Billy Casper, the odd-man out of the Big Three of Palmer, Nicklaus and Player, won his 50th PGA Tour victory on this date in 1973 at age 42. He finished at 20-under-par 264 to beat Australian Bruce Devlin by one stroke to win the Sammy Davis Jr. Greater Hartford Open. When he finished on the 18th green, a group of people 30,000 strong surrounded it as he celebrated his fourth victory in the tournament. Casper’s final round was a 64. He made a 15-foot birdie putt on No. 17 to pull ahead of Devlin.
The 1940 PGA Championship ended on this date. It was the 23rd PGA, held at Hershey Country Club in Hershey, Pennsylvania. It was a meeting of titans: Byron Nelson won his first PGA, defeating Sam Snead, 1-up, in the 36-hole final, getting to hold up the Wanamaker Cup.
The 1893 Open Championship, the 33rd, ended on this date. The tournament was played over two days, 36 holes each day. The winner at Prestwick Golf Club, in Scotland, was Scotsman Willie Auchterlonie, who shot 322, two shots ahead of amateur player Johnny Laidlay. It was the 33rd Open Championship.
Fifty years ago on this date, Bruce Fleisher won the U.S. Amateur at Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio, with Vinny Giles the runner-up for a second straight year. The Associated Press story read: “Young Bruce Fleisher withstood the furious late charge of Marvin (Vinny) Giles III Saturday and rode an even-par 70 to a one-stroke victory in the 68th U.S. Amateur Golf Championship. The 19-year-old from Hialeah, Fla., nailed down the big prize in his first national tournament, finishing with a 72-hole total of 284, four over par for the distance. Giles, the 25-year-old University of Virginia law student from Charlottesville, made a gallant bid to overtake the leader with a sizzling five-under-par 65, a course record on the tough 6,760-yard Scioto layout.” Also, three major championship winners share life events on this date. Pádraig Harrington was born in 1971 and the Irishman won the Open Ch. of 2007 and 2008 and the PGA Ch. of 2008. The 2011 Masters winner, Charl Schwartzel, was born in 1984 in South Africa. And the 1967 Masters champion, Gay Brewer, died on this date at age 75 in 2007.
Three U.S. Amateur champions were crowned on this date, August 30: in 1969, Steve Melnyk won at Oakmont, shooting a 70 in the final round during a year the event was stroke play. Billy Mayfair in 1987 won by defeating Eric Rebmann, 4&3, at Jupiter Hills, and in 1992 Justin Leonard defeated Tom Scherrer, 8 and 7 at Muirfield Village G.C., Dublin, Ohio.
Brandie Burton won the du Maurier Classic on this date in 1993 when she defeated Betsy King in a playoff. The two were tied at 11-under 277 at the London Hunt & Country Club in London, Ontario, after regulation. First prize was $120,000. And In 1908, the U.S. Open Championship ended on this day at the Myopia Hunt Golf club in South Hamilton, Massachusetts when Fred McLeod defeated fellow Scot Willie Smith by six strokes in an 18-hole playoff. It was McLeod’s only major victory. In his dotage, he became an honorary starter at the Masters with Jock Hutchison.
Having won three straight U.S. Junior titles, Tiger Woods, on this date in 1994, won the first of three straight U.S. Amateur championships. At Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., he defeated Trip Kuehne, 2 up, winning the final three holes on the Stadium Course after once trailing 6 down during the 36-hole match. At the time, the victory made Woods the youngest, at 18, to win the Amateur. He became the first golfer to win both the U.S. Junior and U.S. Amateur in a career. It was the 94th playing. In 1995 Woods defeated. George (Buddy) Marucci Jr., 2 up, at Newport (R.I.) Country Club, and in 1996 Woods defeated Steve Scott in 38 holes at Pumpkin Ridge G.C. (Witch Hollow Course), North Plains, Oregon. Woods was also the medalist that year.
On this date in 1995, the Canadian du Maurier Classic was won by Jenny Lidback at Beaconsfield Golf Club in Pointe-Claire, Quebec, with an eight-under-par total of 280. She won by one over Liselotte Neumann of Sweden. Brooke Henderson was another Canadian who won her native country's CP Women's Open, by four shots in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada,, in 2018. And on this date in 1957, Bernhard Langer, who won two Masters in his prime despite being plagued by the yips, was born in Anhausen, Germany. Langer had a second life with the long putter and continued to win well into his 60s on the senior tour.
Marlene Hagge shot 284 at Lakewood Country Club to win the Denver Open on this date of the fourth round in 1956. She took home $800 for first; Fay Crocker was second , six shots behind. And on this date in 2012, when 15 year-old Lydia Ko of New Zealand won the Canadian Open by three shots, she became the youngest winner in LPGA Tour history and was the first amateur winner since JoAnne Carner won the 1969 Burdine’s Invitational. Ko was the fifth amateur winner in tour history. She broke the age record of 16 set by Lexi Thompson at the Navistar Classic in September 2011.
This is the latest the PGA Championship finished in the month of August. The 1946 playing ended on this date with Ben Hogan winning the title, 6&4, over Ed (Porky) Oliver. This was Hogan's first of two PGAs he won. The championship was held at Portland (Ore.) Golf Club. This PGA was also notable for it being the last time Byron Nelson played in the major. He lost to Oliver in the quarterfinals and overall had a 37-8 record. Hogan was age 34, and this was his first major championship.
