NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images
Martin Mills, Getty Images
NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images
With headlines of the day featuring Woodstock and Charles Manson, the 1969 PGA Championship – won by Raymond Floyd – did its best.
From August 14 to 17, the 1969 PGA Championship was played at the National Cash Register Country Club outside of Dayton, Ohio. It was held in the aftermath of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing, the tragedies of the Manson murders and Chappaquiddick, and contemporaneously with the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in upstate New York. It would have been hard for a mere golf tournament to match the drama of the time. The PGA Championship did its best.
This article about that eventful week is adapted from my book, “The Age of Palmer, Pro Golf in the 1960s, its Greatest Era” (Canoe Tree Press), which is available through Amazon.com. The 1969 season marked the first since 1957 in which none of golf’s “Big Three” of Arnold Palm...
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