His real name was Alvin C Thomas, but he was known far and wide as “Titanic” Thompson. He was part gambler, part golfer–and all hustler.
When Titanic made a bet on a golf game, he always seemed to have a trick up his sleeve. Once he played against another gambler named Nick the Greek, who was also a very good golfer. Titanic was losing on the seventeenth hole, and so he made an offer to Nick the Greek which seemed too good to be true.
“I’ll bet you double or nothing, Nick,” Titanic said. “I say I can hit eight silver dollars in a row with my pistol from a distance of twenty-five feet.”
“You’re on!” Nick replied, feeling certain that the trick was impossible.
But Titanic did it! He threw a silver dollar high in the air eight times, and hit each one with a shot from his pistol. Then he gave one of the coins to Nick as a souvenir.
Titanic’s greatest “sucker bet” is still talked about to this day. He had lost some money in a dice game, and he bet the winner $2,500 that he could drive a golf ball 500 yards. Of course the offer was accepted.
It was a raw winter day. Titanic and his gambling friend drove to a golf course somewhere on New York’s Long Island. On one hole there was a water hazard in the form of a lake. The lake had become frozen over.
Titanic teed up with the wind at his back and boomed a drive out onto the ice. The ball sailed, bounced, skidded, and rolled for what seemed like forever. It finally stopped almost half a mile away!
From The Giant Book of Strange But True Sports Stories by Howard Liss. Illustrations by Joe Mathieu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic_Thompson
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