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Al Geiberger's "59" clubs, Wanamaker trophy, net $130,000 at auction

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 13:28:00 GMT

Former PGA Tour and Champions Tour player Al Geiberger has a tax issue, but he said that's not the reason he auctioned off much of his memorabilia, including the clubs with which he recorded the first 59 in PGA Tour history.

Geiberger, 75, said that his Champions Tour pension, an annuity on which he began collecting at age 65, expired at age 75 and that his PGA Tour pension pays "a whopping $128 a month."

Bidding, conducted through Green Jacket Auctions, closed on the Geiberger Collection on Saturday night, earning him nearly $130,000, including $54,754 for the Wanamaker Trophy he received for winning the PGA Championship in 1966 and $10,832 for the clubs from his round of 59.

Geiberger's name, meanwhile, had turned up on a California Franchise Tax Board list of the top 500 delinquent taxpayers, noting that he owed $219,060.

"No, not that's not the reason," he said about selling his collection. "We've been handling that with Bernie Gartland [of the Gartland Group, tax attorneys]. We settled with the IRS, but the state is ridiculous to work with. Bernie's been working with them."

He sold the memorabilia to generate cash to augment his retirement income. "I didn't make any retirement on the regular tour," he said. "The senior tour is where I built up some, but the annuity ends in 10 years."

The memorabilia, at any rate, had been locked away in a storage facility near his home in Palm Desert, Calif. "We've actually been in touch with Al for the last couple of years," Ryan Carey, president of Green Jacket Auctions, said. "We'd known he has been interested in selling his collection. It's been sitting in a storage locker for several years. He knew he wasn't really appreciating it."

The original World Golf Hall of Fame, then in Pinehurst, N.C., wanted the clubs he used in shooting 59 in the second round of the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic in 1977. "But I was still playing with them," he said. Instead, he sent the ball, a Hogan model that he used for all 18 holes, which has turned up missing, he said.

His auction take, incidentally ($129,983, to be exact), was more than he earned in all but two seasons in his PGA Tour career. In 1975 and '76, he earned $176,000 and $195,000 respectively.

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Tiger's Road Back To No. 1

Alex Myers — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

A look back at Tiger Woods' fall from No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking and his climb back to the game's top spot.

David Graham still waiting for his Hall call

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 19:26:00 GMT

By Dave Shedloski

Former U.S. Open and PGA champion David Graham read with keen interest Raymond Floyd's recent published comments critical of the World Golf Hall of Fame. Perhaps because it hit so close to home.

"It's an interesting scenario because Raymond basically said some things that I have thought all along," Graham said by phone from his home in Whitefish, Mont. "The thing is Raymond has big boots in golf. He's a purist, and for him to say something like that was quite a statement."

Photo by Getty Images

Floyd, a four-time major champion who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1989, recently was quoted by Golf Magazine as saying, "the bar has been lowered" on qualifications. "Guys get voted into the Hall of Fame who don't belong, who lack the numbers. I'm very upset at the Hall of Fame for that. . . . I'll just say that you should have at least two majors. . . . There are guys in there that it's a joke. It takes integrity away from the term, 'Hall of Fame.'"

This year's inductees include Fred Couples, who won the Masters among 15 PGA Tour titles, and Colin Montgomerie, who won the Order of Merit on the European Tour a record eight times but neither captured a major nor won an official event in the U.S.

Graham, meanwhile, competing in his prime when the eras of Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson overlapped in the 1970s and early '80s, won eight times on tour, including the 1979 PGA Championship at Oakland Hills CC and the '81 U.S. Open at Merion, the latter with a punctilious final round of 67 that was so impressive that Ben Hogan called to congratulate him on the performance.

With 25 other worldwide victories, Graham, a native of Australia, joins Gary Player as the only men to win tournaments on six continents. He teamed with Bruce Devlin to capture the 1970 World Cup for Australia, and in 1994 he captained the International Team in the first Presidents Cup. He also earned five Champions Tour titles before congestive heart failure in 2004 ended his competitive career.

"It's hurtful," Graham, 66, said of his omission from the Hall of Fame. "When you have a record that should mean something and it doesn't, you have to wonder what's going on."

