Gary Player Won the 1965 U.S. Open. Then He Gave Away the Winner's Check

In 2018, the last time professional golf came to Bellerive Country Club, the reviews of the golf course were not particularly kind.

“I’m not saying there is no strategy. I’m not saying that,” said Pat Perez, right before he went on to say … pretty much exactly that. “There’s only one way to play it,” Perez added. “Just hit it as far as you can, then try to attack the pins with the greens that soft.”

Dustin Johnson gave a similar review.

“It’s pretty straightforward,” Dustin Johnson said. “Hit it in the fairway and hit it on the green.”

The media takes were even more acidic. Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch said Bellerive was such a mediocre course that “even Rees Jones can’t claim as being among his finest fiascos.” Geoff Shackelford called the greens “poor” and “weak” and pointed out that even though the course had been renovated in 2007, another renovation was likely in the cards. (He was right. The club spent $19 million in improvements after the PGA Championship.)

One ESPN golf scribe went even further in his critique.

“Apologies to the fine people in the St. Louis area, who have turned out in big numbers and have been eager to see a major return to this area, but this is not a venue that should ever host a major again. It is long and boring and requires almost no strategy.

There are no memorable shots here, no dramatic holes, nothing that anyone will remember a week after this is over. The city and the people are nice. The course represents everything that's boring and broken about professional golf.”

As it turned out, that smarmy ESPN writer — me, by the way — wasn’t entirely correct. Bellerive produced a memorable PGA Championship, at least over the weekend, and one that we’d still be talking about had Tiger Woods tracked down Brooks Koepka on Sunday. The roars I heard that afternoon are among the most memorable in my time as a golf writer, and Koepka’s 4-iron from 238 yards into the 16th hole is probably one of the greatest shots I’ve ever seen in person. Koepka would later say he’d give back every dollar he ever earned just to experience that feeling of being in contention in a major one more time.

It was a good lesson. The modern golf media doth complain too much, methinks. A golf course might not be interesting, but the results can still be memorable if the right characters emerge. Nick Price won the first of his three majors at Bellerive in 1992, a win he felt changed his whole career.

Could something special happen this week when the PGA Tour tees it up for the BMW Championship at Bellerive?

It doesn’t feel likely. PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp realized the FedEx Cup Playoffs needed an overhaul for multiple reasons, a key one being there are no discernible stakes for the top players. Rory McIlroy looks admittedly lost with his golf swing at the moment, yet we already know he’ll be in the field at East Lake in Atlanta next week. The PGA Tour will also be distributing $100 million in bonuses at the end of this event, of which there is no cut. Scottie Scheffler has already locked up first place, meaning he’ll snag $22 million (plus another $1 million deferred) as a reward for his play this season.

The fact the Tour is playing at Bellerive this week — and backing up a Brink’s truck full of cash for players — reminded me of one of my favorite anecdotes in golf history, and one that’s worth re-sharing because it’s not widely remembered today.

In 1965, Gary Player became just the third man in history to complete the career Grand Slam, winning the U.S. Open by beating Kel Nagle in an 18-hole playoff at Bellerive. He joined Gene Sarazen and Ben Hogan, beating Jack Nicklaus to the accomplishment. (Nicklaus would match the feat the following year when he won the Open Championship.) Player was the first foreigner to win the U.S. Open since 1925, but he actually did something that week I promise no professional golfer will ever duplicate.

He gave away the winner’s purse, minutes after accepting the trophy. All of it.

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Player is — and this is putting it lightly — an eccentric figure. I’ve learned over the years that it’s essential to fact-check nearly everything he says. His tall tales often run hot with hyperbole, and short on facts. He’s also been embroiled in his share of controversy. But what happened at Bellerive in 1965 is still commendable.

He earned $26,000 for winning the U.S. Open (about $265,000 in today’s dollars) and announced during his speech that he was giving $20,000 of it back to the USGA for junior golf programs in America. He was giving $5,000 to the Cancer Relief Fund (in honor of his mother, who died when he was 8 years old). The rest, plus an extra $1,000 out of his pocket, went to his caddie.

Gary Player is truly the only man to ever win the U.S. Open — and the Grand Slam — and come out of it down a thousand dollars. This, mind you, was at a time when the median household income in America was $6,900 a year.

“A long time ago, I said to myself there is no use saying ‘Please God, let me have this championship or that’ if you’re not willing to make a sacrifice,” Player told reporters after he was awarded the trophy. “So I decided that if God would be kind enough to let me win the U.S. Open, I’d make some sacrifice. The American people have treated me so well that in some way I wanted to show my appreciation.”

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We’ve spent so much oxygen the last five years arguing about how much golfers should get paid, and what kind of compensation is sustainable, that it’s easy to forget that previous generations of golfers didn’t always tie themselves into knots worrying about such things. They played for a piece of history and assumed the rest would sort itself out.

Bellerive might be an imperfect venue, but it’s been the backdrop for some great moments. Let’s hold out hope that one more awaits us.