Don Cherry stands in a doorway, one foot in, one foot out of his Las Vegas ranch house. He’s tapping his toe. His hands fidget in the pockets of his windsuit. The sun shines. His golf cart is loaded. We’re waiting on his wife, Francine. Cherry rocks on his heels. Outside, then in again. He wants to get going.  The threshold between indoors and out seems the ideal spot to take a snapshot of this man who has lived life with his feet firmly planted in two spheres: golf and show business. He had the after-hours escape any pro golfer might have longed for—paying gigs as a crooner of the first order, an honorary member of the Rat Pack who sang his way to a gold record. Then again, Cherry enjoyed the sunshine heroics any singer in smoky lounges might envy—as a golfer who competed with the world’s best on the game’s grandest stages, playing the PGA Tour and teeing it up in 17 major championships.

He is the music-making golfer who knocked ’em dead at the Desert Inn for years, whom Vic Damone dubbed the “singer’s singer,” who traveled with Dean Martin and Buddy Hackett from one high-profile booking to another throughout the ’60s and ’70s. But he’s also the singer who happened to be undefeated in Walker Cup play, who played in the Masters as an amateur for the better part of a decade, who played himself to within one shot of the lead with two holes to play in the 1960 U.S. Open at (coincidentally) Cherry Hills.

Looking at Cherry now, it’s not hard to see either version of him. At 78, he’s still at home on a golf course; he isn’t as long as he once was, but his shots fly as straight as a microphone stand and he putts like a champ. He plays golf better than most men sing, but the truth is, he still sings better than, well, just about anybody. He’s still recording, even during one of the toughest periods of his life, having lost his son Stephen in the World Trade Center massacre.

So why don’t more people know him as the golfer or the singer? It’s a question he’s been asked a thousand times before. “I made choices. I could always play golf and I could always sing. For a long time, one complemented the other. I loved them both; I just never gave one up to devote myself fully to the other. I didn’t feel I had to.”

Now, at the age when most men are well into their retirement, Cherry is considering his next CD (a collaboration with Willie Nelson), and his next benefit concert, all the while editing the final drafts of his memoir, “Cherry’s Jubilee: I Never Played the Game.”

The subtitle is puzzling since Cherry did play the game—and played it with style. Raised by a single mother, Cherry grew up in what was generally considered the breadbasket of golf in the ’40s and ’50s, Texas, in the dusty town of Wichita Falls. The game came easily to him, and his mother, a strong-willed woman who worked as a seamstress, didn’t stand in his way, so long as he sang.

“When I was little, she wanted me singing,” Cherry says. “It’s all I can remember. Me at 6 or 7 years old, wondering why people were staring at me while I sang. I’d ask my mother and she’d say, ‘They’re staring because they know how good you are.’” Cherry rubs his chin. “She was a tough woman, so I kept singing and I never stopped.”

Cherry nursed both talents, but golf flourished first. In the years after World War II, he racked up amateur golf championships, garnering 14 titles in nine years. By 1961, the year before he turned pro, Cherry was known in golf circles as a stellar Walker Cup competitor. To this day, his 5-0 record in singles and foursomes play remains a Walker Cup standard—an accomplishment of which Cherry may well be the most proud. “Amateur golf was really big then, bigger than the tour in some ways,” he points out. 

Throughout the ’50s and early ’60s, Cherry played in the Masters an impressive nine times, befriending a number of golfers such as three-time Masters champion Jimmy Demaret, who loved Cherry’s game but practically revered his singing voice. Demaret was a friend and supporter to Cherry throughout the ’50s when Cherry was cutting his teeth in big-time amateur golf, while singing in lounges at night. “Jimmy was what my father should have been,” Cherry said. “He really took care of me.”

Cherry was known as a golfer who’d bend a pitching wedge over his knee, or toss a 5-iron just as often as he won. As with his dual talents, his anger seemed inherent, undeniable. “I’ll tell you when I figured out I was a hothead,” Cherry says. “When I was 10 years old, I used to caddie for my brother. One day he’s playing against three other guys for a dime a hole. He comes to the last hole and, with the presses and all, he’s up 130 dimes. Thirteen dollars! And I’m going to get half of his winnings. So after driving it right down the middle on 18, he chunks a wedge into the water. Right then and there, I took the bag, walked to the pond and gently laid it in the water, right where his ball had rolled in. That’s when I knew what I was.”

Throughout his amateur career, Cherry held a reputation for flashing his anger. It wasn’t until he moved to New York to pursue music professionally that he learned to cool down. “They didn’t know me,” he says, “and they didn’t have to put up with me.” He is sanguine about his temper and its effect upon his life, seeing it more as a phase than a character flaw. “Every friend I had remained a friend. I never lost a friend because of my temper. Now I’m at the point where I can’t understand when someone slams a club into the ground after a bad shot. It’s a total turnaround, I guess. The truth is, I just gave up on anger.”

The question persists. If Cherry had made that kind of simple choice in his career path—golf or music—would he have made that final small step from the merely excellent (the top-ranked amateur, the reliable studio artist) to the immortal (a major champion or music icon)? The step was not a large one in either field. Cherry’s amateur record indicates that he had the tools to compete on the next level. Cherry dispels this idea with something close to a growl. “I never quit, but I just didn’t have the temperament for it. I took things hard. And I’m not dumb. Three nights at a club was a guaranteed payday. I couldn’t turn that down while I was missing cuts. Besides, I loved singing. I really loved being in front of a crowd, a big room full of people. I was always confident I could handle that.”

