The first Greater Milwaukee Open was nearly the final one
In 1967, a group went all-in to bring the PGA Tour in Milwaukee. But the first Greater Milwaukee Open, in July 1968, also was nearly the last. It started out boldly enough. The Milwaukee Journal’s Billy Sixty reported on July 2, 1967, that a group of businessmen had gained the support of the Professional Golfers’ Association of America to hold a men’s professional open golf tournament in Milwaukee in 1968.
The Greater Milwaukee Open, to be held July 11-14 at North Shore Country Club in Mequon, would have $200,000 in total prize money, making it the second-richest in golf history.
In announcing the new tournament — the first pro golf men’s competition in the Milwaukee area since 1961 — general chairman Ralph Rosenheimer, founder of North Shore State Bank, underscored the GMO’s ambitions.
“We are all pleased to again give our city big-league golf in big-league manner, and to give the tournament a permanent home,” he said in the July 2, 1967, story. “We’ll do everything possible to let the country know Milwaukee is big-league.”
The fact that the dates for the Milwaukee tournament were the same as for the 1968 British Open — one of pro golf’s four major tournaments, and a prime draw for the sport’s biggest names — didn’t seem to dim the organizers’ hopes.
But it gave some top players pause. Asked whether he would take part in the GMO, Jack Nicklaus, one of golf’s most popular players, was dismissive: “It’s horrible that some pros would pass up the British (Open) to play in Milwaukee. If I play anyplace, it’ll be the British.”
Still, some of golf ’s most established players signed up quickly to play in Milwaukee, including future World Golf Hall of Famers Gene Julius Boros, Charlie Sifford, Ken Venturi and Gene Littler. By early July, they were joined by such PGA veterans as Sam Snead, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Tom Weiskopf, Don January, Jack Rule and Ray Floyd.
A big “get” was Lee Trevino, a popular newcomer who in June won his first major tournament, the U.S. Open Championship.
But golf ’s top four players in 1968 — Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Billy Casper — all skipped the GMO to compete in the British Open instead.
On July 11, 1968, the first day of the first GMO, the course saw a flurry of low scores. Of the 144 players competing on Day 1, 68 were at or below par, Sixty reported on July 12. The first day’s leaders, Mac McLendon and Rocky Thompson, both shot a courserecord 66.
The next day, Snead — golf’s ‘old man,’ — as he was dubbed by Sentinel sportswriter Hank Sayrs — broke their record, shooting a 65 and muscling his way into a tie for second, behind Dave Stockton.
Snead was battling tendinitis in his left wrist. Asked why at 57 he was playing with such an injury, he told Sayrs: “There are 200,000 reasons,” a reference to the tournament’s overall
prize pool.
Snead stayed in the hunt but wound up four strokes behind Stockton, who won the first GMO — and its $40,000 top prize — at 13 strokes under par.
“That $24,000 I picked up for second place was the largest purse of my life — and I didn’t even win,” Snead told Sayrs.
GMO President Rocco Bunino told The Journal that about 75,000 attended the four-day tournament and the pro-am events preceding it.
“Because of the conflict (with the British Open) we missed the attendance of such big names as Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Billy Casper at our gate,” Bunino said in a July 16 Journal story. “This was costly.”
That lower-than-anticipated attendance, combined with the extravagant prize money, nearly sank the GMO. Officials at the time characterized the loss as running “into five figures”; Journal columnist Bob Wolf wrote in 1979 that the GMO’s debt after the first tournament was $135,000. (It took until 1978 to pay it off, Wolf wrote.)
“After that first tournament, about $14,000 worth of players’ checks bounced,” Bob Crichton, who replaced Bunino as GMO president in 1969, told Wolf in a July 5, 1979, column. “As a matter of fact, Trevino’s check was one of them.”
To keep the GMO on life support for the 1969 tournament, organizers cut the prize money in half — to $100,000 — and reduced its operating budget by about half.
The GMO also begged for, and received, dates distanced from the British Open.
The 1969 tournament was set for Aug. 7-10, a month away from the British Open — and one week before another major tournament: the PGA Championship.
The tournament, which changed its name to the U.S. Bank Championship in 2004, played through in Milwaukee until 2009.
In the 42 years the tournament was played in Milwaukee, it was held the same week as, the week before or the week after the British Open 26 times.