Golf Central

On this day in 1954, the PGA Tour handed out its post-season hardware, and hardly anybody showed up. Well, nobody that you would probably remember today.

A shadowy cast of golfers whose names are unfortunately not permanently etched in history were the leading lights on the Tour in '54, carrying on a glamour drought on the Tour that started with Ben Hogan's withdrawal from full-time action after winning the last three of his nine majors in 1953.

The 1954 money leader was Bob Toski, with a then-record $65,819 ($479,155 in today's money!) and four wins. Ed Furgol, who won the US Open that year, was the Tour's Player of the Year, and the Vardon Trophy winner was EJ "Dutch" Harrison with a 70.41 scoring average.

Over the next three years, the tour's leading money winners were Julius Boros (1955), Ted Kroll ('56) and Dick Mayer ('57). Fine players, but household names they were not. But then the big boys weighed in ...

Arnold Palmer won his first PGA Tour money title in 1958 and became the popular figure that re-launched golf in the public conscious. From then until 1980 all but three of the Tour's 23 money titles were won by fellows named Palmer, Player, Nicklaus, Casper, Trevino, or Watson ...

Toski, mind you, later found greater fame as an instructor to the stars - counting Bruce Devlin, Pat Bradley, Jane Blalock and Judy Rankin among his students - and writing a regular instruction column that was a staple of Golf Digest for decades.

It was also on this day, in 1915, that an article appeared in the New York Times suggesting that dogs should be used a golf caddies. And every time we step in a pile of dog crap on the way to the bus stop, we think that's a really, really bad idea. We love our golf, really we do ...

We know it's a Wednesday, so probably you don't have a pub quiz on tonight, and if you do, you really are a sad individual after pub quizzes the last two nights in a row. But just in case you need more obscure facts than the winner of the 1954 PGA Tour money title (Toski! Toski! Toski!), here are some more nuggets for you ...

On this day in 2001, an incredible record barometic pressure figure of 1085.6 hPa (don't ask us what that means, we're not that clever) was recorded in a lonely place called Tosontsengel, Khövsgöl Province, Mongolia. The guy who recorded it is an even sadder figure than you and your pub quiz ...

And on this day in 1901, the interestly-named German inventor Rudolf Hell was born in Eggmühl, Bavaria. And you've got to give him credit, because Rudolf had one Hell of a Good Idea in 1925, when he invented the Hellschreiber, which was an early forerunner to the fax machine. So, it's actually OK to tell office underlings to "go to Hell" ...

And on a bright note, on this day in 1997, the highest-grossing movie of all-time, Titanic, was opened in cinemas across America. Rumours that Kate Winslet got starkers in the film probably did nothing for box-office figures ...

That said, it's torson odriin mend hurgee!, as they say on the steppes of Tosontsengel, to babe-like Charmed actress Alyssa Milano (35), who is doubly cute because she loves baseball; freaky-haired Brit singer Limahl (49) of Kajagoogoo fame; actor Jake Gyllenhaal (27) of Brokeback Mountain acclaim; and sporting birthdays to Italian ski stallion Alberto "La Bomba" Tomba (41), who shagged and skied his way into popular legend; and sledging Aussie cricket god Ricky Ponting (33).

And it wouldn't be On This Day In History if we didn't honour at least one silly-named rapper, and today's b-day greetings go to "Lady Sovereign" (22, otherwise known as plain-old Louise Amanda Harman of Wembley, England), whose lyrics "If you hate me, then f--- you" are near the pinnacle of English literature. The little chavette from the Chalkhill council estate got recent acclaim for spitting in the face of DJ Jelly Donut in San Francisco this year. Sigh. And every time you want to meet a sweet English rose to take home to mother, you just can't find one.

It also would have been a birthday for the renowned wartime French chanteuse Edith Piaf, had she not gotten a little too close to a torch song in 1963.