25th -Today in 1867 Foxhall Parker Keene was born, an American thoroughbred race-horse owner and breeder as well as a world and Olympic gold medallist in polo and an amateur tennis player. He was also rated the best all-around polo player in the United States for eight consecutive years, a golfer who competed in the US Open, and a pioneer race car driver who vied for the Gordon Bennett Cup. In addition to his substantial involvement in flat racing, he was also a founding member of the National Steeplechase Association. An avid golfer, Keene competed in the 1897 US Open, making it to the quarter-finals in the 1898 US Amateur Championship. He died in poverty aged 73. On this day in 1926 the 9th PGA Championship, held at the Salisbury Golf Club, Westbury in New York was won by Walter Hagen. American Gilmer Bryan Morgan II was born in 1946 in Oklahoma and turned professional in 1972. He won seven events on the PGA Tour between 1977 and 1990 and was one of the most consistent top five finishers during that period. The most prestigious tournament he won on the PGA Tour was the 1978 World Series of Golf. He also played on the 1979 and 1983 Ryder Cup teams. Morgan was known for playing tournaments with little or no practice. He was exceptional at “playing cold”. Although he never won a major title during his time on the PGA Tour, Morgan showed signs of brilliance. For example, during the 1992 US Open at Pebble Beach, Morgan became the first player to ever reach 10-under-par during the US Open competition when he recorded a birdie on the third hole during the third round. He later added two more birdies to reach −12 after the seventh hole. He would later finish badly to finish at −4. This was good enough for the 54-hole lead. However, a final round 81 left him +5, in a tie for 13th place and eight shots behind eventual winner Tom Kite. Morgan also led the 1976 PGA Championship after 36 holes but finished T8. He became eligible to play on the Champions Tour in 1996. He has enjoyed much success on the Champion’s Tour notching 25 wins. Three of his wins have come in senior majors, namely The Tradition in 1997 and 1998 and the Senior Players Championship in 1998. Louise Suggs won the 4th edition of the US Women’s Open today in 1949. In 1955 Patty Berg won the LPGA Clock Open, both Suggs and Berg was founding members of the LPGA and thus modern Ladies’ Golf. The 12th LPGA Championship title was claimed by Gloria Ehret today in 1966.  Today in 1972 saw Sandra Haynie win the LPGA Lincoln-Mercury Golf Open, one of her 42 LPGA Tour career wins. Jane Blalock, who, after winning several New England golf tournaments in her youth, joined the LPGA Tour as a professional and named Rookie of the Year in 1969 as well as most Improved Golfer the following two years, won the LPGA Sarah Coventry Tournament today in 1977. Kathy Guadagnino won the 1988 LPGA Konica San Jose Golf Classic. Today in 2016 the PGA’s FedEx Cup was won by Rory McIlroy which was played at the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. Arnold Palmer, generally regarded as one of the golf’s greatest and most charismatic players died on this day in 2016. He left behind a legacy that went far beyond the boundaries of Western Pennsylvania, where he won the first of his five West Penn Amateur titles in 1947 as a senior at Latrobe High School and went on to the win the US Amateur (1954) and 62 events on the PGA Tour. He had been in failing health since late in 2015 and made his last real public appearance on the first tee of the 2016 Masters, joining Jack Nicklaus and long-time friend Gary Player for a ceremonial opening tee shot, even though Palmer did not hit a drive. The son of a groundskeeper who always taught him to leave the course better than he found it, Palmer left the game bigger and even better than he found it, growing into a legend that made him maybe the most famous golfer of all time. With his magnetic personality, charming good looks and the swashbuckling playing style of a matador, Palmer wooed massive galleries known as Arnie’s Army from Oakmont to the links landscape of Scotland, from Pebble Beach to South America, stomping through and around courses merely to get a glimpse of the man with the sudden, thrusting swing and distinctive whirly-bird finish. Palmer was so popular he is generally credited for bringing the sport to television, creating the huge purses available today on the PGA Tour and, in 1960, making it fashionable for American players to journey overseas and play the British Open, something most players of that era opted not to do because of the travel demands. His appeal transcended the golf course, making him one of richest and most identifiable athletes in the world. At the time of his death, more than four decades after he won the last of his 62 PGA Tour events, he remained one of the top three wealthiest athletes in the world, earning nearly twice more than annually than his friend and one-time rival, Nicklaus. Palmer won seven major titles — only six players in history won more — but he enjoyed his greatest success at the Masters, winning the green jacket four times. Only Nicklaus won more. The only major title that eluded Palmer was the PGA Championship, depriving him of a chance to become only the fifth player in history to complete golf’s Grand Slam. His greatest year was 1960 when he won the Masters for a second time and followed that with a victory at the U.S. Open at Cherry Hills in June, where he shot 65 and came from seven shots off the lead in the final round. Curiously, Palmer’s final-round charge was fuelled by a sports writer, Bob Drum of the Pittsburgh Press, who told Palmer before the round he didn’t have a chance to win. Palmer was so angry he went out and drove the first green to start his victory march. There is a plaque on the first tee at Cherry Hills commemorating the moment. With two majors already, Palmer went to the British Open amid a frenzy that the young American star might make it three in a row at St. Andrews, considered the home of golf. Despite a par-birdie finish, Palmer ended up finishing second by a stroke to Australian Kel Nagle. Nonetheless, Palmer’s presence at the British Open forever changed the tournament. The British Open had fallen so far off the radar for American professionals that, a year earlier at Muirfield, no US players were in the field. The reasons were simple: It was too far to travel and the purse was minuscule ($1,250) compared to the US Open ($14,400). But Palmer changed all that. He went back the next year and won the British Open at Royal Birkdale, then won again in 1962 at Royal Troon. “He got Americans to come over here and play,” Nicklaus said. “He brought worldwide recognition to the event, at least from our side of the pond.”

