There was no crystal bowl presented to Jimmy Wright, the low club professional in the 1969 PGA Championship.
He didn’t get a post-round interview all week, but ABC did grant the Inwood (New York) Country Club head professional less than a minute on air as he holed a 3-foot par putt to finish fourth at NCR Country Club in Kettering, Ohio.
At a course just over five miles south of Dayton, the hometown of the aviation pioneering Wright brothers (no relation), Jimmy Wright soared up the leaderboard before his achievement on a humid Sunday, August 17 – the day when the groovy Woodstock music festival closed – was soon grounded.
The clubhouse leader with a pair of twosomes left on the course, Wright shot 5-under-par 279, three strokes behind eventual PGA champion Raymond Floyd.
Despite what you might find on Google or Wikipedia, Wright owns the highest finish of any career PGA club professional in a PGA Championship.
He took home $8,300 for fourth place, a standing worth $840,000 at last year’s championship. But Jimmy Wright isn’t whining about the pay; he just would like the historical record corrected.
Now 84, and a PGA life member living in Bradenton, Florida, Wright recorded a performance further shoved under the turf of time during the 2023 PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, New York.
That was the remarkable week for PGA professional Michael Block of Mission Viejo, California, whose bid for an ESPY included a hole-in-one on No. 16 on Sunday and a classic up-and-down for par on 18 to tie for 15th and earn a berth in next week’s PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky.
It was then that the broadcasters and colleagues in the graphics department stumbled over themselves.
While Block indeed had the highest finish by a PGA club professional since 1988, one graphic declared, without attribution, that no PGA club professional had ever finished in the top 10.
“I started to get calls from friends who asked, ‘I thought you said that you finished fourth in the PGA,’ ” said Wright, a PGA member since 1967. “It was tough getting those calls. They thought I had made it up.”
Meanwhile, Wright sat in front of his TV and was a cheerleader for Block at Oak Hill.
“What Michael Block did that week was exceptional,” Wright said. “Any time a club professional gets into a PGA Championship is an exceptional experience. And then to make a cut is really special. You are competing against the best players in the world.
“And for him to finish in the top 15, that is even more exceptional. He did a bunch of exceptional things and had a week you can’t imagine.”
The demarcation took place on December 12, 1968. The 225 touring professionals at the time got their collective wish to form what in 1975 was renamed the PGA Tour.
Wright’s 1969 PGA finish didn’t earn an exemption to the following year’s PGA Championship. He had to qualify all over again, and he did it by finishing runner-up to Bob Rosburg, the 1959 PGA champion, in November in the PGA Club Professional Championship.
There’s more to the Rosburg-Wright connection, and that comes later.
Competitive recognition for a club professional in 1969 was like a perfect storm: a convergence of decisions in the PGA boardroom mixed with global politics during a turbulent civil-rights era.
The 1969 PGA Championship was contested less than eight months after the split between the PGA of America and the Association of Tour Professionals.
The demarcation took place on December 12, 1968. The 225 touring professionals at the time got their collective wish to form what in 1975 was renamed the PGA Tour.
When the bond was broken, the PGA of America had 6,000 members. Today, the PGA boasts a membership roster of 30,000.
“As club professionals, we really weren’t informed of what was going on,” Wright said. “What we did hear, and feel, was the heat. They said there were too many club professionals competing in the PGA Championship (30 were in the 139-player field in 1969) and taking up spots in other tour events. Some said that most club pros couldn’t break 90.”
Since 2006, there have been 20 club professionals guaranteed automatic berths in the PGA Championship by their finish in the PGA Professional Championship.
As for global politics, the ’69 PGA Championship was ground zero for a group of anti-apartheid activists who found their target in South African Gary Player, whose minority-white-ruled homeland maintained discriminatory policies for more than 50 years.
During the third round, the protesters disrupted play several times, beginning as Player, paired with Jack Nicklaus, reached the 10th green.
Player got the worst of it.
During the round, they threw telephone books twice at his back, ice in his eyes, and even charged him on the green while he was attempting an important putt.
Player finished a stroke behind Floyd remarkably, with a major championship soiled by the demonstrators.
“Had all that not happened to Gary, his chances of winning the championship would have increased dramatically,” Wright said. “There were a lot of horrible things yelled at him, and it had to affect him.”
Caddie’s beginning with borrowed clubs
A club professional’s journey to play in a major championship is a bumpy trail that Wright knows well. Born in Bentonville, Arkansas, Wright was the son of a brick mason who moved his family to Enid, Oklahoma.
From age 13, when he began caddying at Oakwood Country Club in Enid, Wright built his game on his own. Caddies were allowed to play the course on Mondays, and thanks to the generosity of a club member, Wright used borrowed clubs and posted a 72 on his first nine holes. Four years later, he shot 68 for 18 holes.
Oakwood PGA head professional Dan Langford hired Wright and let him build his skills to work in the golf shop and take care of the golf carts. Later, at Meadowlake Golf Course in Enid, Wright watered greens for John Langford, Dan’s brother.
Wright earned a golf scholarship to Oklahoma State University and became a three-time all-American during an era when freshmen were not allowed to compete on the varsity.
The Cowboys finished second (1960), fourth (1961) and second (1962) in the NCAA Championship during Wright’s collegiate career.
