Portal:Golf/Did you know archive
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[edit] June 11, 2007 to June 24, 2007; August 6, 2007 to August 31, 2007; September 3, 2007 to September 30, 2007
Image:MickelsonTPCAwardCeremony.jpg
- ...that, although Scotland is home to Musselburgh Links, the oldest golf course on which play has been continuous since its opening, and is generally recognized as the birthplace of golf, the history of variants of golf in China and the Netherlands may predate that in Scotland?
- ...that Uruguayan professional golfer Fay Crocker became the first non-American to win an LPGA major championship at the 1955 United States Women's Open and the oldest-ever winner of a women's major championship at the 1960 Titleholders Championship?
- ...that the Vardon grip, named for its progenitor English golfer Harry Vardon, features a player's resting his dominant little finger on his non-dominant index finger?
- ...that American Champions Tour player Bruce Fleisher holds that tour's record for prize money won in one's rookie season, having earned US$2,515,705 in 1999 en route to claiming the Arnold Palmer Award as the tour's leading money-winner?
- ...that the flop shot, in which a player uses a lofted club, such as a lob wedge, to launch a ball at a very high angle with much backspin in order to minimize its distance, was popularized on the professional level by American Phil Mickelson?
[edit] April 22, 2007 to April 30, 2007; June 2, 2007 to June 10, 2007
- ...that, because darkness threatened a sudden-death playoff match, American captain Jack Nicklaus and International captain South African Gary Player agreed to draw the 2003 Presidents Cup (trophy pictured)?
- ...that Mission Hills Golf Club, located in Guanlan, Shenzen, People's Republic of China, is listed by Guinness World Records as the world's largest golf resort and comprises twelve eighteen-hole courses, each designed by a different professional golfer, golf instructor, or course architect?
- ...that English amateur golfer and hoaxer Maurice Flitcroft averred that he was a professional and entered the 1976 The Open Championship but, playing with mail-order clubs, required 121 shots to complete his first round?
- ...that a player's stepping within one foot of a hole whilst retrieving a ball is disfavored by traditional golf etiquette, principally because footprints situated around the hole may serve to create a doughnut effect that affects the roll of balls on the putting green?
- ...that French professional golfer Marie-Laure de Lorenzi won twenty-three Ladies European Tour tournaments and finished in 1988 and 1989 as that tour's Order of Merit winner but did not play in an LPGA Tour-sanctioned event over her career?
[edit] August 20, 2006 to April 22, 2007
- ...that Vincent Tshabalala, having, in view of his colour classification—Coloured—long been denied entry to the Southern African Tour but having subsequently joined the European Seniors Tour, in the top twenty of the Order of Merit standings of which he finished four times, is the only player ever to have twice won the professional better ball event contested annually at the Nelson Mandela Invitational, a charity tournament endorsed by the eponymous former South African president and hosted by South African Gary Player, having captured the 2004 title with Ernie Els and the 2005 title with Tim Clark?
- ...that, over the 101 seasons during which both the United States Women's and British Ladies Amateur Golf Championships have been contested, only four players have claimed the championship trophy of each—respectively, Robert Cox Cup and Pam Barton Memorial Salver—in the same season—American Kelli Kuehne (1996), Frenchwoman Catherine Lacoste (1969), Englishwoman Barton (1936), and Scotswoman Dorothy Campbell (1909), the player with the most career victories–five–across the two tournaments and also a three-time champion of the North and South Women's Amateur Golf Championship?
- ...that Australian (né American) Aaron Baddeley, a three-time PGA Tour of Australasia tournament champion, won the 1999 Australian Open whilst an amateur, aged just 18 years, defeating by two strokes countrymates Nick O'Hern and Greg Norman, and captured the tournament's 2000 edition as a professional, defeating by ten strokes juniors rival Adam Scott, who would subsequently garner four PGA Tour tournament titles and enter the top ten in the World Golf Rankings prior to Baddeley's, in 2006 at the Verizon Heritage, winning his first PGA Tour tournament?
- ...that, although no woman has won in one season four LPGA Tour tournaments considered as major championships—at present, the Kraft Nabisco Championship, LPGA Championship, United States Women's Open Championship, and Women's British Open—to complete a grand slam, American Babe Zaharias, who accumulated ten major championship titles over her career, more than any other player save countrymates Mickey Wright (thirteen) and Patty Berg (fifteen), won all three majors—then the Western Open, Titleholders Championship, and United States Women's Open—in 1950, and American Sandra Haynie, who won 42 LPGA titles over career, ninth-best of all players, won the two—the LPGA Championship and United States Women's Open—contested in 1974?
- ...that Sweden finished fifteenth in the inaugural Women's World Cup of Golf, a team tournament analogous to the WGC-World Cup contested by male players on the PGA and European Tours as part of the World Golf Championships series, represented by Carin Koch and Sophie Gustafson, sixteen strokes behind Japan, comprising Ai Miyazato and Sakura Yokomine, but in 2006, fielded a squad of Annika Sörenstam, eight times a Rolex Player of the Year Award winner and the world's top-ranked player, and Liselotte Neumann, the 1994 Ladies European Tour Order of Merit winner, who defeated Scotland by three strokes and Wales by seven?
[edit] July 26 to August 20, 2006
- ...that, in 1972, behind co-individual champions Americans Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite, the University of Texas at Austin Longhorns won the team stroke play National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Men's Golf Championships, defeating the University of Houston Cougars, the 1969 and 1970 champions, for the second consecutive season, and that Crenshaw would win his third straight individual title in 1973?
