looks as good at the top as you do. The top of your swing is straight out of the book.”

Once he had the hacker consciously thinking about his backswing, shots would start spraying all over the course, giving brown the room he needed to win. Or standing on the tee at the par three ninth hole, Brown would take out a club but give the honor to his opponent when he needed a shot or two to win. DSR would look down the short 148-yard hole shaking his head. “Go on and hit man,” he would say. “ I just want to swing this hammer a few times. I don’t know why I’ve been hitting so many pitchouts on this hole.”

When all else failed DSR would offer to play a hacker while standing on one foot. The problem for the hackers was that they were never smart enough to make him stand on his right foot.

Now DSR was one of the soundest golfers ever to swing a club for profit at Palmer. He probably hadn’t hit a pitchout in 20 years. But mere mention of a pitchout was enough to start his opponent thinking about the possibility. And sure enough, the poor hacker – playing with a generous spot–would shank the ball out to Woodward Avenue.

To get a decent bet, Brown often had to give up more shots than even his solid game could overcome. But even when he lost a match after giving up as many as three shots for nine holes, he could be found around the snack bar laughing and shaking his head, saying: “Boy, I got a bad case of buzzard luck. Can’t kill nothin’, and won’t nothin’ die.”

Brown loved to work the bus run along 7 Mile past the course. The scene around the course was so irresistible to him that he once parked his bus just so he could take a break, leaving passengers on board, and go over and woof at the players around the first tee, setting up games for later in the day.

When all else failed DSR would offer to play a hacker while standing on one foot. The problem for the hackers was that they were never smart enough to make him stand on his right foot. DSR could play Palmer at even par on his left foot, or one or two over at the worst. Playing on both feet, he could “duck the card” (shoot under par) almost at will.

DSR belonged to a coterie of Palmer Park golfers whose tenure at the course predates the influx of celebrities and “sportsmen.” That group includes Sherry “Rifleman” Wellons, a 52-year-old self-styled pro and Curtis Walker, a 51-year-old retired factory worker. Those players don’t back away from any games at Palmer, even when the challenger is from the PGA circuit.

Michigan has been without a regular event on the PGA Tour since the demise of the Buick open a few years ago. But back then, most of the black pros–Pete Brown, Jim Black, Charlie Sifford–would find their way to Palmer after the Buick. Back in 1967, Sifford was amusing Palmer regulars with his anecdotes from the big-time circuit. “But he didn’t take anything away from here,” says resident pro Rory.

“He came here and lost four days in a row,” laughed Noah “Pensacola” Lewis. “Then he went to Hartford and won the tournament. He said he had forgotten how to chip until he came here.”

Pete Brown, who now plays out of Los Angeles, was once a Palmer Park regular with a swing so powerful that wits around the course said, “He burned the shaft out of clubs, knocked all the dimples off the ball.” Brown might have been the longest knocker ever to set foot on Palmer until PGA Tour regular Jim “Distance” Dent stopped by one day. Dent carried a drive past a tree that sits over 300 yards down the left side of Palmer’s first fairway.

“He knocked the milk out of the ball,” says Steve Williams, a 22 year old Wayne State University senior who sometimes plays on Palmer’s “mini-train,” a collection of golfers not quite good enough to compete on the big train.

But players like Sifford, Dent and Brown could always find a game at Palmer, and some of their stiffest competition came from the “Rifleman.” Sherry Wellons’ iron play earned him that nickname. He fires bullets into Palmer’s postage stamp greens, shots that fly in and strangle the flagstick. As sound as the Rifleman’s game is, however, he never broke Pete Brown’s course record 60. That task was left to Bob Steele, a former minor league ball player with the Orioles and Dodgers. Two years ago, Steele toured Palmer’s short layout in 59.

Players like Wellons, Curtis Walker and countless other Palmer veterans were first addicted to golf in the South. Like Wellons, Walker learned the game in Georgia as a caddy. “Back then, Joe Louis was everybody’s hero,” says Walker. “I read about Joe playing golf, and I decided to learn the game. I learned with one club – a 5 iron.”

Walker found his way to Detroit and Palmer Park in 1947, coming to a scene where Joe Louis had played many a round. One of the toughest matches Walker or any other golfer could find at Palmer came from Joe’s older brother, DeLeon Barrow. Barrow’s downswing is a lunge that looks as though he’s trying to strip mine rather than hit a golf ball, but he is still, at 66, capable of ducking the card at Palmer.

While Palmer has a hard core of 50 regulars who play on the train, the course is flooded every day with hackers and duffers who descend en masse because the course is so conveniently located: teachers, policemen (Detroit’s 12th precinct sits about a three-quarter wedge shot from the 10th tee), autoworkers, construction workers, lawyers, doctors, preachers and anyone else who just wants to watch the show around the first tee.