One thing is certain, he didn’t dissipate either of his talents through hard living. Cherry has never had a cocktail or a cigarette in his life, though that never deterred him from hanging out with people who did. “The four best friends I ever had—Mickey Mantle, Bobby Laine, Phil Harris and Dean Martin—were the four biggest drunks who ever walked. I loved every one of them. I just never dove in. Dean once offered me $500 to drink a pineapple daiquiri. I looked at him and said, ‘It’s not going to happen,’” Cherry snorts. “You can pretty much stand up to anyone after him.” As for not smoking, he says, “That was all about my mother. She just wouldn’t have it, so I never got started.”

Still, in the starched-collar era of the ’50s, Cherry’s night-and-day dichotomy was too much for some of the most powerful men in golf. During the ’54 Masters, Cherry took a job singing in a nightclub during the tournament. After the second day, he was called into Masters chairman Clifford Roberts’ office. “We’re pleased you’re here,” Roberts said, “but I have to tell you we’ve never had anyone play in the Masters and sing at a nightclub.”  “Mr. Roberts, I’ve looked down the list,” Cherry deadpanned, “and I don’t see anyone on there who can sing.” Later, an aging Bobby Jones called him aside, waving him over with his cigarette holder. “Donald,” Jones said, “That’s a great answer you gave Mr. Roberts. Do me a favor and don’t ever give it again.”

At the 1960 U.S. Open, Cherry, still an amateur, found himself within a stroke of eventual champion Arnold Palmer late on Sunday afternoon. Six years earlier, Cherry had given Palmer a terrific chase for the U.S. Amateur title and now he was poised for payback. “I ran in a 40-footer for birdie on 14 and Sam Snead said, ‘You’re going to win the tournament.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, lord!’”  The jinx was on. Cherry missed birdie putts on 14 and 15, then took a 7 on 18 to finish in a tie for seventh.  The next year, Cherry turned pro. He never duplicated his amateur success, because his entertainment career started taking off. For 10 years, Cherry was most widely heard as the voice of “Mr. Clean” on television commercials. He made nearly $800,000 in a single decade from the residuals of that single voiceover job, several times more than he ever made as a golfer.

Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, television guest spots proved plentiful. Cherry was a featured performer on the Dean Martin, Arthur Godfrey and Merv Griffin shows, and later “Hee Haw” and “Nashville Now.” The hit songs “Band of Gold,” “Take a Message to Mary” and “Wild Cherry” boosted his stock and allowed him to headline larger venues as his participation on the pro tour waned. When on tour, he would often book himself to sing on the weekend of a tournament. “That made it so I knew I had money coming in, no matter where I was,” he says.

With these successes in the entertainment world, Cherry’s drive to play golf at the highest level faded. He is an honest guy, admirably so. You can hear the paradoxical mixture of pride and regret in almost everything he says. The past may bother him, but he’s not reliving his choices and he is not loath to admit the music may have hurt his game as a pro. “I know it took its toll on my game. It had to, but I got fulfillment from both things. I’m not sorry in the slightest for the choices I made.”

By late afternoon, Don Cherry and I find ourselves on the 15th hole, waiting for a group ahead of us. Cherry takes a deep sigh and looks for all the world like he’s had enough of golf. He’s just returned from a benefit to raise money for a memorial to his son and the other victims of September 11th. Soon he’ll be appearing with Nelson in a fundraiser for Ladybird Johnson. He’s got to be tired.

“It’s just been a hell of a year. Losing Stephen in one day. Watching it all on television,” he says. “Man, I guess I was like everyone else, in a way. There I was in my bedroom in Las Vegas, watching all this stuff happen 2,000 miles away.” It’s clear that it hurt him to have been so far away, yet so near during the massacre, caught between two worlds once again.

On the next hole, the old crooner’s spirits visibly lift. He wants to get home and change for the photo shoot planned that afternoon. He’s let me pick the suit, a classy Versace number, and we’re setting up at sundown on the first green—the lounge singer, oddly in his element, on the golf course. I ask him if he’s going to sing while we shoot the pictures and he laughs. “You bet I will.”  Then I ask him if he’ll perform something from the new CD, his tribute to Perry Como. Cherry mistakes it for an on-the-spot request and before I know it he’s singing “Without a Song.”  At first, the juxtaposition is jarring: one voice in all the emptiness, one man a capella against the Nevada wind. But within seconds he has filled the air. When he stops after one verse, I ask him to go on. And so he sings, as we play the hole, and with each step we take I can feel the two worlds—the song and the game, the man and the past—pulling together. I urge him all the way through the song, and by the end we’re both laughing at the ludicrous contrast, the beautiful song of loss paired against two short putts in a meaningless game. Cherry’s rendition of this Como standard is without a doubt the most incredible thing I’ve ever heard on a golf course. I’m too astounded to even clap.

“I suppose,” I say, “if I were a nightclub audience, I’d be in love with you now.”

Cherry laughs. “Yeah,” he says as he putts out, “the good part is, sometimes it works out that way.” 

To hear excerpts from some of Cherry’s favorite songs—old and new—or to purchase any of his CDs, visit www.doncherry.us