Doug Ford, 1957 Masters champion, among notable deaths

Doug Ford, the 1957 Masters champion, died May 14. He was 95 and the tournament’s oldest living winner at the time of his death.

He won the Masters when he shot 66 in the final round to rally from a three-shot deficit to Sam Snead. Ford collected the first of his 19 tour victories in 1952, and his last win was in 1963. Ford won the 1955 PGA Championship, and he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2011.

He played on the Senior Tour when it began in 1980, and twice won a division for older players at the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf.

But Ford, a native of Connecticut, is best remembered for his victory at Augusta National Golf Club. A daring shot at the par-5 15th in the final round lifted him to victory.

“That shot,” Ford said in an interview with The Augusta Chronicle in 2017, “was what won it.”

A day earlier, Ford was near the same spot, 230 yards from the pin, and elected to go for the reachable par-5 in two. Ford’s 3-wood found the water in front and seemingly took him out of contention.

After the round, his fellow tour professionals questioned the move.

“They were all wondering why I went for it,” Ford recalled. “They said, ‘If you get that shot tomorrow, you need to lay up.’ ”

A day later, Ford refused to play conservatively.

After playing his first 14 holes Sunday in 4-under fashion, Ford had stormed to the lead with four holes to play. Not far behind was Snead, who trailed by a stroke.

Similar to Saturday, Ford’s drive at No. 15 found the fairway – a mere 230 yards from the green. His caddie, George “Fireball” Franklin, urged him to play safe.

“Fireball kept telling me to hit an iron – to not go for it,” Ford said. “It got sort of heated between us and you could tell the crowd could sense what was going on. In the end, I went for it. After all, they don’t remember you in Augusta unless you win.”

Ford hit 3-wood and struck the same shot as the day before. Only this time, the ball found the green instead of trickling down the bank.

The 34-year-old two-putted for birdie and extended his lead.

“I was never a good safe player,” Ford said.

Now two strokes clear of the field, Ford’s second shot on No. 18 found the greenside bunker – and plugged. But Ford walked up, hit it and watched as it landed some 25 feet short and rolled into the cup for a birdie.

Ford played in 49 Masters between 1952 and 2001, which ranks third in tournament history behind Gary Player (52) and Arnold Palmer (50). He played in 46 consecutively.

A year after winning his green jacket, Ford almost became the first player to successfully defend his Masters title. He finished one shot behind Palmer, who won the first of his four Masters after getting a favorable ruling at the par-3 12th.

“I only have myself to blame,” Ford said. “I missed birdie putts on No. 17 and 18 that would have won it. I don’t blame the rules committee.”

In his latter years, Ford struggled to compete at Augusta National.

Ford, Gay Brewer and Billy Casper received a letter from Masters chairman Hootie Johnson in 2002 asking them to no longer compete in the tournament because they exhibited a pattern of not completing their rounds.

Ford withdrew from his final four Masters appearances, including in 2001, when he quit after one hole. Brewer and Casper each withdrew twice in their final three appearances at Augusta National.

Johnson later rescinded the order to ban champions after they turned 65, which was to go into effect in 2004.

Ford was still a regular at Augusta National each year, making his way from Florida to Augusta the Saturday before the tournament and remaining in town for Tuesday’s annual Champions Dinner.

And he kept his sharp wit.

When asked what it felt like to be the oldest living champion, Ford paused to collect his thoughts.

“I’d rather be the youngest,” he said.

Gene Littler, who lost a playoff at the 1970 Masters, died Feb. 15. He was 88.

Known as “Gene the Machine” for his fluid swing, Littler won 29 times on the PGA Tour and claimed his only major at the U.S. Open in 1961.

Littler played in the Masters 26 times between 1954 and 1980, and his best chance at winning came in the tournament’s final 18-hole playoff. He squared off against Billy Casper, a good friend and fellow San Diego golfer.

Both had played steady golf, with Casper firing rounds of 72, 68, 68 and 71. Littler opened with a 69 and finished with three rounds of 70.

