Seattle surged with civic pride when it hosted the 1962 Century 21 Exposition, a world’s fair that welcomed visitors to the city from April to October. Trumpeting science and technology, local citizens built a fair that highlighted the “World of Tomorrow.” The fair not only turned a profit but also left enduring landmarks including the Space Needle, Seattle Center Coliseum and the Science Center. Puffed up with pride, the city welcomed the traveling caravan that was the PGA Tour for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair Open Invitational at Broadmoor Golf Course in the middle of September.
Five years before the NBA came to town with the Sonics and seven years before MLB expanded into the Puget Sound region with the ill-fated Seattle Pilots, the PGA Tour and the Seafair hydroplane races on Lake Washington represented the only big-time professional sports available for local fans. With a field that included golf’s “Big Three” of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, golf fans were ready to witness the finest that the PGA Tour had to offer. Add a pro-am field that included entertainment legends Bob Hope and James Garner, The Seattle World’s Fair Open represented one of the largest professional sporting events to hit town and featured a $30,000 purse.
Nicklaus, Palmer and Player breezed into town fresh from doing battle in the first World Series of Golf, an exhibition-type televised tournament that pitted the winners of the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open and PGA championships. The first and only time that the three played in the World Series at the same time, Nicklaus prevailed enjoying a $50,000 payday. Even though the prize money did not count towards the official money list, it was the biggest winner’s check available to players on the tour during this era. In this, his rookie year, Nicklaus served noticed that he was ready to assault Palmer’s position as the top player on the tour when he secured his first professional victory in an 18-hole playoff over Palmer in the U.S. Open. Yet the World’s Series field only contained three players because Palmer won both the Masters and the British Open. Palmer also led the official money list for the year. Gary Player captured the PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club in Pennsylvania. Earlier in the year, he finished second in the Masters behind Palmer.
Super-agent Mark McCormick represented all three players and packaged them as “The Big Three” and began cashing in on endorsements and exhibition fees. Press coverage centered on “The Big Three” and any tournament with the entire trio in the event enjoyed increased press coverage and fan interest. The three players arrived in Seattle together and posed for pictures for the local newspapers.
Tony Lema rode into town after rebuilding his career on the PGA Tour. Following a successful rookie year in 1958, he experienced devastating down years in 1959 and 1960. Using the Caribbean Tour in the early stages of 1961, as a laboratory to work on his game, he climbed his way back to the 43rd spot on the money list once he returned to the PGA Tour. In 1962, he began to show signs of becoming the kind of player who could win on tour. Coming into Seattle, he had four top ten finishes including a third in the Eastern Open and a tie for sixth in the Buick Open. Still, he was frustrated at not being able to punch through for his first official PGA Tour title. He sat in the 33rd spot on the money list as the Tour headed to the Northwest for stops in both Seattle and Portland.
| When we got serious, I got serious.
One did not have to look far to discover the reason for his improved play. With a well-deserved reputation as a playboy during his early years, he had recently fallen in love. He met Betty Cline, an airline attendant, and the two became serious. As he readily admitted, it made all the difference when it came to his golf game.
Tony and Betty Lema
“When we got serious,” he later said, “I got serious.” The tall, lanky Lema, from San Leandro, California, was a fan favorite. His smooth swing, lengthy tee shots and deft touch around the greens drew attention and admiration from fellow players while his friendly and easy-going manner attracted the fans. His game also exhibited a flair for the dramatic, not unlike Palmer. Neither player was afraid to try to pull off a gambling shot when the time was right.
On Tuesday, before the Wednesday pro-am, contestants enjoyed a breakfast in the restaurant atop the Space Needle. They enjoyed the 360-degree view of the city from the radically new revolving restaurant atop Seattle’s newest landmark. On Wednesday, in the pro-am, Gary Player, Dow Finsterwald and Don Massengale set the pace with a score of 64. Lema shot a 66 while Palmer, playing with Bob Hope, posted a 67. Nicklaus, playing alongside James Garner struggled home with a 74. Nicklaus’s score was puzzling because Broadmoor, with a par of 70, measured just 6,328. Expert opinion was that with his length, he would eat Broadmoor up.
