Nicklaus Couldn't Hear, But He Still Won the Western Open
Doctor had to plug his ear and administer a shot to fight a fungus picked up while swimming
The first week of the FedEx Playoffs did not disappoint treating us to another sudden death playoff and another title for the rejuvinated Lucas Glover. The heat in Memphis for the FedEx St. Jude Championship was brutal (be sure to click on the Check It Out feature to see just how hot it was). Glover was able to scramble for a bogey on the par-3 14th hole after hitting his tee shot into the water but still fell out of the lead as Patrick Cantlay passed him on the leader board.
Cantlay posted a 64 on Sunday, but Glover birdied the 16th hole to get a share of the lead and the two players remained tied after regulation. Glover won on the first playoff hole after Cantlay hit his drive into the water. Glover is the first player over the age of 40 to win a FedEx Cup playoff event since Tiger Woods did it in 2018.
Yikes!
In last week’s Tour Backspin Poll, 64% of respondents love the new FedEx Playoff structure with the top 70 players qualifying, a change from the top 125 players qualifying. The percentage of respondents who hate it because they want to see more players in the field was 36%.
In this week’s Tour Backspin Poll, weigh in on your feelings on the newly revamped PGA TOUR schedule for next year. Quite a few changes with Elevated Events, and Designated Events getting a third name change as Signature Events. Also, the season runs in a calendar year so goodbye wrap-around schedule. Learn more about the schedule from Golf Magazine HERE and then weigh in with your opinion in the Tour Backspin Poll.
Tour Backspin Poll
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We’ve got more Jordan Spieth for you. No wonder he is so popular with the fans.
This week the PGA TOUR continues the playoffs with the BMW Championship. This tournament shares DNA with the Western Open, a tournament that was founded before the PGA TOUR. We’re going back to 1967 when Jack Nicklaus had to deal with fatigue from a very busy summer travel schedule and an ear that was plugged up. He battled the colorful Doug Sanders down the stretch where it was very much in doubt which player would give the title to the other. Scroll down to read.
This week’s Vintage Ad is a piece of art from Titleist. Scroll down to see.
We’re groovin’ to the tunes of 1967 in this week’s Tour Backspin Spotify playlist. Listen HERE.
Check out Doug Sanders’ compact swing in this week’s Swing Like a Pro. Scroll down to view.
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We’ve got a great list of guests for the second season of The Tour Backspin Show. Al Geiberger takes us through his 59 at the 1979 Memphis Open, we profile the Jan Craig Headcover company which has been hand knitting headcovers since the early 1960s and their poms have graced the bags of Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Ben Crenshaw, and we check in with Frank Beard and Chuck Courtney.
Listen to The Tour Backspin Show podcast HERE or on Spotify, or on Amazon Music and Apple Podcast.
If you like golf history, check out the Your Golfer’s Almanac podcast. Host Michael Duranko celebrates birthdays, milestones, and other accomplishments that occurred on the day in golf history. Listen HERE.
Congratulations to David Rihm who correctly identified hole #6 at Sedgefield Country Club, in Greensboro, NC in last week’s WHAT HOLE IS IT? David beat out one other correct answer in the random drawing and we have a prize pack in the mail to David. Check out the 2023 leader board and scroll down for your chance to win in this week’s WHAT HOLE IS IT? We’ve got some new prizes to hand out!
Save the Date! The first meeting of The Tour Backspin Show Book Club will meet on Thursday, Sept. 21st at 5 pm (PST) via Zoom.
To get things started, we will be discussing my book on Tony Lema, Uncorked, The Life and Times of Champagne Tony Lema (it was the easiest guest to book). The book is available on Amazon and if you are a member of Amazon Prime, you can download the Kindle version for free. If you upgrade from a free subscription of Tour Backspin to a premium subscription before Aug. 31st, we’ll send you an author signed copy of the book for free.
We will be featuring other authors and some of the best golf books ever written in future episodes of The Tour Backspin Show Book Club.
Register, for free, at tourbackspin.com through the below link.
We’re playing Western Open Open Trivia in this week’s Tour Backspin Quiz. Scroll down to play.
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Enjoy!
Larry Baush
Despite Hearing Issues, Nicklaus Outlasts Sanders
It is Sunday, August 6th, 1967, and Jack Nicklaus is tired. It had already been a long year, a year that had seen Nicklaus win the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am in January and the U.S. Open in June. In July he traveled to England for The Open Championship where he finished in second place behind Roberto De Vicenzo. The very next week he was in Colorado for the PGA Championship, and now, just two weeks later, he was in Chicago for the Western Open at Beverly Country Club in Chicago.
And his ear hurt. It wasn’t just his exhaustive schedule that was bothering him physically—a fungus he picked up from swimming was responsible for an earache in his left ear. A doctor plugged up his ear, gave him a shot, and it all resulted in him not being able to hear out of the ear. The crowd of 21,000 that followed him during Sunday’s final round sounded half the size to Nicklaus. That satisfying sound that the ball makes when it falls to the bottom of the cup was inaudible.
And yet, he entered the final round just one stroke off Doug Sander’s lead of 205. He got into that position on the strength of a third round 65 on the easy Beverly Country Club course. After he bogeyed the last three holes to shoot a one-over-par 72 in the opening round, he came back with a 68 in the second round which put him six shots behind the leader, Labron Harris, who shot rounds of 66 and 68. Doug Sanders shot rounds of 69 and 68 and was at 137.
Sanders, mired in a months-long slump, took the lead after the third round shooting a 67. Nicklaus was tied at 205 with Tom Veech, a 300-pound pro who matched the 65 that Nicklaus posted in the third round. With four bogeys in a row, starting at the third hole, Harris shot a 72 for a three-round total of 206.
