Aussie golf legend Peter Thomson dies at 88
MANY would suppose the professional golfer Peter Thomson led an idyllic existence. He tended to agree.
“I’ve had a very joyful life, playing a game that I loved to play for the sheer pleasure of it,” Thomson said.
“I don’t think I did a real day’s work in the whole of my life.” Thomson undoubtedly performed at least a few hours of honest toil in his 88 years.
He could hardly have been the success he undoubtedly was, had he not. Peter William Thomson who died yesterday was arguably Australia’s finest golfer. In a golden era from the early 1950s until the mid 1960s he won the British Open Championship five times, three of the victories coming in successive years; he was second three times and made the cut in 23 consecutive appearances in the championship up to 1973.
Thomson also collected three Australian Open titles among 34 victories on the Australasian Tour and 21 — as well as his Open Championships — on the European Tour.
If a question could be posed about his golfing career it would concern his record in America where he claimed only one regular tour success, the 1956 Texas International Open.
But he addressed that situation somewhat by winning 11 tournaments in his two seasons on the US PGA Senior Tour, nine of them in 1985 when he topped the money list.
It could easily be imagined that for a man of his abilities, almost 40 years of playing professional golf might seem like something other than “real work”.
But after retiring from competitive play, Thomson established a golf course design and construction company that presumably required some serious endeavour to grow, as it did, into one of the world’s most successful.
Thomson took just as naturally to television commentary and to journalism which he has practised, again with seemingly effortless skill.
“It has all been one long piece of fun,” he said.
“Playing golf in my day didn’t have the pressures associated with it that came along later,” he said.
“The thing about those days was that it was such a paltry prize they put up. The money was gone by Christmas.
“I’m not sure how much it was but it was nearly negligible. You couldn’t buy a Jaguar car with it, I remember that.”
The point is illustrated well by the fact that Thomson had to borrow a jacket from an Australian friend for the presentation at the 1956 Open.
When he handed back the jacket, the cheque was still in the pocket.
Long after the two had returned to Melbourne his friend found the cheque in the jacket pocket and returned it to its rightful owner, who had forgotten all about it.