Graham isn't even on the Hall of Fame ballot, having fallen off in 2000 after failing to garner five percent of the vote in consecutive years. His only avenue to Hall inclusion is the veteran's category -- the route through which Ken Venturi will be inducted in May with Couples, Montgomerie, former European Tour executive director Ken Schofield and Willie Park Jr., who won two Open Championships in the late 1880s.

According to Brody Waters, director of museum operations at the World Golf Hall of Fame, Graham also has fallen off the ballot on the veteran's category because of lack of voting support. He can be reconsidered either by a nomination from a current Hall of Fame member or a member of the hall advisory board.

Other multiple major winners yet to be voted in include Dave Stockton, Padraig Harrington, Retief Goosen, Mark O'Meara, Fuzzy Zoeller, John Daly and Andy North. The latter two men also have fallen off the main ballot, Daly in 2007 and North in '97.

This is a big summer for Graham, who will return to Merion in June to host the past champions dinner with Nicklaus, Lee Trevino and Arnold Palmer prior to the 113th U.S. Open on Merion's East Course. The Open was last played at Merion in '81, when Graham overcame a three-shot deficit to George Burns and won by three strokes with a 7-under 273 total.

"I'd had a conversation with (USGA executive director) Mike Davis about the possibility of being reconsidered this year with Merion hosting the U.S. Open," Graham said. "I don't know what happened to that. I don't really understand how it all works. In my mind, it's a bit of a fiasco. It's been disappointing to not even be considered, and I think Raymond made some very good points. But for me to say it doesn't carry the same weight as a player who already is in the Hall of Fame. All I have is my record, and it'd be nice if someone could explain to me how it's not good enough."

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Phil Mickelson's putter change draws attention to the importance of loft

Derek Evers — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 22:24:00 GMT

By E. Michael Johnson To start his 2013 season Phil Mickelson put Odyssey's new Versa putter in the bag. The club is noticeable for its zebra-like stripes (the #9 half-mallet Mickelson used features white/black/white...

The Most Memorable Shots Of 2012

Alex Myers — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 05:00:00 GMT

A look back at the golf season's brilliant (and not so brilliant) moments.

Tribute: A Speech Fit For A King

Jack Nicklaus — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Arnold Palmer receives the Congressional Gold Medal, and Jack Nicklaus shares memories of a man he'll never forget.

Golf Style

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 04:00:00 GMT

Is McIlroy in the early stages of a Tiger-like run? Let us count the similarities

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 17:40:00 GMT

By Sam Weinman

There's always some idiot claiming that Rory McIlroy is poised to dominate golf the way Tiger Woods did a dozen years ago.

Allow me to be that idiot.

When Woods won his second major at the 1999 PGA, it was the start of a historic run. Should we expect the same from McIlroy? Photos by Getty Images

OK, to be fair, no one can reasonably expect any golfer to rattle off four-straight majors as Woods did between the 2000 U.S. Open and the 2001 Masters. But with McIlroy's third win in four starts on Sunday, it's worth noting the remarkable similarities between the run the Northern Irishman is currently on, and the one Woods began in late summer 1999.

Related: Golf's Biggest Phenoms

For instance:

-- Both players followed up dominant, landscape-changing maiden major championship victories (Woods in the 1997 Masters, McIlroy in the 2011 U.S. Open) with what might be described as "a readjustment phase." For Woods, that meant a 1998 season in which he won only once on tour. For McIlroy, it was a lackluster period earlier this season in which he missed four of five cuts.

-- Both players emerged from those trying periods with a convincing win in the season's final major, Woods by holding off Sergio Garcia in a memorable Sunday duel in the 1999 PGA at Medinah; McIlroy with his eight-shot romp at Kiawah.

-- Both players, newly emboldened by major win No. 2, used it as a springboard into the rest of the season. Two weeks after his win at Medinah, Woods won the tournament now known as the Bridgestone Invitational, then finished '99 with wins at Disney, the Tour Championship, and the American Express Championship at Valderrama (he then opened the 2000 season with two more wins, extending his win streak to six). As Bill Fields wrote in Golf World after Medinah: "Woods simultaneously has refined his game and grown more comfortable with the glare he works under since his 12-stroke victory at Augusta National."

