Irwin, the three-time U.S. Open champion who spent many of his formative years in Boulder, will provide one of the highlights of tournament week as CommonGround Golf Course in Aurora hosts the AJGA event June 1-4.
Two days before his 70th birthday, the former two-sport athlete from the University of Colorado plans to conduct a short-game clinic and do a Q&A with CGA executive director Ed Mate at CommonGround, which is owned and operated by the CGA and CWGA. Irwin’s son, Steve, serves on the volunteer board of governors for the CGA and has won five CGA championships, including the 2004 Match Play.
The by-invitation-only Hale Irwin event is scheduled for June 1, the day before championship play begins in the 54-hole tournament. The tourney is expected to draw a strong national/international field, along with some of the best players from Colorado — both boys and girls, who will compete in separate divisions.
Having Hale Irwin — the most successful golfer to have grown up in Colorado — on hand for the AJGA tournament will put a nice exclamation mark on the week.
“It’s exactly what we were hoping for,” Mate said. “With his connections to Colorado, this is a great way to honor his legacy in the state. That’s special, especially with this being (the CGA’s) centennial year.”
Appropriately, the Hale Irwin tournament — the first AJGA event held in Colorado since 2013 — is being conducted at CommonGround, which is the home of the Hale Irwin Elite Player Program. The program, which was launched in 2012, is designed to nurture the budding talents of promising junior players in the state.
Irwin is an ideal role model for such players given his background and what he’s accomplished.
In 1962, he captured his first state championship, prevailing in the CGA Junior Match Play. He then won the individual state high school title in 1963, helping his Boulder High squad claim the team championship.
That same year, having just turned 18, Irwin won the first of three consecutive CGA Stroke Play titles, becoming the first person to accomplish that feat. (He’s pictured above on the 50th anniversary of the first of those victories.) In 1966 in his hometown of Boulder, Irwin captured the CGA Match Play championship, in the finals defeating three-time defending champion, current Colorado Golf Hall of Famer and CU teammate Larry McAtee, 5 and 4.
In ’66 as an amateur, Irwin also qualified for his first U.S. Open and went on to make the cut. Later that year, he was named an All-Big Eight defensive back in football for the second time. And the next spring he won the NCAA golf individual title while a CU senior.
All that happened while Irwin lived in Colorado — not the ideal climate for golf. But even with snow on the ground, Irwin practiced, showing competitiveness and resolve that few have matched.
“That just comes down to the ‘These guys aren’t going to beat me’ attitude,” Irwin said a few years ago while in Colorado. “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.”
And he did to a large extent. Irwin won 20 times on the PGA Tour, including the U.S. Open in 1974, ’79 and ’90, the last making him the oldest Open champion ever, at 45. Then he’s won 45 times on the Champions Tour — the most ever on that circuit by a remarkable margin of 16. And along the way, he earned his way into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
All in all, the Colorado kid made good.
The three-time U.S. Open champion attended Friday’s second round of the Stroke Play at Pinehurst Country Club to watch his son, Steve, compete in the event. Steve Irwin, the 2004 CGA Match Play winner, shares 18th place at the halfway point at Pinehurst following rounds of 72-73 for a 5-over-par 145 total.
Fifty years ago, in the months after Hale Irwin won the Colorado state high school title while at Boulder High School, he put on a clinic at the CGA Stroke Play that made an indelible mark on some of his fellow competitors.
John Hamer, like Irwin now a member of the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame, put Irwin’s golf abilities as a then-18-year-old into perspective.
Hamer, who like Irwin was a University of Colorado golfer during the 1960s, was starting to ponder whether he’d eventually take a shot at the PGA Tour. And at the 1963 CGA Stroke Play, he said he finished with a very respectable 6-under-par total for 72 holes.
Hamer placed second that week, but suffice it to say he wasn’t a close runner-up. Irwin won the tournament — by 15 strokes.
“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.”
That 1963 victory was the first of three in a row by Irwin in the CGA Stroke Play — at that time an unprecedented feat in the tournament. To this day, only one other player has won three straight — Bob Byman — and coincidentally, he too grew up in Boulder.
