![]() “I could have had a gun in there,” Pappas testified. Warren told Pappas to empty his desk drawer, which had hundreds in cash. Within minutes, Lombardo was stripped of his revolver and tied up on the clubhouse floor while Pappas emptied $17,000 from his office safe. They were met by Lombardo. “Good morning, Mr. With Warren holding him at gunpoint, Pappas drove his white Mustang the 16 miles to Sunol. “Beautiful, beautiful, I might even split half the take with you,” Warren told Pappas after the call with Lombardo. He told security guard Jimmie Lombardo that he would stop by, with a friend, to drop off a winner’s check. ![]() Her eyes were covered with black tape. Worried the bandits would fumble the heist, John called the Sunol Valley clubhouse. “And if we didn’t get back, or if something went wrong, that would be the end of it as far as Mary was concerned, and as far as I was concerned.” “The plan was that they were going to keep Mary right here with the one fellow (Spencer) and the other fellow (Warren) and I were to go out to the club and empty the contents in the safe,” Pappas testified. The interaction was suspicious, as Paul was married and lived on his own. John recognized Spencer as one of two men who knocked on his door weeks earlier, asking to speak with his son, Paul. Warren, 24, and Spencer, 23, both from San Jose, wore masks and rubber gloves. “As I glanced around the corner of the kitchen alcove, I saw a dark figure, and as he moved to me mumbling something, I saw his gun,” John testified, as reported in the Hayward Daily Review. and flipped on the lights, Carl Edward Warren and Douglas Rice Spencer were in their kitchen, armed and masked. When John and Mary entered their home at 12:20 a.m. Hayward Mayor John Pappas, right, joins Bobby Kennedy, middle, and Hayward city council member Jack Smith during a re-elect Pat Brown rally at Chabot College in 1966. “The PGA said if you play in Sunol, you get an exemption for the following week’s tournament, and the prize money you win will be official.” The Hayward native only held partial PGA status and was easily swayed to play 20 miles from home. “It was an easy decision for me,” said Lotz, now retired in Oakdale. It was the PGA of America, looking to fill the Alameda County Open field with tour-caliber players. The first week on the player-run PGA Tour would feature two events, 400 miles apart. APG events, including the Los Angeles Open, transferred to the PGA. A tour council was formed, with players having veto power. Ī Tournament Players Division - renamed the PGA Tour in 1975 - was established. “The short, unhappy life of the American Professional Golfers has ended,” wrote Art Spander in The San Francisco Chronicle. Like many players, Palmer sold clubs and merchandise in PGA shops.Ī compromise was reached at the PGA executive meeting in December. “If a player decides to go with the other group,” Elbin warned, “his PGA card will be lifted immediately.”Īrnold Palmer, son of a longtime PGA club pro, bridged the gap between players and the PGA. Sunol Valley, located about 30 miles southeast of Oakland and touted as the first lighted championship course in the world, could host a full-field PGA event in short January daylight. In November, the Alameda County Open was announced, scheduled the same week as the APG opener. “It will be tough at first, but we will endure.” “(The PGA) will continue to play tournament golf,” PGA Commissioner Max Elbin said. The APG’s first event was the historic Los Angeles Open at Rancho Park Golf Course. The rogue tour swayed sponsors - “ this is where the dancing girls are,” boasted APG attorney Sam Gates - and assembled a robust 1969 schedule. “Instead, we want to provide a better vehicle for the operation of professional golf tournaments. “This is not designed to destroy the PGA,” Nicklaus wrote in a September issue of Sports Illustrated. Tournament golfers were tired of answering to club pros on tournament matters, and sought a larger portion of TV and tournament revenue that ballooned during the Jack Nicklaus-and-Arnold Palmer rivalry. In August 1968, players split from PGA of America events to form a rogue circuit, American Professional Golfers, Inc.
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