Golf Central

On this day in 1974, Johnny Miller strolled to his third straight win to start the PGA Tour season, winning the Dean Martin Tucson Open by three shots over Ben Crenshaw.

In doing so, Miller became the first player (and only) to win the PGA Tour's first three events of the year. Only 26, the floppy-fringed blonde Mormon from San Francisco was on his way to one of the greatest seasons in modern PGA Tour history, one that has not been rivalled until Tiger Woods came along ...

While Miller bracketed his two major championships (the 1973 US Open and the '76 Open Championship) around his 1974 season, it was that one singular campaign which etched him into the golfing public's memory. Of his 25 PGA Tour wins, eight of them came in 1974 alone. Miller's candle might have burned quickly and brightly in terms of longevity: But he is still a big part of the game in his role as lead pundit for NBC sports' smallish collection of golf broadcasts - a role in which he both rankles, entertains and enlightens.

January 20th, at it turns out, is also a good day to be born if you want to be a very good by very underrated (perhaps even obscure) golf champion. Because on this day, the following players were born:

• Laurie Auchterlonie (d. 1948), was born in St. Andrews, Scotland in 1868. One of the many transplanted Brits in early 20th century golf, Auchterlonie won the 1902 US Open using the new rubbed-cored Haskell ball, representing the Chicago Golf Club, and becoming the first US Open champ to shot four rounds below 80 ...
• Willie Turnesa (d. 2001), was born in 1914 in Elmsford, Illinois. He was the youngest of seven golfing brothers and two sisters in the famous Turnesa family, and the only of the brothers who did not turn professional. Nicknamed "Willie the Wedge" because of his skill with the broad-bellied club, Turnesa won US Amateur titles in 1938 and 1948, and the British Amateur Championship in 1947 ...
• And Lionel Hebert (d. 2000), born in Layafette, Louisiana in 1928, was a five-time PGA Tour winner during the late 1950s and early 1960s. An ethnic Cajun, Hebert played on the 1957 US Ryder Cup team, and his finest moment came the same year, when he won the PGA Championship in the last match-play incarnation of that event, beating Dow Finsterwald 2 & 1 at Miami Valley Country Club in Ohio ...

And speaking of hot starts like Miller's, it was on this day in 1964 that the Beatles released their "debut" LP in the United States, "Meet the Beatles," to rave reviews. Despite the claim on the album's sleeve that it was the "first album by England's phenomenal pop combo", it actually followed "Introducing ... The Beatles" into US shops by about 10 days. There was no doubt that the Beatles were on fire however, and with a Side One that included I Want To Hold Your Hand, I Saw Her Standing There, This Boy, It Won't Be Long, All I've Got To Do and All My Loving, it was no wonder the mop-tops were a massive hit ...

It was also a big day in the USA today in 1892, when the first official game of basketball was played by students at the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. The first Michael Jordan dunk was still about 90 years off, though ...

On the less auspicious side of the coin, however, it was on this day in 1982 that mad English rocker Ozzy Osborne, kicking off a US Tour, bit the head off a bat onstage in Des Moines, Iowa. Ozzy had to go to hospital for a series of rabies tests ...

And in the bizarre world of astrology, it's fitting to note that today is the cusp day between Capricorn and Aquarius. And we all know that Aquarians are quite cool, while Capricorns, on the other hand ...

That said, it's at faz tent avguri ad bon cumplean!, as they say in Romagna Italian, to former astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (78), who still has the coolest nickname of any astronaut, to the nutjob film director David Lynch (62) of Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive fame; to the Kiss guitarist/songwriter Paul Stanley (56); and to baseball's little hero David Eckstein (33), who was the shortstop on the Anaheim Angels' unlikely World Series championship team in 2002. Way to go, Eck! ...

And it would have been a birthday for the legendary Italian film director Federico Fellini (b. 1920), who much influenced nutjob directors like Lynch, and was probably asking them if anyone in the Great Beyond understood "Felliniesque" when he travelled there in 1993.

'Til tomorrow ...