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Records, they say, are made to be broken, but in men’s professional golf, at least a few marks appear insurmountable: Byron Nelson’s 11 consecutive wins; Tiger Woods’ 142 straight starts without a missed cut; and, yes, the holy grail of golf records: Jack Nicklaus’ 18 major wins. With Tiger’s superhuman powers fading, feels like you could carve all of those numbers in stone.

But there’s another less frequently cited achievement that 17-time PGA Tour winner and shrewd golf observer Jim Furyk says is also bound to go unmatched — that is, unless one player does it soon: Hale Irwin’s career win haul on the PGA Tour Champions.

From 1995 to 2007, Irwin won a staggering 45 times on the senior circuit, including a nine-win season in 1997. That averages out to nearly four wins a year over a 12-year stretch, which sounds maybe slightly gettable until you realize that Irwin was 62 at the end of that run. That’s the thing with Champions tour golf — with each passing season out there, you’re not getting any younger.

Unless, of course, you happen to be Bernhard Langer, who has aged like a fine Gruyere. In 15 seasons on the Champions tour, Langer has won with Irwinian consistency, racking up 42 wins. As recently as a couple of years ago, it seemed a foregone conclusion that Langer would eclipse Irwin’s mark. But today, not so much.

Since picking up W No. 40 at the 2019 Senior Open Championship, Langer has showed he is, in fact, human, winning “just” twice more. He’s 64 now. How many more wins does he have in the tank, especially with young’uns like Phil Mickelson and Padraig Harrington coming onto the scene? Three or four more victories suddenly seems like a big ask.

But back to the 51-year-old Furyk, himself a three-time winner on the Champions tour. Whoever ends up holding the win record, Furyk predicts, that player will hold the mark forever. (Third on the all-time wins list, by the way, is Lee Trevino with 29.)

“What he and Hale did, I’m going to say now, is not going to be repeated,” Furyk said on Thursday after firing a first-round 62 (on the PGA Tour) to take the lead at the Sony Open in Hawaii. “There’s no way folks are going to win that many tournaments on that tour.”

The next closest pursuers among active Champions players are Fred Couples, with 13 wins, and Tom Lehman, with 12 titles. Both players are 62, meaning neither is a threat to even sniff 45 wins. Mickelson burst onto the tour last year, winning four of six starts. Does he have 42 more victories in him? Hard to imagine the Champions tour keeping Lefty’s attention for that long.     

So, yes, Furyk’s Bernhard-or-bust theory appears to have much merit.

“I’m tired of gushing about Bernhard,” Furyk added Thursday. “It’s amazing what he’s done at 64, to stay that competitive, that fit and to actually have the want and the will and the grind to be that competitive is absolutely amazing.”

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The post Hale Irwin reunites with teen caddie who helped him win the 1974 U.S. Open appeared first on Golf.

The post Hale Irwin reunites with teen caddie who helped him win the 1974 U.S. Open appeared first on Golf.

On Thursday at the U.S. Open, Hale Irwin reunited with Peter McGarey, the teen caddie who helped Irwin to his U.S. Open win 46 years ago

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The post Winged Foot Winners appeared first on Golf.

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History has proven that only the toughest can win at Winged Foot. Here’s a look at the players who have conquered the iconic venue and hoisted the hardware.

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The post What it takes to win a U.S. Open at Winged Foot, according to two players who have done it appeared first on Golf.

The post What it takes to win a U.S. Open at Winged Foot, according to two players who have done it appeared first on Golf.

This is the first installment in our five-part series, The Road to Winged Foot, powered by Cisco Webex, in which we’re highlighting how players, officials, broadcasters and others are preparing for the 2020 U.S. Open, set for next week at Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y. First up: Two former Winged Foot Open champions reflect on what’s required to win the national championship on such a fearsome setup.

***

The most fun I ever had on a conference call came a week or so ago in a three-way conversation with two former U.S. Opens winners, Mr. Hale Irwin and Mr. Geoff Ogilvy.

