The Year Is: 1967

Stunning turns. Establishment attacks. Tumult and progress. In 1967, golf mirrored the changing world around it

Words by Travis Hill
Curated by Chris Reynolds

Light / Dark

America was changing. The status quo, so firmly stamped in place by the suburban success of the 1950s, was by 1967 officially an open question. Race riots in Detroit. The Summer of Love in San Francisco. The Graduate and Bonnie & Clyde titillated moviegoers. Aretha Franklin released “Respect” and The Beatles were on a magical mystery tour. The golf world, clearly staid by comparison, nevertheless experienced seismic revelations: Gay Brewer upended the favorites at Augusta while Charlie Sifford became the PGA Tour’s first African-American champion.

Yet the establishment remained. The Rolling Stones were forced to change the controversial lyrics of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “Let’s spend some time together” when they played “The Ed Sullivan Show.” And in June, while hippies wore flowers in their hair and traded tabs of LSD in Haight-Ashbury, a decidedly drug-free Jack Nicklaus won the U.S. Open.

On it went throughout a tumultuous year on the course. Some of golf’s biggest names—Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Julius Boros, Billy Casper—won multiple times, while others, like Gary Player, were shut out. Don January outlasted a slew of stars to win the PGA Championship in a playoff and 44-year-old Roberto De Vicenzo held off a Nicklaus charge to capture the Open Championship. Like Brewer, it would be his only major championship.

The ladies of the LPGA experienced similar cultural whiplash. To the surprise of no one, future World Golf Hall of Fame members Kathy Whitworth, Mickey Wright and Carol Mann combined to win 15 of the 28 scheduled events. But the Tour also saw the beginning of an international shift that would eventually come to define it: France’s Catherine Lacoste and Australia’s Margie Masters became the LPGA’s first winners from their respective continents.

Demonstrators march in support for the legalization of drugs in Hyde Park, London, 1967. Photo by Stanley Sherman/Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Sammy Davis Jr. became the first black man to be featured on the cover of GQ in 1967, and it was no surprise that the story included this image of him playing golf. While freely admitting to shooting in the 90s, he loved the game. In 1973, Davis became the first African-American to have a PGA Tour event with his namesake: the Sammy Davis Jr. Greater Hartford Open. Ever the comedian and civil-rights advocate, he told The New York Times that he hoped the tournament would inspire people of color to play, and that he hoped to see “a Mexican or a colored guy win.” Photo by Milton Greene/Conde Nast Via Getty Images

Kathy Whitworth rips a drive during her dominant 1967 season, in which she won eight of the 28 official money events. She was the leading money winner ($32,937), earned the Vare Trophy for best scoring average and, of course, was named Player of the Year. The Associated Press also named her its Female Athlete of the Year. It was an important time for the LPGA; the stars who founded the Tour, including huge draws Babe Zaharias, Louise Suggs and Patty Berg, were no longer in their prime and the organization needed some fresh names to carry it forward. Whitworth gladly picked up the mantle and became the Tour’s most important player of the 1960s. She would eventually win 88 titles, setting a record still untouched. Photo by Associated Press

Meanwhile, the stakes on the course were consid-erably lower for Dean Martin, but his dominance of popular culture was no less pronounced. Here he is taking a break between shots for his 1967 movie The Ambushers, filmed in Acapulco, Mexico. Photo by Martin Mills/Getty Images

Big Bad Jack

Marty Fleckman was on the verge of history. As the final round of the 1967 U.S. Open kicked off at Baltusrol Golf Club, he had a one-stroke lead and was gunning to become the first amateur to capture the U.S. Open since Johnny Goodman in 1933.

But the thousands packed into the sweaty galleries on a stiflingly muggy New Jersey afternoon knew better.

There was never any question that Sunday would belong to golf’s giants. Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer teed off in the penultimate group in the final round with more than another major title on the line. Arnie, who at 37 years old had finished runner-up in three of the last five Opens—including a heartbreaking playoff loss to Jack at Oakmont in 1962—was once again trying to stand up to this golf supernova. Jack was 27, entering the prime of his career and looking, once and for all, to dethrone the King.