English golfer Jack Whaley, 22, became only the third English player to win the U.S. Amateur, on August 16, when he defeated American Jay Leng, Jr., 4 and 3, to win the 126th championship in the 36-hole final at Merion Golf Club near Philadelphia. Whaley plays at Florida State and Leng at Stanford. On this date in 1997, Matt Kuchar won the U.S. Amateur, defeating Joel Kribel, 2 & 1, at Cog Hill's Dubsdread course in Lemont, III. Kuchar, 19 at the time, was from Lake Mary, Fla., and a golf team member at Georgia Tech. He was playing in the U.S. Amateur for the first time. And on this date in 1975, Al Geiberger won the second Tournament Players Championship, finishing three shots ahead of Dave Stockton at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, Texas.
On this date in 2009, the Solheim Cup wrapped up at Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove, Illinois. The U.S. won a third straight match, 16-12, and won eight of the 12 singles matches held on the final day. Also, Beth Daniel won the World Championship of Women's Golf on this date in 1981, at Shaker Heights (Ohio) Country Club. She went home with the $50,000 first-place prize money.
On this date in 2010, The Senior Tradition, held at the Crosswater Club, was won by Fred Funk by one shot over Michael Allen and Taiwan's Lu Chien-soon. And two influential names in women’s golf history shared the stage on this date in 1976. Kathy Whitworth won the Patty Berg Classic at Keller Golf Course in St. Paul, Minnesota. Whitworth shot a seven-under-par score of 212 to win by two shots over Sandra Post. First prize was $8,000.
On this date in 1914, two of the prominent golfers of the time battled in Round 4 at the Midlothian Country Club in Illinois in the 20th U.S. Open. Walter Hagen, the third-round leader by two shots, shot 73 but held on when those closest to him fell back. Amateur star Chick Evans, who trailed by four, shot 70 to finish a shot back. Hagen shot two-over 290, Evans 291 and third place was back to 297. And the third PGA Championship ended on this date in 1920. Jock Hutchison--who golf writers forever have to fight copy editors that they don't change his name to Hutchinson--defeated Douglas Edgar, 1-up, at Flossmoor Country Club in Chicago in the 36-hole final.
On this date in 1944, Bob Hamilton pulled off one of golf’s greatest upsets at Manito Golf & Country Club in Spokane, Washington, when he defeated all-time great Byron Nelson, 1 up, in the PGA Championship 36-hole final. The much more heralded Nelson could not get the edge on Hamilton; the two finished the first 18 holes tied. Nelson would win the following year, 4&3, versus Sam Byrd.
On this date in 1984, Lee Trevino won his second PGA Championship and sixth and final major, at Shoal Creek, winning by four shots over Gary Player and Lanny Wadkins at 15 under par. At age 44, Trevino showed he could still win a major when he held off Player and Wadkins He shot 69 in the final round to get to 15 under par. The victory came 10 years after he'd won his first PGA.
The PGA Championship ended on this date in 2002 as a moment for the Everyman in all of us. Unheralded Rich Beem shot 278 to edge Tiger Woods by one shot at Hazeltine National. Beem could have faltered many times in the final round as Woods came charging at him with a 67, but he had a 68 of his own and won his first and only major. Also on this date, in 1946, the Golf Writers Association of America was begun.
Of the PGA Championships that ended on this date, two stand out. In 1969 at NCR Country Club, Raymond Floyd won his first major, one shot ahead of South Africa’s Gary Player, who was targeted by apartheid protesters. And in 1997, Davis Love III won his only major, at Winged Foot, by five strokes over Justin Leonard. The son of the late Davis Love Jr., a PGA club pro and teaching legend, Love III won by holing out on the final hole as a rainbow emerged from the sky, a heavenly confirmation of a popular victory.
Today’s date is a popular one in PGA Championship history. On this date, six were won by: 1970, Dave Stockton at Southern Hills; 1976, Stockton at Congressional; 1992, Nick Price at Bellerive; 1998, Vijay Singh at Sahalee; 2009, Y.E. Yang at Hazeltine, and 2015, Jason Day at Whistling Straits. Stockton’s victory marked the last good chance Arnold Palmer had of winning the only major he didn't win. Stockton finished two shots ahead of Palmer and Bob Murphy with a winning score of just one-under-par 279 at Southern Hills in Tulsa. Stockton shot 73 in the last round to hang on as Murphy shot 66 and Arnie 70.
Of the several PGA Championships that ended on this date, the one in 1965 was supposed to have been Arnold Palmer’s crowning moment. Held at Laurel Valley Golf Club in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, in Arnie’s Latrobe backyard, the winner instead was the very worthy Dave Marr, who won by two shots over Billy Casper and Jack Nicklaus. Marr went on to be arguably the best TV golf analyst, mainly working for ABC. Palmer, who exerted a lot of energy serving as a championship host, only finished tied for 33rd, 14 shots behind, and never once broke par in four rounds. That PGA was the earliest year the PGA Championship ended on an August 15.