You may be wondering about the use of the honorifics, and Hollywood-style at that. (On the first reference.) Well, in this bureau, in these holy days leading up to our great national championship, all former Open winners don Mister. While it is true that there is little in golf more pretentious than calling Ben Hogan Mr. Hogan, this week, under this byline, he is Mr. Hogan. Mr. Ben Hogan, first time out.

Hey, if win the U.S. Open four times, or even three times (Mr. Irwin, Mr. Tiger Woods) or two times (Mr. Andy North, Mr. Curtis Strange) or even once (Mr. Ogilvy), you’ll get the full treatment, too.

C’mon, Phil!

Mr. Irwin won his first U.S. Open (in 1974) on the same course where Mr. Ogilvy won his only (to date) U.S. Open. We all know where that was: the West Course of the Winged Foot Golf Club, in leafy Mamaroneck, N.Y. Mr. Ogilvy’s victory there came the last time the Open was played there, in 2006. Some people remember that Open best for the improbable 6 Phil made on the par-4 18th hole on Sunday. He would have won with a 4. A 5 would have meant an 18-hole Monday playoff with Mr. Ogilvy, who was in the house, watching Phil finish on TV. Alas, the double-bogey that lives in infamy and on a certain Callaway commercial.

But one of the wonderful things that came out of our session was a reminder of just how marvelously Mr. Ogilvy played, including the par he made on 18 in front of Phil, to get to the clubhouse at 285, five over par, and enjoy the feeling of being the leader in the house.

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“I’ve always loved par being important,” Mr. Ogilvy said. “It’s close to the most satisfying” thing there is in golf.

Five over!

That’s what the USGA is all about. That’s what the U.S. Open is all about. That’s why the U.S. Open is the U.S. Open. A.W. Tillinghast, the man who built Winged Foot, demanded golfers to stop iron approach shots on sloping greens.

As for Mr. Irwin, he called Winged Foot “the hardest course I ever played when weather wasn’t an issue.” He won at seven over. He described the foot-high rough in places.

“The moaning was unbelievable,” Mr. Irwin said. “Every shot was demanding.” He took 287 of them. “If I made a par, be very happy and move to the next hole.”

Mr. Ogilvy, born in 1977, has read about and watched the ’74 Open, what he called, as others have, “the Massacre at Winged Foot.” He recalled the 1984 U.S. Open at Winged Foot, when his countryman, Greg Norman, lost to Fuzzy Zoeller in a playoff.

As we spoke, it was Friday morning for Mr. Ogilvy in Melbourne, Australia, and Thursday night for Mr. Irwin, in Phoenix. They seemed to be enjoying each other’s virtual company, as members of this tiny club, of players who have won major championships at Winged Foot. Davis M. Love III won his PGA Championship in 1997 at Winged Foot. Had he taken two fewer strokes at the 1996 U.S. Open, we’d be trotting out a Mister for him right now. Instead, a nod to Mr. Steve Jones.

Mr. Irwin said something in the chat I had never considered before, despite many trips to Winged Foot. If you stood on each of the 18 greens at Winged Foot’s West Course, you’d think the course must be very hilly, because the greens have so much slope. But in actual fact, the course is quite flat. It’s the greens that make the course.

Mr. Irwin watched the 2006 U.S. Open on TV. He said in our interview that he liked Winged Foot better in 2006, because of its graduated rough, because of the condition of the course.

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Mr. Ogilvy was well aware of Mr. Irwin’s record as a U.S. Open player, as a golfer who was “tough as nails.”

Mr. Ogilvy said that his pitch to 18 “had my attention.” The fairway was short and tight he said it was like playing off a green. There was no margin for error. “My caddie said, ‘Let’s par the last four holes. Nobody else is going to do that.’” Mr. Ogilvy did, and the other contenders did not. The caddie was a legend of the European tour, Alister “Squirrel” Matheson.

