Poll: Spieth Wins PGA, Greatest Year In Modern Majors?

As noted in Golf World and debated on Morning Drive, Jordan Spieth has a chance to join Ben Hogan and Tiger Woods as three-out-of-four major winners in one year. A win also gives Woods a strong run for the best single year in major play.

My question: would Spieth’s Win-Win-T4-Win match Tiger’s 2000 5th-Win-Win-Win? (This assumes no runaway win by Spieth, which seems unlikely given the form of so many players with good vibes at Whistling Straits.)

Damon Hack noted in our Morning Drive debate the size of Tiger’s winning scores as evidence of Woods-2000 remaining the greatest single season performance in majors. Call it the Secretariat factor.

Ben Hogan won the '53 Triple Crown, choosing to play The Open over the PGA. Got him a ticker-tape parade, so I'm including it too as an option for the non-millennials.

Even if Spieth just finishes in the top five, he becomes just the fourth player in history to finish fifth or better in the season's majors (Rickie in '14, Woods twice, Nicklaus twice). Pretty incredible.

What say you?

If Jordan Spieth wins the PGA, greatest year in the modern majors?

Win-Win-T4-Win=YES

Tiger was more dominant in 2000

Hogan going 3 for 3 in '53 is the best

 

pollcode.com free polls

Gullane Must: Archie Baird's Heritage Of Golf Museum

Any golfers who have been to Scottish Open host Gullane only get the complete experience by visiting Archie Baird's Heritage of Golf museum.

While I'm not on the grounds yet at Gullane and am unsure what the museum's status is within the tournament setup, this Brandon Tucker story gives a nice synopsis of Archie's tribute to the game.

Baird especially enjoys talking about the golf ball, which went from an expensive, feather-core ball to a cheaper, more mass-produced ball made of a black, gum-like Gutta-Percha, just after 1850. This allowed the number of golf clubs in the world to go from just a handful to thousands by 1900.

The tour ends rather abruptly, as Baird notes:

"Then the modern, rubber-core ball came along in the 1920s, courses had to adapt to it, and I lost interest. Any questions?"

That's our man!

Here's a video taken by some American visitors...

Putting The (Incredibly Rare) Modern Grand Slam Into Perspective

He's got the first two legs of the Grand Slam. Yet, perhaps because he's been on vacation, there has been too little chatter about where this feat puts Jordan Spieth's year headed into St. Andrews.

Five before him have technically had a "chance" to win the modern Grand Slam of golf, only three men legitimately had a shot. As Victor Mather presented the Grand Slam story a week ago in the New York Times, Ben Hogan's opportunities in 1951 and 1953 were compromised by scheduling.

That leaves Arnold Palmer in 1960, Jack Nicklaus in 1972, Tiger Woods in 2002 and now Jordan Spieth in 2015 with a chance to win the Grand Slam after winning the first two modern majors.

Pretty heady company.

In 1951, Ben Hogan took the first two majors. But he would have faced a significant hurdle for a Grand Slam: The British Open started a day after the P.G.A. ended. After sustaining terrible injuries in a car crash in 1949, Hogan played a light schedule, and in the end he elected not to compete in the last two majors.

In 1953, after once again winning the Masters and the U.S. Open, he did travel to Scotland to play in the only British Open of his career. He won, but once again could not play in the P.G.A. because the events overlapped. That was the only time a Masters and U.S. Open winner also won the British Open. It was Hogan’s ninth, and final, major victory.

Though the victory was front-page news, there was not much hand-wringing over his missing the P.G.A.; the modern concept of the Grand Slam would not solidify in the public’s mind until the early 1960s.
Arnold Palmer, who often spoke about his desire to win the Grand Slam, won the first two legs in 1960. He came close in the British Open that year, losing to Kel Nagle by a stroke.

Jack Nicklaus’s turn came in 1972. Like Palmer, he missed a British Open win by a stroke, losing to Lee Trevino.

After Palmer and Nicklaus, it took 30 years and the emergence of another of the game’s greatest golfers to get another Masters-U.S. Open winner. In 2002, Tiger Woods won his seventh and eighth majors and went into the British Open alive for the Slam. But he shot an 81 on Saturday in terrible conditions, and wound up tied for 28th.

As for the "other" Grand Slam won by Bobby Jones in 1930, he kicked it off with a 7&6 win at The Old Course over the vaunted Roger Wethered.

The highlights show him hitting quite the miraculous Road bunker recovery...

