The Drummer would have loved it. Golf in its purest form, the U.S. Open. In Pinehurst, his adopted golf haven.

Yep, ol’ Drummer would have been in his element, spinning some yarns about the old days, telling you why that guy couldn’t win on No. 2, and why this guy could.

Bob Drum, one of the game’s legendary writers, died in May of 1996, but his spirit lives on. His son, Kevin, is executive director of the Sandhills Golf Association. It’s a job the young Drum loves, spreading the gospel as to why the Sandhills are the best place in the world to pursue the elusive par. But his father is never completely out of his thoughts, particularly during a Masters or a U. S. Open.

"Dad loved Pinehurst," Kevin said. "People used to say you couldn’t hold an Open here because it couldn’t handle the crowd. Dad would say, ‘What do you mean? They get 50,000 people in Rockingham twice a year.’ "

Bob Drum was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1918 and went on to become a two-sport athlete at the University of Alabama, where he was All-America in basketball. He spent four years in Europe and North Africa during World War II, and then took a tough job; sports writer for the Pittsburgh Press.

Drum worked there for 17 years, but he had found two things that changed his life. He discovered Arnold Palmer in Latrobe, Pa., and he learned that his passion was writing about golf.

It has been said that Bob Drum invented Arnold Palmer. That isn’t the whole truth, of course. Everyone knows that Pennzoil invented Arnie. But Drum did chronicle Palmer’s every feat, and it was Drum’s prose that made Arnie bigger than life in the eyes of golf fans.

Drum was a crusty guy who hid a soft heart under that rough-hewn exterior. But you only had to be around him a few minutes to understand that he was special. Jack Nicklaus knew that, and at his Memorial Tournament last week, Nicklaus honored his old friend.

Now Drum’s name appears on the wall at Muirfield with other journalistic greats such as Herb Graffis, O.B. Keeler, Grantland Rice, Herbert Warren Wind, Charles Price, Dick Taylor, Jim Murray and Furman Bisher.

"My dad covered about a thousand tournaments," Kevin Drum said, "but only one honored him. He would have been proud to be honored by Jack Nicklaus on the same day as Ben Hogan. And my mom is really proud that he’s on the wall with those other great writers."

Kevin has many memories of his father, including 25 trips to Augusta National to attend the Masters.

"He was a sports writer who fell in love with golf to the point that he quit writing about anything else," Kevin said. "It was ironic, because he didn’t really play golf himself. He loved the story, the honor and integrity of the game. He felt golf was so unique — unlike any other game — because players called penalties on themselves.

"He liked the places, the people, the characters he met, more than he did playing."

Drum, who was a past president of the Golf Writers Association of America, had little patience with those he felt didn’t take the time to understand the subject they were covering.

"It bothered him that most of the people covering the game weren’t really golf writers," Kevin said. "When he was working, they didn’t have the luxury of watching on TV, they had to walk the courses. Those guys deserve a lot of credit for the boom of the game."

The Drummer, whose spirit no doubt now resides in places such as Augusta, St. Andrews and Pinehurst, is gone.

But the memories are still living with his son.

"We were best friends," Kevin said, "not just father and son. We were hanging out together."