Jackie Burke Jr. worked most days of his nearly 101 years in his cozy, window-less, wood-paneled office at Champions Golf Club, which he co-founded in Houston with fellow Texan and Masters champion Jimmy Demaret. Among the museum-quality photographs adorning the walls is the most famous golf picture not of this world.
The inscription is from Apollo 14 astronaut Alan Shepard – one of four Champions members to walk on the moon and the only one to hit a golf ball on it, one-handed with a makeshift 6-iron – to his teacher, Burke. “Warmest personal regards for your great help with my ‘lunar swing.’ “
The irony to anyone who ever met Burke is he was arguably the most well-grounded, down-to-earth major golf champion who ever lived. A man who won a pair of majors (Masters and PGA Championship) in 1956 among his 19 pro titles, competed in five consecutive Ryder Cups and captained the U.S. side twice was always most at home teaching the game and running his beloved Champions.
“All the things you have to go through for whatever a career is, I maintained my teaching ability,” said Burke, a World Golf Hall of Famer. “Knowledge isn’t knowledge unless it moves forward.”
Burke, whose major double in 1956 afforded him the luxury of early semi-retirement from the tour to teach golf and build his own dream club, died Friday morning in Houston. Just 10 days shy of his 101st birthday, Burke lived longer than any major champion, surpassing Gene Sarazen (97 years, 2 months, 17 days). Burke passes the torch of oldest living major champion to 88-year-old Gary Player.
Behind the desk in his office were some of the honors he held dearest: the 2004 Bob Jones Award for sportsmanship presented by the USGA; the 2003 Lifetime Achievement Award presented for outstanding contribution to the PGA Tour; his Hall of Fame obelisk presented at his induction in 2000. He kept the engraved silver cigarette box given to him for winning the Masters at his house.
“I played golf differently than most people did,” he said. “It’s too tough a game to try to be somebody you’re not. You weren’t out there to be some hero. I never even got into that.”
“Guys trying so hard to not make a mistake never win. You can’t fear it or think you’re going to be disgraced if you don’t win the Masters.” – Jackie Burke Jr.
Burke returned to Augusta one last time for the Champions Dinner and the locker he shared with Tiger Woods in 2011, when he received the William D. Richardson Award for outstanding contributions to the game at the annual Golf Writers Association of America banquet. He had advice for the modern generation competing at the Masters.
“Guys trying so hard to not make a mistake never win,” he said. “You can’t fear it or think you’re going to be disgraced if you don’t win the Masters. If you go out to try to win the Masters, that’s some pretty poor thinking. You better go out and try to play the Masters. There better be a lot of play in you.”
Burke learned how to play from his father, Jack Burke Sr., a teaching pro at Houston’s River Oaks Country Club and a runner-up in the 1920 U.S. Open. An asthmatic child, the junior Burke would sit on the golf bag and listen as his father gave lessons to Babe Zaharias, Henry Picard and other pros and amateurs who came through town.
He honed his skills in the caddie yard, cutting holes in the ground with a knife and wagering whatever change he had in his pockets. “I gambled all my life,” he said. “You have to have gamble in you to even play.”
He turned pro in 1941 at age 17 but ended up with a four-year tour in the Marines. As a combat instructor during World War II, he taught recruits how to throw grenades as well as their bodies overboard if their ship got hit by a torpedo. When the war was over, he had $300 to his name and resumed professional golf with a different perspective than the teenager who swapped trash talk with Babe.
“You felt like you’d escaped an airplane wreck, so it took a different mentality,” he said of his post-war experience. “It wasn’t a mentality of greatness. It was a survival mentality.”
“I played better in ’52 than I played in ’56 by far. The Masters was going to be my fifth straight win, but Snead beat me by four shots.” – Jackie Burke Jr.
With the help of a blank check from a local businessman – which Burke filled out for $2,500 – he embarked on a tour career. At the same time, he helped make ends meet and sharpened his teaching skills working for Claude Harmon during summers at Winged Foot in New York.
“Pretty much all of the guys out there were teachers,” he said of the bygone tour pros. “It’s a simple matter: You can only do what you can teach. If you can’t teach it, you sure can’t do it. Today they hire teachers.”
Burke won his first tour event at the 1950 Bing Crosby Pro-Am at Pebble Beach. He was named player of the year in 1956 for winning his two majors. Truth be told, however, it wasn’t Burke’s best season. In 1952, he earned the Vardon Trophy for low scoring average and won five tour events, including four weeks in a row before finishing runner-up to Sam Snead in the Masters.
“I played better in ’52 than I played in ’56 by far,” he said. “The Masters was going to be my fifth straight win, but Snead beat me by four shots.”
History will always remember his 1956 performance, when he set the record that still stands for rallying from eight shots behind leader Ken Venturi on a brutally windy Sunday at Augusta National in the first televised Masters.
“I got shown, I think, on the last hole,” he said. “You couldn’t believe it. Winning wasn’t even on my radar. Surviving was my only concern. Hoping I didn’t shoot 100. They had some high scores out there.”
Despite conditions Burke called “the worst,” he held steady around par with bogeys on 11 and 14 offsetting birdies on Nos. 2 and 12. On the 17th hole with the wind hard at his back, he managed to keep his approach on the green with 30 feet left.
“I’ve played on sand greens before, and the bunker sand was all over that green,” Burke said. “So I knew that sand was fast. When I hit my putt I thought, God, that ain’t even halfway. I swear the wind blew the damn thing in. The wind or God.”
