Scott Simpson turned back a stacked leaderboard to give USC a U.S. Open win on Father’s Day.
Father’s Day is U.S. Open Sunday. We hope you have had a great day, and we send our best to Trojan dads and all dads who celebrate this day with their families. It was 37 years ago that a USC golfer won the 1987 U.S. Open in San Francisco. Scott Simpson created an immortal moment against a stacked leaderboard.
Entering the final round of the 1987 United States Open Golf Championship at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, Tom Watson — owner of eight major championships — held a one-stroke lead over a tightly-bunched field with big names. If Watson wasn’t going to win, young Keith Clearwater — who roared to the top section of the leaderboard with a stunning 64, the second-lowest score in U.S. Open history — did not figure to overtake him.
The smart money rested with Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer, or Ben Crenshaw, all major champions.
Those big names weren’t just major champions, we should note; they were multiple major title winners (though some had not yet won a second major at the time). This was a loaded field. Scott Simpson rose above them all.
USC has won a lot of football games in the San Francisco Bay Area over the decades. This was as sweet a Bay Area win for the Trojans as any other they have achieved. Scott Simpson achieved golf immortality with his one shining moment at the Olympic Club.
“He was just grumpy and entitled … nobody liked him.”
HONOLULU — A year ago, while covering the PGA Tour in Maui, I heard that former U.S. Open champion Scott Simpson not only had moved to Hawaii after his playing days had come to an end, but that he had become the men’s golf coach at University of Hawaii. Who knew!
So, I looked him up and met with the seven-time PGA Tour winner the following week at the Sony Open for what resulted in an enjoyable two-part Q&A and a standalone story (Part I here; U.S. Open flash back here; partnering with Bill Murray at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am here). A few weeks ago, during my return trip to Oahu to cover the Sony Open, we sat down again for another solid hour and delved deeper into partnering with Bill Murray at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, coaching the modern golfer, why he supports a rollback of the ball and doesn’t like NIL or LIV as well as how Greg Norman turned into a jerk. All that and more. Enjoy.
As the buzz about NIL and the transfer portal calmed in 2023, college golf got a new controversy.
As much of the buzz about NIL and the transfer portal seemed to quiet in 2023, college golf got a new and interesting controversy in the form of its scoring system (of all things).
Although things are progressing it still made for an interesting year, one that saw a number of big names exit the college game.
As we continue the countdown to 2024 by offering up a snapshot of our best stories from the year, take a scroll through some of the biggest stories from the world of college golf in 2023 (photo galleries, college facilities and lists were not included in this listing).
Simpson won the 1987 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco.
I flew all the way to Hawaii to meet Scott Simpson and be regaled by his stories.
Well, that’s not totally accurate – I didn’t even know Simpson was living there and had become the men’s golf coach at University of Hawaii – but it truly was one of the highlights of my trip, especially the portion spent on Oahu for the Sony Open of Hawaii.
Simpson, 67, shared so many good stories that I’ve previously posted a story on his longtime partnership with Bill Murray at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, and a wide-ranging Q&A, but when the conversation shifted to the U.S. Open, we dove deep enough that I saved that portion for a separate standalone Q&A.
Simpson won the 1987 U.S. Open at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, the crowning achievement of his seven PGA Tour wins between 1980 and 1998. He birdied the 14th, 15th, and 16th holes during the final round to edge Tom Watson by one stroke. He finished with a three-under par total of 277.
Here’s Simpson on the importance of an attitude adjustment when he arrived at The Olympic Club, his magical putting day in the final round and “ranking just slightly ahead of a tuna sandwich” on the thrill meter in one writer’s opinion.
“It’s so fun,” Simpson said of coaching. “Hopefully they’re learning some things and I don’t mess them up.”
Scott Simpson has enjoyed success at nearly every stage of a golf career that spans six decades.
The 67-year-old won consecutive NCAA men’s golf titles (1976, 1977), was the recipient of the 1977 Fred Haskins Award as the best male collegiate golfer, played on a Walker Cup team (1977), won seven times on the PGA Tour, including the 1987 U.S. Open (in exactly 600 career starts), represented the Stars and Stripes in the Ryder Cup (1987) and picked a pretty good spot — Pebble Beach — for his one and only PGA Tour Champions triumph.
Simpson last played more than a handful of senior events in 2016 and called it quits in 2020 but as he told Golfweek during an interview at the 2023 Sony Open in Hawaii, he wasn’t the type to sit around in retirement and watch the grass grow.
Instead, after moving to Hawaii full time in 2014, he volunteered at the local First Tee chapter and with the Hawaii State Junior Golf Association and dabbled in some coaching at the high school and college level before being named men’s coach of the University of Hawaii in 2021.
Imagine being coached by a winner of the U.S. Open.
