The professional golf season”s fourth and final major, the PGA Championship, concludes Sunday at the Atlanta Athletic Club”s Highlands Course. When the final putt drops, the legacy of one of the 156 golfers in the field will be cemented for the remainder of his career. He will be forever identified as a major champion. In the case of 28 of the contestants, a win this weekend would mean multiple major wins, most probably cementing a place in the World Golf Hall of Fame.
It”s always interesting to look back upon past tournaments to see the changes that have occurred in the game down through the years. An interesting tale of the PGA Championship means looking back at the events as they played out in central Indiana some 20 years ago this week.
The 1991 PGA Champion-ship was similar to the one being played this weekend in that there was no clear-cut favorite nor was there a truly dominant American golfer. Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus were over 50 years of age and had a new home on the PGA Senior Tour. American Tom Watson was eight years removed from his eighth and final major win. Europe”s best-known golfer, Seve Ballesteros of Spain, hadn”t won a major title in three years and was struggling with his golf swing. Australian Greg Norman was the No. 1-ranked golfer in the world, and yet he only had one major win, the 1986 British Open. Nick Faldo had four majors at the time, but he was more successful in the Masters and the British Open. There were a lot of one-time major winners as golfers prepared for the ”91 PGA at Crooked Stick in Indianapolis.
Early that week, the alternate list came into play as a handful of golfers withdrew from the tourney for a variety of reasons. The afternoon prior to the start of the championship, Nick Price”s wife, Sue, went into labor. Price, a top-five golfer from Zimbabwe, withdrew and the PGA of America folks contacted the No. 9 golfer on the alternate list, a relatively unknown tour rookie from Memphis named John Daly. Daly was at home when he took the call Wednesday evening, quickly packed up his car, was joined by fianc?e Betty, and drove through the night from Memphis to Indianapolis. He got to the tournament site several hours prior to his tee time.
Daly had zero course knowledge and didn”t even have the advantage of getting to play a practice round. However, he did catch one major break. Without a bag to carry that week, Jeff “Squeaky” Medlin, a longtime tour caddie who had looped for Price for a number of years, signed on as Daly”s caddie for the week. Medlin had charted out the course earlier in the week and he was one of the tour”s top caddies. He was the right person at the right time to caddie for the super-talented, super-green Daly.
Daly opened play with a 69 and found himself on the leaderboard, two strokes behind leader Kenny Knox. Of course, major tournament leaderboards are often littered with one-day wonders who happen to follow a 69 with a second-round 79. There was nothing particularly shocking about Daly and his 69 on Thursday, but then Friday arrived and he carded a 5-under-par 67, and after 36 holes he had a one-stroke lead.
On Thursday morning, only the most hardcore of golf fans knew of John Daly, a one-time winner on the Ben Hogan Tour (now the Nationwide Tour) who had limited success on South Africa”s Sunshine Tour. By Saturday morning, the entire golfing world was fully aware of the 25-year-old kid from Arkansas who hit prodigious drives while chain smoking his way through a round of golf. Daly was outgoing with the press, he was very fan friendly, and he seemed like the poor man”s Arnold Palmer. Medlin”s advice prior to every tee shot was simple. Squeaky told Daly to “kill it.”
Daly held a one-stroke lead over Texan Bruce Lietzke. He was a rock-solid ball striker who had been on tour for 17 years. Lietzke had 11 tour wins to his credit, was a former Ryder Cupper, and had three top-five finishes in past PGA Championships. It would be all about Daly, Lietzke and Knox, who was two back, over the final 36 holes of the tourney.
On Saturday, Daly continued with his pedal to the metal, shooting 69 to get to 11-under. Knox shot 70 to fall three back, and Lietzke carded a 72 to finish four strokes behind Daly. Still, to anyone with knowledge of the game, it still seemed like Daly could and would fall apart at any moment.
Sunday dawned. Daly yanked his opening tee shot left and bogeyed the first hole. However, he righted the ship and started making one par after another. Knox was in the final pairing and he made it easy on Daly by faltering early on. He would return a score of 74 and wind up in fourth place, six shots back. Lietzke would play steady golf and shoot 70, but it was too little, too late. He would finish solo second, three shots off the pace. Jim Gallagher Jr. had the low round of the day, a 5-under-par 67, but that merely got him into third place, five shots out of the lead. John Daly, who finished at 1-under-par 71, closed it out at 12-under, good enough for a three-shot win, his first tour win, and his first major title. On Aug. 11, 1991, the legend of long-hitting John Daly was born.
The purse that weekend was $1.35 million, about the same amount the winner of the 2011 PGA will take home. Daly won $230,000, Lietzke pocketed $145,000, and Knox made $95,000. Current television commentator, Irishman David Feherty, finished seventh and won $38,000 for his efforts. Aging veterans Raymond Floyd, Craig Stadler and Hal Sutton were the only past major winners among the top 12.
The 1991 PGA Championship played out 20 years ago, and yet it seems like it was light years ago. It was a fun major during a fairly bland time on the PGA Tour. Daly was more like a superhero cartoon character in a world where Corey Pavin was the leading money winner, with less than $1 million in earnings, and the other major champions were Ian Woosnam, Payne Stewart and Ian Baker-Finch. In many ways, there have been lots of changes since 1991 and in many ways, things have remained very much the same.
