When King said he didn’t know anything about caddying, Selby simply explained: “You carry bags around the golf course and they pay you.”
So one Saturday morning, King, wearing cut-off blue jeans, T-shirt and a backward baseball hat, jumped on his bike and rode to Brown’s Run.
He looked more like a character in “The Sandlot” than a country club employee.
He parked his bike in the doorway of the pro shop. When he walked in, he was greeted by Dale Fedder, the longtime head pro.
King spoke first: “Hey, man, I’m here to caddie.”
“You are?” Fedder asked.
“I am.”
“Do you know anything about this?”
“Not a thing.”
Fedder took King to the back of the pro shop, handed him a pair of pants and a golf shirt. At least he looked the part.
“I had no idea what I was doing,” he said with a smile.
On that first day, King caddied for Tony Tenore, a Middletown realtor. The round was filled with adult beverages and language to match, King remembered.
King continued to show up every weekend at Brown’s Run and Fedder always made sure he was wearing appropriate clothes.
Years later, King, who said he barely could break 60 for nine holes, made a hole-in-one in a tournament at Weatherwax Golf Course.
The next day, King received a congratulatory phone call from “the other Larry King,” then head pro at Wildwood Golf Club in Middletown. One day apart, the men with the same name, both made a hole-in-one on the same hole.
The two Kings have remained friends for decades and when King was inducted into the SOPGA Hall of Fame Friday night at Scioto Reserve Country Club, the two men sat at the same table.
“It’s been an amazing journey,” King said Friday when asked about the HOF.
That pretty much sums up King and his fascination with the golf business.
King said while vacationing in Naples, Fla., he was asked by Randy Harris, pro at a local course, if he wanted to work in the bag room. He accepted, and a few days later and after the bag room supervisor quit, King was offered the job.
It was 1979, and King, a welder at the time, was making $100,000 a year. He made $2.10 an hour as a cart boy.
“I sit back and think about it,” he said. “Man, oh man, where I have come from.”
For the last three decades, King has been a fixture in the region, most recently as the owner and head professional at Tri County Golf Ranch in Springdale. There, he continues to teach and grow the game he loves.
A PGA member since 1992, he has held leadership roles at Stillmeadow Country Club, Four Bridges Country Club and across Cincinnati Recreation Commission.
He’s a six-time Greater Cincinnati PGA Player of the Year and has qualified for 17 PGA Professional National Championships and four appearances in the Senior PGA Professional National championship.
On Friday night, he joined an illustrious group, including the “other Larry King,” as a member of the HOF. He wore a suit and tie to the ceremony. He looked the part.
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