Payne Stewart

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**Payne Stewart**
Personal Information
Birth	January 30, 1957 Springfield, Missouri
Death	October 25, 1999 (aged 42) Mina, South Dakota
Nationality	United States
College	Southern Methodist University
Career
Turned Professional	1982
Professional wins	23 (PGA Tour: 11, Other: 12)
Major Championship results Wins: 3
Masters	T8: 1986
U.S. Open	Won 1991, 1999
British Open	2nd/T2: 1985, 1990
PGA Championship	Won 1989
Awards
Byron Nelson Award	1989
World Golf Hall of Fame	2001

William Payne Stewart (January 30, 1957 – October 25, 1999), was an American golfer who won three majors in his career, the last of which occurred only months before he died in an airplane accident at the age of 42.

Stewart was born in Springfield, Missouri, and attended Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, where he was a member of Phi Gamma Delta. He was always popular with fans, especially for his clothing, and was reputed to have the biggest wardrobe of all professional golfers. He was a favorite of photographers because of his tam o'shanter caps and patterned trousers, which were a combination of plus fours and knickerbockers, a throwback to the once-commonplace golfing "uniform".

1 Golfing life
2 Death
3 Professional wins (23)
- 3.1 PGA Tour wins (11)
- 3.2 Other wins (12)
4 Major championships
- 4.1 Wins (3)
- 4.2 Results timeline
5 Trivia
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Golfing life

Stewart failed to earn a PGA Tour card at Qualifying School in his graduation year, so he played on the Asian Tour for a couple of years, winning twice. He finally earned his PGA Tour card in 1982 and won his first event on the tour at that year's Quad Cities Open. He won eleven Tour events, including the 1989 PGA Championship and the U.S. Open in 1991 and 1999. He was a two-time winner of the Hassan II Trophy in Morocco. At the time of his death was ranked in the top-10 of the Official World Golf Rankings - he had been ranked in the top-10 for almost 250 weeks from 1986 to 1993 and again in 1999.^[1] At a time of international domination of the golf scene in the late 1980s and early 1990s he was often the highest ranked American player.

Stewart represented the United States on five Ryder Cup teams (1987, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1999) and was known for his patriotic passion for the event, once saying of his European opponents, "On paper, they should be caddying for us."^[2] He was disappointed to miss out in 1995 and 1997 when he failed to qualify automatically and wasn't chosen as a captain's pick. Stewart also played for the U.S. on three World Cup teams.

[edit] Death

Main article: 1999 South Dakota Learjet crash

On October 25, 1999, a month after the American team rallied to win the 1999 Ryder Cup in Brookline, Massachusetts, and four months after his U.S. Open victory at Pinehurst No. 2 Stewart was killed in the sudden depressurization of a Learjet flying from Orlando to Dallas, Texas for the year-ending tournament, The Tour Championship, held at Champions Golf Club in Houston that year. National Transportation Safety Board investigators later concluded that the plane suffered a gradual loss of cabin pressure early in the flight and that all on board died of hypoxia, lack of oxygen. The plane, apparently still on autopilot and angled off-course, was observed by Air National Guard F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter aircraft as it continued its flight over the southern and midwestern United States. Other than frost on the plane's windows, the military pilots saw nothing amiss but were unable to directly observe the Learjet's pilot or copilot, who did not respond to repeated radio calls. It is likely that the pilots and occupants already had lost consciousness.

There was some speculation that military jets were prepared to shoot down the Lear if it threatened to crash in a heavily populated area. Officials at the Pentagon strongly denied that possibility. "Shooting down the plane was never an option," Air Force spokesman Capt. Joe Della Vedova said. "I don't know where that came from."