 

26th  – The 2nd and 8th British Opens took place on this day at Prestwick Golf Club in 1861 and 1867 respectively, they were both won by the same player – Tom Morris Sr. Otherwise known as Old Tom Morris, the Scottish golfer, born in 1821 was  the son of a weaver, and began golf by age ten, by knocking wine-bottle corks pierced with nails (to serve as balls) around the streets of the town using a homemade club, in informal matches against other youths; this was known as ‘sillybodkins’. He started caddying and playing golf from a young age, and formally was hired as an apprentice at age 14 to Allan Robertson, generally regarded as the world’s first professional golfer; Robertson ran the St Andrews Links and an equipment-making business and served four years as apprentice and a further five years as journeyman under Robertson. He died in my 1908 at the age of 86.  In 1925 at Olympia Field in Illinois, Walter Hagen won the 8th PGA Championship. English pro-golfer Neil Chapman Coles was born in 1934. He had a successful career in European golf, winning 29 tournaments between 1956 and 1982. After reaching 50 he won a further Senior titles between 1985 and 2002, winning his final European Seniors Tour at the age of 67. In recognition of his tireless effort, Coles was selected by the World Golf Foundation Board of Directors through the Lifetime Achievement category for his remarkable contributions to the international development of the game. A leading pioneer in the inception of the European PGA Tour in 1971, Coles became its first chairman.As a member of eight Ryder Cup teams between 1961 and 1977, Coles represented his country in 40 matches, second only to Hall of Famer Nick Faldo. He is among the visionaries who saw that this historic and prestigious event should be expanded to involve Continental professionals and so strengthen European unity in sport. The immense worldwide interest in the match is the result, and the benefits for golf have been widespread. Now a champion on the burgeoning European Seniors Tour, Coles is extending a remarkable career that spanned 50 years as a professional and 45 tournament victories, including one in 2000. By winning the Jersey Seniors Open, Coles became the first player to win a tournament in six different decades. Coles was the only member of the Class of 2000 who didn’t attend the induction ceremony. He has not flown since 1963 and other means of transportation from his residence in Walton-on-Thames, England, were not available. His self-imposed limitation of not flying is the primary reason he did not win any major championships and never established himself as a household name outside of the European golf community. In 1954 Patty Berg won the LPGA Ardmore Golf Open.  Namibian golfer Trevor George Dodds was born in 1959 in Windhoek, South West Africa. He turned pro in 1985 and won the Canadian Tour Order of Merit in 1995 and 1996. He has compiled 14 wins on four different tours: the PGA Tour, Nationwide Tour, Sunshine Tour and the Canadian Tour. Today in 1965 the 11th LPGA Championship was won by Sandra Haynie.  The 1970 and 1971 LPGA Lincoln-Mercury Golf Open was won by Judy Rankin and Pam Higgins respectively. World Golf Hall of Famer Donna Caponi took the LPGA Carlton Golf title today in 1976. Patty Sheehan, who joined the LPGA Tour in 1980, won the LPGA SAFECO and Inamori Golf Classics in 1982 and 1983. The 30th Ryder Cup, which took place the The Belfy, saw the US team beat their European counterparts 15-13 on this day in 1993. On the same day Kris Monaghan won the second of her two LPGA events, the Kyocera Inamori Classic, her first being the Red Robin Kyocera Inamori Classic three years earlier in 1990. In 1999, the 33rd Ryder Cup was won by the USA, 14.5-13.5 at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. John Byron Nelson Jr , one of the greats in the history of the sport,known as “Lord Byron” for his elegant swing and gentle manner, died on this day in 2006. Nelson and two other legendary champions of the time Ben Hogan and Sam Snead, were born within seven months of each other in 1912. Although he won many tournaments in the course of his relatively brief career, he is mostly remembered today for having won 11 consecutive tournaments and 18 total tournaments in 1945. He retired officially at the age of 34 to be a rancher, later becoming a commentator and lending his name to the HP Byron Nelson Championship, the first PGA Tour event to be named for a professional golfer. As a former Masters champion he continued to play in that annual tournament, placing in the top-10 six times between 1947 and 1955 and as high as 15th in 1965.In 1974, Byron Nelson received the Bob Jones Award, the highest honour given by the United States Golf Association in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship in golf. Nelson became the second recipient of the PGA Tour Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997, and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame [in 1974. He received the 1994 Old Tom Morris Award from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, GCSAA’s highest honour. Nelson was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2006.