In the Monday playoff, though, it was Casper who had precision and consistency. Long known as one of the game’s best putters, Casper one-putted nine times in firing a 3-under 69. Littler finished with a 2-over 74, making it the most lopsided 18-hole playoff loss in tournament history.

Casper opened up a four-shot advantage after just four holes. The lead increased to seven through 11 holes, but Littler made it interesting down the stretch with birdies at Nos. 13 and 15. Bogeys by Casper on Nos. 12 and 14 had narrowed the deficit to three, but he put the tournament out of reach with birdies on two of the final three holes.

Littler won the first of his tour titles in the 1954 San Diego Open while still an amateur. He won the 1955 Los Angeles Open for his first pro victory and went on to win three more times that year.

At the 1961 U.S. Open, Littler rallied from three shots behind in the final round at Oakland Hills to win the U.S. Open. Nearly two decades later, he nearly won the 1977 PGA Championship at Pebble Beach until losing to Lanny Wadkins in the first sudden-death playoff in a major.

He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1990 and in 1973 received the Bob Jones Award, the highest honor by the U.S. Golf Association that recognizes distinguished sportsmanship in golf.

Peter Thomson, a five-time winner of the British Open and the only player in the 20th century to win the tournament for three consecutive years, died June 20. 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, according to Golf Australia.

The first Australian to win the British Open, Thomson went on to secure the title five times between 1954 and 1965. Only Harry Vardon, with six titles between 1896 and 1914, won more.

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.

Despite his global success, Thomson only played in the Masters eight times between 1953 and 1969, placing fifth in 1957.

Thomson also tied for fourth at the 1956 U.S. Open. 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 at Royal Melbourne.

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 1979, he was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his service to golf, and in 2001 became an Officer of the Order of Australia for his contributions as a player and administrator and for community service.

Hubert Green, who used a quick, quirky swing to forge a Hall of Fame career, died June 19 in Birmingham, Ala., after a long battle with throat cancer. He was 71.

Green won 19 times on the PGA Tour and four times on the PGA Tour Champions. He captured the 1977 U.S. Open at Southern Hills by one shot over Lou Graham, despite playing the last four holes after receiving a death threat, and added the 1985 PGA Championship at Cherry Hills, beating Lee Trevino by two.

At the Masters, Green played at Augusta National 19 times between 1969 and 1990. He finished runner-up in 1978 after missing a short putt on the final hole.

“I never thought about it once after I missed it,” Green told The Augusta Chronicle. “I hit a bad putt. My father told me a long time ago to do the best you can, then carry on.”

Green said the missed 3-footer wasn’t where he lost the tournament.

“What cost me was on No. 16, where I 3-putted from 15 feet,” Green said.

Green won two of the last three Greater Jacksonville Opens, in 1974 and 1976 at Deerwood, before the tournament evolved into The Players Championship. He had three top-10s in The Players, including a tie for sixth in 1982, the first year the tournament was at the TPC Sawgrass Players Stadium Course.

He also added a victory, with Gil Morgan, at the 1999 Legends of Golf at the Slammer and Squire. Eight years later, he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Green had a swing in which he kept his hands low and after numerous twitches, would lash at the ball with a short, quick backswing. But he became one of the top winners on the PGA Tour in the 1970s and 1980s.

Green had nerves of steel on the golf course – especially during the 1977 U.S. Open when USGA officials informed him of a death threat when he had a one-shot lead through 14 holes in the final round. The threat said Green would be shot on the 15th green and officials offered to clear the golf course or suspend play until Monday.

Green chose to keep playing, in front of the galleries, and played his last four holes at even par to win.

His final PGA Tour victory came at the 1985 PGA as he pulled away from a tie with Trevino with five holes to play.

Green also was a solid Ryder Cup player, going 8-5, with a 3-0 record in singles.

Dan Jenkins, who covered more Masters Tournaments than anyone, died March 7. He was 90.

He covered his first Masters in 1951, the same year his boyhood idol Ben Hogan won his first green jacket, and covered every one through 2018. In addition to covering 68 Masters, Jenkins covered 232 major championships with 63 U.S. Opens, 45 British Opens and 56 PGAs.