Like Irwin’s performance 50 years ago made an impression on Hamer, it still registers for Irwin — more so than his second and third Stroke Play titles.
“That was a lot of years ago, but I remember that first one; that made an impression on me,” Irwin said Friday.
“I was an upstart young guy and then there was the old guard — guys like Les Fowler and Jim English. I was relatively new to Colorado and I happened to have a very good tournament. I do remember playing awfully well.”
Of course, as Irwin is quick to note, it didn’t hurt that the tournament was played at what is now known as Flatirons Golf Course, which was Hale’s home course.
“You look at tournaments that get you started down a successful path, and that one kind of got me going,” he said.
Irwin would finish his amateur career with four CGA titles — he won the 1966 Match Play at Boulder Country Club by defeating fellow CU golfer Larry McAtee, the three-time defending champion, 5 and 4 in the 36-hole final.
Irwin, of course, has gone on to win an NCAA title while at CU, then 20 times on the PGA Tour (including the 1974, ’79 and ’90 U.S. Opens) and a record 45 times on the Champions Tour. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1992.
The CGA and CWGA now operate the Hale Irwin Elite Player Program out of CommonGround Golf Course, which is owned and operated by the golf associations.
The year it was first held, William McKinley was president of the U.S., Butch Cassidy allegedly was in on a train robbery in Montana, and Queen Victoria passed away.
The 113th CGA Match Play will be held next week — July 8-12 — at Bear Creek Golf Club in west Denver.
The championship has been contested every year since 1901. That not only makes it the oldest continuously held statewide golf tournament in Colorado, but one of the oldest in the nation.
While the U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur, Masters and PGA Championship — along with the British Open — all weren’t held various years because of World War I and/or II, the CGA Match Play has never missed a beat. It’s been contested each year without fail since Frank Woodward defeated H.K.B. Davis Sr., 3 and 2 in the finals in 1901.
The Match Play actually predates the CGA by 14 years, but the association’s first official function when it was founded in 1915 was becoming the administrator of the event.
Over the first 112 years, the champions have included the very famous and the obscure.
Four members of the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame have their names on the Richard C. Campbell CGA Match Play trophy — N.C. “Tub” Morris (1924 and ’27), Charles “Babe” Lind (1946), Hale Irwin (1966) and Steve Jones (1980). Between them, Irwin and Jones went on to win the U.S. Open four times.
“I look back at all those (Colorado amateur) events I was fortunate enough to play and have some success in as really the groundwork that got me started into the golf scene,” Irwin said last year. “Colorado golf is where it all started.”
Other current PGA Tour players who have won the CGA Match Play are Brandt Jobe (1984, ’85, ’88) and fellow Kent Denver High School alum Kevin Stadler (1999 and 2002).
The championship has seen everything from a couple of 12-and-11 routs in the 36-hole final match, to one finale that lasted more than 40 holes, as Sam Valuck needed 42 to overcome future state senator Les Fowler in the 1961 title match at Cherry Hills.
Dr. Larry Bromfield has been by far the most successful player in CGA Match Play history, having won an amazing eight times from 1912-28. Next best are Mark Crabtree, Larry McAtee and Walter Fairbanks, with four titles each.
This year’s Match Play will be contested at Bear Creek, which has hosted the championship 13 previous times since 1986.
Former Georgetown University golfer Brian Dorfman of Cherry Creek Country Club will defend his 2012 title, and last year’s runner-up, Colorado State University golfer Parker Edens, is also back. (Dorfman is pictured above in front of the Match Play trophy.)
Likewise in the field are former University of Colorado golfer Derek Fribbs, who last month won the CGA Public Links Championship after shooting a final-round 62; 2012 CGA Stroke Play champion and 2013 Publinks runner-up Steven Kupcho; 2012 U.S. Amateur match play qualifier Mike Schoolcraft; and 2004 Match Play winner Steve Irwin.
As the defending champ, Dorfman will be the No. 1 seed, with a single round of stroke play on Monday setting up the rest of the 64-man match play bracket.