Update on 2015-07-03 06:22 by Geoff

**For those in the If-Tony-Lema-Can-Show-Up-At-St.-Andrews-sight-unseen-then-Jordan-can-too, class, I give you Tony Lema after his win in 1964:

He was far more useful to me than a club. Without his help I doubt if I could have won it. It amazed me the way he just put the club in my hand.

That's Lema on his caddie Tip Anderson. Yes, that Tip Anderson.

Nicklaus: "I think I underachieved all my life"

Jack Nicklaus held court today at The Memorial, launching the 40th edition of the tournament he founded by honoring Nick Faldo and journalism lifetime achievement honorree Doc Giffin. Before that ceremony, however, the Golden Bear took questions from the media.

Doug Ferguson kicks off his AP notes column with Nicklaus' view that he was a constant underachiever and how that shaped his approach to the game.

"I think that if you feel you're overachieving, or getting more out of what you should get, then you stop working," Nicklaus said. "I always feel like I'm never getting what I should be getting out of what I'm doing. So you've got to work harder to make sure you do that. I always wanted to climb a mountain. I always wanted to get better. ... So I just tried not to believe anything about what I would read or what I would hear or what I even thought.

"I still don't think I achieved what I could have achieved in my career."

R.I.P. Billy Casper

One of the game's all-time greats-particularly with a putter--has passed. Billy Casper was 83. While I never saw him play in his prime, the three-time major winner and 51-time PGA Tour winner displayed his controlled hook with grace and precision on the Senior Tour where he was a 9-time winner.

Tod Leonard, of Casper's native San Diego, on the legend's passing.

In an email, Bob Casper said his father had suffered from pneumonia after Thanksgiving, spent five weeks in the hospital and then returned home. He was doing rehabilitation four days a week, but last Thursday became weak.

“He went downhill quick,” Bob Casper said. “It was quick. But he didn’t have any pain. It was peaceful.”

The AP’s obituary, by Doug Ferguson.

The New York Times' obituary, by Richard Goldstein.

Jaime Diaz’s Golf World feature on Casper prior to the 2012 U.S. Open at Olympic Club.

Rex Hoggard on Casper's legacy in golf, including one remarkable stretch.

Dubbed “the most underrated golfer of all time” by Johnny Miller, Casper’s 27 Tour victories from 1964 to ’70 topped every player during that timeframe, including Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player.

Jack Nicklaus took to Facebook to remember his friend. Just part of the statement:

“Billy Casper was one of the greatest family men—be it inside the game of golf or out—I have had the fortunate blessing to meet. He had such a wonderful balance to his life. Golf was never the most important thing in Billy’s life—family was. There was always much more to Billy Casper than golf. But as a golfer, Billy was a fantastic player, and I don’t think he gets enough credit for being one. I have said many times that during my career, when I looked up at a leaderboard, I wasn’t just looking to see where a Palmer or a Player or a Trevino was. I was also checking to see where Billy Casper was.

Here's a fairly recent clip of Casper telling David Feherty how even Tour Players are unaware if his accomplishments.

Update on 2015-02-08 18:43 by Geoff

**Golf Channel's obit narrated by Rich Lerner, which aired today on Golf Central with follow-up talk (in lieu of Farmers Insurance Open talk).

Update on 2015-02-08 23:56 by Geoff

**Michael Bamberger writing for golf.com:

He will be missed throughout golf, a gentle man who welcomed questions on any subject and who never seemed to be in hurry for anything. He will be especially missed at Augusta. During the Masters, he would have long lunches on the upstairs clubhouse veranda, in his green coat -- 50L would be a generous guess -- surrounded by friends and many family members. Casper and his wife, Shirley, who survives him, had 11 children, six of whom were adopted. Casper was a devout Mormon, a proponent of the health benefits of eating buffalo meat, and a successful businessman. He started a golf-course management company, Billy Casper Golf, that operates well over 100 golf courses.

Golf Channel will re-air Feherty featuring Casper on Monday at 9 a.m., 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. ET. 

Golf In America Even Older Than First Thought

A hat tip to Luke Kerr-Dineen for a fun Tommy Braswell story in the Post and Courier of Charleston on a University of Edinburgh find suggesting the first golf clubs and balls were shipped to America in 1739, not 1743 as first thought.

To put that date in perspective, Kerr-Dineen points out:

The first train was nearly 100 years away from being conceived, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews was 15 years away from being founded and George Washington was just 7 years old.

The "First Shipment of Golf Clubs to America" inspired this print in 1990.

They don't ship 'em like they used to!