“I never played the tour full-time, and entered 10 events in 1962 and a couple in 1963 before I joined the Army National Guard,” Wright said. When he completed his service, Wright went to work for Claude Harmon Sr. at Winged Foot Golf Club, in 1964-65.
Harmon won the 1948 Masters, the last PGA club professional to win a major.
Wright married Joyce McGugin in March 1964 before arriving at Winged Foot, and he did nothing but teach. The next year, some Winged Foot members raised money for Wright to be able to compete on the winter tour. He landed the Inwood Country Club job in 1965, and later hired John Langford, who ended up being Wright’s only golf coach.
By the time Wright entered the 1969 PGA Championship, he was on a mission.
“I wanted to play in all four majors as a club professional,” said Wright, who met his goal. In fact, he competed in 23 majors: a 1970 Masters invitation after his stellar play in the ’69 PGA, along with 13 PGAs, eight U.S. Opens and the 1974 Open Championship. After he turned 50, Wright played in the Senior PGA, U.S. Senior Open and Senior British Open.
The last full-time club professional to compete in the Masters, Wright finished a shot out of the top 24. In 1974, he traveled to Royal Lytham & St. Annes, where he qualified for his only Open Championship.
Wright’s career achievement in a PGA Championship as a full-time club professional is wedged between two World Golf Hall of Fame legends: Tommy Bolt (third in 1971) and Sam Snead (T4 in 1972), who left the tour to take club jobs.
The PGA of America was eager to elevate the formerly titled PGA Club Professional Championship field. Snead was the “home professional” until 1974 at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Bolt retired from the tour in 1967 and taught at Cherokee Village, Arkansas.
Snead won the 1971 PGA Club Professional Championship, and Bolt was fourth in 1969 and ’70.
Another turn of fate
Jimmy Wright’s fate in prestigious championships stretched to November 1969 at the PGA Club Professional Championship at San Marcos Country Club in Chandler, Arizona.
Wright grabbed a four-stroke run midway through the championship before Bob Rosburg caught fire. Rosburg took 59 strokes over the back nine of his second round and front nine of the third round to force a 54-hole tie with Wright.
The twosome was remarkably not paired together in the final round. Playing one hole ahead and trailing Rosburg by a stroke, Wright faced a downhill 30-inch slider of a par putt to force a tie.
Just as he was making the backstroke with his putter, a female spectator exploded with a sneeze.
“I tried to stop my stroke but couldn’t,” Wright said. “I pushed the ball to the right, and it didn’t even hit the hole.”
Rosburg said later he “bunted” a 4-wood approach to the front of the green of the demanding 18th hole. From there, he got down in three for bogey to capture the Walter Hagen Cup. Rosburg, then a member of the Gateway PGA Section, met Wright in the clubhouse to tell him a story.
“Bob said that he got a call from the PGA of America, with the official saying that his entry form was not received, and asking, ‘Aren’t you going to play?’ ” Wright said. “Bob said, ‘No, I’m not eligible. I’ve played in too many [13] tour events.’ ”
Wright said Rosburg was asked by the PGA official to list his events.
“When Bob came to the Canadian Open, the official stopped him,” Wright said. “The official said, ‘Oh, we aren’t counting that one as a PGA tournament.’”
“Well, if you’re not counting it, I’ll enter,” Rosburg replied.
In his 57-year PGA of America career spanning the Metropolitan and North Florida PGA sections, Wright was a head golf professional, director of golf, instructor, competitor, and merchandiser. He was the youngest, at age 42, to be inducted into the Metropolitan PGA Hall of Fame.
From 2000 to 2004, Jimmy and his wife, Joyce, ran the Wright Approach, a golf and sportswear shop in Sarasota, Florida. Wright sold his business and served until 2012 at the Concession Club in Bradenton as a director of golf, membership, and tournament director.
‘A classy and stylish professional’
The 1969 PGA Championship remains one of Wright’s fondest golf memories, along with his Dayton caddie, then 15-year-old Kevin O’Hearn, who drew Wright’s bag in a lottery.
Now a retired 70-year-old social studies teacher and Ohio State graduate, O’Hearn contacted Wright earlier this year. O’Hearn and his brother had received Evans Scholarships based upon their caddie background.
“Jimmy was such a classy and stylish professional that I wanted to reach out to him for being one of those in my life who meant a lot to me,” O’Hearn said.
That PGA week, Kevin’s brother drew Tommy Bolt in the caddie lottery. When he got Jimmy Wright’s bag, someone asked, “Who’s that?”
“I had no idea,” O’Hearn said, “but the moment I began caddying for him, I couldn’t believe my luck. It was the best week of my life.”
Wright began the final round with a birdie at NCR Country Club, and O’Hearn let out a yell.
Wright quickly said to his caddie, “Kevin, we have 17 holes to play.”
“Jimmy saved par coming out of some very tough spots that week,” O’Hearn said. “He found a way out of trouble in ways that you would not believe.”
O’Hearn said Wright “made me feel like his son. When he asked my opinion on shots, I suspected that he already knew what he wanted to do. I felt he wanted me to feel part of something special.”
Wright’s name isn’t etched on the base of the Walter Hagen Cup, but there was that trip 54 years ago to Augusta National Golf Club where a man in a green jacket called the gallery’s attention.
“Fore, please. Jimmy Wright now driving.”
And that wasn’t anything to sneeze at.
Bob Denney is historian emeritus of the PGA of America.