A roundup of Tuesday’s World Cup games.
Peter Thomson, a five-time winner of the British Open and only golfer in the 20th century to win the tournament for three straight years, has died. He was 88.
Thomson had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for more than four years and died at his Melbourne home surrounded by family members on Wednesday morning, Golf Australia said.
The first Australian to win the British Open, Thomson went on to secure the title five times between 1954 and 1965, a record equaled only by American Tom Watson.
The Australian’s wins came in 1954, ‘55, ‘56, again in 1958 and lastly in 1965 against a field that included Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.
Only Harry Vardon, with six titles between 1896 and 1914, won more.
Thomson also tied for fourth at the 1956 U.S. Open and placed fifth in the 1957 Masters. He never played the PGA Championship.
In 1998, he captained the International side to its only win over the United States at the Presidents Cup.
Asked by the Associated Press in 2011 how he’d like to be remembered, Thomson replied: “A guy who always said what he thought.”
Born in the Melbourne inner-city suburb of Brunswick on Aug. 23, 1929, Thomson was a promising cricketer. He scored an unbeaten 150 runs for the Carlton club against a men’s side as a 15-year-old.
But golf became his passion, and he turned professional in 1947.
He won the national championships of 10 countries, including the New Zealand Open nine times and Australian Open three times. He first played on the PGA Tour in the U.S. in 1953 and 1954, finishing 44th and 25th on the money list, respectively. He won the Texas International in 1956.
Thomson won nine times on the Senior PGA tour in the U.S. in 1985, topping the money list. His last tournament victory came at the 1988 British PGA Seniors Championship, the same year he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Overall, he won 26 European Tour events, 34 times on the Australasian PGA tour and 11 on the seniors tour in the U.S, as well as once in Japan.
In later years, Thomson wrote articles for many publications and daily newspapers, was club professional at Royal Melbourne and designed more than 100 golf courses. In the 2011 Presidents Cup program, Thomson provided an insightful hole-by-hole analysis of the composite course at Royal Melbourne.
Thomson was always reluctant to compare his wins with anyone else’s.
“All records are qualified in that they were made at a certain time in history,” Thomson told golf historian and author Brendan Moloney for a story on his 80th birthday.
“The circumstances change so much, and so do the players’ attitudes. In golf, only in the last 30 years or so has there been a professional attitude to playing for money. The professionals in the USA and Britain and anywhere else all had club jobs as a backstop to their income.
“When they did play and make records, you have to understand that they were taking time off from the pro shop,” he said. “So the records that were set were pretty remarkable.”