Joe Kirkwood, Sr.

Joe Kirkwood, Sr.
— Golfer —
Personal information
Full name	Joseph Henry Kirkwood, Sr.
Born	(1897-04-03)3 April 1897 Sydney, Australia
Died	29 October 1970(1970-10-29) (aged 73) Burlington, Vermont, U.S.
Nationality	Australia
Career
Turned professional	1920
Former tour(s)	PGA Tour
Professional wins	16
Number of wins by tour
PGA Tour	13
Best results in major championships
Masters Tournament	T29: 1936
U.S. Open	T9: 1933
The Open Championship	4th/T4: 1923, 1927, 1934
PGA Championship	T3: 1930

Joseph Henry Kirkwood, Sr. (3 April 1897 – 29 October 1970) was a professional golfer who is acknowledged as having put Australian golf on the world map.

Born in Sydney, Australia, Kirkwood left home at age ten to work on a sheep station in the Australian Outback, where his boss introduced him to the game of golf. He developed his skills to the point where he could compete in his country's most important golf tournaments. Kirkwood won the Australian Open in 1920 and in that year's New Zealand Open he astounded the golfing world with a victory that surpassed the previous tournament record score by twelve strokes.

Kirkwood's success led him to England and Europe where, in his first competition, he defeated the great Harry Vardon. He began playing on the professional tour in the United States in 1923, winning that year's Houston Invitational, and was the first Australian to win on what became the PGA Tour. In 1924, he was one of the top-ranked golfers on the tour with five victories, three of which were consecutive. Kirkwood remains co-holder of the record for the widest winning stroke margin in PGA Tour history, set at the 1924 Corpus Christi Open in Texas.^[1] That year he also teamed up with Walter Hagen to begin travelling around the globe putting on golf and trick-shot exhibitions, newsreels of which were sent back home to be shown in cinemas around the U.S.

Kirkwood's best performance in a major championship was a third place finish in the PGA Championship in 1930, a semifinalist in the match play competition. He finished fourth in the British Open on three separate occasions. In 1933, he won the Canadian Open. He was apparently the first-ever golfer to tee off from the howdah atop a domesticated elephant, which he first did (and was photographed doing) at Royal Calcutta Golf Club in Calcutta in 1937, and soon after in other clubs in India, and later in Africa.

Over his lifetime in golf, Kirkwood is credited with scoring twenty-nine holes-in-one, two of which came in the same round. In his later years, he retired to the mountain resort community of Stowe, Vermont in New England, where he was the local teaching pro at the Stowe Country Club. The club has held the Joe Kirkwood Memorial Golf Tournament annually since 1967. Notably, Kirkwood's skills remained at a high level for most of his life and at age fifty-one, in 1948 he and his son Joe Kirkwood, Jr. both made the cut at the U.S. Open, the first father and son to do so and a record tied only in 2004. When his son won the 1951 Blue Ribbon Open in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, they became the third father-son winners in the history of the PGA Tour, which by 2010 still has only seven such pairs of winners. One of Kirkwood's most remarkable feats was playing a round of golf at 10-under-par 62, "breaking his age" at the age of sixty-three.

Kirkwood died at age 73 in 1970 in Burlington, Vermont. He was elected to the American Golf Hall of Fame at Foxburg, Pennsylvania. His autobiography, as told to Barbara Fey, was published posthumously in 1973 under the title Links of Life. In his honour, the annual winner of the Australian PGA Championship receives the Kirkwood Cup. He is buried in the West Branch Cemetery in Stowe.

Professional wins

PGA Tour wins (13)

1923 (5) California Open Championship, St. Augustine Open, Houston Invitational, Open Championship of Illinois, Kansas Mid-Continent Pro Championship (tie with Walter Hagen)
1924 (4) Texas Open, Houston Open, Philadelphia Open Championship, Corpus Christi Open
1930 (1) Long Beach Open (tie with Olin Dutra)
1931 (1) Southeastern Open
1933 (2) North and South Open, Canadian Open

Other wins

this list may be incomplete

1920 Australian Open, New Zealand Open, New Zealand PGA Championship

Results in major championships

Tournament	1921	1922	1923	1924	1925	1926	1927	1928	1929
Masters Tournament	NYF	NYF	NYF	NYF	NYF	NYF	NYF	NYF	NYF
U.S. Open	T33	T13	T12	T22	T45	DNP	CUT	T41	T19
The Open Championship	T6	T20	4	DNP	T14	T24	T4	DNP	DNP
PGA Championship	DNP	DNP	QF	DNP	DNP	DNP	DNP	DNP	R32

Tournament	1930	1931	1932	1933	1934	1935	1936	1937	1938	1939
Masters Tournament	NYF	NYF	NYF	NYF	DNP	DNP	T29	DNP	DNP	DNP
U.S. Open	CUT	DNP	T23	T9	T12	DNP	DNP	DNP	DNP	DNP
The Open Championship	DNP	T26	DNP	T14	T4	DNP	DNP	CUT	DNP	DNP
PGA Championship	SF	R32	R32	DNP	DNP	DNP	DNP	DNP	DNP	DNP

Tournament	1940	1941	1942	1943	1944	1945	1946	1947	1948
Masters Tournament	DNP	DNP	DNP	NT	NT	NT	DNP	DNP	WD
U.S. Open	DNP	DNP	NT	NT	NT	NT	T57	T23	T21
The Open Championship	NT	NT	NT	NT	NT	NT	T8	DNP	DNP
PGA Championship	DNP	DNP	R16	NT	DNP	DNP	DNP	DNP	DNP

NYF = Tournament not yet founded
NT = No tournament
DNP = Did not play
WD = Withdrew
CUT = missed the half-way cut
R32, R16, QF, SF = Round in which player lost in PGA Championship match play
"T" indicates a tie for a place
Yellow background for top-10

Summary

Tournament	3rd	Top-5	Top-10	Top-25	Events	Cuts made
Masters Tournament	0	0	0	0	2	1
U.S. Open	0	0	1	9	15	13
The Open Championship	0	3	5	9	11	10
PGA Championship	1	2	3	6	6	6
Totals	1	5	9	24	34	30

Most consecutive cuts made – 11 (1921 Open Championship – 1926 Open Championship)
Longest streak of top-10s – 1 (nine times)

References

↑ Kelley, Brent. "Largest Margin of Victory on the PGA Tour". About.com. Retrieved 16 January 2015.