This brought back memories of all the time I got to spend with Mickey Wright when I was a wide eyed assistant golf professional and how fortunate I was.
Sixty
years on from the pro debuts of two World Golf Hall of Famers.
There was a time when the end of the
calendar year for the aspiring tour professional was Armageddon and the
Promised Land all in one. Be one of the top finishers in an arduous qualifying
school and you earned the right to play the following year on your respective
tour. Be off your game, and you'd spend the entire next season in the
wilderness . . . waiting for the next November to roll around.
The first PGA Tour Qualifying School
was held in the fall of 1965, with 49 players competing over eight rounds with
17 getting a chance to play on tour in 1966. John Schlee was the
medalist.
Now, of course, the PGA Tour has
changed qualifying school so that it gives you status on the Web.com Tour. In
turn, the school's impact on the heartbeats of male pros has been diminished,
as has the November/December time period each year when hundreds of PGA Tour
careers were launched via Q School and livelihoods were begun.
Reflecting on November as a time of
hope for the tour player is a good time to celebrate a pair of World Golf Hall
of Fame careers that launched 60 years ago.
In November 1954, both Arnold Palmer and Mickey Wright
announced they were leaving the amateur ranks and turning professional to play
tour golf. Both made the transition at logical points in their career.
Palmer won the '54 U.S. Amateur in
late August and, at 25, felt he was more than ready to play for pay. So did the
PGA of America (the PGA Tour was still under the auspices of the association at
the time), which had this in Palmer's bio: "The most coveted title in
amateur golf, the National Amateur Championship, was won in 1954 by Arnold
Palmer, and it
presaged his eventual decision to turn PGA professional, for you
might say the powerful Youngstown, Pennsylvania native was born to play golf
alongside the top stars of the 'new look' era of youth." The "Man
from Latrobe" label was still down the PR pipeline.
Palmer had a pretty strong first
year on tour, despite not being able to collect any prize money during his
first six months. At that time, tour newcomers had to go through a
"probation" period of not being allowed to take money; one can only
imagine how much today's tour players would learn from such an experience.
Palmer played the Masters in April 1955 and could collect the $696 10th-place
money because the Masters was an invitational event and not an official tour
event. In mid-August Palmer won the Canadian Open by four shots, along with
$2,400 in first-place money. For the year he earned $7,958 for 32nd place on
the money list.
Wright didn't turn 20 until February 1955, but turning pro
as a teenager -- something far more common on the LPGA Tour these days -- was
rather shocking back in the '50s. Wright had attended Stanford for one year,
but she had won the 1952 U.S. Girls' Junior and 1954 World Amateur. In 1954 she
was also low amateur at the U.S. Women's Open in July and Women's Amateur
runner-up in September, so she was ready to move from college to pro golf.
(Despite the short college career, Stanford still inducted her into its hall of
fame in 2000.)
At 5-feet-9, Wright's athletic,
powerful swing was one of the all-time finest of any gender. In her first year
in '55, she had a 77.22 stroke average and was 12th on the money list with
$6,325. She didn't win her first tour event until 1956, in the Jacksonville
Open. Golf Digest named her the Most Improved Women's Professional in 1957, she
won 10 or more tour titles each year from 1961 to 1964, and by age 28, in 1963,
she had won the four women's majors twice. In 1999, the Associated Press named
her Female Golfer of the Century.
The qualifying school may have lost
its historical impact, but this time of year still has memories of when
historical careers were launched.
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