Burke’s 1-under 71 Sunday was matched that day by only one other player in the field, Snead. That turned out to be just enough to edge Venturi, who bogeyed seven of the final 10 holes to shoot 80 – one of 29 players to shoot 80 or worse in the final round. Burke’s 1-over par 289 total remains the highest winning score (matching Snead in 1954 and equaled by Zach Johnson in 2007).
The victory earned Burke $6,000, which helped change his life more than the green jacket.
“I was just thinking about the money,” he said. “[Cary] Middlecoff was in charge of the money because he was leading [pro]. If Venturi won, he’d have gotten a cup. … I enjoyed winning it. You felt like you accomplished something.”
Later that year at Blue Hill Country Club, in Canton, Massachusetts, Burke won the PGA Championship, beating Ted Kroll, 3 and 2, in the 36-hole, match-play final. In addition to a check that bounced, the PGA victory earned him a lifetime exemption from weekly qualifying on tour and let him play on his own terms.
“So that allowed me to build this,” he said of Champions Golf Club, which he founded the next year with Demaret. “I was married and had three children and was tired of singing ‘Happy Birthday’ from the Holiday Inn. So I knew I had to get out of that and I knew how to teach.”
Burke and Demaret wanted to build their own model golf club from scratch in their hometown of Houston. They attracted 500 charter members to put up $600 each, banking the entire $300,000 sum before building the course in 1959.
“I knew better than to start without a full membership,” said Burke, who proudly never assessed the membership as he kept a firm watch over the club’s finances for six decades. “So we’ve had a full membership ever since.”
Their idea of a golf club differed greatly from the model Clifford Roberts and Bobby Jones established at Augusta National.
“Cliff saw the game from an executive standpoint; I see the game from a family standpoint,” Burke said. “Because I think if you’re not training kids, you’re not doing anything. We teach 200 kids a year [at Champions], and our kids all have a card in their pocket that tells them if they mess around they’re going to have to go back with daddy for six months. They are all good players and know where the out of bounds is. I think that’s important.”
“You teach each individual and have to get golf on them some way, any way you can. One guy’s nervous and one guy isn’t. One guy’s fat and one guy’s skinny. All day long you’re teaching differently.” – Jackie Burke Jr.
Champions has 36 holes and nearly 1,000 members, all with required handicaps of 14 or better. Four of its members through the years have won major championships: Jay Hebert, Dave Marr, Hal Sutton and Steve Elkington.
When Champions played host to the U.S. Women’s Open in December 2020, it joined Pinehurst as only the clubs to have hosted a Ryder Cup, U.S. Amateur, Tour Championship and both the men’s and women’s U.S. Opens. Burke and his surviving wife, Robin (née Moran) – who was 40 years younger and captained the 2016 Curtis Cup team – aspired to attract more high-profile events to Champions, potentially a Walker Cup, Solheim Cup or U.S. Women’s Amateur.
Burke had particular passions – he hated golf carts and the modern obsession with power. Teaching the essentials remained the most important part of his life until the end.
“I’ve never seen a trophy given away in the fairway; they give the trophies away on the putting green,” he said. “That’s where you need to start a pupil, from the green back to the tee and not from the tee to the green. Teach him to putt and then chip and fix his hands while he’s doing that. Never seen a guy with a good grip ever play bad and never seen a guy with a bad grip ever play good. It’s essential you start out by getting the grip you’re going to live with.”
His simple philosophies transcended eras.
“Trying to dominate the game is the most foolish thing in the world,” he said. “We haven’t dominated checkers yet. But they think there’s an answer out here. How can there be an answer when everybody’s different? They haven’t cloned anybody yet.”
That straight-shooting frankness embodied the essence of Burke. He aspired to “achievable goals“ and believed a golfer should “be great at one thing.” For Burke, that was putting. “I could putt with anything,” he said.
“You teach each individual and have to get golf on them some way, any way you can,” he said. One guy’s nervous and one guy isn’t. One guy’s fat and one guy’s skinny. All day long you’re teaching differently.
“One day I was teaching a kid and asked him if he had a white towel in his bag. He did. I said, ‘Why don’t you take that and surrender to who you are?’ He wanted to be the fictitious guy he couldn’t be. You are who you are. That can’t change.”
He was the last survivor from golf’s golden era before Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus elevated the PGA Tour to new heights. Sadly, there’ll never be another champion quite like him – though Burke wouldn’t want us to dwell on that.
Burke’s value as a teacher reached into the 21st century when he taught Phil Mickelson the putting-clock practice routine that elevated his short-putt accuracy and led to the first of six major wins at the 2004 Masters – the same year Burke, at age 81, served as a Ryder Cup assistant captain to Sutton.
“Put 10 balls 3 feet from the hole and putt 100 in; if you miss one you go back and start again,” Burke told Mickelson. “Phil said, ‘I’ll do that today.’ I said, ‘For how much?’ He said, ‘I’ll bet you the best dinner in Houston that I’ll do it right now.’ He missed the fourth ball. So he said, ‘I’ll bet you breakfast.’ I said I’ll be eating off you the rest of your whole damn life. He called me from Phoenix and said that he had done it about two months later. He got to be better than a bunch of people.”
As was Burke in his day. He was the last survivor from golf’s golden era before Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus elevated the PGA Tour to new heights. Sadly, there’ll never be another champion quite like him – though Burke wouldn’t want us to dwell on that.
“Don’t be bringing yesterday forward,” he said. “You can’t do it.”