Given the impression Hale Irwin made 50 years ago this summer at the CGA Stroke Play Championship, it seemed only appropriate that he make a guest appearance at the tournament half a century later.
The three-time U.S. Open champion attended Friday’s second round of the Stroke Play at Pinehurst Country Club to watch his son, Steve, compete in the event. Steve Irwin, the 2004 CGA Match Play winner, shares 18th place at the halfway point at Pinehurst following rounds of 72-73 for a 5-over-par 145 total.
Fifty years ago, in the months after Hale Irwin won the Colorado state high school title while at Boulder High School, he put on a clinic at the CGA Stroke Play that made an indelible mark on some of his fellow competitors.
John Hamer, like Irwin now a member of the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame, put Irwin’s golf abilities as a then-18-year-old into perspective.
Hamer, who like Irwin was a University of Colorado golfer during the 1960s, was starting to ponder whether he’d eventually take a shot at the PGA Tour. And at the 1963 CGA Stroke Play, he said he finished with a very respectable 6-under-par total for 72 holes.
Hamer placed second that week, but suffice it to say he wasn’t a close runner-up. Irwin won the tournament — by 15 strokes.
“I remember thinking there was probably a few other guys out there like Hale, so that ended those thoughts (of turning pro),” Hamer said. “If I had known how good Hale was, though, I might have tried it.”
That 1963 victory was the first of three in a row by Irwin in the CGA Stroke Play — at that time an unprecedented feat in the tournament. To this day, only one other player has won three straight — Bob Byman — and coincidentally, he too grew up in Boulder.
Like Irwin’s performance 50 years ago made an impression on Hamer, it still registers for Irwin — more so than his second and third Stroke Play titles.
“That was a lot of years ago, but I remember that first one; that made an impression on me,” Irwin said Friday.
“I was an upstart young guy and then there was the old guard — guys like Les Fowler and Jim English. I was relatively new to Colorado and I happened to have a very good tournament. I do remember playing awfully well.”
Of course, as Irwin is quick to note, it didn’t hurt that the tournament was played at what is now known as Flatirons Golf Course, which was Hale’s home course.
“You look at tournaments that get you started down a successful path, and that one kind of got me going,” he said.
Irwin would finish his amateur career with four CGA titles — he won the 1966 Match Play at Boulder Country Club by defeating fellow CU golfer Larry McAtee, the three-time defending champion, 5 and 4 in the 36-hole final.
Irwin, of course, has gone on to win an NCAA title while at CU, then 20 times on the PGA Tour (including the 1974, ’79 and ’90 U.S. Opens) and a record 45 times on the Champions Tour. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1992.
The CGA and CWGA now operate the Hale Irwin Elite Player Program out of CommonGround Golf Course, which is owned and operated by the golf associations.
