World’s top 5 all in action for PGA’s return

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Jerry McGee thought he might be in line for some good luck that week. He had come to the Florida Panhandle in April of 1975 to play in the Pensacola Open. One night before the tournament began, he and his wife Jill had dinner in a local restaurant. "We ordered oysters and I found a pearl in one of mine," McGee told the Morning Journal of Lisbon, Ohio last year. "I guess that was a good omen." It was, indeed. After opening with a 69 that left him five strokes off Andy North's lead, McGee steadily climbed the leaderboard. He led by one stroke through 54 holes thanks to consecutive 66s and ended up beating Wally Armstrong by two strokes. The win was the first of four on the PGA TOUR for McGee, who died Wednesday at the age of 77 just weeks after moving to Florida to be closer to his family. His son Mike, who is married to LPGA legend Annika Sorenstam, posted on Facebook that McGee was admitted to the hospital on Saturday. "He went downhill quickly," Mike McGee wrote. "Lots of complications that had been brewing. We were blessed that my parents moved to Orlando and we could all say our goodbyes and be together. "He had struggled for a while and I really believe that after many years of us wanting them to move closer that he finally acquiesced because he knew this was coming. Once my Mom was settled here he was at peace." McGee, who was born July 21, 1943 in New Lexington, Ohio, was a fixture on the PGA TOUR in the 1970s and PGA TOUR Champions from 1993-2004. He started out playing baseball and football but became interested in golf after his parents divorced and his mother later married a club professional. "When I was 14, some friends of mine took me to Firestone to watch the tournament; it was the Rubber City Open at that time," McGee told the Tribune Chronicle of Warren, Ohio in 2014. "And from that day on, I wanted to play professional golf." McGee played at Ohio State, then turned pro in 1966 and joined the PGA TOUR the following year. He made 404 starts and won four times, including twice in 1979, and played on the victorious U.S. Team at the 1977 Ryder Cup at Royal Lytham & St. Annes. "Outside of my family, playing on that team was the greatest thrill of my life," McGee told the Morning Journal in 2020. "To be one of 12 golfers picked to represent your country, I still get chills thinking about it." The slender 5-foot-9, 160-pound McGee was known on TOUR for his short game. He played in 26 majors and posted a trio of top-10s, including a tie for fifth in his 1972 Masters debut. "It's ironic the Masters is next week," Mike McGee wrote on Facebook. "That was by far his favorite week of the year and during his radiation treatments for cancer years ago, he played Augusta National in his mind." McGee was plagued by nagging injuries during his career and eventually sidelined by hypoglycemia, also known as low blood sugar, in 1981. He took a job as director of golf at Oak Tree Country Club in West Middlesex, Pennsylvania, where he go on to work for 12 years. During the last year of his employment at Oak Tree, McGee had a sign on his desk that said: 1993. It was a reminder that he would be eligible for what is now known as PGA TOUR Champions that year. "Everybody asked, ‘What's that,'" McGee recalled in a 2005 interview with the Tampa Tribune. "I just kept it between me and well, me. That was the year I turned 50, when I could join this tour. I gave it a shot. I've done well." McGee made 318 starts on the Champions Tour and posted five top-three finishes. He earned more than $3.2 million in a dozen seasons, including the 1999 campaign that was interrupted by surgery to remove cancerous tumors on the left side of his neck and the base of his tongue. After the surgery, McGee had 6 ½ weeks of radiation. He returned to PGA TOUR Champions four months later and ended up playing in 130 more tournaments before retiring after the 2004 season. "I was so lucky," McGee told the Tribune Chronicle. "I've gone to places, met people, that I would never had the opportunity to without the game of golf." In addition to his wife Jill, Jerry is survived by his brother, Don Holden (Joel); his daughter, Roxane Love-McGee; his son, Michael McGee (Annika Sorenstam); and his daughter, Michelle McGee (Mark Riley); along with grandchildren, Dylan Love, Ava McGee, Will McGee, and Liam Riley. There will be a Celebration of Life at a later date. Memorial contributions can be made to the Youngstown State women's basketball team.

