(Editor’s note: GolfWeek is celebrating its 50th anniversary and will continue to do so through future magazines and a celebration held in conjunction with this year’s PGA Show in Orlando. For the first 50 days of 2026, GolfWeek will share memories and covers from longtime former employees.)
April 7, 1975 in Augusta, Georgia Four-time Masters champion Arnold Palmer is surrounded by autograph-seeking women as he arrives for practice for Thursday’s Masters Championship in Augusta.
For those of us who believe that the PGA Tour has gradually sacrificed individuality for corporatism, the 1975 schedule provides important supporting evidence. That was the year Golfweek debuted, with a slew of tournaments hosted by big names whose naming privileges had long ago been erased by KPI-focused genius CMOs.
advertisement
Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Andy Williams, Glen Campbell, and Danny Thomas gave away the largest bills to AT&T, American Express, Farmers Insurance, Genesis, and FedEx St. Jude. Dean Martin also stopped in Tucson, but before dark, at what later became the Chrysler Classic. Even Ed McMahon attended an event that still bears the name of a man named John Deere. Celebrity affiliations these days don’t extend beyond Creator Classic.
Because it was held opposite the British Open, Deere’s purse in ’75 was only $75,000, or about $450,000 in today’s dollars. Roger Maltby won that week and the week after that. His two first-place checks totaled $330,000, less than the prize money received by Sepp Straka, who finished last in the Tour Championship.
Roger Maltby has a check from winning and then losing the 1975 Pleasant Valley Classic.
Unlike Roger, Sepp did not deposit his check at the bar. Jack Nicklaus won five games that season, including two majors, and topped the list with an inflation-adjusted winnings of $1.78 million. That’s about the same amount as Cameron Young won his first title at the Wyndham Championship in August.
advertisement
It was the spring when Lee Elder broke the color barrier at the Masters. It was gruesomely appropriate for the modern golf ethos that the 2021 First Tee commemorating that historic moment was ruined. Some unfortunate son of a bitch named Wayne Player rode his father’s coat tails to places he didn’t care about and then did what he had spent his entire life doing, pulling off a marketing stunt where he placed a sleeve of golf balls high over his head behind the elder man in his wheelchair.
April 8, 1975. Augusta, Georgia, USA. Lee Elder at Augusta National Golf Course during the 1975 Masters. Elder was the first black player to compete in the Masters. Required Credit: File Photo – Augusta Chronicle via USA TODAY NETWORK
That summer, the Open was held at Carnoustie. Old photos show players on a practice field that resembles a chewed-up cow pasture, the kind of place where today’s superstars jump hurdles and post rude complaints on social media. Tom Watson defeated Jack Newton in the playoffs. Newton passed away several years ago. He was a great player and a hellraiser. A few years after finishing runner-up at the 1980 Masters, he crashed into a propeller at Sydney’s airport on a rainy night, losing his right arm and eye.
Bert Yancey played in his last major tournament in the summer of ’75. He recorded six top-five finishes in the game’s biggest events, but also battled bipolar disorder. After leaving the Westchester stop in August, he climbed a ladder at LaGuardia Airport and told arriving passengers to separate them by race to preach harmony. Although his career was nearly derailed, Yancey’s story serves as a reminder that a mental health crisis existed in elite golf long before Grayson Murray’s recent tragic death.
advertisement
Many other aspects of the ’75 season went in a disturbing direction.
Jack Nicklaus takes a hit from the trap during a practice round for the Masters on April 9, 1975 in Augusta, Georgia.
The schedule at the time lacked the rigid structure of today, with no playoffs or even a finale, and things lulled into a series of tournaments in the West, the final one in San Antonio, and then a silly seasonal team event at Disney. The players returned to Japan at the end of October. Now they can be done by Labor Day and save the Ryder Cup and paid gigs in far-flung locations. At the top of the money list is Scottie Scheffler, with $26 million. Adding in bonuses from FedEx and Comcast, his earnings in 2025 exceeded his total prize money for the 1975 season on tour. Even the newspaper writers who followed the circus back in the day have long since become obsolete due to cost efficiency, and have been replaced by paid influencers.
As John Wooden said, all progress is change, but not all change is progress.
advertisement
The PGA Tour has improved in many ways since then. golf week It was first published 50 years ago and that is something to celebrate. Perhaps a few decades from now, when AI bots look back in 2025 and look back on half a century, they’ll find memorable, thoroughly authentic characters and an old-fashioned charm of homely simplicity. After all, professional golf is changing so rapidly that our current institutions will soon look like relics of a bygone era, some of which we may even miss.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Lynch: As Golfweek celebrates its 50th anniversary, the only constant is change
