She Talks a Good Game

Helen Casey has always said she'd rather talk a good game of golf than play one. Perhaps that's why she's built a reputation over the last two decades as one of Naples' most prolific radio broadcasters and print writers when it comes to her all-time favorite sporting passion.

Casey, a Naples resident since 1988, when she and her huband, Sam, moved to Florida from Chicago, fell in love with the game, as she says, "many, many, many years ago," as a student at the University of Minnesota. A Minneapolis native and the daughter of a Twin Cities newspaperman, she took up the sport to complete a college physical education requirement. "It was golf or a course in public health. What do you think I took?" she says. And she has played the game ever since.

She's also of an era when some women politely decline to give their ages, even if they know that you know that they know that you know. Suffice to say she has adult grandchildren, had a long career working high-profile jobs in the world of fashion, retail and public relations in New York and Chicago and has never been shy about expressing her opinion on any subject at any time in any place. Oh yes, she also adores large hats, the bigger and more colorful the better.

She no doubt had acquired a spiffy dark-green number when she first accompanied Sam Casey, the former CEO of the Pullman Company and a long-time member of Augusta National, to a Masters tournament back in the early 1990s. One day she happened to overhear an interview being conducted by a young reporter with Lanny Wadkins, then a prominent player and now the lead analyst on golf telecasts for CBS Sports.

"This kid was just asking Lanny a bunch of really stupid questions," Casey recalls. "I thought, 'You know, I think I could do it better myself.'"

When she returned to Naples, she paid a visit to a local radio station-"WNOG, and on a clear day, maybe it had 2,500 watts of power," she says-and convinced the general manager to let her do the occasional golf report on the air. "I made a lot of mistakes," she says, "and the engineers were always helping me with all the little buttons, but people kept telling me how much they enjoyed it."

Casey began taking her tape recorder to junior golf events in the Naples area, to the occasional PGA and LPGA tournaments around Florida and always to the Masters, where she became a credentialed member of the press corps and once scored a personal coup with a long one-on-one interview with Arnold Palmer, conducted in the front seat of a Dodge Caravan next to the Eisenhower cottage.

She's been on and off the radio ever since before taking a hiatus last year to help care for her ailing husband. (She first met Sam in the mid-1980s when they were walking their dogs on State Street in Chicago.) She also became a prolific writer, contributing articles to a wide variety of local and regional publications, including a long-running column entitled-what else?-"From Under My Hat" that appeared regularly in the Naples Daily News.

Casey also accompanied her husband on a number of golfing trips to Augusta National, usually with several other couples. "We played golf, we laughed, we had a wonderful time," she says. "It's a magical place, and not just for the men."

Her view on the all-male club clearly is diametrically opposed to that of Martha Burk, the former head of the National Council of Women's Organizations, who has waged a so-far unsuccessful four-year campaign to convince Augusta National's leadership to admit its first female member. Casey says she was always "treated royally" on her annual sojourns to the club and feels so strongly about the sanctity of its membership, she's written a book about it-A Wife's Journey Down Magnolia Lane-that will be published in March.

According to her personal Web site (www.augustastories.com), her book will "blow the lid off perceptions of Augusta National as a club shrouded in secrecy and the epitome of an austere male bastion." She also writes about her personal experiences with so many of the players she's managed to interview under the large tree behind the clubhouse, as well as years of interaction with their wives and children.

There's a touching anecdote, for example, focusing on Barbara Nicklaus and the late Winnie Palmer, when Arnold's wife was battling the cancer that eventually killed her. Though their husbands were fierce rivals for many years, Casey recalled Barbara's many kindnesses toward Winnie Palmer in the last days of her life. She also did a two-hour interview with Martha Burk, and Casey says, "Martha and I left the room probably enjoying the stories we shared about our grandchildren as much as our views on Augusta National."

Casey has performed many kindnesses herself for her Naples listeners and readers, always making certain to interview locally based tour professionals like Rocco Mediate and Peter Jacobsen following their rounds, or having them as guests on her shows. She's also a dedicated reading volunteer at a local elementary school, a co-founder of Women in the Golf Industry and a member of Friends of the Gardens, a Southwest Florida group involved in preserving the environment.

She doesn't play as much golf these days as she'd like. But she still talks and writes a fine game, much to the delight of the Naples golf community.

Leonard Shapiro covers golf for The Washington Post and is a past president of the Golf Writers Association

of America.