Golfers we like Meadowlark Lemon – The Digest – retired Harlem Globetrotter enjoys playing golf – Brief Article
Brian Wacker
For 24 years, he was the razzle-dazzle of basketball with his patented hook shot and no-look behind-the-back passes as a member of the Harlem Globetrotters. On the golf course, Meadowlark Lemon’s repertoire is slightly more limited.
“I leave the tricks to Tiger,” says Lemon, who, after playing in more than 7,500 games for the Globetrotters, was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last year. “The only basketball skill I’ve taken to the course is my touch with chipping and putting.”
Although the confetti-in-the-water-bucket trick might rattle his match-play opponents, you won’t see it on the first tee from Lemon. He’s too worried about keeping his drive in the fairway.
“I just wish I could spend as much time on golf as I did practicing basketball,” he says. But Lemon is another type of globetrotter these days, spending 150 to 175 days a year on the road spreading the gospel as an ordained minister. It might be his calling, but it hasn’t helped him with his 14 handicap.
Lemon plays when he can, whether it’s a celebrity event or a casual round near his home in Scottsdale. But since he retired from the Globetrotters in 1978, the years have passed quickly. “And if your long game is anything like mine, you’re in trouble,” he says.
Although the Clown Prince of Basketball is now 70 years old, Lemon prefers to think of himself as “somewhere between 18 and 100. I would like to be Moses, though,” he says. “The Bible said he was 120 years old when he died. And I’m going to keep playing golf until I can’t get out of the cart anymore.”
COPYRIGHT 2003 New York Times Company Magazine Group, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