September is usually one of the loveliest months in Seattle as summer clings tenaciously before autumn takes over. Sunny skies greeted the players for Wednesday’s pro-am round. Unfortunately, with the golf world’s eye focused on Seattle, the weather disappointed as grey clouds and rain greeted the players for the first round. Dave Hill managed the weather conditions well on his way to a round of 64, a round where he hit every green. In fact, the pros were feasting on Broadmoor as more than 48 players in the field of 126 broke par.
Nicklaus bounced back from his poor pro-am round with a nice 67, one stroke better than Player and three strokes in front of Palmer. Dave Marr, the defending champion, came in with a 67, as did Billy Casper. Julius Boros rode a rollercoaster as he set a course record for the front nine with a 29 and then soared to a 39 on the back nine. Ken Venturi experienced a similar round when he went out in 30 and finished with a 68. Lema shot a lackluster 72 putting him well down the leader board. Local favorite Don Bies managed a 70 tying him with Doug Sanders.
With the weather improving for the second round, Billy Casper came out on fire and tied the course record of 63 taking over the lead. Two strokes back were Nicklaus and Billy Maxwell. After taking treatments for a sore muscle under his right shoulder, Palmer shot a fine 65 to come in at 135, five strokes off the lead. Hill backtracked with a 73 for a 137 total. Lema made a move up the leader board after shooting a 66 for a 138 easily making the 36-hole cut that came at 143. After the third round, another cut would reduce the field further.
The weather continued to improve as the week wore on as bright sunshine bathed the course for the third round. Fans flocked to Broadmoor to watch the pros work their magic on the course. Officials estimated the crowd for Saturday at 7,800 and expected that number to grow to 10,000 for Sunday’s final round. Fans could park in the South lot of Husky stadium for $1.50 and admission into the tournament was $4.00 on the weekend ($3.00 for the first two rounds). Student admission was $1.00.
| Nicklaus was firing on all cylinders as he missed only one green in the third round.
Nicklaus did not disappoint the throng of fans in the third round firing a 5-under 65 for a 197 and a lead of two-strokes. Player attempted to keep pace, shooting a 64 that featured eight birdies and two bogeys and sat alone in second-place. Bob Rosburg sat at 201, tied with Billy Casper who followed up his course record round with a 71 after his putting stroke deserted him. Canadian Al Johnson was another stroke back after his third round 64. Lema added another 66 but looked to be out of contention for the title as he was seven strokes off Nicklaus’s lead. Nicklaus was firing on all cylinders as he missed only one green in the third round. In fact, he missed only four greens in the first three rounds.
”I have been holding back on my drives, giving up yardage, to keep from being wild,” he explained to the press after his round. “I would say I’m hitting the ball pretty well.”
While many local fans followed their favorite players around the course, thousands of others staked out prime viewing spots on the par-3 seventh hoping to witness an ace. Organizers put up a $10,000 bonus for any player scoring a hole-in-one on the hole. The low score of each round also won a bonus of $100 in the first two rounds and $200 on Saturday and Sunday.
Sunday dawned with clear skies and again bathed Broadmoor in bright sunshine helping to draw a huge crowd that met organizers expectations. Fans who could not make it to the course followed the action live on the radio broadcast by KVI, one of the most popular stations at the time. Excitement permeated the air at Broadmoor as the players teed off. Fans anticipated witnessing an epic battle between two of golf’s “Big Three,” Nicklaus and Player, for the title. Nicklaus and Rosburg were in the final group that teed off at 12:30. Player and Casper were in the group in front of Nicklaus and Lema was almost an hour in front of the leaders. He got the day’s proceedings off to an explosive start with a red-hot start with an eagle on the par-5 first hole and then followed with three straight birdies.
