Oosterhuis passed away the day before his 76th birthday.
One day short of his 76th birthday, PGA Tour winner and former Masters broadcaster Peter Oosterhuis passed away on Thursday morning according to the PGA Tour.
The Englishman won the 1981 Canadian Open but was probably more known as the longtime voice of the 17th hole at Augusta National during CBS’s annual Masters coverage. Oosterhuis retired from broadcasting in 2014 to deal with early-onset of Alzheimer’s. The London native earned seven wins on the European Tour in a two-year span from 1972-74 and was the rookie of the year in 1969. He also competed on six consecutive Ryder Cup teams from 1971-1981, where he boasts an overall record of 14-11-3. He twice defeated Arnold Palmer as part of his record-tying six Sunday singles wins.
Oosterhuis was the Director of Golf at Forsgate Country Club in Jamesburg, New Jersey, and Riviera Country Club outside Los Angeles from 1987-1993 and then tried his hand at broadcasting. He worked as lead analyst for Golf Channel’s European Tour coverage and then joined CBS, where he covered the Masters from 1997-2014.
He is survived by his wife, Ruth Ann, sons Rob and Rich, stepsons Byron and Matt and four grandchildren Peyton, Turner, Sutton and Lachlan.
“(Carl) had incredible instincts, took calculated risks and hired the best people he could find.”
AUSTIN, Texas — Before cell phones became an essential part of daily life, folks trying to track down Carl Paul on a Sunday knew exactly how to do it.
“It was easy — you just had to call his work phone,” said Barry Rinke, Paul’s son-in-law. “He was always at his desk, even on Sunday. He loved what he did. It was never about money for him. It was about loving what he did.”
What Paul did was take an avocation — a knack for custom-producing golf clubs — and create one of the biggest forces in the world of golf, Golfsmith. Co-founded with his wife, Barbara, Golfsmith started in the family’s two-bedroom apartment, forcing the couple’s daughters to move in with them. But by the time it was sold in 2002, Golfsmith grew from that bedroom to 35 brick-and-mortar retail stores across the country, employing 1,200 people and boasting a catalog distribution of 30 million per year, making it the biggest golf retail and component catalog in the world.
But to know Paul, who died on January 12 at the age of 83, was to understand that his passion was always around building a community. Family was essential to Paul, and so was his extended family of clubmakers that stretched out over the globe. When Carl and Barbara started the Golfsmith clubmaker’s school in Austin, Texas, they often invited those taking the weeklong seminar into their home.
“Years later, we started hosting a conference, and we’d have 500 customers from all over the world in Austin,” said Rinke, who worked for the family business for 17 years. “A huge percentage would say, ‘Yeah, I remember staying with Carl and Barbara in their house.’ It truly was a family. He touched so many lives.”
Incredibly, Paul used S&H green stamps — a rewards program from a bygone era — to purchase the drill that got the process started in the couple’s New York City-area home. At the time, Paul worked for the Federal Power Commission and was moonlighting in the club-making business.
Carl Paul moved to Austin in 1973. The co-founder of Golfsmith died at the age of 83 on Jan. 12. (Photo: contributed by Paul family)
Paul offered his brother Frank a one-third stake in the business, and soon after, he decided to quit his job, move the family to Austin and turn his hobby into a career. The move paid massive dividends.
“Carl was an advocate of taking calculated risks. That’s what he did with the move,” Rinke said. “And as things started to grow, he kept this a family business. He had incredible instincts, took calculated risks and hired the best people he could find.
“He was just a guy who lived by his gut feelings. And when he started fixing and building clubs, he would see how other people had the same desire to fix and build their clubs, and how it could become a small business for many of these people.”
Rinke became part of the family by marrying Beth Paul, a golfer who starred at Westwood High School in Austin before playing for the University of Texas. In 1985, Rinke recalls talking with Carl Paul about the company’s 108 employees and then booming $8 million in sales.
“We thought, ‘Oh gosh, this just can’t get any bigger’,” Rinke said.
But when the family sold the business in 2002, sales were closing in on $300 million per year.
Paul is survived by Barbara, with whom he was married for 58 years, and daughters Beth, Kelly and Marnie.
January notably won the first-ever PGA Tour Champions event in 1980.
Don January, winner of the 1967 PGA Championship and a two-time member of the U.S. Ryder Cup team, died Sunday at age 93, according to the PGA Tour.
January won 10 times on the PGA Tour. In 1976, he won the Vardon Trophy for low scoring average at the age of 46.
Born in Plainview, Texas, on Nov. 20, 1929, he led the North Texas State golf team to four straight NCAA titles. Given the nickname “Bones,” January won his 1963 PGA in an 18-hole playoff at Columbine Country Club in Denver.