When Mr. Ogilvy described his playing partner, Ian Poulter, dressed “head to toe in pink,” Mr. Irwin laughed. Mr. Irwin did not wear pink. In his U.S. Open prime, he was not one to do a lot of laughing. Mr. Zoeller was a joker. But you’re not going to find a lot of U.S. Open winners whose first move was to tell jokes.

Mr. Irwin compared how he played 18 on Sunday — driver and a 2-iron — with how Mr. Ogilvy played it, driver and a 9-iron. Dustin Johnson could surely play it this year with a driver and a wedge. But a 4 there will always be a good score. Of that both gents were sure.

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In the first of five episodes of “The Road to Winged Foot, powered by Cisco Webex ” Hale Irwin and Geoff Ogilvy — both of whom won U.S. Opens at Winged Foot — reveal how they got it done on the fire-breathing layout.

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The post Black touring caddies from a generation ago had insights you won’t find in a yardage book appeared first on Golf.

The post Black touring caddies from a generation ago had insights you won’t find in a yardage book appeared first on Golf.

Yesterday, today and this weekend, Bamberger Briefly returns in memory of, and in tribute to, Charlie Sifford, often described as golf’s Jackie Robinson and the winner of the 1967 Travelers Championship, nee the Greater Hartford Open. Thursday’s subject was Jim Thorpe.

***

In early June in 1979, I caddied in the Kemper Open at Quail Hollow in Charlotte. I was a 19-year-old college kid. Many of the caddies were grown black men from working-class sections of Augusta, Houston, Dallas, Little Rock, Ark., and Jackson, Miss. I certainly didn’t know that then but have learned this bit of social history over the years.

Herman “Mitch” Mitchell, famously linked to Lee Trevino, was probably the most prominent of them, but there were many others, including Sam “Killer” Foy and Dolphus “Golf Ball” Hull, who spent much of his career getting fired by Raymond Floyd and rehired by Floyd’s wife, Maria. Later that June, Hale Irwin won the 1979 U.S. Open at Inverness, Killer on the bag, in a mustard jumpsuit, despite the Midwestern heat.

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This week, the PGA Tour is making its annual stop in Hartford, where Charlie Sifford won the first of his two PGA Tour events at age 45. You’ll be able to count the number of black caddies and players — and Tour officials and broadcasters and reporters — on your fingers, easily. That wasn’t always the case. The professional game is poorer — and far less interesting — for it.

One of the things that drew me to the “pro golf circuit” were the black men traveling it. When I caddied some in ’85, Killer was kind to me and he didn’t need to be. He knew the better motels and the all-you-can-eat buffets. Killer got his nickname as an undercard boxer in Houston. He once fought Sugar Ray Robinson, or so it goes.

“Sam was quiet on the course,” Irwin told me this week. “He gave me what I needed. He liked night. He liked his cars and he liked his girlfriends. On the course, he’d wear a stocking over his hair, under his hat. One time I saw him without it and I couldn’t even recognize him. He said, ‘This is my night hair.’”

The Tour then was a way of life. Now it’s a lucrative profession. You drop in and drop out. As it happens, the caddie yard at the Wethersfield Country, where the Hartford tournament was played for years, produced the caddie that paved the way for today’s caddies. The late Bruce Edwards was a white prep-school kid and the son of a dentist who caddied for Tom Watson through most of Watson’s Tour career. There was something charismatic about Bruce, as there was about Killer. Each had sui generis style. Bruce would wear turtlenecks on cold mornings and looked better than any player doing it, his longish hair touching the top of his collars. Killer tucked his pant bottoms into his socks on wet days. He was wearing knickers when Payne Stewart was still in high school.

For caddie style, Killer’s fellow caddie Golf Ball was the leader, not in the clubhouse but outside of it. One of Dolphus Hull’s signature looks was the porkpie hat with the brim up, all the way around. You could see the veins in his forehead. Ball, native son of Jackson, Miss., won with Ray Floyd and Calvin Peete and others. He dreamed about caddying for Ben Crenshaw, Texas golf legend, but never did. But there was a closeness between the two men. The pro game was more Southern then than anything else and caddie-player relationships were different.