McIlroy, meanwhile, has followed up his own PGA win with back-to-wins in the Deutsche Bank and the BMW to virtually lock up Player of the Year honors. The scariest part, though, is McIlroy's done it in a way that suggest he's building toward something bigger. "The more you put yourself in this position, and the more you win and the more you pick up trophies, it becomes normal," McIlroy said. "And it feels like this is what you're supposed to do."

-- Both players were 23.

The similarities only go so far, of course. Woods' Tiger Slam, what is widely considered the greatest golf ever played, came on the heels of a dramatic swing overhaul. McIlroy has undergone no such reinvention

Also, McIlroy's two major championship wins have both come on rain-softened big ballparks, where his power and towering ball flight have given him a decided advantage. He has yet to show an ability to win on a diverse set of layouts like Woods did when he won at Pebble Beach, St. Andrews, and Valhalla in 2000. In other words, with Merion, among other courses, looming on the 2013 major schedule, McIlroy still has plenty to prove.

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Mickelson ties career birdie best, course record, and Singh for the lead on Saturday at Crooked Stick

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 00:44:00 GMT

By Dave Shedloski

CARMEL, Ind. -- Some people see the glass half-empty, others half-full. Phil Mickelson looks at it and simply wants to figure out how to fill it up.

Emerging from a months-long period where his game "went south for awhile," Mickelson fired an 8-under-par 64 Saturday at Crooked Stick GC, and enters the final round of the BMW Championship tied atop the leaderboard with Vijay Singh.

Photo: Scott Halleran/Getty Images

"It was a fun day. I got it going with the putter. It's nice to be playing well again," said Mickelson, who tied his low round of the year. He fired a 64 in the final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am when he won a showdown with Tiger Woods to register his 40th PGA Tour title.

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The left-hander, who sits at 16-under 200 through 54 holes, tied his career high with 10 birdies, the seventh time he had dropped that many, but it was the first time he had been so economical with his putting stroke since the opening round of the 2006 BellSouth Classic at TPC Sugarloaf.

Mickelson arrived at Crooked Stick fresh off a T-4 finish at the Deutsche Bank Championship, ending an unseemly summer string of seven starts in which he had finished no better than T-36. As is his wont, Lefty looked upon his slide as an opportunity to scrutinize the various parts of his game rather than to fret over them.

"It's actually been, looking back on it, a great three or four months, because as bad as I've played, it's forced me to really analyze and look at and dissect the parts of my game to get it back to where I wanted it to be," he said. "It's taken me some time, and certainly I have a little ways to go.

"When was it its best? What was I doing then that made it its best? How do I practice? How do I hit the shots? What allows me to have good distance control, trajectory, all those things," Mickelson added, noting the questions he was asking of himself. "Although it's taken me three, four months of poor play, I feel like now it's back to a level where I'm going to start playing the way I know I'm capable of playing."

Certainly a key area of marked improvement has come on the greens after he changed to a claw-style putting grip two weeks ago at The Barclays.

If Mickelson, 42, were to win Sunday, he would give himself a chance of capturing the FedExCup title, one of the few omissions in a resume that earned him entry into the World Golf Hall of Fame in May. (Which is about the time his struggles began, perhaps nothing more than a coincidence?) It also would allow him to settle a score going back two decades.

Previous to this week's third playoff event, the only other occasion in which Crooked Stick hosted a PGA Tour event was the 1991 PGA Championship. The ninth alternate ended up winning, a guy named John Daly.

By Mickelson's way of thinking, he should have been allowed to compete in that PGA. In January of '91, Mickelson, then the reigning U.S. Amateur champion, won his first tour title at the Northern Telecom Open. That he remained an amateur meant he couldn't compete in the PGA, which is restricted to professional players.

Though he won the 2005 PGA, Mickelson still is irked by the circumstances.

"I remember that I qualified for the tournament and wasn't allowed to play in it, and that really upset me back then," he said Saturday. "I won the Tucson Open in '91, which qualified me to play the PGA Championship, and I wasn't allowed to play because I wanted to graduate college and stay an amateur. I would have loved to have competed. I felt I deserved to after I had already qualified, and I look back on that 20 years later, and I'm still upset."

Maybe he'll get over it with a win Sunday.

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The Ride Of His Life, Bumps And All

Mike Stachura — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 04:00:00 GMT

Why has John Huh succeeded against the odds? 'There really was no other option for me'.