 

27th-Today in 1930 the 34th US Golf Amateur Championship was won by Bobby Jones. This win completed the unique Grand Slam of golf, under the “old” structure which was the US Open, British Open, US Amateur and British Amateur events. After retiring from competitive golf in 1930, Jones founded and helped design the Augusta National Golf Club soon afterwards in 1933. He also co-founded the Masters Tournament, which has been annually staged by the club since 1934 (except for 1943–45, when it was cancelled due to World War II). The Masters evolved into one of golf’s four major championships. Jones came out of retirement in 1934 to play in the Masters on an exhibition basis until 1948. Jones played his last round of golf at East Lake Golf Club, his home course in Atlanta, on August 18, 1948. A picture commemorating the event now sits in the clubhouse at East Lake. Citing health reasons, he retired from golf permanently thereafter. Kathrynne Ann Whitworth was born on this day in 1939, throughout her playing career she won 88 LPGA Tour tournaments, more than anyone else has won on either the LPGA Tour or the PGA Tour. In 1981 she became the first woman to reach career earnings of $1 million on the LPGA Tour. She is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame. She began playing golf at age of 15 and won the 1957 and 1958 New Mexico State Amateur Championship and became a professional player at 19, joining the LPGA in December 1958. In 1962 she won her first tournament, the Kelly Girls Open. She won a total of six major championships. She was LPGA Player of the Year seven times between 1966 and 1973, won the Vare Trophy for best scoring average by an LPGA Tour Player a record seven times between 1965 and 1972 and entered the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1975. She was named Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year in 1965 and 1967. She was Named “Golfer of the Decade” by Golf Magazine for the years 1968 to 1977 during the 1988 Centennial of Golf in America celebration. She received the 1985 William Richardson Award from the Golf Writers Association of America for consistent outstanding contributions to golf. She was the US team captain at the inaugural Solheim Cup match in 1990. In 1974 Whitworth won the Orange Blossom Classic. It was her fifth triumph in that tournament that was also known during its existence as the St. Petersburg Open. Only three other LPGA golfers have won the same tournament five times. Whitworth retired from competitive golf in 2005 after competing in the BJ’s Charity Classic, an event on the Women’s Senior Golf Tour. She is a member of the New Mexico Hall of Fame, Texas Sports Hall of Fame, Texas Golf Hall of Fame, and the Women’s Sports Foundation Hall of Fame. On this day in 1956 Mildred EllaBabeDidrikson Zaharias, an American athlete who achieved a great deal of success in golf, basketball, baseball and track and field, died at the age of 45. She won two gold medals in track and field at the 1932 Summer Olympics, before turning to professional golf and winning 10 LPGA major championships. By 1935, Didrikson began to play golf, a latecomer to the sport in which she became best known. Shortly thereafter, she was denied amateur status, and so, in January 1938, she competed in the Los Angeles Open, a men’s PGA (Professional Golfers’ Association) tournament. No other woman competed against men in this tournament until Annika Sörenstam, Suzy Whaley and Michelle Wie almost six decades later. She shot 81 and 84, and missed the cut. In the tournament, she was teamed with George Zaharias. They were married eleven months later, and settled in Tampa, Florida, on the premises of a golf course that they purchased in 1951.Didrikson became America’s first female golf celebrity and the leading player of the 1940s and early 1950s. In order to regain amateur status in the sport, she could compete in no other sports for three years. After gaining back her amateur status in 1942, she won the 1946 US Women’s Amateur and the 1947 British Ladies Amateur – the first American to do so – and three Women’s Western Opens. Having formally turned professional in 1947, Didrikson dominated the Women’s Professional Golf Association and later the Ladies Professional Golf Association, of which she was a founding member. Zaharias won a tournament named after her, the Babe Zaharias Open of her hometown of Beaumont, Texas. She won the 1947 Titleholders Championship and the 1948 US. Women’s Open for her fourth and fifth major championships. She won 17 straight women’s amateur victories, a feat never equalled by anyone. By 1950, she had won every golf title available. Totaling both her amateur and professional victories, Zaharias won a total of 82 golf tournaments.Charles McGrath of The New York Times wrote of Zaharias, “Except perhaps for Arnold Palmer, no golfer has ever been more beloved by the gallery. In 1948, she became the first woman to attempt to qualify for the US Open, but her application was rejected by the USGA. They stated that the event was intended to be open to men only.[Zaharias had her greatest year in 1950 when she completed the Grand Slam of the three women’s majors of the day: the U.S. Open, the Titleholders Championship, and the Women’s Western Open, a feat that made her the leader on the money list that year. Also that year, she reached 10 wins faster than any other LPGA golfer, doing so in one year and 20 days, a record that still stands. She was the leading money-winner again in 1951, and in 1952 took another major with a Titleholders victory, but illness prevented her from playing a full schedule in 1952–53. This did not stop her from becoming the fastest player to reach 20 wins (two years and four months). In 1953 Zaharias was diagnosed with colon cancer. After undergoing surgery, she made a comeback in 1954. She took the Vare Trophy for lowest scoring average, her only win of that trophy, and her 10th and final major with a US Women’s Open championship, one month after the surgery and while wearing a colostomy bag. With this win, she became the second-oldest woman to win a major LPGA championship tournament (behind Fay Crocker). Babe Zaharias now stands third to Crocker and Sherri Steinhauer. These wins made her the fastest player to reach 30 wins (five years and 22 days). In addition to continuing tournament play, Zaharias also served as the president of the LPGA from August 1952 to July 1955. Her colon cancer recurred in 1955 and she eventually succumbed to the illness in 1956. In 1959 Betsy Rawls won the LPGA Opie Turner Golf Open and in 1964 the LPGA Visalia Ladies’ Golf Open was taken by Mickey Wright. The 27th Ryder Cup was won by Europe, who beat the USA 15-13 at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Ohio. On the same day in 1987 Jan Stephens won the LPGA Konica San Jose Golf Classic.

 

 

