Arv Olson -- He Wrote That Others Would Be Remembered

It would be so appropriate for this humble, soft-spoken Swede to join the Hall's elite group of 21 since the Hall of Fame already contains hundreds of articles that Olson has written about the current and future members, the old and new courses and the history of a sport that BC has become so renowned for throughout Canada, the Pacific Northwest and now the world.

BC Golf News Audio

 Just before Arv Olson was invited to comment,  a close friend and longtime collegue, former Sun columnist Archie MacDonald,  a member of the BC Sports Hall of Fame media category, offered some additional  insight into an Arv Olson some of his loyal readers may not have known.

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With Alice, his bride of 51 years, at his side, Arv Olson was most eloquent and thoughtful in his acceptance comments, humbled that so many thought enough to be on hand and grateful to the many over the years who provided him with so much to write about.

BC Golf News Audio

Another colleague who has spent several years walking many of the same fairways covering tournaments and conducting interviews side-by-side with Arv Olson is his good friend with Vancouver's other daily newspaper, The Province, columnist Kent Gillchrest, who enjoyed Olson's company as much as anybody and for a variety of reasons.

BC Golf News Audio
KentGilchrestOnArv.mp3  

In a special presentation, an original oil painting by noted Canadian golf artist and broadcast/journalist Eric Dwyer, was unveiled and awarded to Arv Olson by BCGA president George Faithful (left) and Golf Hall of Fame of BC member, Doug Roxburgh, (right) the 13-time BC Amateur champion. 

The Three Amigos, (L to R) Johnny Johnson, legendary amateur, Arv Olson and his high school buddy, award-winning Vancouver Sun photographer Ralph Bowers. 

Iain MacIntyre, one of the most talented young columnists with the Vancouver Sun, succinctly captured the full essasnce of Arv Olson's character and style of writing in the following column, 

For The Love Of The Game
 
Sports writer Arv Olson ‘never could play’ golf, but he has great feeling for those who could

By IAIN MACINTYRE
Vancouver Sun July 6, 2009

Asked for his favourite story from 38 years covering golf at The Vancouver Sun, Arv Olson names 99-year-old Arthur Thompson, who in 1968 shot 92, 10 months before his 100th birthday in Victoria.

“This man was incredible,” Olson remembers. “He was 6-6, straight as a board. He lived on the water and still rowed his own boat when he went salmon fishing.

“I was so impressed. You think you’re going to meet some old guy all crumpled up. But he was so strong and agile. I couldn’t believe it.”

Arv never knew who he was going to meet on a golf course. It could be Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead or Gene Sarazen — a few of the other guys he interviewed and wrote about — or a millionaire CEO or a bus driver. Or a 99-year-old age-shooter who still had both oars in the water.

It is the diversity of golf’s participants and their personalities that Arv so loved to write about. The quality and scope of these stories marked his five decades chronicling the game in British Columbia.

Monday at Mayfair Lakes in Richmond, the B.C. Golf Association pays tribute to the 74-year-old for his contributions to golf in this province. He retired from The Sun in 1995, but kept busy helping the BCGA and writing three golf books. (His profile of B.C. and Canadian golf great Stan Leonard is available at www.arvolsongolf.com).

The only other British Columbian honoured with a BCGA tribute was Doug Roxburgh, the greatest amateur player in the province’s history.

“I was obviously surprised and overwhelmed,” Olson says from his beloved Fanny Bay, where he and his wife of 51 years, Alice, have lived in their dream home overlooking Georgia Strait since he quit newspapering. “I mean, here’s this 13-time provincial champion [Roxburgh]. And here’s this lowly golf writer. What am I doing there?”

BCGA president Kris Jonasson has an answer: “Arv is a big part of the history of the game in B.C. and we felt it was time to recognize his contributions. He had a huge footprint on the game.”

Funny Arv should mention Roxburgh. The first time I saw either, Arv was under the lip of a bucket hat and Roxburgh under the lip of a bunker on the 12th hole at Rivershore Golf Club in Kamloops, where I was covering the 1987 B.C. Amateur.

Roxburgh somehow failed to win that year — Gary Puder won, at age 49, when the tournament was dominated by grownups — but was still impressive. So was Arv, who knew everyone and was disarmingly jovial. He had already been covering golf in B.C. for three decades at that point.

Arv took over the golf beat at The Sun in 1957 because “nobody else wanted it.”

“I put my hand up and said ‘I’ll take it,” he recalls. “My first tournament was the New Westminster Amateur and it was won by a guy named Doug Bagus. He was 6-5 and growly. He used to throw clubs and everything. I had to go interview him and he scared the hell out of me.”

Arv survived the ordeal and went on to cover several hundred more tournaments.

He wrote golf for 38 summers while working other beats during the winter, including a desolate 10-year sentence on the Canucks brightened briefly by the 1982 run to the Stanley Cup final.

“What I liked about golf is you always had a winner,” he says. “You didn’t have to watch the Canucks every night.”

Arv didn’t play golf until he started covering it. Growing up in North Vancouver, he played rugby and football, but earned pocket money by caddying at Capilano. He walked to West Vancouver across the Capilano River bridge, then hitchhiked the last couple of miles to the course.

“The members had to pick us up,” he said. “If they didn’t, they’d have no one to carry their bags.”

Golf took him many places. To Augusta and St. Andrews and to Myrtle Beach, S.C., where he managed to shepherd a dirty dozen mostly-newspaper types through a golf extravaganza. The highlight of the trip was an excursion to Pinehurst, where two tee times wrangled by Arv for famed No. 2 were jeopardized by fog and wayward minivan driving by Tommy (Two Rooves) Tait, one of Arv’s oldest friends and so nicknamed because he clattered one tee shot off, well, you know. Tait will be at Mayfair on Monday.

After the Pinehurst round, the grateful eight bumped into Canadian golf legend Moe Norman in the pro shop. And, of course, Moe knew Arv.

There are so many golf stories.

Like the pro-ams Arv covered in Chilliwack run by pro Dunc Sutherland, who gave produce and livestock as prizes until the winner was drinking while the first prize, a goat, was eating upholstery in the first-place finisher’s station wagon.

Or the media tournament at Langara where former radio jock Terry MacKinnon, whose temper was as unpredictable as his swing, peeled out of the parking lot with his putter tethered and sparking behind his car, dragged to its death as punishment for poor performance. Imagine if they did that to Canucks.

“I never could play, but I tried,” Arv says. “I fell in love with the people in the game. There were so many interesting people.”

imacintyre@vancouversun.com

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Arv Olson's first book, BACKSPIN: 100 years of golf in British Columbia, was written to coincide with the province's centennial celebrations and is a skillfully woven compilation of people, tournaments, statistics and the historical background of a game that has evolved into a multi-billion dollar industry. Although published in 1992, it is still the quintessential historical record of the sport in British Columbia.

His second offering, Shingles & Shells: A History of Fanny Bay, came out in 2004 and was written as a favor to the local historical society in the region where he lives in retirement on Vancouver Island.

A year later came Golflore: notes, quotes and anecdotes, a mixed bag of history, humour, records and rules with witty, captious quotes running rampantly throughout the pages . . . a book with no time line and never out of date.

His last work, STAN LEONARD: Canada's forgotten golf legend, was released this summer and is a tribute to one of Canada's greatest PGA pioneers.

The STAN LEONARD book is available now on-line at www.arvolsongolf.com