Texas Pride — Don January (left) speaks with fellow Texas golfing legends Ben Crenshaw (center) and Miller Barber, crica 1985. January died in early May at age 93.

DALLAS — I know it’s corny but I cherish the memory …

Watching golf on our small black and white TV, circa the early 1960s, the announcer says that Don January, slow moving with his signature turned-up back shirt collar, is playing well with a chance to win.

“It’s great to see Don January playing so well but what about Fred February,” my dad intones to solicit our laughter.

There is just something about that name — Don January. It was synonymous with pro golf during the 1960s and ‘70s and into the ‘80s and 90’s. The Dallas pro who won 10 times on the regular tour and 22 times on the senior tour died in early May at age 93.

January was part of the golf boom made possible by television and a charismatic man named Arnold Palmer who took center stage to fend off rivals Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player. It was the Golden Age of golf and television was the perfect medium for a sport played outdoors in beautiful surroundings. Those were fun days when sports was entertainment and a diversion from the heavier, more serious things of life. It was not so much the industry with agents and twitter and what have you that it is today.

Such were my thoughts recently while processing the death of January, a man I got to know well the past 10 or so years. Getting to know the January family through my friendship with his oldest son Tim has been a real blessing in my life and I was honored greatly when asked to give the eulogy at the celebration of Don’s life ceremony at Prestonwood Country Club.

The celebration, replete with an open bar and Mexican food buffet, was by invitation of the family and well attended. Having been asked some two weeks earlier, I wrote and rewrote my remarks only to ignore them and speak extemporaneously because I knew the trajectory of Don’s life in Dallas from a young boy wading the creeks of Stevens Park to being one of a group of men who founded the PGA Tour Champions in 1980.

I opened by saying that ever since being asked to speak by the family, it was as close as a 14-handicapper would ever feel to “sleeping on the lead.” The audience laughed, thankfully, because it was a golf playing group, no doubt, and I am sure they wanted me to brief since I was to be followed by Ben Crenshaw, Lee Trevino and Lanny Wadkins.

That I became a friend to Don’s during his last decade is still a marvel to me. Meeting him through his son Tim and also through mutual friend, the late A.J. Triggs, Don was gracious in being my radio show guest on numerous occasions. He was a much loved guest because of his great storytelling, once being called by Johnny Miller as the greatest storyteller in golf.

January was decidedly “old school,” and played for peanuts compared to the riches now doled out on tour, not to mention LIV golf funded by the Saudi Arabians. His first win on tour at the 1956 Dallas Open put a paltry $5,000 in his pocket.

“But I felt like the richest man in the world,” Don would say as he recounted sinking his second shot from the greenside bunker for an eagle at the 72nd hole. That shot was compared to the one sunk by Jordan Spieth some 60 years later when Spieth won his first PGA Tour event (John Deere Classic, July 14, 2013).

January was a big fan of Spieth but puzzled at times by the modern game.

“I love Jordan and know he’s a great kid,” Don told me and Tim once while watching a tournament on TV, “but does he have to have a seminar with his caddie every time he pulls a club?”

January expounded on that thought with more pithiness.

“If a caddie told me all of that stuff, I would just hand him the club and say you hit it and I’ll carry the bag.”

This coming from a man who said he called his sports psychologist “bartender.”

Don January was born in November of 1929, learned to play golf at Stevens Park in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas where as a kid he would wade the creeks to find golf balls while his clubs and shoes were tucked behind the counter in the golf shop managed by a benevolent old pro Wiley Moore.

“One summer I visited my grandparents down in Lampasas and when I got back to Dallas, all of my buddies were hitting the ball farther than me and I didn’t like that one bit,” January once recalled. “So one evening I stood up on top of the hill on the third tee and hit ball after ball until I could clear the creek below and I guess that’s how I developed this long swing that has served me well.”

That swing was analyzed at the reception in Don’s honor by his longtime friend Lee Trevino.

“I first saw him hit a ball when I was a young caddie at the old Glen Lakes Country Club just off Central Expressway,” Trevino said. “He was wearing all black and hitting drivers off the tee and he could really send it. That was the 1950s and I thought he was Elvis or something.”

Trevino was admired by January because he was also a Dallasite and a golfer who earned every cent he made.

“I could drive you by the little shack that Lee lived in as a kid with his mom and grandfather and he came up from nothing,” January told me once.

While January had one major championship, the 1967 PGA, Trevino of course won six with two PGAs, two US Opens and two British Opens.

“The first time I played with Don was at the 1967 US Open at Baltusrol and I had never seen anyone stand so close to the ball,” Trevino said to the room of some 100 people gathered to celebrate January’s life. “That was an advantage because his swing was upright and the club was swung in a pendulum manner. I was short and a little heavy and had to swing around my body which makes it a little harder to be consistent. Now you see the modern players stand close like Don did — guys like (Brooks) Koepka and (Scottie) Scheffler and even Jon Rahm.”

Crenshaw and Wadkins both told how they played money games during practice rounds on tour with January and his best pal, the late Miller Barber, aka Mr. X.

“Those guys were hard to beat,” Wadkins said.

Crenshaw spoke from his heart.

“Don was probably the best natural golfer I ever saw but most of all, he was a man who encouraged me and a lot of other guys.”

As I pondered my friendship and all that Don did for golf — helping to end the repugnant “Caucasian clause” and starting the senior tour — I agreed with the assessment given by Scott Verplank during a recent podcast.

“The last time I saw Don he was struggling a little but still had that gleam in his eye,” Verplank said. “Most of all, he was like Byron Nelson, a genuinely nice man.”

Is there a better compliment to be given? I think not.