Nicklaus, playing in the group in front of Sanders on Sunday, played well and came to the 18th tee leading Sanders by one. His third shot approach on the 596-yard, par-5, found the green leaving him a birdie putt of only 15-feet. He got a little too aggressive with the putt and rolled it four feet past the cup. He then missed the comebacker for par leaving the door open for Sanders. It was the only three-putt of the round for Nicklaus who also had seven one-putt greens in his round.
“I just used the wrong club”
After signing his scorecard, Nicklaus sat at the edge of the 18th green to watch Sanders finish. Sanders had flown his tee shot the 207-yard, par-3, 17th hole over the green resulting in a bogey.
“I just used the wrong club,” Sanders said about the shot that sailed over the green.
“Do you think I want to win this way?”
He now had to birdie the final hole to force a playoff with Nicklaus, but he missed the green with his third shot and took another bogey. As Sanders faded, a news photographer asked Nicklaus to smile for a picture.
“Do you think I want to win this way?” he asked quietly. “Doug played fine golf. He lost it. I didn’t win it. It’s like coming in the back door. I don’t like to win on somebody’s misfortunes.”
He also talked about his ear condition.
“There are a lot of sounds in golf that mean a lot.”
“I didn’t want anybody to know about my ear,” he said. “I had to play by feel out there. All the clicks were gone. The ball plopping into the cup wasn’t there. There are a lot of sounds in golf that mean a lot.”
Nicklaus won $20,000 and upped his winnings for the year to $101,148 becoming the first player to win over a hundred grand for five straight seasons. He won two more times during that busy year, at the rich Westchester Classic and at the Sahara Invitational. He also won the World Cup, an unofficial team event with Arnold Palmer, although he was not a member of the Ryder Cup team that year as he had not fulfilled the PGA apprenticeship requirement.
His total official winnings for 1967 came to $188,998 and he was finally able to get some rest before the 1968 season started. And he could hear again.
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Bonus Story
Tom Veech who was tied for second in the 1967 Western Open with Jack Nicklaus was a 300-pound pro from Wisconsin with a distinguished amateur record. He was a four-time Wisconsin State Open champion winning his first title as an 18-year-old. He beat Arnold Palmer in the quarterfinals of the Intercollegiate National Championship (now the NCAA Championship). He shot a 59 at the North Hills Country Club in Menomonee Falls, WI.
Randy Warobick, whose father, Lou, was Veech’s best friend, and a professional golfer, said, “He literally had the best hands the golf world has ever seen. His control of the golf club was phenomenal.”
Veech went out onto the PGA Tour in 1959 but didn’t last very long. Still, he made occasional appearances in PGA events including the 1967 Western Open. He also played in the 1964 PGA Championship alongside his friend Lou Warobick and Randy tagged along for the week.
He sat spellbound as Billy Casper and Tony Lema talked about Veech over lunch. Casper played college golf for one year at Notre Dame where he occupied the second spot on the team. Veech held down the first spot and was team captain.
“Billy said, ‘you know, Lou, if they allowed carts, we’d all be playing for second place,” Randy recalled. “The field included Ben Hogan, Nicklaus and Palmer in their prime, and Sam Snead. That’s how much Billy Casper thought of Veech.”
The reasons that Veech did not achieve success on the PGA TOUR was that he didn’t like the lifestyle and his 300-pound weight made it hard for him to walk for 72 holes every week. His knees suffered from his excess weight and his thighs would chafe raw.
“There were many times his legs were bloody after a round of golf,” Warobick recalled.
Veech became a vice president of sales and marketing for Moen Manufacturing in Chicago before retiring and eventually moving to Vero Beach, FL. He passed away in hospice care in Vero Beach in 2018 at the age of 88.
WHAT HOLE IS IT?
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Tour Backspin Quiz | Western Open Trivia
The founding of the Western Open predated the start of the PGA Tour. What year was the Western Open first played? Who was the winner and who was the runner-up in that first Western Open?
Scroll down to for answer
Swing Like a Pro
They said he could swing in a phone booth. The compact swing of Doug Sanders.
Blind Shot
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This is a cool caddie story about the heat in Memphis during the FedEx St. Jude Championship. Read it HERE.
Uncorked, The Life and Times of Champagne Tony Lema tells the story of one of the tour’s biggest stars in the mid-1960s. A fascinating glimpse into the traveling caravan that was the PGA TOUR during an era where the fields were full of “Mad Men” era personalities. From a hardscrabble youth spent on the “wrong side of the tracks” in the Oakland suburb of San Leandro, to the temptations of Elko, Nevada, to the bright lights of the PGA TOUR, Uncorked tells a story of determination, redemption and, above all else, a love story that documents how Betty, Tony’s new wife, provided the direction and motivation for him to become a top star. Order on Amazon.
What is Hip?
Look at those colors from 1967. And the socks and hats! (photo: Golf Digest)
Tour Backspin Quiz Answer:
The first Western Open was played in 1899 and was won by Willie Smith. Laurie Auchterlonie was the runner-up.
If you’re enjoying the free version of Tour Backspin, I hope you would consider upgrading to a paid subscription ($5 per month, or $36 per year). Your support helps us with the research, writing, travel, and the other work required to make this newsletter sustainable. I understand that not everyone can or wants to buy a paid subscription. I’m happy to have you here either way. I’m glad you feel that the stories of these players from one of golf’s “Golden Ages” are important to document before it is too late. Thanks for reading.
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Final Thoughts
Wow, that heat in Memphis was brutal. Just look at Glover’s pants. And there’s no way that Tom Veech could have walked 72 holes in that heat.
Did anybody dress as cool as Doug Sanders?