PGATour’s tallest and best putter
George Archer, the 1969 Masters champion, who was once the tallest player on the PGA Tour and maybe its best putter, died Sunday at his home in Incline Village, Nev. He was 65.
The cause was Burkitt’s lymphoma, a form of cancer, which he had been battling for a little more than a year, his daughter Elizabeth said.
After a successful amateur career, Archer, who was six feet six inches, turned professional in 1963 and won for the first time in 1965. Competing against players like Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Lee Trevino, he went on to win 12 tournaments on the PGA Tour and 19 on the Champions Tour for players 50 and older. His last victory was in the 2000 MasterCard Championship.
Despite his size, he was not a big hitter and used a 3-wood for most of his drives. He weighed 185 pounds in his prime; his green jacket as the Masters champion was size 42 extra long, and he joked that his shoes were made by Chris- Craft, a boat manufacturer.
In the 1969 Masters, one of men’s professional golf ’ s four major tournaments each year, he won by a stroke over Tom Weiskopf, Billy Casper and George Knudson. He shot par 72 in the final round and earned US$20,000. This year, Tiger Woods won the Masters and collected US$1.26-million.
The Masters is played at Augusta National in Georgia, a difficult course for most players. Archer made light of that, telling The New York Times
in 1972: “No tournament is harder to win than any other. It isn’t any harder to win the Masters than the Hartford Open. You have to get the breaks to win any tournament.’’
George William Archer was born Oct. 1, 1939, in San Francisco. He was kicked off his high school basketball team because he was spending more time playing golf than basketball. In a one-month stretch in his high school days, he caddied seven times for the pro Mervin Ward, who was known as Bud, and Ward’s highest score was 65.
Before joining the Tour, he spent six months tending cattle on a ranch in Gilroy, Calif., where he lived, doing chores in the morning and practising golf in the afternoon. The Times said in 1969: “He worked as the ‘new man,’ doing what he remembers as the rotten chores: cleaning stalls and water troughs and whitewashing miles of fences. He never rode a horse until he had enough money to buy one.’’
In 1980, at the Sea Pines Heritage Classic in Georgia, Archer set a Tour record for the fewest putts (95) in a 72-hole tournament. According to the PGA Tour, the record lasted until 1986, when Bob Tway finished with 94 putts.
In 1983, Elizabeth carried Archer’s bag in the Masters, the first woman to be a caddie there.
He is survived by his wife of 44 years, the former Donna Garman, who was also his coach; two daughters and seven grandchildren.
In 1996, Archer had hip-replacement surgery, and he was never pain-free after that. On Aug. 25, he and his wife drove to Truckee, Calif., for a final round of golf.
“ I’m not sure if he kept a scorecard, but he played gloriously,’’ Donna Archer said Monday.