The Rev. Floyd Moore, for instance, has a sure fire method of evening a match when he’s down. Strolling down the fairway, he’ll break into a gospel wail: “You know I love the Lord; He heard my cry.” Jim Finley, one of the Rev’s regular opponents, tries to prevent any divine intervention by telling Moore, “Rev, I can beat you. But I can’t beat you and Jesus.” But the Lord regularly hears Moore’s cry, and he starts burying balls from all over the green.

Palmer’s golfers are generally a fun loving crowd, but they can become militant. A few years ago when the course’s parking lot was a dust bowl and the refreshment stand was only a single window, golfers boycotted the course.

Led by Charles “Brother” Foster, famed for lying prostrate on his stomach to line up putts, the golfers demanded that the city improve conditions. Several days into the boycott, the city agreed to build a new snack bar, pave the parking lot and put in an additional practice putting green.

When Palmer started filling up a few years ago with the “sporting crowd,” the fortunes of the resident hustlers improved markedly. The train may only cost $10 to ride, but a player could pick up several hundred dollars a day with the right side bets.

The parking lot at times looks like a funeral home driveway with all the luxury cars waiting to join the procession. The only thing missing is a hearse. But there’s no caste system at Palmer. Since the snack bar has no liquor license, the trunks of many limousines are rolling bars. Trunks pop open, the liquor is broken out and the golfers linger in the parking lot well after dark discussing their play that day. When the temperature soars, golfers sit in the air–conditioned comfort of the cars, drinking liquor from plastic cups.

“There’s no other course like this one anywhere in the country,” says Rory. “Golfers come here from all over the country, but very few take anything away with them. If they’re looking for action, they can find all they want here.”

Finding action at a golf course was reserved for relatively few blacks in Detroit until the 60s. Before then, the city’s hustlers made their living in dingy pool rooms, and crowds like the one at Palmer’s first tee would hang around for hours to watch the good sticks. In the late 50s and early 60s the hustlers began discovering bowling, and in just a blink of an eye on the scale of a hustler’s evolution, the bowlers began showing up at golf courses. From a hustler’s standpoint, the two games complement each other– golf in the summer, bowling in winter. It’s tough enough to master the skills needed to play good golf, but many of Palmer’s hustlers are just as good on the bowling alleys as they are on the fairways.

If a Palmer Park golfer can’t win with skill, he might be victorious nonetheless with just miraculous luck. “Stabbing” Eddie Sims came to the ninth tee one day, seemingly with no hope for victory. He could only win with a hole in one. Sims crushed just a fine pitchout towards Woodward, but the ball caught the fence, jumped forward and fell onto the green and into the cup for a win. “Stabbing” Eddie picked up his nickname because his swing has little or no follow through. It often just keeps on going into the turf. He doesn’t take divots; he digs foundations.

Palmer’s golfers are looking forward even now to September and the annual Palmer Park Open, now called the Marion “Chris” Williams Memorial Tournament in honor of the late pro. The “Open” is a combination golf tournament, carnival, gambling casino, picnic and a revival meeting where the gospel is golf. Women barbecuing ribs will attract every nose in smelling distance, and all the train regulars will be trying to “take home the iron” in the championship flight.

Although the train is made up primarily of black golfers, several whites are regulars. John Miranov, a bump shop man at a Cadillac dealership, rushes to the course after work in his dungarees to join the train. But Joe Sabol doesn’t have to rush these days. He’s been laid off from his job as a sheet metal worker. Both men, though, hold their own and win their share of trains.

As Fat Daddy and Bob Ladford were locked in a battle of wills and golf games, Sabol was running away with the medal by ducking two under the card. Little matter to Fat Daddy, though. His action with Ladford and other golfers on the train was much heavier than the medal. When he returned to the snack bar with his shirt off and hat askew, the hangers on got on him. “Man, they’ve beaten Fat Daddy’s shirt off and knocked his hat band loose,” cracked one spectator.

But Fat Daddy simply turned to his detractors and said calmly, “All sickness ain’t death, you know. I’m still the leading money winner.”

The action on Palmer Park’s train might appear to be something of a contradiction in a city like Detroit with its soaring unemployment and intense racial polarization. But the golf at Palmer eases the pain of unemployment, and any racial tension is left out on Woodward or on 7 mile, long before the golfers pull into the parking lot. Black and white golfers at Palmer play on teams in golf leagues together, and when they’re hustling, they see only one color – green.

Whenever out of town ringers stop in Detroit and show up at Palmer, they have only to find the right player and ask: “You want my business?” One of the regulars will surely respond, “Let’s stick it in the ground.” ◼︎

Sadly, Palmer Park Golf Course is no more. The city closed it in 2018. When I last visited the course in 2015, it was being managed by the American Golf Corp. and looked better than I had ever seen it. But the train and the scene had long since disappeared. The few regulars hanging around the grill had no memories of those characters from the 1960s and 70s, except that one vaguely remembered hearing the name Prime Minister. But a friend of mine, a retired attorney, sent this story to one of his buddies,  who passed it along to several others. They are regulars at a favorite Detroit watering hole and no longer play at Palmer Park. But they all remembered the course, the train and the characters chronicled here.