28th-Today in 1921 at the 4th edition of the PGA Championship held at Inwood CC, Far Rockaway, New York, Walter Hagen was crowned champion. The Australian golfer Bruce Crampton was born in 1935 and turned professional in 1953. Crampton won the Vardon Trophy for the player with the lowest stroke average on the PGA Tour in 1973 and 1975. He had 14 career wins on the PGA Tour between 1961 and 1975 and was runner up in four major championships – one Masters, one US Open, and two PGA Championships – all to Jack Nicklaus. He was ranked among the top five golfers in the world in both 1972 and 1973, according to Mark McCormack’s world golf rankings. His other regular career victories included the Australian Open, New Zealand PGA Championship, Far East Open and the Philippine Open. As a senior, he won 20 times on the Champions Tour, and topped the money list in 1986, but he did not win a senior major. Crampton was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 2001. On this day in 1944 American Richard Karl Who turned professional in 1968.He won the 1974 BC Open by sinking a 35-foot putt on the first hole in a playoff with Bruce Crampton. Karl, who worked at the En-Joie Golf Club in Endicott, New York where the BC Open was played and lived along the 10th fairway, is the last club professional to win on the PGA Tour. Karl played briefly on the Senior PGA Tour (now Champions Tour) starting after he turned 50 in September 1994. His best finish in this venue was a T-5 at the ACE Group Classic. In 2007, Karl played as a sponsor’s exemption in the inaugural Dick’s Sporting Goods Open, a Champions Tour event played on his home course. Also born today in 1960 Thomas Elliott Byrum who turned professional in 1984. He has played over five hundred events on the PGA Tour, but his sole victory came at the 1989 Kemper Open. He owns two top-10 finishes in major championships: T8 in the 2002 US Open at Bethpage and a 9th in the 1997 PGA Championship at Winged Foot. His older brother Curt is also a former PGA Tour winner and is now an analyst on the Golf Channel. American Laurie Anne Rinker was born in 1962 and who played on the LPGA Tour in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. Rinker was born and raised in Stuart, Florida. She attended the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, where she played for coach Mimi Ryan’s Florida Gators women’s golf team from 1980 to 1982. She was recognized as an All-American in 1980 and 1982, and qualified for the LPGA Tour in the summer between her junior and senior year of college. Rinker’s best years in professional golf came in the mid-1980s, and included two LPGA Tour wins: the 1984 Boston Five Classic and the 198 LPGA Corning Classic. Her best finishes in the LPGA majors included a seventh place in the 1984 Nabisco Dinah Shore, a tie for third in the 1987 LPGA Championship, and a tie for seventh in the 1995 du Maurier Classic. The most lucrative year of her career was 1987, when she earned $158,916 and had nine top-10 finishes.Rinker is exempt for the 2018 US Senior Women’s Open, as the winner of the 2015 LPGA Teaching and Club Professionals Championship. Rinker’s two brothers, Larry and Lee, have played on the PGA Tour.She competed under her married name, Laurie Rinker-Graham, from 1992 to 2003. South-Korean golfer Pak Se-ri or Se-ri Pak was born in 1977 and played on the LPGA Tour from 1998 to 2016. She was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in November 2007. Born in Daejeon, she attended Keumseong Girls’ High School in Gongju City, Chungnam