He made 526 starts on the PGA Tour and once he turned 50, he made another 333 starts on the PGA Tour Champions, winning 22 times on the senior circuit.
He banked $3,220,478 on the Champions tour, earning three times what he did on the PGA Tour. January notably won the first-ever Champions event, the 1980 Atlantic City Senior International.
Broeck famously played and caddied in the same PGA Tour event.
“Last Call” Lance Ten Broeck, who famously played and caddied in the same PGA Tour event, died Sunday at St. Mary’s Hospital in West Palm Beach. He was 67.
Ten Broeck grew up on the south side of Chicago, part of a family of golfers, and played collegiately at Texas. He qualified for the U.S. Open seven times and held the 36-hole lead in the 2012 U.S. Senior Open, but was the quintessential journeyman golfer, playing at least 14 tournaments in 12 seasons, making 355 career starts on the Tour, recording 11 top-10 finishes without ever claiming an official win.
“I probably didn’t have enough confidence, but it’s hard to have confidence when you’re not playing well,” Ten Broeck once told The Caddie Network. “And when I played badly, I didn’t want to play.”
In 1999, with his playing status all but gone, Jesper Parnevik asked him to caddie for him. They won together that first week at the Wyndham Championship and Ten Broeck had a new profession. In addition to caddying for four of Parnevik’s victories, he also worked for the likes of Ernie Els, Tim Herron and Richard S. Johnson.
RIP Lance Ten Broeck. One of the great characters I have known my entire time caddying . Taken way too early . Last Call will have that bar upstairs rocking . pic.twitter.com/JAIIG87H8N
Along the way, he made a habit of committing to events where he caddied just in case several players dropped out and depleted the alternates list. At the 2009 Valero Texas Open, that’s exactly what happened. Ten Broeck didn’t know yet of his impending tee time and the night before he enjoyed eight happy-hour special orders of a 22-ounce beer and a jug of sake for $6.50. Parnevik teed off at 7:25 a.m. and when the round ended Ten Broeck, 53 at the time, was informed he had an afternoon tee time.
“I didn’t have any clubs or even any pants. I had to be taken to the mall to buy pants.” said Ten Broeck, who still managed to shoot a respectable 71.
He followed it up by shooting 70 to beat his boss by two strokes but they both missed the cut. Ten Broeck, who was tall enough that he didn’t need a stool for kitchen cabinets, borrowed clubs from the 5-foot-7 Johnson and later complained the clubs were too short, the irons too stiff. (Read all about it in this ‘Hate to be Rude’ column here.)
We lost a great friend of the game of golf yesterday, Lance Ten Broeck.
Lance spent his whole life around our great game as a player, a caddy, and a coach, for that matter.
He repeated the feat the following year near Cancun, finishing his loop 12 minutes before his tee time. There was no time to eat lunch let alone warm up or even hit a practice putt. He played in sneakers.
“It was more fun the last time,” Ten Broeck said afterwards. “I played crummy. I didn’t even make a birdie.”
When asked later that year if he was interested in seeing if the third time would be the charm in New Orleans, where players were dropping like flies from the field, he said, “No, man. The thrill is gone.”
Lance Ten Broeck held the 36-hole lead at the 2012 U.S. Senior Open before finishing T-9.
An all-time nickname
Ten Broeck earned one of the great nicknames in golf for his tendency to close the bar. He once recounted the story of how former caddie Jeff “Boo” Burrell stamped him with the nickname when Ten Broeck was playing in the 1980 Pensacola Open.
“Jeff used to make football bets with me and I would phone them in to the bookie,” Ten Broeck told Craig Dolch for a Caddie Network story. “He came into my hotel room Sunday morning and there was a guy sleeping on the floor in a bartender uniform. Jeff said, ‘Who the heck is that?’
“I had gone to Rosie O’Grady’s the night before and I needed a ride home. I had to stick around for last call for the bartender to give me a ride home. So Jeff started calling me ‘Last Call Lance.’”
As Golf Channel’s Rich Lerner noted in his tweet, “he loved a good hang as much as his golf.”
Lance Ten Broeck, longtime pro and later a caddie, passed at 67. Known as “Last Call Lance,” he was a likable character who loved a good hang as much as he loved golf. RIP.
Ten Broeck won one event, the 1984 Magnolia Classic, but it was an unofficial opposite-field event played the same week as the Masters. Ten Broeck played sparingly on PGA Tour Champions, beginning in 2005. He threatened to win the biggest senior title in golf at the 2012 U.S. Senior Open, grabbing the 36-hole lead but couldn’t keep up his pace over the weekend and finished T-9.
