The "Lost" PGA Tournament

How the CBS Golf Classic became the "lost" PGA tournament

Nov 26, 2021

The PGA TOUR is in Sea Island, Georgia for the RSM Classic, a tournament first played in 2010. The TOUR will then take a break resuming December 2nd with the Hero Challenge, a limited field event. There will also be a made for television event, "The Match" pitting Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka. We're going back to 1963 to see why the CBS Golf Classic is the "lost PGA tournament". We'll use the newsletters during the holidays to continue the study on this story. The newsletter on the week of Thanksgiving will be used to update you on some of what is in store for Tour Backspin for 2022--we have a lot of exciting news, so stay tuned. Of course, we'll have a WHAT HOLE IS IT? that week.

Congratulations to Kevin DeRouen a member of the Washington Golfer and Western Washington Golfer Facebook groups, for winning the WHAT HOLE IS IT? contest from last week. Kevin identified the 16th hole at the Half Moon Bay Ocean Course and then beat out nine other correct answers. This is the third Thursday of the month, so it's a Guest Post hole and thanks to Glenn Blue for the picture and the story. WE NEED "GUEST POST" PICTURES. Send us that pic on your phone of a great golf hole, tell us a story on how you conquered it (or how it kicked your butt) and if we use it, you'll win a prize. Send the pic to larry@tourbackspin.com. Check out the WHII leader board below.

The Tour Backspin shop is HERE to help you with your holiday shopping. All Tour Backspin subscribers can get 10% off and FREE SHIPPING now through Dec. 20th. Use the coupon code 2021SUBSCRIBER. We have historically authentic items including buttons/magnets, t-shirts, trading cards and more. Each t-shirt incorporates a design used in the 1960s or 1970s from a button or tournament program cover and includes an historical recap of the tournament. We will be adding more items (including the 2022 WHAT HOLE IS IT? wall calendar) over the next couple of weeks. Your Christmas shopping just got easier. No supply line issues here, everything is in stock. Check it out.

This week's quiz is guess the logo from the world of golf. Scroll down to play.

This week's vintage ad is all about the CBS Golf Classic in 1964-1965 (see the main story for a link to watch the final match).

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Okay, we're on the tee, let's get going.

Why the CBS Golf Classic is Considered the "Lost PGA Tournament"

If you Google “CBS Golf Classic” the first result you’ll see is this video, posted by yours truly. The video has been viewed more that 1,600 times and the most common comment is about how hard it is to find content on the web concerning this made-for-television event. One online discussion forum, golfclubatlas.com, has dubbed it “The Lost PGA Tournament”. Even though it was an unofficial PGA TOUR event, the name is apropos. There is little to no content on the web about the CBS Golf Classic.

The matches were originally filmed in 16mm and a fire in a CBS warehouse destroyed the company’s archived copies, leaving only the copies that the director, Frank Chirkinian, gave to the participating players as the only surviving footage. We were lucky enough to get access from the Lema family to the championship match in the 1964/1965 season where Tony Lema was paired with Bobby Nichols against Bob Charles and Bruce Devlin. That is the video posted online and referenced above and we’ve written about it on the Tour Backspin blog. You can read that HERE.

The CBS Golf Classic was co-owned by Dan Curtis, the legendary television producer and director. His long list of productions includes Dark Shadows, The Winds of War and War and Remembrance. The IMDb entry for Curtis does not include any credits for the golf matches. A December 1966 profile by Ed Misurell, syndicated by UPI, states that Curtis won an Emmy Award in 1965 for the match play series. In the article, Curtis relates how he sold the concept to CBS in 1963.

The tournament’s purse provided an incentive for the players to participate. The winning team in 1964 won $50,000, matching the first-place prize money in the World Series of Golf, another unofficial PGA event that pitted the winners of the four majors in a two-day event at Firestone Golf and Country Club.

Chirkinian used the matches to experiment with techniques that he would later incorporate into the CBS broadcasts of regular tour events including cameras operated from cranes. He also introduced players wearing small microphones so that the viewer could capture conversations about strategy. This is especially fun in a two-man best ball match play event.

In the first year of the matches, 1963, there were two brackets, one played at Baltusrol on the Lower Course and the other played at La Quinta Country Club. The Baltusrol matches were played first with the winning team traveling to California to play the winner of the La Quinta bracket.

It took research through television listings in newspapers from 1963 and 1964 to determine this final match pairing. That’s how obscure the CBS Golf Classic has become. We would love to give you the shot-by-shot coverage and funny anecdotes from the matches, but there just wasn't any coverage of the made-for-television event in the golf magazines or newspapers of the day. Here are the results of the matches:

Check out the bonus fact below for more about how we got our hands on the 16mm film of the 1964 final match.

The playlist this week is all about songs from 1964. Listen HERE .

This is the third Thursday of the month so it is a "Guest Post" for WHAT HOLE IS IT? Want your pic featured as a "Guest Post"? Send your pictures to larry@tourbackspin.com. If we use your pic for the WHAT HOLE IS IT? contest, you'll win a prize. Send us your pics!

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Enjoy!
Larry Baush

Tour Backspin Quiz | Guess The Logo

Answer below

Bonus Story

When the PGA TOUR began its year at the Los Angeles Open in 1965, Frank Chirkinian and CBS hosted the participants of the CBS Classic to a banquet. It was at the banquet that Chrikinian presented large 16mm film canisters to each player for each match they played in. He worked his way through the players leaving Tony Lema, who played in the final with his friend Bobby Nichols, until the last.

Chirkinian announced, “This is all we have after we edited out all your foul language,” as he held up a 12-inch strip of film. The room erupted in laughter at the joke and then Chirkinian presented Lema with his canisters. This is the same film that I have digitized (in a primitive way) and posted on YouTube. Again, you can watch that HERE.