![]() Golf fans remember the playoff at Valhalla. Open champion, Fleck was presented a check for $6,000 and quipped, “I think my wife will find some use for it.” Years later, he was still entering tournaments, but disconsolate that he sometimes couldn’t break 80. In golf, however, he’d never won any tournament of consequence. Fleck, then 32, had been heroic in another way, serving in World War II and being aboard a British ship off the coast of Normandy on D-Day. ![]() Playing in front of a reported crowd of 10,000 on Sunday for an 18-hole playoff, most heartily rooting for the legend from Texas, Fleck shot 69 and won by three over Hogan, who announced his retirement right there in the aftermath. But late in the day, in an era when pairings weren’t arranged by leaderboard position, Iowa municipal-course pro Fleck rode a wave of back-nine birdies in shooting 67 to tie Hogan. It was said he’d already donated his golf ball to the USGA. When commentator Gene Sarazen signed off on the broadcast from San Francisco’s Olympic Club, Ben Hogan was declared the owner of a fifth U.S. The script had its satisfying ending, or so everyone thought. And on that Sunday night in Pinehurst, when he might have been pouting in his room, Gore walked into a local sports bar alone, tilted a couple of pints with the locals and truly proved to be the all-time Everyman. He won three times that summer in the aftermath and earned a “battlefield” promotion to the PGA Tour, and he scored his only title in the big leagues later that September. Alas, Gore and Goosen positively melted in the final round, shooting an astonishing 84 and 81, respectively, while New Zealand’s Michael Campbell secured his only major victory. Goosen ended up taking a three-shot lead into Sunday, but the South African carried a flat personality, and it was Gore who easily became the gallery favorite. ![]() Barrel chested and jovial, Gore was an easy guy to root for, and that became apparent in the second round, when the Californian shot up the leaderboard at steamy Pinehurst with a 67 that tied him for the lead with Retief Goosen and Olin Brown. At 31, he’d won three times on what is now the developmental Korn Ferry Tour, but had played in just a single major to that point. Gore was on the verge of being labeled a journeyman when he arrived at Pinehurst that June.
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