Instead, according to an Air Force timeline, a series of military planes provided an emergency escort to the stricken Lear, beginning with an F-16 from Eglin Air Force Base, about an hour and twenty minutes (9:33 EDT to 9:52 CDT - see NTSB report on the crash) after ground controllers lost contact. The plane continued flying until it ran out of fuel and crashed into a field around Mina, a town ten miles west of Aberdeen, South Dakota after an uncontrolled descent. The five other people aboard the plane included his agents Robert Fraley and Van Ardan, and pilots Michael Kling and Stephanie Bellegarrigue, along with Bruce Borland, a highly-regarded golf architect with the Jack Nicklaus golf course design company.

At the time of his death, Stewart had won $12,673,193 in career earnings.

One year after Stewart's death, his widow Tracey and her two children, as well as the family of Stewart's agent Robert Fraley who also died on that flight, brought a lawsuit seeking $200,000,000 in damages against the Learjet's operator SunJet Aviation Inc and owner JetShares One Inc. The case was brought to trial in Federal Court in Orlando, Florida where in June of 2005 jurors acquitted the defendants of responsibility for the crash. In their verdict, the jurors also found that the plane's manufacturer, Learjet, had no liability in the deaths of Stewart and Fraley due to negligence in the design or manufacture of the plane.

After his death, the stretch of Interstate 44 that passes through Springfield, Missouri was designated as the Payne Stewart Memorial Highway in his memory.

[edit] Professional wins (23)

[edit] PGA Tour wins (11)

1982 (1) Miller High Life QCO
1983 (1) Walt Disney World Golf Classic
1987 (1) Hertz Bay Hill Classic
1989 (2) MCI Heritage Golf Classic, PGA Championship
1990 (2) MCI Heritage Golf Classic, GTE Byron Nelson Golf Classic
1991 (1) U.S. Open
1995 (1) Shell Houston Open
1999 (2) AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, U.S. Open

Major championships are shown in bold.

[edit] Other wins (12)

this list is probably incomplete

1981 Indian Open, Indonesia Open (Asian Tour)
1982 Magnolia State Classic
1982 Coolangatta-Tweed Heads Classic (Australia)
1985 Jun Classic (Japan Golf Tour, tie with Kazushige Kono and Masahiro Kuramoto)
1991 Heineken Dutch Open (European Tour), Skins Game
1992 Skins Game, Hassan II Trophy
1993 Skins Game, Hassan II Trophy
1996 Wendy's 3-Tour Challenge (with Fred Couples and Davis Love III)

[edit] Major championships

[edit] Wins (3)

Year	Championship	Winning Score	Margin	Runner(s) Up
1989	PGA Championship	-12 (74-66-69-67=276)	1 stroke	Andy Bean, Mike Reid, Curtis Strange
1991	U.S. Open	-6 (67-70-73-72=282)	Playoff¹	Scott Simpson
1999	U.S. Open (2)	-1 (68-69-72-70=279)	1 stroke	Phil Mickelson

¹Defeated Scott Simpson 75-77 in a 18-hole playoff.

[edit] Results timeline

Tournament	1981	1982	1983	1984	1985	1986	1987	1988	1989
The Masters	DNP	DNP	T32	T21	T25	T8	T42	T25	T24
U.S. Open	DNP	DNP	DNP	CUT	T5	T6	CUT	T10	T13
The Open Championship	T58	DNP	DNP	CUT	2	T35	T4	T7	T8
PGA Championship	DNP	CUT	CUT	CUT	T12	T5	T24	T9	1

Tournament	1990	1991	1992	1993	1994	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999
The Masters	T36	DNP	CUT	T9	CUT	T41	CUT	DNP	DNP	T52
U.S. Open	CUT	1	T51	2	CUT	T21	T27	T28	2	1
The Open Championship	T2	T32	T34	12	CUT	T11	T45	59	T44	T30
PGA Championship	T8	T13	T69	T44	T66	T13	T69	T29	CUT	T57

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

[edit] Trivia

Stewart appeared on episode number 169/7.18 titled Futile Attraction of the hit sitcom Home Improvement. It aired on March 10, 1998 and featured Stewart as himself.