Jack Burke Jr., a prime participant on the P.G.A. tour within the postwar years who received two main golf championships in a single season, then turned a sought-after teacher to a few of golf’s biggest stars, has died at 100. He was the oldest residing winner of the Masters and P.G.A. championships.
The USA Golf Affiliation confirmed his demise. The Related Press stated he died on Friday in Houston.
Burke’s banner yr was 1956, when he received each the Masters and the P.G.A. titles and was named the P.G.A.’s golfer of the yr.
His Masters victory stunned virtually everybody.
Solely weeks earlier, having gone winless because the Inverness open in Ohio in 1953, Burke, who was 33, had introduced that he was contemplating retiring. And going into the ultimate spherical at Augusta Nationwide Golf Membership, he was eight strokes behind the Masters chief, Ken Venturi, and had not drawn a lot consideration.
All eyes had been on Venturi, who at 24 was vying to develop into the primary newbie to win the Masters. However as Venturi faltered, Burke crept up the leaderboard, passing eight gamers, and received by a stroke.
He had obtained some meteorological assist.
“I had a downhill putt on the seventeenth gap that was lightning fast, and it was made even sooner as a result of the 40-mile-per-hour wind had blown sand out onto the inexperienced,” Burke informed Golf Digest in 2004. “I simply touched that putt, and I instantly thought, ‘Oh, no, I didn’t get it midway there.’ Then the wind grabbed that factor and saved blowing it down the hill, till it plunked useless in the midst of the opening. It was a miracle — the very best break of my profession.”
That June he received the P.G.A. Championship, defeating Jack Kroll, on the Blue Hill Nation Membership in Canton, Mass., in match-play format, which relies on holes received in a head-to-head contest, not the variety of strokes on a scorecard.
All informed, Burke received 16 tournaments on the Skilled Golfers’ Affiliation of America tour, together with 4 in 4 weeks in 1952.
The son of a Houston golf membership professional, Burke turned skilled at 17 and joined the tour at 23, hailed as one of the crucial promising golfers of his technology.
In 1949, by then residing in Kiamesha Lake, N.Y., in Westchester County, he recorded his first skilled win, within the Metropolitan Open, on his residence course, the Metropolis, in White Plains, defeating the veteran Gene Sarazen. The victory got here 24 years to the day after Burke’s father defeated Sarazen in a match, as Sarazen ruefully however good-naturedly identified to Jack Jr.
In 1952, after his 4 straight tour victories and a second-place end on the Masters, behind Sam Snead, Burke was profiled by Collier’s journal as “Golf’s New Scorching-Shot.” At 5-foot-9 and 170 kilos, he may hit 265 yards off the tee and was a superb putter, and his boyish attractiveness solely added to his enchantment.
“His curly faintly auburn hair, blue eyes and occasional shy smile have made him the darling of the female hyperlinks addicts,” the journal wrote, figuring out Burke as “certainly one of golf’s most eligible bachelors.”
In 1957 Burke joined his mentor, Jimmy Demaret, the primary three-time Masters champion, in founding the Champions Golf Membership in Houston. Demaret had been an assistant professional beneath Burke’s father since Jack Jr. was 10.
Burke and Demaret instituted a membership coverage — nonetheless in pressure — during which solely golfers with a handicap of 14 or decrease are admitted. “I liken us to Stanford College, or Yale or Harvard,” Burke informed Golf Digest. “They don’t settle for D college students academically, and we don’t settle for individuals with a D common in golf.”
The membership hosted the 1969 United States Open and the 2020 U.S. Ladies’s Open Championship, amongst different tournaments.
Burke went on to earn distinction as a longtime teacher of Phil Mickelson, Hal Sutton, Steve Elkington and different professionals. In his 70s, Arnold Palmer dropped by for a lesson.
Jack Nicklaus as soon as stated of Burke, “I can’t let you know what number of instances we had been enjoying golf and he’d say, ‘Jack, how are you going to play from that place?’”
John Joseph Burke Jr. was born on Jan. 29, 1923, in Fort Value, the eldest of eight siblings, certainly one of whom died younger. He grew up in Houston, the place his father, who had tied for second within the 1920 U.S. Open, was the professional on the River Oaks Nation Membership.
Jack Jr. performed his first golf at age 6. At 12, he shot a 69 on a troublesome par-71 course. At 16, he certified for the U.S. Open. However at 17, on the insistence of his mom, he entered Rice Institute (now Rice College) in Houston. He left earlier than he accomplished his freshman yr, nevertheless, and have become the pinnacle professional on the Galveston Nation Membership.
When World Warfare II broke out, Burke joined the Marine Corps and taught fight conditioning, together with judo. He joined the P.G.A. tour after the warfare (it turned formally the PGA Tour in 1968), moved to Westchester and likewise taught golf at golf equipment in New Jersey and elsewhere in New York.
He first gained large consideration in 1951, when he recorded two commanding victories in that yr’s Ryder Cup competitors. That led to his choice to 4 extra Ryder Cup occasions within the Nineteen Fifties, during which he compiled a 7-1 match report in opposition to his European competitors. He was twice Ryder Cup captain, shedding in 1957 and profitable in 1973.
In 1952, he received the Vardon Trophy, given to the tour chief in scoring common. (His was 70.54.) When Burke was 81, Corridor Sutton, the 2004 United States Ryder Cup captain, named him an assistant captain.
Burke was elected to the World Golf Corridor of Fame in 2000. In 2003, he was voted the recipient of the PGA Tour’s Lifetime Achievement Award and the US Golf Affiliation’s Bob Jones Award. In 2007, he obtained the P.G.A. Distinguished Service Award.
Burke married Ielene Lang in 1952. She died within the mid-Nineteen Eighties. Burke had turned 60 when he met Robin Moran, a freshman golfer on the College of Texas, in 1984 on the placing inexperienced on the Champions Golf Membership, the place her father had despatched her for a golf lesson, based on the P.G.A. historian Bob Denney. The couple married in 1987. She was a finalist within the 1997 United States ladies’s newbie championship and was inducted into the Texas Golf Corridor of Fame.
Burke had a daughter together with his second spouse and 5 youngsters together with his first, together with a son, John J. Burke III, who died in 2017. Full info on his survivors was not instantly accessible.
Burke joined elite firm by profitable two majors in a single season, however by his personal alternative he would by no means have a shot at a grand slam, as it’s understood right now, by profitable all 4, both in a single-season or in a profession. He missed the lower on the 1956 U.S. Open, at Oak Hill Nation Membership, exterior Rochester, and all through his profession by no means performed within the British Open.
Frank Litsky, a longtime Instances sportswriter, died in 2018.; William McDonald contributed reporting.