Province where she was the school’s best amateur golfer. She then moved to Seoul for training.She turned professional in 1996, a year before she moved to the United States as a 20-year-old.In 1996 and 1997, she won six tournaments on the LPGA of Korea Tour. Pak joined the LPGA Tour full-time for the year 1998, crowning her rookie season with victories in two majors: the McDonald’s LPGA Championship and US Women’s Open. At just 20 years of age, she became the youngest-ever winner of the US Women’s Open. About.com writes that “Pak won a 20-hole playoff for that victory, making that tournament – at 92 holes in length – the longest tournament ever in women’s professional golf. Four days after the US Women’s Open win, Pak shot a then-LPGA record 61 during the second round of the Jamie Farr Kroger Classic. She won the Rolex Rookie of the Year award for that season. Since 1998, she has gone on to win 21 more events on the Tour, including three more majors. In June 2007, at age 29, she qualified for the World Golf Hall of Fame, surpassing Karrie Webb as the youngest living entrant ever (Tom Morris, Jr., who died in 1875 at the age of 24, had been elected in 1975). Pak has also competed in a professional men’s event, at the 2003 SBS Super Tournament on the Korean Tour. The Korean Tour is a feeder tour for the Asian Tour and does not offer world ranking points. She finished 10th in the event, according to the World Golf Hall of Fame “becoming the first woman to make the cut in a professional men’s tournament since Babe Zaharias did so in 1945.” At the 2005 McDonald’s LPGA Championship, she missed the cut for the first time in 29 majors. In an interview quoted on the PGA Tour’s website, she commented that she was searching for a balance between her golf and her personal life: “I’ve been a little bit unhappy about everything, my game, big game. I’m not really enjoying it at all, and I’m not doing anything with my ability. I know what I needed, a much better balance. I’m always putting a lot of pressure on myself”. Eventually, she was found to have a finger injury. In 2006, she rediscovered her best form by winning the McDonald’s LPGA Championship for the third time to claim her fifth major title overall. Perhaps the greatest tribute to her career to date came in a column by Golf World writer Eric Adelson in 2008, who called Pak “a pioneer… who changed the face of golf even more than Tiger Woods. “When Pak came to the LPGA in 1998, she was the only Korean player. Ten years later, she was one of 45 Koreans on tour, and the single largest source of revenue for the LPGA was the sale of TV rights in South Korea. She was the only South Korean on the LPGA Tour in the year 1998, Pak’s spectacular triumph at the 1998 U. Women’s Open encouraged many Korean women to take up golf as a sport. She is regarded as a leader of the game in her home country and has also inspired the new generations of LPGA players On 17 March 2016, Pak announced that she would retire following the 2016 season. She retired the following 13 October, after completing the first round of her country’s lone LPGA-sanctioned event, the LPGA KEB Hana Bank Championship. In 1980 Jerilyn Britiz won the LPGA Mary Kay Golf Classic. The 32nd edition of the Ryder Cup, held at Sotogrande in Spain was won by Europe who retained the Cup by beating the States 14½ points to 13½. In 1997 Wendy Ward won the LPGA Fieldcrest Cannon Classic. In 2014 the 40th Ryder Cup was once again won by Europe. A 16½ – 11½ win over the Americans at Gleneagles Hotel course in Scotland.