“It’s so fun,” Simpson said. “Hopefully they’re learning some things and I don’t mess them up.”
Here’s more from a riveting conversation with Simpson, who discusses among other things how he ended up in Hawaii coaching the men’s golf team, why nice guys don’t finish last and what happened to his Magnum P.I. mustache.
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“No one wanted to play with him, and I just thought, you know what, I don’t care what I shoot.”
Thirty years ago, the odd couple of comedian-actor Bill Murray and PGA Tour pro Scott Simpson joined forces to become an unforgettable duo at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
Simpson, who is in his second year as men’s golf coach at University of Hawaii, recalled to Golfweek at the Sony Open in Hawaii the story of how their partnership came to fruition. The incredible part of it is that apparently no one wanted to play with Murray except for, of all people, Simpson.
As Simpson tells it, Murray had played the previous year in the pro-am with journeyman pro John Adams. Simpson remembers watching on TV Murray’s antics with the gallery and thinking they were hilarious, but when Adams was asked, ‘How is it playing with the fun-loving Murray’, he complained that he found it distracting and wasn’t able to concentrate on his game.
“He said, ‘It’s really not much fun,’ or something like that,” Simpson recalled. “I went to the putting green after and Peter Jacobsen, who played for years with actor Jack Lemmon, is there and I said to him, ‘Peter, can you imagine John Adams saying this isn’t fun? That’s the most fun you can have on the golf course, playing with Bill Murray.’ He goes, ‘Scott, you’ve got to play with him next year.’ My caddie was Jim Mackay, Bones – he caddied for me before Phil Mickelson. I taught him everything. He caddied for my buddy Larry Mize first – and Bones said, ‘You tell him you want to play with Murray next year.’
“Actually, when Bones left me for Mickelson – which was great, you know. I was really happy for him to get this guy who’s so talented and going to do great things. He says, ‘But there’s one thing I want, one thing I’m going to ask you for, I want to caddie with your group with Bill Murray next year.’ Even though he was working for Phil, he caddied for me at Pebble.”
Scott Simpson lines up a birdie putt on the 18th hole during the final round of the 2006 Boeing Championships at Sandestin. (Jason Parkhurst)
Jacobsen and Mackay talked Simpson into writing a letter to tournament officials requesting to play with Murray. On paper, it seemed like a mismatch with Simpson, a regular at weekly bible study meetings, considered to be too staid for Murray’s on-course schtick. But two weeks before the tournament the following year, officials asked Simpson if he still wanted to play with Murray.
“Absolutely,” Simpson said. “No one wanted to play with him, and I just thought, you know what, I don’t care what I shoot. This is going to be the most fun week in the world. I didn’t care. Because I get the front row seat. He would slice it over into the people and the people would start clapping because they knew he was coming to them, and rightfully so.
“They had these ladies that would make cookies for all the AT&T executives. He would go, ‘Can I have one of those?’ Oh, sure, Mr. Murray. Next thing you know he grabs the whole batch of them and he’s throwing them to the people in the gallery. One time at Spyglass, he went to a cart of a Ben & Jerry’s vendor and same thing: ‘Can I have one of those? Oh, sure’. Next thing you know he’s throwing one to everyone in the gallery, ‘Hey, you look like a Cherry Garcia.’ He emptied it, and the guy who owned the Ben & Jerry’s thing out there, he’s in shock and he goes, “Oh, my God, I wanted him to have one, but oh, no, I’m going to lose money.’ Murray left him like $500. He just went over there and gave him like $500. Just stuff like that.”
Simpson had so much fun that first year that he kept signing up to play with Murray year after year.
“I said, ‘You can play with someone else, you know. He said, ‘Oh, no, we’ve got to win it.’ He says, ‘We’ve got two rules. We’re going to have the most fun and we’re going to win.’ We always accomplished at least one goal,” Simpson said.
Simpson and Murray, who played together 13 times between 1993 and 2007, finished as high as a tie for fourth in the pro-am division (2004), but never took home the hardware. (Simpson did win the 2006 First Tee Open on PGA Tour Champions with Murray as his partner.)
“He finally won with D.A. Points (in 2011), and he goes on the David Letterman Show, and Letterman goes to him, ‘So, Bill, you won that golf tournament out there, huh?’ ‘Oh, yeah, Dave. Big deal.’ He says, ‘You know, my partner D.A. won the pro thing, but the big news was we won (the pro-am).’ Letterman goes, ‘Didn’t you play with another guy for a long time?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, Dave, I played with this guy named Scott Simpson for about 14 years. He brought me down, Dave. He brought me down. Then he looks at the camera, ‘And you know you did,’ ” Simpson recalls with a laugh. “That was so classic. ‘You know you did.’ Geez. Good fun.”
