Tony Lema

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
Tony and Betty Lema
Tony and Betty Lema

Anthony David "Tony" Lema (February 25, 1934 – July 24, 1966) was an American professional golfer.

Lema was born in Oakland, California to parents of Portuguese ancestry.[1] His father died when Tony was three years old, and his widowed mother struggled to raise the family of four children on welfare. He began playing golf as a boy, but at age 17 enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served in Korea. After his discharge from the military in 1955, he obtained work as an assistant to the club professional at a San Francisco golf club.

By 1957, Lema had developed his skills sufficiently enough to earn his way onto the PGA Tour. He struggled until 1962, when he began an impressive performance between then and 1966 that saw him win ten PGA tour events, finish second on 11 occasions, and third four times. In 1963 he finished second by one stroke to Jack Nicklaus at The Masters. In 1964, he won the Bing Crosby Pro-Am at Pebble Beach, California and then captured one of the major championships by taking that year's British Open at St. Andrews, Scotland. Lema was a member of the 1963 and 1965 United States Ryder Cup teams.

Lema was nicknamed "Champagne Tony" for his habit of celebrating a tournament victory with a bottle of champagne. In 1966, he was flying with his wife, Betty, to an exhibition match in Chicago, Illinois, when their chartered twin-engine Beechcraft Bonanza ran out of fuel and crashed on the seventh hole of a golf course in Lansing, Illinois. All four people on board were killed.

Lema and his wife were buried in the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Hayward, California.

Contents

[edit] Quotes

  • "A buoyant, positive approach to the game is as basic as a sound swing."
  • "Golf is like solitaire. When you cheat, you only cheat yourself."
  • "In choosing a partner, always pick the optimist."
  • "You build a golf game like you build a wall, one brick at a time."
  • "If I had to cram all my tournament experience into one sentence, I would say, "Don't give up and don't let up!""

[edit] PGA Tour wins (12)

Major championship is shown in bold.

[edit] Other wins (4)

this list is probably incomplete

[edit] Results in major championships

Tournament 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966
The Masters DNP DNP DNP DNP DNP DNP DNP 2 T9 T21 T22
U.S. Open 50 DNP DNP DNP DNP DNP CUT T5 20 T8 T4
The Open Championship DNP DNP DNP DNP DNP DNP DNP DNP 1 T5 T30
PGA Championship DNP DNP DNP DNP DNP DNP WD T13 T9 T61 T34

DNP = did not play
WD = withdrew
CUT = missed the half way cut
"T" indicates a tie for a place.
Green background for wins. Yellow background for top-10.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ [1] Portuguese-Americans.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../t/o/n/Tony_Lema_6dcc.html"
In other languages