My friend Mike Donald and I went to visit Ball in a nursing home in Jackson a few years ago. Ball was on his last legs. There was a wisdom about him.

“Crenshaw says to me, ‘Ball, what do you do if you love a girl but she don’t love you?’” Ball told us.

“If she don’t love you, you gotta let her go,” Ball said, as he recounted it for us that day.

“I believe you’re right,” Ben said.

“I know I’m right,” Ball said.

That’s really the difference, right there. The touring black caddies from the 1970s and ’80s didn’t have the reams of data the caddies have at their disposal today. Their specialty, from what I could see, was insight into the human condition. Killer knew I needed an early-morning nod and generously nodded in my direction. And that, as a poet of New England once wrote, made all the difference.

Michael Bamberger may be reached at Michael_Bamberger@Golf.com

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The post How old is too old to win a U.S. Open? Thirty years after Hale Irwin’s record-setting victory, his mark still stands appeared first on Golf.

The post How old is too old to win a U.S. Open? Thirty years after Hale Irwin’s record-setting victory, his mark still stands appeared first on Golf.

Ed. note: The 2020 U.S. Open, now set for Sept. 17-20 at Winged Foot Golf Club, was originally slated for June 18-21. In a cap tip to the week that would have been, GOLF.com will be highlighting our national championship over the coming days, from its history, courses and legacy to its special ties to Father’s Day.

*****

The U.S. Open is a slow march, not a sprint, and yet the 1990 staging of the event is best remembered for one man’s dash around the 18th green.

After dropping an improbable birdie bomb that would land him in a Monday playoff at Medinah, Hale Irwin set off on a celebratory lap that called to mind his days as a fleet-footed defensive back in college.

The difference being that the former gridiron star was now 45.

The next day, when Irwin edged Mike Donald in 19 extra holes, he became the oldest player ever to win the U.S. Open, a record that still stands.

“Do I think it will ever be broken?” Irwin asked this week from his home in Arizona, repeating a question that had been put to him over the phone. “The only definitive answer I can give you is that it depends.”

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On the one hand, he noted, age, like par, is just a number, less a physical condition than a state of mind. And given the value of experience in golf, there’s no reason, he said, that a Grecian Formula user couldn’t put a whipping on the kids.

“As long as you keep yourself in reasonably good shape, you should be able to stay competitive,” Irwin said. “When you’re in your forties as a golfer, you’re still in the prime of your career.”

On the other hand, he offered, winning a major isn’t easy. Never has been. But especially in the modern era, with the profound depth of talent in professional golf, and long, gnarly setups with lightning greens that favor power players with young nerves.

If you think it’s tough to be a 40-year-old virgin, try being a 40-year-old in the U.S. Open.

Recent history has not been kind.

After Irwin, the second-oldest winner of the championship is Ray Floyd, who was three months shy of his 44th birthday when he pulled off the trick at Shinnecock Hills in 1986. Before Floyd, the pickings are slim. You have to go back to 1920 (Ted Ray, age 43, at the Inverness Club) to find the next name on the seniority list.

Not that graybeards have been dominating the other majors, either. But just last year, Tiger Woods, at 43, earned his fifth green jacket, while in 2016, also at Augusta, Bernhard Langer played in the second-to-last pairing on Sunday at the Jimmy Buffet-groupie age of 58. Throw in Tom Watson, at 59, with his near miss in the 2009 British Open, and a 53-year-old Greg Norman threatening to claim the claret jug in 2003, and you start to get a sense that the other majors might provide more chances to the Centrum Silver set.

Statistics, of course, can be misleading, but here’s one that seems telling: In the 30 years since Irwin’s victory at Medinah, the average age of the U.S. Open winner is around 30, the youngest average winning age for any of the majors. (For the Masters and the PGA Championship, it’s close to 32; for the British Open, the average is nearly 34.)