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A year after winning two PGA TOUR tournaments, Gene Littler met with the media to discuss his return to golf. Fans had last seen Littler play in the 1972 Doral-Eastern Open in Miami before he took an extended break from the game. He had a good reason for his sabbatical. In March, surgeons removed a malignant tumor on the lymph glands under Littler’s left arm. Two weeks later, surgeons then removed all the gland-bearing tissue under that same arm. With all the medical issues he had encountered, Littler’s professional golf career was somewhat unsettled, and even he didn’t know if he would return to the level that saw him win the 1961 U.S. Open and 23 other PGA TOUR events or even return to the TOUR at all. “No one can say how well I’ll play,â€� Littler told the assembled reporters. “The doctors won’t stick their necks out and say I’ll play as good as ever. But the way I feel now, the way I feel and have been progressing, I think it will be nearly as good as new. I feel like I’ll be able to do it.â€� Littler was right. Seven months after his surgeries and called cancer-free by his doctor, Littler was back on TOUR, competing in his home state of California at the Kaiser International Open in Napa, where he would tie for 35th. And by 1973, the San Diego native was back playing a full TOUR schedule that included a hard-to-believe win at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital Open. Recovering from cancer and winning that tournament at age 42 may have been his crowning achievement. Forty-seven years after that cancer scare, the player people called “Gene the Machineâ€� because of his stylish golf swing, died this weekend in his hometown. He was 88. “Gene was the consummate gentleman but also a fierce competitor. His rhythmic swing that earned him his distinctive nickname remains in our minds a thing of beauty. It was a pleasure to watch Gene Littler hit a golf ball,â€� PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan said. “San Diego has produced great champions like Billy Casper, Phil Mickelson and Mickey Wright. Gene Littler stood right there beside those giants of the game, and we mourn the passing of a tremendous golfer, husband and father.â€� Born July 21, 1930, Littler was a contemporary of Billy Casper, another San Diego native 11 months younger than Littler — the two Californians inexorably tied together throughout their respective World Golf Hall of Fame careers. Growing up in a beach community, Littler wasn’t all about golf early in his life. During his teenage years, he surfed and played a lot of baseball. He then discovered golf, a pastime he turned into a career. Littler attended and graduated from San Diego State University and then joined the U.S. Navy, where he served from 1951 to 1954, still playing a lot of golf as a member of the Navy golf team. On that squad, based in San Diego, were seven future PGA TOUR players: Littler, Casper, Don Whitt, Bill Bisdorf, Bob Goetz, Bud Holscher and Bill Blanton. Along with his military obligations, Littler was able to still play competitive golf and was a member of the winning 1953 U.S. Walker Cup team that featured, among others, William C. Campbell, Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward. The Americans defeated the Great Britain and Ireland team, 9 to 3. He also won the 1953 U.S. Amateur in Oklahoma City, beating Dale Morey, 1-up, in the final. In January 1954, while still an amateur, Littler won his hometown San Diego Open, a PGA TOUR event in just its third year. An even-par 72 in the final round — his worst score of the week — couldn’t slow Littler, who coasted to a four-shot win over Dutch Harrison at Rancho Santa Fe Golf Club. Two weeks after that triumph, and after consulting with his wife, Shirley, at the time eight months pregnant with the couple’s first child (Curt, born in March), Littler decided to turn professional. Six months later, Littler finished as runner-up to Ed Furgol at the U.S. Open at Baltusrol Golf Club in New Jersey, one of four runner-up finishes Littler recorded that season. Littler captured his lone major championship at the 1961 U.S. Open, shooting a final-round 68 to come from three shots off the pace to defeat Bob Goalby and third-round leader Doug Sanders by a shot at Oakland Hills Country Club in Michigan. His first win as a professional came in 1955, up the road at the Los Angeles Open, beating Ted Kroll by two shots at Inglewood Country Club, a course that saw him chip in for birdie three times during the 72 holes. Yet it was his play in two USGA events that he felt cemented his place in golf history. “To win both those — the U.S. Open and the U.S. Amateur — is really, really special; a big thrill for me,â€� Little said in a 2012 interview. And of his famous swing, Littler added, “I worked on tempo a lot, and I think my tempo was really pretty good. I think maybe that’s what gives the impression of a terrific swing. I don’t know if mechanically it was that sound or not, but it must have been OK.