Joe Conrad was goofing around playing church softball at age 13 when a good buddy on the team invited him to take in a round of golf. So the teens rounded up some clubs, climbed on their bikes and pedaled over to Riverside Municipal Golf Course.
It was there that Conrad, slightly built and red-haired, discovered something significant.
?I couldn't hit a softball very well,? he said recently. ?But have a golf ball sitting up on a tee? I could blast it.?
In the ensuing years, few did it better.
Conrad, now 83, went on to enjoy a remarkable career that included winning the 1955 British Amateur Championship, competing on two Walker Cup teams and capturing three national titles as a spearhead on the talent-chocked North Texas State program.
?He was an amateur's amateur,? said Reid Meyers, executive director of the Texas Golf Hall of Fame. ?You go to his home and he has a great trophy room downstairs, all that stuff in there, but he's very humble. He's one of the reserved gentlemen, in the Byron Nelson category of gentlemen.?
On Feb. 15, the gentleman they once called ?Little Red? will take his place in the San Antonio Sports Hall of Fame.
Conrad, born and raised on the city's Southeast Side, is no stranger to such recognition. In 1979, he was inducted into the second class of the Texas Golf Hall of Fame, joining the likes of Harvey Penick and his North Texas State teammate, Don January.
?Such a helluva guy,? January, the 1967 PGA Championship winner, said recently from his home in Dallas. ?He was very reserved, and you never knew what he was thinking or not thinking. I never saw him speak up, I never saw him bragging, but you get him in competition, and you knew he was a competitor.?
Conrad's rise from scuffling softball player to international golf star was notable. Less than a month after gripping a club for the first time, the future St. Gerard student entered the 1943 Texas State Junior Championship at Brackenridge. Predictably, he struggled, dropping every match-play showdown.
After the final loss, he shuffled into the Brackenridge clubhouse.
?And I won some consolation prize,? Conrad said, chuckling. ?I'd only been playing a month, and I thought, 'Well, isn't that something?' I won that little prize and started playing over at Willow Springs all the time.?
Nearly every day, Conrad would bike the two miles from his home to school, then another couple miles afterward to Willow Springs.
?Then, it was four miles back home,? he said.
With that passion came eventual championships. Conrad, seven years after beginning play, earned the Mexican National Amateur title. In 1951, he returned to Brack and won the Texas State Junior in addition to the Texas Amateur Championship.
By that time, he also was a spearhead for the juggernaut North Texas State squad that also included January and Billy Maxwell. Together, they ruled college golf from 1950-52.
?He wasn't very long off the tee, wasn't really very straight,? said January, 83. ?But he chipped and putted wonderfully.?
That skill set, and an uncommon competitive streak, produced Conrad's signature moment on the course in 1955. There, the 5-foot-8 Texan, an Air Force lieutenant stationed at Lackland, strung together a series of upsets, including a 3-and-2 defeat of local favorite Alan Slater in the final, to take the British Amateur at Royal Lytham in St. Anne's.
Conrad, after a try at the pro ranks, returned to San Antonio to briefly hold the head pro position at Canyon Creek Golf Club (now Club at Sonterra) before opening the 19th Hole Golf Center on the city's North Side in the 1960s.
He retired in 1988, then won the Southern Texas PGA's 60-and-over title in fall 1991. Conrad, celebrating his own rise from the junior ranks, became one of the city's pre-eminent supporters of junior golf in ensuing years.
?It has been a fun time,? he said.
roliver@express-news.net Twitter: @RichardCOliver
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