Last week was a very active one in the world of sports. The Women’s NCAA Final Four played out to its conclusion as Stanford fell to UConn in the semifinals only to have South Carolina steamroll over UConn in the finals with a decided advantage on the offensive boards. In the Men’s Final Four, Kansas mounted the greatest halftime comeback in the history of the NCAA Finals to prevail over North Carolina. During the first half, UNC reproduced the playbook of South Carolina by dominating the backboards. Kansas cleaned up that deficit in the second half to prevail by three points.
Meanwhile in the world of golf, J.J. Spaun won the Texas Open for his first PGA Tour victory. A classic journeyman who has spent more time outside the top 125 than inside of it, Spaun got into this week’s Masters, next year’s Tournament of Champions and has a two-year exemption on the tour. At the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, high school sophomore Anna Davis shot a 3-under-par 69 at the home of the Masters to leap ahead of the first-round leaders and capture the title. Her victory was unexpected to say the least. On the other side of the country, past Augusta National Women’s Amateur champ Jennifer Kupcho won her first major on the LPGA Tour at the Chevron Classic in Palm Desert. Kupcho had a big enough lead that she could bogey five holes on her final nine and still prevail by two strokes. Long ago the Chevron was known as the Dinah Shore. Next year the Chevron will be relocating from the desert to Texas. Chevron will increase the purse and commit long term to the LPGA Tour, but the move from Mission Hills after all these years is a little bit disheartening.
Meanwhile we’re at the mid-point of the 2022 Masters, the first men’s major championship of the year. The Masters has had a way of rewarding the best players of their era with another green jacket for the closet. Jack Nicklaus won the Masters a record-setting six times while Tiger Woods has five Masters’ titles and the late Arnold Palmer four. In the post-World War II era, the ultra-colorful Jimmy Demaret won three Masters titles as did Sam Snead. The third member of golf’s big three, Gary Player, has won three Masters titles as have Nick Faldo and Phil Mickelson. Two-time winners include Hall of Famers such as Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Bernhard Langer, Tom Watson, Seve Ballesteros, Ben Crenshaw and Jose Maria Olazabal. In the modern era, ball striker supreme Bubba Watson also has two green jackets.
While it seems that the Masters has always featured the greats of the game atop its leader board, there have been multiple times were a solidly middle-of-the-pack golfer has caught lightning in a bottle for four days at Augusta National Golf Club and ended up beating the greats of the game. For a number of golfers, it was their one moment of golfing glory, their one major triumph.
San Francisco resident George Archer won the 1969 Masters by one stroke over an illustrious threesome that included Billy Casper, Tom Weiskopf and sweet-swinging Canadian George Knudson. At 6-foot-6, Archer was without a doubt the owner of the largest green jacket in Masters history. Amazingly, for being as tall as he was, Archer was a great putter who made just about everything in sight to prevail that weekend at Augusta National.
There has been a lot of oral history about the young Archer perfecting his putting craft under the lights at Lincoln Park Golf Course alongside San Francisco Bay. Supposedly Archer was that young 12-year-old kid who hustled quarters and dollars from the adult regulars on the Lincoln Park practice putting green. His family moved to San Mateo during his teenage years and he attended San Mateo High School. At 6-6, George would seem like a perfect addition to his high school basketball team. However, he was kicked off the team for missing too many practices. The reason? He was spending every minute of his spare time playing golf or working at the local country club. Archer did play on the high school golf team at San Mateo. He also was a caddie at the very private Peninsula Country Club.
Archer turned professional in 1963 and was an immediate success in local tournaments. He won the 1963 Northern California Open and later that summer he prevailed in the Northern California Stroke Play Championship. He defended his NorCal Open title in 1964. Archer entered the Lucky Invitational Tournament at Harding Park in January of 1965. The Lucky was a regular stop on the PGA Tour in those days. The largely unknown Archer was very familiar with Harding Park alongside Lake Merced in San Francisco. He posted scores of 68-73-69-68 for a 278 total and a 6-under-par aggregate score, which was good enough to find him tied atop the leader board with British Open champion Bob Charles of New Zealand. Archer birdied the second playoff hole to secure his first PGA Tour win.
From that point on, Archer was off and running in the world of professional golf. Archer won 13 times on the PGA Tour, 19 times on the Senior Tour and even wandered the world to the point that he won the Argentine Open, the Columbian Open, and the Philippines Invitational. Yet none of those wins was as important or as impressive as his 1969 Masters win.
From 1946 through the beginning of the Arnold Palmer era of 1958, the winners of the Masters were household names such as Snead, Hogan, Demaret, Jackie Burke, Cary Middlecoff and Doug Ford. All had multiple majors during the course of their career. Yet during that very same time, two of the more unexpected Masters champs rose to the top of the leader board. In 1946, Herman Keiser defeated Ben Hogan by one stroke at the Masters. He won four other times on the tour during the 1940s. Two years later, Claude Harmon won the ’48 Masters. Harmon was a longtime club professional at Winged Foot and is best known for raising a foursome of sons who are all noted golf instructors. His only other official win on the PGA Tour was the 1950 Miami Two Man where he teamed up with Pete Cooper. While Harmon merely dabbled in tournament golf, he did have seven top-10 finishes in the major championships.
The leader board at this weekend’s Masters should feature an all-star lineup of great talent. Yet don’t be surprised if a middle-of-the-pack golfer should come through and win. After all, it’s happened to others such as Gay Brewer, Charles Coody, Art Wall Jr., Larry Mize and most recently Charl Schwartzel, Trevor Immelman and Danny Willett. At the majors level, everyone is good. Then again, hopefully you didn’t put your money on Matthew Wolff or Cameron Young.