 

29th-On this day in 1879 at the 19th British Open, Jamie Anderson took the title after shooting a 169 at St Andrews. The 5th Ryder Cup came to close today in 1935 at the Ridgewood Country Club in New Jersey, in which the USA won 9-3. In 1963 Mickey Wright, who became a member of the Tour in 1955, won the LPGA golf Invitational named after herself. This was one of 13 major championships and 82 LPGA Tour career events that she won. Five years later in 1968 the same Invitational was won by Betsy Rawls. The 1974 LPGA Portland Ladies Golf Classic was won by Joanne Carner. She is the only woman to have won the US Girls’ Junior, US Women’s Amateur, and US Women’s Open titles, and was the first person ever to win three different USGA championship events. In 1991 the 29th Ryder Cup was won by America who beat Europe 14½ points to 13½ at the Ocean Course in South Carolina. On the very same day Pat Bradley won the MBS LPGA Golf Classic. Five years on in 1996 British player Trish Johnson took the LPGA Fieldcrest Cannon Golf Classic with a three-stroke victory over American Kim Saiki. Johnson’s winning score was a -18 (270). In 2002 Europe claimed the 34th Ryder Cup with a 15½-12½ points win at The Belfry.

 

 

30th-Today in 1882 the 22nd British Open was staged and was won by Bob Ferguson who shot a 171 at St Andrews. The 6th edition of the Ryder Cup saw the States take victory 8-4 at Southprt & Ainsdale in England on this day in 1937. Mickey Wright won the LPGA San Diego Golf Open today in 1962. Sharon Miller won the LPGA Seven Lakes Golf Invitational  today in 1968. In 1973 Sandra Palmer, who turned professional and became a member of the Tour in 1964, won the Cameron Park Golf Open. She won 19 events of the Tour and also several other professional events. She won two major championships – the 1972 Titleholders Championship and the 1975 US Women’s Open. She topped the money list for 1975 and was awarded the LPGA Player of the Year title. Her ten top-10 finishes on the money list came in ten straight years from 1968 to 1977. She played her last event on the Tour in 1997. The 1979 LPGA Mary Kay Golf Classic was won by Nancy Lopez. She had won the New Mexico Women’s Amateur at 12 in 1969, and the U.S. Girls’ Junior in 1972 and 1974, at 15 and 17, respectively. Shortly after graduation from Goddard High School in Roswell, she played in the US Women’s Open as an amateur, first in 1974 and again in 1975 where she tied for second.As a collegiate freshman in 1976, Lopez was named All-American and Female Athlete of the Year for her play at the University of Tulsa. That year she won the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) national intercollegiate golf championship and was a member of the U.S. Curtis Cup and World Amateur teams. Lopez left college after her sophomore year and turned pro in 1977, and again was the runner-up at the US Women’s Open. The 39th episode of the Ryder Cup in 2012 was won by Europe after a 14½ – 13½ win over The States at the Medinah Counry Club in Illinois.

