Billy Casper: Under-rate this!
On this day, in 1959, Billy
Casper won the Portland Open, but this smooth golfer, a legend from
San
Diego before Phil Mickelson, was only getting started.
The Portland
title was only one 51 Casper would
amass on his way to becoming probably one of the most criminally under-rated
golf figures of his day. When people think of golf in the ‘60s they inevitably
say Palmer, Nicklaus and Player, but from 1965-70, when that trio combined for
35, Casper was winning 23
tournaments all by himself.
More recently, though, Casper
DQ-ed himself from the 2005 Masters instead of signing a scorecard that would
have had 106 big numbers on it.
Also on this day, in 1895,
the very first US Open Championship was held, on a nine-hole layout in Newport,
RI. It was won by the Isle of Wight’s
very own Horace Rawlins, aged 21, over 36 holes on the same day. Rawlins
scooped $150 (that’s $3370.74 in today’s bucks!)
from a purse of $335, and a shiny gold medal. In addition to being a bit
of a golf trend-setter, Rawlins sported a mightily handsome moustache, which
was de rigeur in his day.
And in 1998, Aussie ace
Steve Elkington shrugged off both his allergies to grass and Fred 'I Got Da' Funk
to win the Buick Challenge in a playoff.
In history, Continental Army
General George Washington set the tone for future American Ryder Cup captains
by launching an all-out attack on British forces in Germantown,
Pa., suffering massive casualties in the
process.
And to prove that gunshots
and golf balls are not the only things in the air on October 4, this was also
the day 1957 when the USSR launched the sputnik, the first man-made object into
space. A year later to the day, with humbler goals in mind, British Overseas
Airways began the first trans-Atlantic passenger jet service, flying between
the Big Smoke and the Big Apple. Rock heroine Janis Joplin was also out of her
head on this day in 1970 when she fatally OD’d on smack at the age of 27.
And it’s Vill Gleck fir daei Geburtsdaag!, as
they say in Luxembourgeois, to 1988 LPGA Championship winner Sherri Turner
(51); Oscar-winning yummy mummy Susan Sarandon (61); gun-loving actor Charlton
Heston (83); Pet Shop Boys synthpop guy Chris Lowe (48); and Clueless actress
Alicia Silverstone (31). It also would have been a birthday for 19th
US president
Rutherford B. Hayes, who pre-dated George W. Bush in the corruption and
ineptitude stakes by 123 years.