Jack Burke Jr., who won two major golf titles in one season, dies at age 100
Jack Burke Jr., a top player on the PGA tour in the postwar years who won two major golf championships in one season and then became a sought-after instructor to some of golf's biggest stars, has died at the age of 100. He was the oldest living winner of the Masters and PGA Championships.
The American Golf Association confirmed are dead. He died Friday in Houston, according to the Associated Press.
Burke's peak year was 1956, when he won both the Masters and PGA titles and was named the PGA's golfer of the year.
His Masters victory surprised almost everyone.
Just weeks earlier, after going winless since Inverness opened in Ohio in 1953, Burke, who was 33, had announced he was considering retirement. And going into the final round at Augusta National Golf Club, he was eight strokes behind the Masters leader, Ken Venturi, and hadn't attracted much attention.
All eyes were on Venturi, who at the age of 24 was vying to become the first amateur to win the Masters. But as Venturi faltered, Burke crawled up the leaderboard, passing eight players and winning by one stroke.
He had received some meteorological assistance.
“I had a downhill putt on the 17th hole that was lightning fast, and it was made even faster because the 40 mile per hour wind had blown sand onto the green,” Burke told Golf Digest in 2004. “I just touched that putt and I immediately thought, 'Oh no, I didn't get it halfway through.' Then the wind grabbed that thing and kept blowing it down the hill until it fell dead in the middle of the hole. It was a miracle, the best break of my career.”
In June, he won the PGA Championship, defeating Jack Kroll at Blue Hill Country Club in Canton, Massachusetts, in match play format, which is based on holes won in head-to-head competition, not stroke count. on a scorecard.
All told, Burke won 16 tournaments on the Professional Golfers' Association of America tour, including four in four weeks in 1952.
The son of a Houston golf club professional, Burke turned professional at age 17 and joined the tour at age 23, hailed as one of the most promising golfers of his generation.
In 1949, while living in Kiamesha Lake, NY, in Westchester County, he recorded his first professional victory, in the Metropolitan Open, at his home course, the Metropolis, in White Plains, defeating veteran Gene Sarazen. The victory came 24 years to the day after Burke's father defeated Sarazen in a tournament, as Sarazen ruefully but good-naturedly noted to Jack Jr.
In 1952, following his four consecutive tour victories and a second-place finish at the Masters behind Sam Snead, Burke was profiled by Collier's magazine as “Golf's New Hot-Shot.” At 6 feet tall and weighing 170 pounds, he could hit 265 yards off the tee and was an excellent putter, and his boyish appearance only added to his appeal.
“His curly, light auburn hair, blue eyes and occasional shy smile have made him the darling of the female links addicts,” wrote the magazine, identifying Burke as “one of golf's most eligible bachelors. “
In 1957, Burke, along with his mentor, Jimmy Demaret, the first three-time Masters champion, founded the Champions Golf Club in Houston. Demaret had been an assistant pro under Burke's father since Jack Jr. 10 was.
Burke and Demaret instituted a membership policy – which is still in effect – that only admits golfers with a handicap of 14 or lower. “I compare us to Stanford University, or Yale or Harvard,” Burke told Golf Digest. “They don't accept D students academically, and we don't accept people with a D average in golf.”
The club hosted the 1969 United States Open and the 2020 US Women's Open Championship, among others.
Burke went on to earn distinction as a longtime instructor for Phil Mickelson, Hal Sutton, Steve Elkington and other professionals. When he was in his seventies, Arnold Palmer came by for a lesson.
Jack Nicklaus once said of Burke, “I can't tell you how many times we were playing golf and he said, 'Jack, how are you going to play from that position?'”
John Joseph Burke Jr. was born on January 29, 1923 in Fort Worth, the eldest of eight siblings, one of whom died young. He grew up in Houston, where his father, a runner-up finisher at the 1920 U.S. Open, was a pro at River Oaks Country Club.
Jack Jr. played his first golf at age 6. At age 12, he shot a 69 on a tough par-71 course. At the age of 16 he qualified for the US Open. But at age 17, at his mother's insistence, he entered the Rice Institute (now Rice University) in Houston. However, he left before completing his freshman year and became head pro at Galveston Country Club.
When World War II broke out, Burke joined the Marine Corps and taught combat conditioning, including judo. He joined the PGA tour after the war (it officially became the PGA Tour in 1968), moved to Westchester and also taught golf at clubs in New Jersey and elsewhere in New York.
He first came to widespread attention in 1951, when he scored two impressive victories in the Ryder Cup competition that year. That led to his selection for four more Ryder Cup events in the 1950s, during which he compiled a 7–1 match record against his European competition. He captained the Ryder Cup twice, losing in 1957 and winning in 1973.
In 1952 he won the Vardon Trophy, which was awarded to the tour guide in average score. (He was 70.54.) When Burke was 81, Hall Suttonthe United States' Ryder Cup captain in 2004, named him assistant captain.
Burke was elected to the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2000. In 2003, he was named a recipient of the PGA Tour's Lifetime Achievement Award and the United States Golf Association's Bob Jones Award. In 2007 he received the PGA Distinguished Service Award.
Burke married Ielene Lang in 1952. She died in the mid-1980s. Burke had turned 60 when he met Robin Moran, a freshman golfer at the University of Texas, in 1984 on the putting green of Champions Golf Club, where her father had sent her for a golf lesson, the PGA historian said. Bob Denney. The couple married in 1987. She was a finalist in the 1997 U.S. Women's Amateur Championship and was named to the Texas Golf Hall of Fame.
Burke had a daughter by his second wife and five children by his first, including a son, John J. Burke IIIwho died in 2017. Complete information about his survivors was not immediately available.
Burke joined the elite company by winning two majors in one season, but by his own choice he would never have a shot at a Grand Slam, as it is understood today, by winning all four, nor in one season, nor in a career. . He missed the cut at the 1956 US Open, at Oak Hill Country Club, outside Rochester, and never played in the British Open throughout his career.
Frank Litsky, a longtime Times sportswriter, died in 2018.; William McDonald contributed reporting.