The Fort Worth, Texas, native began working for his hometown paper while still in high school, and later earned the Hogan beat where he became good friends with the golfer. Jenkins eventually landed at Sports Illustrated, and he stayed with the magazine from the early 1960s to 1984. He became a regular columnist for Golf Digest in 1985.

Jenkins found a broader audience as a best-selling novelist, with Dead Solid Perfect, Semi-Tough and You Gotta Play Hurt among his titles. His 23rd and final book, Sports Makes You Type Faster, was published last year.

In 2012 he was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame, one of only three writers to be so honored and the only one to go in while still alive.

Hogan once offered to help Jenkins, who was a scratch player, with his game and perhaps move on to national events.

“I said, Ben, I’m flattered and I appreciate that, and I’m embarrassed to have to turn down an offer of free golf lessons from the greatest player in the world, but I just want to be a sports writer,” Jenkins said at his Hall of Fame induction. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be.

“He looked at me like I’ve seen him look at other people, with that cold stare, and you don’t know whether you’re going to get a bullet in the head or a dagger in the heart, and you wait and it seems like an eternity, and then he smiled and he said, ‘well, keep working at it.”’

Jenkins also is member of the Texas Golf Hall of Fame and the National Sportscasters and Sports Writers Hall of Fame. He also won the Red Smith Award from the Associated Press Sports Editors among numerous honors.

It was at Augusta, though, where Jenkins really shined. He once quipped that he hoped to reach 52 Masters so he could say he had spent a year of his life in Augusta, but he achieved that and more.

“It’s so beautiful now, and I remember when I came the first time in ’51 and I thought it was the most beautiful place in the world,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins started out in the press tent covering the Masters, then moved to the Quonset hut in 1953. When a new press facility opened in 1990, writers dubbed it the Taj Mahal. It eventually gave way to the mammoth Press Building that opened in 2017, and Jenkins was the only writer who covered the year’s first major in all four venues.

Jenkins’ career started in the days of manual typewriters but he was still effective in the social media era and was considered a must-follow on Twitter, where he exhibited his sharp wit in short form at the major events.

He is survived by his wife June, sons Danny and Marty, and daughter Sally, who followed him into the sports writing profession.

Dave Anderson, a genteel sports writer whose elegant, descriptive prose won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary as a columnist for The New York Times, died Oct. 4. He was 89.

He died at an assisted living facility in Cresskill, N.J., the Times said. He worked at the newspaper from 1966 to 2007.

An expert on baseball, the NFL, boxing and golf, Anderson wrote 21 books, received the 1994 Red Smith Award for outstanding contributions to sports journalism from the Associated Press Sports Editors and was inducted into the National Sports Writers and Sportscasters Hall of Fame in 1990. He was known for his warmth to friends and strangers alike and unflagging politeness.

Anderson covered the Masters 38 times.

Anderson was born in Troy, N.Y., on May 6, 1929, attended Xavier High School and received a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Holy Cross.

A few months after his graduation in 1951, he became a clerk for the Brooklyn Eagle and started covering baseball the following year, when he was assigned card No. 457 by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. He would rise to No. 1 in 2001.

When Harold C. Burr, the Eagles’ beat writer for the Dodgers, broke a hip in a fall at a Cincinnati hotel during a road trip in 1953, sports editor Lou Niss assigned Anderson to replace him.

Anderson was about to leave for spring training in 1955 when Newspaper Guild members of the Eagle struck and the paper folded. He was hired by the New York Journal-American to write a Brooklyn sports column.

He switched to the Times a decade later and became a sports columnist in 1971 alongside Red Smith. He became involved in controversy in 2002 when the Daily News reported the Times refused to publish columns by Anderson and Harvey Araton about the Augusta National Golf Club’s refusal to admit women.

A Times editorial had stated “Tiger Woods, who has won the Masters three times, could simply choose to stay home in April.” After the Daily News report, the Times reported editors did not run the column because executive editor Howell Raines thought it gave the appearance of internal squabbling with the editorial board. The column later ran with the lead: “Please, let Tiger Woods just play golf.”