PECAN VALLEY GOLF CLUB
For golfers of a certain age, this loss in San Antonio, Texas, still stings. In 1968, at a PGA Championship played over Pecan Valley’s tight layout and quick greens, a 48-year-old Julius Boros became the thenoldest winner of a major, beating Arnold Palmer by a single stroke (Phil Mickelson took the “oldest” record this year at Kiawah Island’s Ocean Course, winning the same event at 50 years of age). Palmer hit what was arguably one of his best-ever shots during the tournament: a 3-wood out of deep rough on No.18 that traveled 230 yards and settled 12 feet from the hole. The shot earned him a plaque on the course marking the spot where the shot occurred, but Palmer missed the putt (and a chance at the major he never won), tying for second at 2-over with Bob Charles. It wasn’t Pecan Valley’s only event, as the club also hosted the LPGA’s Alamo Ladies Open from 1963 to 1966, the Texas Open Invitational in 1967, ’69 and ’70, and the USGA’s 2001 U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship. Generally regarded as one of Texas’ better courses, Pecan Valley was acquired by the ironically named Foresight Golf, which abruptly closed the course in 2012, making Pecan Valley the first major championship venue to shutter in the U.S. since the 1939 PGA Championship-hosting Pomonok Country Club in Queens, NY, in 1949. As of press time, the land was still vacant and the course overgrown, while plans for a veterans’ community (talked about since 2012) continued to inch forward.
Considered among the best in Texas Golf, Pecan Valley closed in 2012