â€� “It’s a perfect swing like Sam Snead’s, only better,â€� fellow World Golf Hall of Famer Gene Sarazen once said. In addition to his U.S. Open victory and runner-up showing, Littler had second-place finishes in the Masters and the PGA Championship. Both of those playoff losses came with asterisks for their respective places in history. His loss to Casper in the 1970 Masters Tournament was the event’s final 18-hole Monday playoff. At the 1977 PGA Championship at Pebble Beach Golf Links, Littler fell in a playoff to Lanny Wadkins, the first sudden-death extra session in major championship history. “I probably would have performed better and won more tournaments had I not wanted to go home so often,â€� Littler told the Los Angeles Times. “But I guess I loved my family so much that that was the most important thing in my life.â€� Despite his disappointments in those major championships, Littler still won 29 TOUR titles overall, five after his cancer diagnosis. For his entire career, it was his golf swing and gentlemanly nature that people remembered even if he wasn’t as well-known as contemporaries Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Gary Player and even Casper. “Maybe I should spend more time promoting myself,â€� Littler once said, “but I don’t really think so. What I say isn’t too interesting, and I’m careful not to say the wrong thing. Am I colorless, dull? Yeah, guess you’d say so. Even when I win, the furor dies down fast. When I’m not leading, nobody pays attention to me. You know, I sort of like it that way.â€� Maybe it wasn’t exactly furor, but Littler did win four TOUR titles in 1955 — at the time, a career-high — and added three more wins in 1956 and one title in 1957. Yet after a winless 1958 season, Littler parlayed grip-adjustment advice from future World Golf Hall of Famer Paul Runyan into five PGA TOUR victories in 1959 — his best year on TOUR. Littler also finished second on that year’s money list. Only once during the quarter century beginning in 1954 did Littler end any season out of the top 60 on the TOUR’s money list, and that was in 1972, following his cancer diagnosis. He always called his victory in St. Louis by a shot over Bruce Crampton the most gratifying and emotional of his career. “I was ecstatic after winning the (U.S.) Open, of course. But I was absolutely overcome by winning in St. Louis. I realized I was the only player who had ever come back from that kind of surgery,â€� he said. In 1975, Littler added three additional TOUR victories (the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am, the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic and the Westchester Classic) to finish fifth on the money list. It marked the eighth time he had won multiple tournaments in a season. It was his play in Westchester that again brought attention to the cancer Littler fought and won. In the final round of the tournament in Harrison, New York, Littler made a hole-in-one on the 14th hole at Westchester Country Club. That eagle helped get him into a playoff with Julius Boros, with Littler defeating Boros on the first sudden-death hole. By making the ace, Littler earned an additional $8,000 bonus on top of the $50,000 first-place check. Littler immediately announced he was donating the $8,000 to the American Cancer Society, “in Gary Sanders’ name.â€� Sanders, a Southern California PGA TOUR pro like Littler, also had cancer of the lymph glands and died a week earlier from a cerebral hemorrhage—three weeks after tying for 44th at the Pleasant Valley Classic outside Boston. Littler’s final TOUR win came in 1977, at the Houston Open. Overall he won 47 tournaments in his career, including eight on PGA TOUR Champions, where he competed regularly from 1981 to 2002. In addition, he added four unofficial Legends of Golf titles, with Don January his partner in all four. Littler was also a two-time winner of the Taiheiyo Masters in Japan, in 1974 and 1975. Littler also thrived in team competition as a member of six consecutive U.S. Ryder Cup teams (1961, 1963, 1965, 1967, 1969 and 1971 and again in 1975), He never played on a losing team, compiling a 14-5-8 record in his 27 matches, including a 5-2-3 mark in singles. In 1973, Littler received the Ben Hogan Award, presented by the Golf Writers Association of America to an individual who has made a “courageous comeback from injury or illness.â€� That same year, the United States Golf Association awarded him the Bob Jones Award, in recognition of distinguished sportsmanship in golf. The World Golf Hall of Fame inducted Littler into its Class of 1990, along with Horton Smith and, fittingly, his Walker Cup teammate Campbell and Runyan, who had instructed and tutored Littler so many years earlier. Littler is survived by his wife, Shirley, who he married in 1950, and his two children, son, Curt, and daughter, Suzanne. Funeral services are pending.

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