"You had two strong leaders, two sons of the South in Billy Payne and Bill Clinton," says Mack McLarty, a boyhood friend who became Clinton's most trusted political adviser. "The president had met 'Billy Payne'the strong, entrepreneurial, Southern charmera hundred times before he met Billy Payne.
That Billy Paynepolite, courteous, aw-shucksis not the Billy Payne known to the Atlanta politician Bill Byrne, who says he remembers a hot-necked conversation with Payne during the 1996 Olympics. In the politician's memory, it goes something like this:
etails of the meeting are secondary. Payne now says, "I don't remember Mr. Byrne." Dick Yarbrough, the Payne aide who most often dealt with Byrne, calls the story a lie. What's likely true is the attitude. When Billy Payne has an idea in mind, his hair might explode into fire and he wouldn't notice.
"As for Billy Payne," Burk wrote in an e-mail to me, "many sportswriters claimed he was 'his own man' when he took over the chairmanship. I couldn't disagree more. It is clear that he is Hootie's man, and would never have gotten the nod if he had not promised to continue barring women. ... Billy Pay
In answer to Burk and on the women's issue, Payne delivers a hard line in clipped tones: "Our club will deliberate privately over all issues regarding membership, and other than that we're just not going to talk about it."The caravan passes on, moving at Billy Payne speed.
When Porter Otis Payne died in 1982, Billy Payne saw thousands of mourners at the funeral. "My father had more friends who loved him dearly than anybody I have ever known or heard about in my life," he told a reporter.
"An exceedingly mature, sweet person," Billy Payne says of his father. Then, a caveat: "Up to a point, the sweetest, kindest person you have ever seen. It took a lot to get him mad, but once he reached the boiling point, nobody wanted to be around him."
could respect, admire and wonder if he ever could be that man. Years later, when Billy Payne made a commencement-day speech in his alma mater's football stadium, he used the first two minutes to explain that his father always asked him one question, the same question, a question that shaped his life.
ational, "Billy must feel he has died and gone to heaven, because he truly has a deep love for golf," Dick Pound says. Frazier goes mythological on the idea of Payne and Augusta: "If you are going to entrust the Holy Grail of golf to anyone, I cannot think of any King Arthur better than Billy Payne.