Over that same period, the U.S. Open has seen close calls and feisty showings. At the 2016 edition, Jim Furyk finished T-2, three shots behind Dustin Johnson. And if Phil Mickelson hadn’t stalled down the stretch in 2013 at Merion (where he finished T-2 behind Justin Rose), we might be telling a different story.

But for now, the narrative we’re sticking to is this: Our national championship is no country for old men to conquer.

What will it take for that to change?

Age, as Irwin says, might be just a number, but it’s also a number that must be overcome. That was Irwin’s outlook as the 1990 season got underway. Though his ball-striking remained as pure as ever, he was mired in a five-year victory drought. The last time he’d raised a trophy was at the Memorial in 1985. The shots were there. The scores were not.

“I’d started my design business, and I wasn’t as committed to my game as I’d once been,” Irwin said. “Physically, I knew I was still capable of playing at a high level, but I wasn’t getting results. I was playing what you might call ‘unfulfilled golf.’”

Stepping back and taking stock, Irwin resolved to redouble his focus. He spent hours reflecting on his best finishes, and what it had taken to produce them. He took notes and drafted plans. He ramped up his practice sessions. He fine-tuned his putting. When he showed up on the tee box, he had his game face on.

His intensity increased as summer approached and the USGA granted him a special exemption into the U.S. Open.

“I felt extra pressure to perform,” Irwin said. “I wanted to be representative of the quality of player they believed me to be, and to show that they hadn’t made the wrong choice.”

He began the final round in a tie of 20th, four shots behind the leaders. Paired with Greg Norman, Irwin played a steady front nine, but just after the turn, something clicked. Four straight birdies put him in the hunt, before the birdie on 18 that put him in a playoff.

Irwin was not the only grizzled veteran in the mix. Curtis Strange was there, angling for a third-straight U.S. Open title, as was Nick Faldo, Strange’s U.S. Open bridesmaid in 1988, who would finish one shot out of the playoff. Norman was still smacking a throwback persimmon driver. Jack Nicklaus, at 50, had made the weekend, and made things interesting with a third-round 68.

Youth, per usual, was represented, too. Mickelson was playing in his first U.S. Open. Ditto David Duval. A pair of fresh-faced studs, vying for low-amateur in the event.

Both were also hungry, another vital factor, Irwin says, that now becomes an issue as players age. Things are different for today’s emerging stars than they were in Irwin’s generation. Purses are so fat and young stars earn so much, that money ceases being a motivating factor. Whether young guns will stay healthy is also hard to say.

“With the modern swing, as hard as these guys go at it, by the time they get to 35 or 40, there’s very often physical toll,” Irwin said. “And if you’ve already earned a fortune, then the question becomes, do you still have that drive, do you still want to compete, do you have other reasons to push yourself?”

Surveying the landscape, Irwin sees only a small handful of candidates who are plausibly positioned to break his record. Tiger Woods (now 44), he says, seems the most likely; his first chance would come next year at Torrey Pines, a venue that has been good to Woods. Mickelson (49) and Furyk (50) could also do it; both will be in the field this year at Winged Foot. But a win for one of them, or any other player in their age group, will require more than great shotmaking. It will also take a mental leap.

“In golf, and life, so much comes down to mindset,” Irwin says. “I’m 75, so when I look in the mirror, the guy in the reflection might look old. But that’s not how I feel. As far as I’m concerned, I’m still young.”

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The post Iconic Venues | Hale Irwin on Inverness appeared first on Golf.

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Irwin shares what he loves most about the golf course where he won the second of his three U.S. Open titles.

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The two-time U.S. Senior Open Champion discusses the elite company he joined and what his 1998 and 2000 titles mean to him.

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The post 2019 U.S. Open | Champions Day appeared first on Golf.

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Jerry Pate won the 1976 U.S. Open as a rookie and discusses how the greats, including Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, and Hale Irwin, gather for a round of friendly competition and celebration.

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