R.I.P. Kel Nagle

The oldest living major championship winner, World Golf Hall of Fame member and one of Australia's greatest exports, Kel Nagle was 94 when he passed away in a Sydney hospital.

The 1960 Open Championship winner also won a record 61 Australasian PGA tour tiles. Martin Blake's excellent story on the life of Nagle is worth a few minutes of your time. The more workmanlike ABC Australian obituary is here.

And Mike Clayton posted this remembrance at Golf Australia's site.

In one of his very last events, sometime in the 1980s, he was drawn on the opening days at Royal Melbourne with Norman and another long hitter, Lyndsay Stephen. Kel was well past sixty and he came to the final hole facing a fairway wood for the long approach. Stephen and Norman were predictably miles ahead with pitching clubs in their hands but Nagle bumped his four wood up within fifteen feet of the hole. The other two somewhat clumsily pitched to almost double the distance from the hole and as Kel marked his ball he turned to the younger men and said, ‘not really much you can say, boys.’

He was a wonderful man, beloved by all and one who will be sadly missed but by no one more than by his great mate and partner, Peter Thomson. Together they moved the game into the modern era and made the path easier for all who followed.