Colorado Golf Hall of Famer John Hamer once told a story that put Hale Irwin’s golf talent as a teenager into perspective.
Hamer was a very good player back in the 1960s and was toying with the idea of making a run at the PGA Tour. Then came the 1963 CGA Stroke Play. Hamer finished the 72-hole event with a 6-under-par total — and was happy with it.
There was only one competitor in the field that posted a better score. The only problem was, it was a guy named Irwin, and that score was 15 strokes better than Hamer’s.
“I remember thinking there was probably a few other guys out there like Hale, so that ended those thoughts (of turning pro),” Hamer said. “If I had known how good Hale was, though, I might have tried it.”
Indeed, after a golf career that’s included 20 PGA Tour victories, including three in U.S. Opens, and a record 45 on the Champions Tour, there aren’t many players in golf history who can claim they’ve had a better career. And that’s to say nothing of Irwin’s 1967 NCAA title while at the University of Colorado, his four CGA state amateur wins in the mid-1960s, or his state high school championship while at Boulder High.
On Tuesday night at the University Club, 20 years after being inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, Irwin was honored for all those credentials and more. The soon-to-be 67-year-old received the Nicholson Award, given for a lifetime of commitment and dedication to the game of golf. He joins a golf who’s-who who have earned the honor, including Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson.
Irwin only lived in Colorado — Boulder, to be exact — for about eight years, but he’s certainly made an impact in this state and far beyond.
It was in the Centennial State that Irwin really started cultivating his success. In fact, after playing just three rounds of golf on grass before moving from southeast Kansas to Boulder, he entered his first tournament at age 14.
And he won it, capturing the title in the local Jaycees event at what is now Flatirons Golf Course. He ended up parlaying that success into a berth in the national Jaycees tournament.
“I look back and that’s really where I got the injection of the tournament blood,” Irwin said Tuesday. “I thought, ‘This is my first tournament and a won it.’ I can remember being so excited.
“Then there was the rapid success of going on and seeing what golf could do. I had gone from southeast Kansas to Boulder, then in three (Jaycees) tournaments from Boulder to Denver, then on to Virginia (for the national event). So it was pretty exciting stuff.”
Flatirons — what was then known as Boulder Country Club — was where Irwin started really stoking his competitive fire. Whether it was ideal weather or there was snow on the ground, he practiced, determined to get better than the next guy.
“That just comes down to the ‘These guys aren’t going to beat me’ attitude,” Irwin said. “They could certainly outplay me but they weren’t going to beat me. They might win the battle, but I was going to win the war.”
He can still recall hitting his own practice balls at the course, and his dreams back then.
“I can remember thinking this is the shot to win the U.S. Open because that was the one tournament for which I could qualify,” he said. “That was the dream.”
As a 21-year-old amateur in 1966, Irwin qualified for his first U.S. Open, and he went one step further by making the cut. Coincidentally, that Open was contested at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, where it will be held again next month.
But it wasn’t just on the golf course that Irwin made himself what he is. He was also a standout on the football field at both Boulder High and CU, where he was a two-time All-Big Eight defensive back.
“There can be an argument that football was a hiccup in (my golf) development, but I think it was a necessary and good hiccup,” he said. “I think I learned a lot from football and seeing the vast difference between football and golf and what it took to play golf. I applied a lot of what I learned from football to golf. Some people say I took that attitude with me to golf but it was just a very competitive environment. When I got on the Tour, that’s the arena (football) from which I drew that experience.
“I looked at every golf course as a football field. It was me or them. I say that somewhat jokingly because the thing I had more of than the other fellas was effort. I point back to the football background. Look at me — I was a little guy even then, and I wasn’t terribly fast. So I had to read keys and be in position and play technically better than the next guy. Then I had to play over my weight. I had to hit harder. All that effort is what you could take to the golf course. So when you got to Winged Foot or those hard courses — where others guys might let up because they thought it was too hard — that was right up my alley.”
Though Irwin is more than five years removed from his last Champions Tour victory, he’s not ready to call it quits competitively. If he does win again, he’ll be the oldest champion in the history of the tour.
“The hardest thing for me is not ‘Can I hit the shot?’; I can hit any shot out there,” he said. “But I don’t have the intensity level that I once had, the concentration level I once had to carry through with that predictably time and time again.
“Particularly at nearly 67 I need to be more tolerant of things. But I still can do that. But is that going to be enough to win against the Michael Allens, the Fred Couples, the Tom Lehmans? There’s some good golf being played out there.”
