the club compromised the integrity of the game. If
players were allowed to use Ping clubs, the USGA
feared that skill would cease to be the primary factor
determining who won a game of golf. The major
courses would no longer challenge golfers, and his-
torical comparisons between contemporary and
past generations of golfers would become meaning-
less. The USGA therefore attempted to ban the
square grooves in 1988, and the Professional Golf
Association (PGA) followed suit in 1989. However,
both organizations eventually settled the lawsuit
brought by Karsten.
Professional Golf The economy, media publicity,
and substantial television coverage of the various
professional tournaments and tour organizations
thrived during the 1980’s. Many exciting finishes to
major professional tournaments were witnessed by
millions via live television coverage. The men’s PGA
tour maintained most of the public’s attention, but
as a sign of popularity and growth, the Senior PGA
Tour began in 1980, featuring veterans of the PGA
Tour over age fifty. The new tour gave the viewing
public a chance to continue watching aging super-
stars such as Arnold Palmer and Gary Player.
The Ladies’ Professional Golf Association (LPGA)
tour, like the men’s tour, saw a continued growth in
available prize money, annual number of tourna-
ments, and television coverage. Nancy Lopez gener-
ated much public attention as a young superstar
champion, and Kathy Whitworth became the first
woman pro to win over one million dollars in career
prize money.
The men’s professional tour experienced signifi-
cant growth in both profits and popularity. Tom Wat-
son was the most notable player in the early 1980’s,
winning the British Open in 1980, 1982, and 1983;
the 1981 Masters; and the 1982 U.S. Open. Watson’s
victory in the U.S. Open was especially notable, as he
battled and defeated the legendary Jack Nicklaus at
Pebble Beach, California, holing a difficult chip shot
at the par-three seventeenth hole. Nicklaus, for his
part, won the last two of his eighteen major champi-
onships in the 1980’s. In 1980, he set a U.S. Open
record with a score of 272 at Baltusrol, in New Jersey.
In 1986, at age forty-six, on the last day of the Masters
Tournament, he shot a dramatic 65 to come from be-
hind and win.
Another of the decade’s notable major champi-
onship victories occurred in 1984, when Hall of
Fame golfer Lee Trevino won his sixth and final ma-
jor, the PGA Championship, at Shoal Creek Country
Club, in Alabama. Trevino was forty-four years old,
and the runner-up was forty-eight-year-old, Hall-of-
Fame golfer Gary Player. Also in 1984, Ben Cren-
shaw won the Masters Tournament, which was parti-
cularly notable because he had finished second in
major championships five times. Curtis Strange was
the top-ranked player at the end of the decade. In
1988, he was the first player on the PGA tour to ex-
ceed one million dollars in prize money in one sea-
son. He also won the U.S. Open consecutively in
1988 and 1989. The year 1987 was a milestone of aThe Eighties in America Golf 427
Golfer Kathy Whitworth lines up a putt at the Sleepy Hole Golf
Course in Suffolk, Virginia, in 1982. Whitworth was the first
woman to win more than one million dollars in prize money on the
LPGA tour.(AP/Wide World Photos)