Boeing Classic | Vietnam vet hoping to pull an upset

SNOQUALMIE — In 1995, a Vietnam veteran who had refined his game at the Fort Lewis Golf Course won the GTE Classic at Inglewood Golf Club in Kenmore.

Now, another Vietnam combat vet who is an "alum" of the post course hopes it is his turn to pull an upset on the Champions Tour's 3-year-old Seattle-area stop.

The 1995 winner was Walter Morgan, who spent his final four years in the Army at Fort Lewis, much of that helping operate the course.

"Getting shot at in Vietnam was pressure. There was no pressure out there today," Morgan said after his breakthrough win in what turned out to be the final year of the tournament.

Ed Dougherty is the Fort Lewis Golf Course vet in the Boeing Classic that begins today at 11:30 a.m. at the TPC at Snoqualmie Ridge.

Dougherty (pronounced "DOCK-ur-tee") played golf for five months at Fort Lewis in 1969 after returning from often-horrific combat in Vietnam. He had entered the military after delivering his own draft notice when he was a young postman.

"I wanted to play baseball at McChord Air Force Base when I got back, but they wouldn't let me do it because I was training troops," Dougherty, 59, recalled. "So I told my father, 'Send out some golf clubs,' and I decided to learn how to play golf. It cost me only $6 a month to play."

During the Tet Offensive, Dougherty's unit was sent into a Special Forces camp that had been surrounded and overrun. Only 45 of the 113 men he went in with made it out.

He was wounded by an enemy mortar that put shrapnel into his right hand and wrist.

The medic who looked at it said, "It's a long way from your heart, kid. You'll be all right."

Dougherty received a Purple Heart for his wound and two Bronze Stars for bravery, but is reluctant to talk about them.

"I'm a very lucky person," he said Thursday. "I got a chance to live my dreams. The guys who lost their lives over there never got that chance."

Dougherty hasn't watched a war movie or read a military book since Vietnam. He never has traveled overseas and has deadpanned, "The last time I left America I got shot."

The sound of helicopters makes him nervous because they represented trouble when he was in Vietnam.

"I don't like them at all," he said.

He especially hates hearing them when he is standing over a putt. He says he hears helicopters much earlier than golfers who didn't serve in the military.

Dougherty is always willing to speak to wounded veterans and led five Champions Tour buddies in a clinic Tuesday at the American Lake Veterans Golf Course in Pierce County.

He also engineered a berth in the Wells Fargo Pro-Am Thursday for Maj. Bruce Crandall, who belatedly received the Congressional Medal of Honor in February for heroism in Vietnam.

Dougherty joked that the only connection between his Vietnam experience and current job is "launching 9-irons over trees."

After leaving Fort Lewis, he took a job picking up range balls and later in the bag room at a country club.

He made it onto the PGA Tour in 1975 and had 460 starts from 1975 to '97, winning once. He has won twice on the Champions Tour since joining in 1998 and earned more than $7 million. This year, he has only two top-25 finishes in 17 starts.

Dougherty is in a field that includes 11 winners of PGA Tour "majors." Other decorated golfers include U.S. Amateur winners Jay Sigel (1982 and 1983) and John Harris, who won in 1993 at age 41.

The field also has Chip Beck, best known for shooting 59 in 1991, and Scott Hoch, best known for missing a 30-inch putt that would have won the playoff of the 1989 Masters.

Those are big names in the golf world. Some of the names that matter most to Dougherty are fallen comrades whose names are on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

When Dougherty finally visited the Wall, his wife, Carolyn, said it best when she told a reporter, "I just realized how, but for the grace of God, his name could have been on the Wall."

Craig Smith: 206-464-8279 or csmith@seattletimes.com