Player’s Corner PROFILE
Brown Bagging It with The Babe A neighborhood bicycle ride leads to a memorable encounter for a young Denver boy. By Scott Gardner PHOTOGRAPH BY AP PHOTO © AP1951
POWER COUPLE: Ben Hogan and Babe Zaharias congratulate each other at the World Championship Golf Tourney at Tam O’Shanter Country Club, near Chicago, Ill., on Aug. 12, 1951. A year earlier, following a victory in the Women’s Western Open, Zaharias invited 14-year-old Jerry Karsh of Denver to Park Hill to join the duo for a round of golf.
IF YOU’RE LIKE me, you’ve probably played golf by yourself, late on a summer evening. Your score stinks and the thought of penciling in another double bogey on your mustard-stained scorecard has as much appeal as fishing out a carp from the lake—where you chunked your second shot moments ago—and having it for dinner. But on the next tee, you pluck two worn balls from the bag and for the remainder of the COLORADO AVIDGOLFER | May 2021
round it’s match play—you versus Ben Hogan for the U.S. Open. This begs the question—what would you give to play with the greatest golfers of your generation? Well, if you’re longtime Denver native Jerry Karsh, the answer can fit into a small paper bag. Karsh, now 85, is a modern-day renaissance man, who’s enjoyed career success in both Hollywood and Denver in the entertainment
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biz, as a television production-coordinator and producer-director. If you’re a cinephile, you may have seen his Hollywood work in a “A Walk on The Wild Side,” or “The Bird Man of Alcatraz.” Locally, Karsh was instrumental in getting KRMA Channel 6 off the ground in the mid 1950s, and later in the decade, worked at KUSA Channel 9, producing local children’s programing, such as “Fred & Fae” and “Sheriff Scotty.” Karsh also coloradoavidgolfer.com
