Five To Remember

By Jonathan Wall
Photo by Harry How/Getty Images September 21, 2009

The PGA Tour needed a hook. Looking for a way to bolster television ratings and interest at the end of the golf season, the tour came to the realization it needed a tournament that provided some intrigue and drama in autumn.

Enter the Tour Championship, an event that was first called the Nabisco Championship when it debuted in 1987. The season-ending event gave the top 30 money winners the opportunity to cash in on their yearlong success, while also giving the tour the chance to showcase the best players in a dramatic battle for a $360,000 first place check.

The lucrative event was an instant success. The money on the line and the uncertainty regarding season-ending Player of the Year points added the intrigue and drama the tour had been coveting.

While the event has changed names over the years, the memories remain. From Zach Johnson's flirtation with 59 in 2007 to hurricane conditions at Southern Hills in 1995, the Tour Championship has created plenty of moments over the past 22 years. With that in mind, here are five of the more memorable moments in Tour Championship history:

Kite cashes in with playoff victory over Payne Stewart (1989)

The pain of losing a playoff in a tour event is a tough pill to swallow for any player. Throw in a then-record $360,000 first place check and that pain is only multiplied.

Tom Kite was on the wrong side of the record-setting Tour Championship payout in 1988. But when the opportunity to play extra holes presented itself a year later at the very same event, Kite was able to take advantage.

A final round three-under 68 at Harbour Town Golf Links got Kite into a playoff with Payne Stewart, then the leading money-winner on tour. After matching each other shot-for-shot on the first playoff, Kite finally found out what it was like to be on the other side of a record payday, as Stewart's four-and-a-half foot putt slid by the hole.

The $450,000 Kite won at the 1989 Tour Championship was enough to vault him past Stewart on the money list for the year, as well as give him enough points to capture the PGA of America's Player of the Year award. Additionally, his victory also made him the tour's all-time leading money-winner. Not bad for a week's work.

Sufferin' Hills comes out on top at Tour Championship (1995)

A total train wreck is probably the best way to describe the scene at the 1995 Tour Championship.

Rather than being rewarded for their yearlong hard work, the top 30 were instead treated to course conditions that had most wishing they'd stayed home.

Gusts of up to 40 mph and greens nearing pool table-like conditions turned the already daunting Tulsa, Okla., course into an almost impossible layout. "This tournament is supposed to be fun," claimed Brad Bryant in an interview during the 1995 event, "With the wind, it's not very fun."

Thursday's firm putting surfaces were so fast that officials decided to forego mowing them before Friday's second round. The very same conditions on Friday were not just a burden to the players in the field. A strong north wind also caused an ABC transmitter balloon to blow down into some trees.

Only 14 of the 120 rounds for the week were under par. And as a whole, the field shot a combined 322 over par, a total that was 157 shots higher than what the top 30 shot at the U.S. Open that year at Shinnecock Hills. In the end, 29-year-old Billy Mayfair's even-par 280 still stands as the highest winning score in Tour Championship history by six shots.

The tour remembers Payne Stewart (1999)

For all the fanfare and drama the Tour Championship had produced over the years, the 1999 event at Champions Golf Course in Houston, Texas, seemed like the least important tournament of the season -- and for good reason.

The death of Payne Stewart, one of the most influential golfers of the past 15 years, just three days earlier had turned the season-ending event into a somber affair.