Here’s an interesting article from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about former professional golf commentator Ben Wright, who now lives in Flat Rock. I can’t say I’ve know anything about Wright, having never watched golf for more than a few moments, but the man’s story is quite fascinating.

STATELINE, Nev.—I absolutely loved him and still miss him, and I am now sitting next to him in the bar at the Edgewood Tahoe clubhouse.

If you’re a golf fan, you must remember Ben Wright. He was a fixture on CBS telecasts for 24 years, the guy with the unmistakable British accent. Forget Jim Nantz and Ken Venturi, Wright was the highlight of the whole damn show.

... Wright’s been gone from CBS for 13 years now, shortly after he made some homophobic comments to a reporter that cost him his job.

In a 1995 interview, Wright “supposedly” told a Delaware newspaper, the News Journal, that “lesbians in the sport hurt women’s golf” and “they’re going to a butch game and that furthers the bad image of the game” and that “women are handicapped by having boobs. It’s not easy for them to keep their left arm straight, and that’s one of the tenets of the game. Their boobs get in the way.”

I say he “supposedly” said these things because Wright denied that he did when I caught up with him two weeks ago on a golf trip called “Golf the High Sierra” media tour in which reporters played 36 holes a day at courses in the Reno-Carson City-Lake Tahoe area. ... Wright said his remarks to the woman reporter from the News Journal were off the record and that he wouldn’t have made them otherwise.

“I wouldn’t say those things to my mother, for God’s sake,” Wright said.

...If you want to hear him now, he makes regular appearances on the “John Boy & Billy Big Show” on WRFX in Charlotte, N.C.

“It’s basically a redneck thing,” Wright said. “I’m an absolute contrast between John Boy and Billy. They make fun of me, and I make fun of them.”

He designs golf courses and has a seat on the village council of Flat Rock in western North Carolina, where he lives with his fifth wife.

... How’d he end up in Flat Rock? Somebody in Manhattan told him that Asheville, N.C., was a nice place to live, so Wright checked it out and agreed—Flat Rock is 22 miles from Asheville.

http://www.seattlepi.com/moore/407187_moore15.html

Read more about how he nearly murdered one of this wifes after catching her in bed with another guy, and various other less-than-flattering tales.