WGHOF Induction: Haas on favorite Wadkins memories

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Lanny Wadkins won 21 times on the PGA TOUR, including the 1977 PGA Championship.

Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower and golfers Christy O'Connor, Jose Maria Olazabal and Lanny Wadkins are being inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame on Monday. PGATOUR.COM has asked several prominent golfers and golfwriters to write essays about the inductees which we are publishing in the four days leading up to the ceremony at the World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Fla.

I first met Lanny Wadkins at Bermuda Run Country Club in Clemmons, N.C., in the fall of 1970. I was a junior in high school, and he had just finished his career at Wake Forest. He was doing a "Super Saturday" exhibition with Arnold Palmer, Jack Lewis and Eddie Pearce, and the Deacons were playing football that night. I remember thinking that if these guys were college golfers, I had a long way to go.

Join GOLF CHANNEL host Rich Lerner on Nov. 2 at 10 p.m. ET to see the 2009 World Golf Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony presented by Shell. The coverage will also air on GOLF CHANNEL Nov. 3 at 3 a.m. ET, and Nov. 3 at 8 a.m. ET.

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My uncle, Bob Goalby, had won the Heritage Classic earlier that year, and Lanny finished second, four shots behind him, as an amateur. Lanny really caught Bob's eye. He had watched him hit balls for a while one day and later told me that if Lanny was the kind of player they had at Wake Forest, then that's where I should go to college. If the truth be told, though, I was probably more enamored of Arnold at the exhibition that day. But I could tell Lanny had that "look" about him where you felt like he was going to hit a good shot -- and he usually did.

Lanny is four years older than I am and he moved to Dallas pretty early in his career. So we didn't have that much contact until I made it to the PGA TOUR. He was in another league by the time I got there in 1976, too. He'd already won three times when I turned pro and he won the PGA Championship a year later. He wasn't going to hang around with some lowly little rookie. So it was probably three or four years before we began to play more and more together. I knew his younger brother Bobby pretty well and we started playing practice rounds together along with Lanny, Bruce Lietzke and Bill Rogers. I soon learned that if you played a practice round with Lanny you wanted to be on his team. When they threw the balls up, you always wanted yours to land next to his.

One year before the British Open at Muirfield, Fred Couples and I played a practice round match against him in Scotland. I can't remember Lanny's partner but I do remember Lanny asking "So how does this match stand?" on the 17th tee. We were probably playing a 5-pound Nassau or something like that and there had been many presses. But Lanny knew. He answered his own question, saying "It's 5-3-1-even-1-even, and you lost the front" -- or words to that effect. It was the Bank of Dallas telling us what we owed. Billy Harmon and I still laugh about that day. That's what I mean about wanting to have Lanny on your team.

Lanny's Ryder Cup record speaks for itself. He played on eight, captained one and owns a 20-11-3 record overall. Only Arnold has more wins with 22 and only Billy Casper has as many. At The Belfry in 1985, he was playing with Mark O'Meara in the Four-ball session on Saturday morning. They were booed on the first tee. Mark looked at Lanny and said, 'Oh, my gosh," and Lanny grinned and said, "Yeah, isn't that great?" That's the kind of competitor he is.

I don't think you can find someone more intense than he is. I want to use the word "confident," but I don't know if that does him justice -- and not in a cocky way, either. Lanny just had this belief that he was going to win. And as far as ball-striking goes, he had few peers. He was a fabulous driver of the ball and he hit wonderful irons. He always complained about his putting but I guess you can't make them all. You can't win 21 PGA TOUR events like he did without putting well. He didn't seem to have any weaknesses with the putter -- other than missing a few backhands here and there, that is. I am sure there will be some ribbing about that at the ceremony on Monday. In fact, I was playing with him the other day during the second round of the Administaff Small Business Classic in Houston. He missed about an 8-foot birdie putt and went to slap it in, and the putter got stuck right behind the ball. He just said, "Oh, put me down for a 6."

I know there was some disappointment on his part -- and rightfully so -- that it seemingly has taken a few years longer than it should have for Lanny to be voted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. But he's there now where he belongs. I think the thing I'll remember the most about him is just the way he carried himself on the golf course, the look of professionalism. He did everything the right way. You saw him and you said, 'Now, that's a golfer. That's someone who knows what he's doing and where he's going -- now let's watch him get there."

Editor's note: Jay Haas is a nine-time PGA TOUR champ and a 14-time winner on the Champions Tour where he has earned two Charles Schwab Cups. Like Wadkins, he played collegiately at Wake Forest University.