The gallery was ready for fireworks. It was over before they made the turn.

With five birdies between Nos. 3 and 8, Nicklaus locked in his seventh major championship and effectively dropped the curtain on one of golf’s greatest rivalries. Palmer bravely shot 69, but he finished second again, eclipsed by Nicklaus’ blazing 65. Palmer, never one to hide his emotions, looked a beaten man on the final hole. Perhaps he knew what was coming. Remarkably, with Nicklaus’ victory, he and Palmer had won at least one major in each of the last six years and captured 10 of the previous 22 overall. But going forward, Palmer would record 12 more victories until his last in 1973, none of them majors. Nicklaus, on the other hand, would add 11 more majors to his résumé.

Palmer wasn’t the only legend to pass the torch that day. Nicklaus’ birdie on 18 gave him the new U.S. Open scoring record, his 275 surpassing the 276 Ben Hogan set in 1948. Hogan, then 54, was there to see it; the 1967 U.S. Open was the Hawk’s last.

Back in the days when players used British caddies at the Open Championship, Jack Nicklaus formed a special bond with his man Jimmy Dickinson. Their partnership began at the 1963 Open at Royal Lytham & St. Annes Golf Club, and Dickinson was on the bag for all three of Nicklaus’ Open victories: 1966 at Muirfield and 1970 and 1978 at St. Andrews. In 1967, however, Jack and Jimmy couldn’t quite stare down another title at Hoylake. Photo by Ed Lacey/Popperfoto/Getty Images — Back in the days when players used British caddies at the Open Championship, Jack Nicklaus formed a special bond with his man Jimmy Dickinson. Their partnership began at the 1963 Open at Royal Lytham & St. Annes Golf Club, and Dickinson was on the bag for all three of Nicklaus’ Open victories: 1966 at Muirfield and 1970 and 1978 at St. Andrews. In 1967, however, Jack and Jimmy couldn’t quite stare down another title at Hoylake. *Photo by Ed Lacey/Popperfoto/Getty Images*

Closeup portrait of Jack Nicklaus wearing Masters green blazer and sunglasses with cigarette in mouth. West Palm Beach, FL. Photo by Walter Iooss Jr. /Sports Illustrated/Getty Images — Back in the days when players used British caddies at the Open Championship, Jack Nicklaus formed a special bond with his man Jimmy Dickinson. Their partnership began at the 1963 Open at Royal Lytham & St. Annes Golf Club, and Dickinson was on the bag for all three of Nicklaus’ Open victories: 1966 at Muirfield and 1970 and 1978 at St. Andrews. In 1967, however, Jack and Jimmy couldn’t quite stare down another title at Hoylake. *Photo by Ed Lacey/Popperfoto/Getty Images*

A Rare Smile

At the 1952 Phoenix Open, Charlie Sifford and his all-black foursome, which included Hall of Fame boxer Joe Louis, looked down into the cup on the first hole to find it filled with excrement. In November 2014, President Barack Obama presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Sifford in the East Room of the White House. In between, Sifford’s life was filled with the satisfying highs of breaking barriers on and off the course along with the terrifying lows of institutional and individual racism.

Golf may have been the whitest of all major American sports when Sifford, then 39 and already past his best years, became the first African-American to earn a PGA Player card in 1960. (It still took pressure from the legal system for the PGA of America to drop its “Caucasians Only” clause a full year later.) Jackie Robinson told Sifford one thing when they discussed his goal to play on the best tour in the world: Don’t be a quitter. Sifford quickly learned what he meant, suffering racist taunts at nearly every event, service refused at restaurants and hotels, and death threats.

And yet there he was in 1967, winning the Greater Hartford Open at 45 years old, becoming the first African-American to win on the PGA Tour. Remarkably, Sifford wasn’t done, winning the Los Angeles Open two years later. But even those accomplishments didn’t open every door. It wasn’t until 1975, well after Sifford was on the Senior PGA Tour, that the Masters invited its first African-American player.