- ...that American amateur Carol Semple Thompson, who became, in 1974, one of just eleven players ever to have held simultaneously the United States Women's Amateur and British Ladies Amateur Golf Championships, has played in twelve Curtis Cup ties, most recently, in 2002, converting a birdie putt at the Fox Chapel Golf Club in Pennsylvania to secure the United States' victory over Great Britain and Ireland?
- ...that, although three golfers who represent countries not part of the Commonwealth of Nations rank amongst the top ten career earners in PGA European Tour history—German Bernhard Langer, Dane Thomas Bjørn (pictured), and Spaniard José María Olazábal—only two such golfers have ever won the Order of Merit as top earner in a given season—Langer (in 1981 and 1984 and Spaniard Seve Ballesteros (in 1976, 1977, 1978, 1986, 1988, and 1991)?
- ...that Thai Thongchai Jaidee (ธงชัย ใจด), who became a professional golfer aged 30 years, having previously served in the Royal Thai Army, is the first Thai ever to have competed in all four men's major championships and, having led the Asian Tour, one of the six constitutent parts of the International Federation of PGA Tours and, behind the Japan Golf Tour, the most lucrative Asian tour, in season earnings in both 2001 and 2004, is that tour's career earnings leader?
- ...that two South Africans, Gary Player and Ernie Els, selected by the television channel SABC 3 in 2004 as amongst their homeland's 40 greatest-ever citizens, combined to win 11 HSBC World Match Play Championships, more than players from any other nation over the tournament's 42-year history?
- ...that, in addition to the extant Kraft Nabisco Championship, LPGA Championship, United States Women's Open Championship, and Women's British Open, three other tournaments have been considered as major championships on the LPGA Tour: the Western Open, Titleholders Championship, and du Maurier Classic, of which the last was replaced in 2001 by the British Open—previously only a Ladies European Tour major championship—upon Health Canada's instituting strict restrictions on the advertising of tobacco products, including those sold by the tournament's title sponsor, Du Maurier?
[edit] July 2 to July 26, 2006
- ...that, of the 21 World Golf Championships events that have been contested since the series was created by the International Federation of PGA Tours in 1999–eight WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, seven WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, and six WGC-American Express Championship events–American Tiger Woods has won ten, while no other player has won more than one?
- ...that Japanese brothers Masashi Ozaki and Naomichi Ozaki hold the first and third positions, respectively, on the list of top career earners on the Japan Golf Tour, the men's golf tour with the third-largest annual prize fund, and that an Ozaki finished the Tour season first in earnings in every year between 1988 and 1999, inclusive, save one (1993, when Hajime Meshiai topped the list)?
- ...that American Beth Daniel and Englishwoman Laura Davies are the only players to have participated in every Solheim Cup since 1990?
- ...that Al Balding, a member of the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame, recorded a score of 66 during a senior Canadian Professional Golf Tour tournament in 2002 when aged 78 years, accumulating the highest score-age differential ever recorded in professional golf?
- ...that Zimbabwean Mark McNulty, who became an Irish citizen in 2003 is the only non-South African to have won the Order of Merit as the leading money winner on the Sunshine Tour, having finished first in 1997, 1998, and 2001, before moving to England to participate in the United States-based Champions Tour?
[edit] June 17 to July 2, 2006
- ...that American Curtis Strange won four PGA TOUR tournaments in 1988, including the United States Open, becoming the first golfer to win one million dollars in prize money in a single professional season?
- ...that Australian Greg Norman, who twice won The Open Championship but finished in the top five at golf's three other major championships sixteen times without a win, was the third player to be ranked first in the World Golf Rankings, first issued in 1986, and, having spent 331 weeks over his career ranked first, is second all-time in the number of weeks spent ranked first in the world, behind only American Tiger Woods (395 weeks)?
- ...that American Nancy Lopez was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1988, aged just 30 years, having already achieved 35 of her eventual 48 LPGA Tour tournament victories and two of her three LPGA Championships?
- ...that Bernhard Langer won the German Masters four times in his European Tour career, winning on his home soil in each of three cities (Stuttgart, Berlin, and Cologne) and under two different corporate sponsors (Linde AG and Mercedes)?
- ...that the Espirito Santo Trophy, awarded by the International Golf Federation to the winner of a biennial amateur team championship in which the stroke play scores of the two best performing of four women are summed, has been won by a nation from each of four continents: North America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania?
[edit] June 3 to June 17, 2006
- ...that American Jack Nicklaus, known for having won 18 major championships, the most of any player over his career, finished in second place an additional 19 times, including five times at The Open Championship, which he won thrice?
- ...that George Lyon of Canada earned the last-ever Olympic gold medal awarded in golf, defeating American Henry Chandler Egan to win the men's match play event at the 1904 Summer Olympics, the last Games at which golf was contested?
- ...that Gary Player, the fourth golfer ever to win a career Grand Slam was presented, for his international golf success and efforts to end apartheid in his homeland, with a gold Order of Ikhamanga by South African President Thabo Mbeki and also appeared on a postage stamp?
- ...that the World Cup of Golf, a two-man match play event in which teams, selected on the basis of the Official World Golf Rankings compete for their countries, and as of 2000, a World Golf Championships event, has been won by teams representing nations from each of the six inhabited continents?
- ...that cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov, a resident of the International Space Station, was to make a spacewalk in July 2006 during which he would, reprising Alan Shepard's Apollo 14 moon golf, hit a golf shot, but that the plan was scrapped over fears the ball might damage the space station?