 

 

1st October -In 1939 George William Archer was born, he turned pro in 1964 and claimed the first of 13 victories on the PGA Tour at the Lucky International Open the following year. The leading achievement of his career was his win at the Masters in 1969, he is in fact at 6 foot 5 inches the tallest golfer to win the Masters. In the first round, he fired a 67, good for second place behind Billy Casper. His subsequent rounds of 73-69-72 earned him a one-stroke victory over runners-up Casper, Tom Weiskopf, and George Knudson. Archer’s other top-10 finishes in the majors came at the U.S. Open 10th in 1969, fifth in 1971) and the PGA Championship (fourth in 1968). Archer was hampered by injuries throughout his career and had surgery on his left wrist (1975), back (1979) and left shoulder (1987). In 1996, he had his right hip replaced and two years later became the first man to win on the Senior PGA Tour (now the PGA Tour Champions) after having a hip replacement. He won 19 times on the Senior Tour between 1989and 2000, although he did not win a senior major. Archer is also the only player in PGA Tour Champions history to win a tournament in each of the first three decades of its existence. Archer is considered one of the game’s all-time great putters, and at one time held the PGA Tour record for fewest putts over four rounds with 94 putts at the Sea Pines Heritage in 1980 (1.3 per hole).The record stood for nine years, until broken by Kenny Knox in 1989. Archer was known as the “Golfing Cowboy,” due to a summer job in his youth at his friend and sponsor, Eugene Selvage’s Lucky Hereford Ranch in Gilroy. Archer made Masters history in 1983 when he employed its first female caddy, his 19-year-old daughter Elizabeth, in the first year that outside caddies were allowed at Augusta National. He finished tied for 12th, his third-best at Augusta and final top-20 finish in a major. At the time Liz was a sophomore at Stanford University and had caddied for her father at twenty previous events; a member of the Cardinal track team, she threw the javelin and discus. She started caddying for him on tour in the summer of 1980.Six months after his death, Archer’s widow, Donna, revealed in the March/April 2006 issue of Golf For Women magazine that he had suffered his entire life from a severe form of learning impairment. Despite years of effort and the consultation of many experts, he was never able to read more than the simplest sentences and could only write his own name. She reported that they never revealed this truth beyond their family and that Archer lived in constant fear that the secret of his illiteracy would be revealed. In 2008, Donna created the George Archer Memorial Foundation for Literacy, a 501(c)(3) organization located in Incline Village, Nevada. The Foundation’s mission is to raise funds to identify reading deficiencies, diagnose causes and effective treatments for learning disabilities, improve systems for training teachers, tutors and other educators in literacy issues, provide grants, stipends and scholarships for deserving students, and assist in the development of tools and techniques for the effective teaching of reading and writing skills. The Foundation’s primary fundraiser is the George Archer Memorial Stroke of Genius Pro-Am golf tournament held every October since 2008 at the Peninsula Golf and Country Club, in San Mateo, California – the club at which Archer began his golf career. The LPGA Mickey Wright Golf Open was won by Mickey Wright herself on this day in 1961 and in 1967 Kathy Whitworth takes the LPGA Ladies’ Golf Open. A few years later in 1972 Whitworth won the LPGA Portland Ladies Golf Classic.  This day in 1978 Jane Blalock was the victor at the LPGA Lights Golf Championship and in 1989 the LPGA Konica San Jose Classic was won by Beth Daniel. Swedish player Liselotte Neumann on the LPGA Heartland Golf Classic in 1994 and the following year, 1995, saw Gail Graham from Canada take the Field Crest Cannon/Carolina LPGA event. Sven Tumba born Sven Olof Gunnar Johansson died on this day in 2011. Apart from golf, he was one of the most prominent Swedish ice hockey players of the 1950s and 1960s. He also represented Sweden in football and became Swedish champion in water-skiing. Johansson first became known as “Tumba” in the 1950s since there were other players with the same last name, and he grew up in the Swedish town of Tumba. In October 1960 he married his wife Mona, and five years later he, along with Mona, legally changed his family name to Tumba. After his retirement from ice hockey, he became an accomplished golfer, a golf course designer as well as an ambassador to the game of golf, even officially introducing the game of golf to the former Soviet Union. Tumba was one of the people who introduced golf into Sweden. On the 100th anniversary of the Swedish Golf Federation in 2004, he was named the most influential person in the history of golf in that country, ahead of figures such as all-time women’s golf great Annika Sörenstam. He died on 1 October 2011 after being on the Danderyds sjukhus hospital for three months due to an infection in the hip. He was subsequently honoured prior to the Elitserien games that were played that day, with a one-minute silence. As a player he was the 1970 winner of the Scandinavian International Match Play of Golf and in 1970 he represented Sweden in the Eisenhower Trophy and in 1973 represented Sweden in the World Cup.