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The Loop

Tenuous golf connection: Keith Hernandez and facial hair

September 21, 2012

New Yorkers of a certain age consider Keith Hernandez something of a living deity, for a number of reasons:

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3.  He appeared, until recently, alongside another New York icon, Walt "Clyde" Frazier in the campy Just For Men hair-dyeing gel commercials.

That last part, of course, is because of Hernandez's trademark mustache, which -- according to the New York Times, who we suspect wouldn't make this up -- was voted the best ever in sports by the American Mustache Institute. Now Hernandez intends to shave off his mustache as part of a charity fundraiser for Alzheimer's disease.

None of this has anything to do with golf, except it's an excuse to recall some memorable facial hair in our game in recent -- and not-so recent -- years.

Start with the likes of Johnson Wagner and Geoff Ogilvy, both of whom look like they arrived at the golf course straight from the set of a Spaghetti Western.

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Continue with Craig Stadler, aka "The Walrus."

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You can even go back as far as golf's first real star, Old Tom Morris, who apparently was too busy playing, teaching, designing courses, and making clubs to break out a razor.

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As for facial hair in Golf Digest, it's worth noting that we're just a few months removed from featuring the rare double combination of Rickie Fowler sporting both a mustache AND shorts on our August cover.

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(Our September cover subject, Alvaro Quiros, also has facial hair, but in his case, it's more of a several-day old growth). Before that, you had Graeme McDowell appearing on our cover twice in a seven-month span (the latter, in March 2011, was alongside pal Rory McIlroy) with a beard. Then it gets murky. In July 2002, David Duval was on the cover, not with a beard or a mustache but a modest soul patch below his lip; and in September 1999, instructor John Elliott was on the cover with a mustache, but the mustache was slightly obscured by his shoulder.

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Alas, the year 1996 was an unambiguous facial hair high point, with BACK-TO-BACK COVERS in June and July featuring mustachioed players.

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Hernandez surely must have been proud.