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MAY & JUNE 2007
Lou Warobick was a master when the game of golf was different. Television crews and newspaper reporters covered Wisconsin tournaments, children lined up to meet their favorite players, and the big-name golfers didn’t have multimillion dollar endorsement deals. Warobick isn’t the most storied player in Wisconsin history, and he isn’t always remembered for the number of tallies he put in the win column. The Lou Warobick most Wisconsin golf fans recollect was a teacher, a gentleman. He prided himself on helping others get better, and he not only taught his pupils how to swing a golf club, but how to act on the course.
Even when Warobick was at the top of his game, he wasn’t necessarily concentrating on himself. He was always teaching others to play golf – whether it was on the practice tee before a Wisconsin PGA tournament or on the putting green with his grandson. And while Warobick liked to give lessons to the men he competed against, his real love came from teaching junior players. He was particularly drawn to teaching kids who, like himself, came from poor backgrounds. In fact, several years ago at the Nelthorpe Cup, an all-star event co-sponsored by the Wisconsin State Golf Association and the WPGA, seven of the 12 amateur golfers playing had taken instruction from Warobick. “It was instinctive in his nature to want to help someone on a practice tee,” said Randy Warobick, Lou’s son. “If he saw somebody struggling, he couldn’t stand it. He had to go over and try to help them. That was pretty much him.” Louis Warobick was born on April 11, 1921, in Binghamton, N.Y., to Peter and Katherine Warobick. The factory job Lou’s father held didn’t bring in enough income for the family of 10, so Lou, one of the oldest children, took a job as a bag boy at a store. But every day on his way to work, the young Warobick passed a golf course, and it didn’t take long for management to give him a job as a caddie. Shortly after Warobick began his 25-cent-a-round job, the club pro gave him a set of clubs as well as his first lessons on how to play the game. Warobick, a natural athlete who also played high school football, was a quick study on the golf course who soon demonstrated his ability by winning the course’s caddie championship. His development in golf was interrupted when he was called to serve his country not long after he graduated from high school. After a three-year stint as a World War II paratrooper, Warobick settled in California, where he returned to golf. His first job as an assistant golf pro was in 1949 at Griffith Park GC in Los Angeles. That same year he joined the PGA Tour and married his wife, Clastelle, who went by “Classie.” But the Tour was rough, and players didn’t make anywhere near the amount of money they do now. Airplanes didn’t fly them from tournament to tournament, so Warobick found himself spending most of his time away from his wife and two young children, Kathy and Randy. By 1955, Warobick had tired of life on the road and was looking for an opportunity to settle down. While he was on the Tour, Lou met three other players who would become his lifelong friends, Blue Mound G&CC pro Russ Tuveson, Brynwood CC pro Gordon Watson and Milwaukee CC pro Manuel de la Torre. Watson offered to make Lou his assistant pro at Brynwood, which gave the Warobick family a chance to be together. “He was lonely being away from the family,” Randy said. “It gave him the opportunity to settle down with the family. It was a great move because it brought us to Wisconsin.” Warobick spent a few years at Brynwood before taking the head pro position at Branch River CC in Cato. He was there until 1964, and over the course of the next 21 years, Warobick was head pro at Reid Municipal GC in Appleton, Westmoor CC in Brookfield and Lakeshore Municipal GC in Oshkosh, where he retired in 1986. During his years as a pro, Warobick wasn’t just teaching golf to the throngs of hopefuls who sought out his advice. For nearly four decades, Warobick played in tournaments throughout Wisconsin, winning the WPGA Stroke Play Championship in 1963 and 1967. He was a five-time Wisconsin State Open runner-up. In his later years, Warobick won the WPGA Senior Championship in 1975, ’79, ’82 and ’84, and he was the U.S. National Senior Open Age Champion in 1981 and the National PGA Stroke Play Age Division Champion in 1989. Warobick was posthumously voted into the WSGA Hall of Fame in 2000. Wisconsin golf great Tommy Veech, who describes Lou as his best friend, said the short man with the long nose was one of the kindest men and greatest wedge players he’s ever seen. Warobick was small – only about 5 feet 8 inches tall and 165 pounds – but he hit the ball a long way, and it was always straight. Former WSGA executive director Gene Haas said Warobick had an amazing ability to keep the ball in play. “Lou rarely took shortcuts,” Haas said. “Lou was a position player all his life.” But if Warobick had spent half as much time focused on his own game as he did teaching others, friends said, he could have really excelled. “When he was playing tournament golf, he got so involved in other people, making sure they did OK, that I think he had a hard time concentrating or he would have won more tournaments,” Veech said. Randy recalled a story about the night his dad won the 1967 WPGA Championship. Randy, then a teenager, waited up for Warobick to come home from the tournament to tell the family how he finished. But it got late and Randy grew tired, so he went to bed. When Warobick finally made it home, Randy got out of bed, but instead of telling his son how he finished, the first thing Warobick said was, “Boy, you better watch out for Paul (Meissner). He’s going to be playing great the rest of this year.” Warobick went on about how he gave Meissner a golf lesson after the tournament was over but never mentioned his own score. Figuring his dad had blown the lead he had going into the final round, Randy went back to bed. But when he woke up the next morning and picked up the newspaper, Randy found his dad’s winning score plastered at the top of the sports page. “That was my dad,” Randy said. “That was his love – teaching and helping people out.” Mark Bemowski, a member of the WSGA Hall of Fame since 1991, was in his early 20s when he met Warobick. Bemowski, who knew Veech from North Hills CC in Menomonee Falls, was put up in the Warobicks’ home while he played in the Wisconsin State Open in Appleton. Bemowski – who has since developed a lifelong friendship and golf partnership with Randy – never took lessons from Warobick but said it was a pleasure to watch the man teach others. Warobick always had a smile on his face and was never mad. He was polite and caring, and that’s part of what made him such a great teacher. “Lou was an old-school guy. He was a very talented guy,” Bemowski said. “He was a small man who hit it a long way, but . . . was a feel/hands player like players were back in those days – totally different than the game is played today.” Of all his pupils, the one Warobick had the hardest time teaching was his son. Randy, who might someday follow in his father’s footsteps as a member of the WSGA Hall of Fame, plays the game much differently than his father. You’d guess his powerful swing and crushing drives, so unlike his father’s, are the result of a stubborn father-son relationship. But that’s not the case. Randy, who began to play the game when he was 6 years old, was just trying to keep up. His goal was to reach his dad’s drive in two shots, and he had to swing for the fences in order to do it. “He’s responsible for me hitting it long, but it may be a little wild too,” Randy said. “Because when you swing as hard as you can every time, it’s not going to go as straight as it maybe should.” But whatever Warobick taught his son worked; Randy has won over 200 golf tournaments in Wisconsin, and last fall, a week after turning 55, he won the Senior Bestball Championship with Bemowski. Warobick’s passion for teaching golf was evident until the end. When Lou Warobick passed away on Feb. 9, 1996, after a 10-year battle with cancer, he was the director of golf at Olde Highlander GC in Oconomowoc, which Randy owned at the time. When he was dying, Warobick and his family discussed what to do with the donations and memorials that were sure to come their way. The result was the Lou Warobick Junior Golf Foundation, a non-profit, charitable foundation that provides college scholarships to high school seniors who contribute to their school and community. The scholarships – 30 have been awarded so far – are offered to boys and girls. They are not based on ability to play golf, but rather on sportsmanship, assuring that the values important to Lou are passed on to future generations.
“His name lives on and is associated with some really quality young boys and girls here in Wisconsin,” Randy said, “and that makes us all proud.”
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