He added another birdie at the eighth and turned the front nine in 28 strokes—a new front nine record. He was not the only player to scorch the front nine, however. Excited fans followed Arnold Palmer as it looked like he was mounting one of his famous charges. He made the turn with a 4-under 31 and added another birdie on the tenth. Inexplicably, his game suddenly fell apart and many deserted the ranks of “Arnie’s Army” to follow Lema, the hottest player on the course.
Player, who was struggling on the greens, fell from contention and the tournament boiled down to a battle between Nicklaus and Lema.
“No, Lema’s 28 didn’t frighten me,” Nicklaus acknowledged. “First I heard about Tony’s round was at the ninth tee and I didn’t think too much about it. Seven strokes is a long way to come and I felt I had some birdies in front of me.”
Lema later admitted, “Subconsciously, that 28 round may have hurt me. What do you do for an encore after something like that? I got a little excited, I think.” Now with a possible victory entering his mind, Lema played the back nine. “Out there today, I felt I had a chance to win until the sixteenth hole when I was six feet from the cup. I missed it, though, and took a par. That may have been the turning point.”
He followed up his missed birdie opportunity with a bogey on the next hole after he got too aggressive with his approach shot and failed to get up and down. At about the same time, Nicklaus eagled the par-5 fifteenth. Lema finished with a birdie on the final hole for a 63, but knew it was too little, too late. He did not even win the daily “lap prize” bonus for his low round as his friend Tommy Jacobs nipped him by a stroke with a course record 62.
After his round, he sat down in the locker room with reporters to discuss his round. Always comfortable with the press, they exchanged some light-hearted banter. One reporter asked him, with tongue in cheek, if he hoped that Nicklaus would break his leg coming in.” “Oh, No,” Tony replied and then after a short pause added, “I don’t want him to break a leg. A sprain would be enough.”
Out on the course, Nicklaus, with a two-stroke lead, was finishing his round. He was interested to find out how Lema finished. “I did get a bit of a scare,” he admitted. “When I was on the seventeenth, I thought I had a three-stroke lead over Lema. When I walked off the green, someone told me that Lema shot a 61. That would make it real tight. Then, I found out it was a 63 and I could have killed the fellow with the 61 story.”
Nicklaus avoided any broken bones as he finished the eighteenth with a birdie securing the victory, good for a $4,300 check. However, the second-place finish, worth $3,000, may have been worth more to Lema than the victory was to Nicklaus.
“After that burst of golf I figured there was nothing I couldn’t do and that my first tournament win must be just a lucky break away,” he wrote in Golfer’s Gold, a book he co-wrote with Sports Illustrated writer Gwillym S. Brown. Nicklaus went back-to-back with a victory the next week in Portland before finishing his fantastically successful rookie year. He then headed back to Columbus to finish his college degree. Lema pushed on through the fall tour still looking to secure his first official PGA Tour victory. A bonus pool, and an invitation to the Masters, was up for grabs during the fall tour and Lema’s strong play put him in a strong position to take advantage.
He got a taste of victory when he won the unofficial Sahara Invitational in Las Vegas a few weeks after the Seattle Open. He continued to play well as the tour wound its way to Southern California for the Orange County Open the same week as the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded. As the third round leader, he met with the press. He grabbed a cold beer from an ice chest in the room and answered reporter’s questions. As they were finishing, he had one more thing to say. Looking down at the bottle of beer in his hands, he said, “Okay fellows. If we’re in here tomorrow, I guarantee we won’t be drinking beer. We’ll celebrate with champagne.”
After beating Bob Rosburg in a playoff the next day, they did just that and Lema made good on his word providing champagne to the small group of assembled reporters (most sports reporters were covering college and professional football that weekend). It was a tradition he repeated with every one of his victories during his short-lived career earning his endearing moniker, Champagne Tony Lema. He also won the coveted invitation to the Masters with his fine play during the fall. For both Tony Lema and the city of Seattle the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair Open Invitational was a launching pad into the world of major sports. Lema went on to win the 1964 British Open along with a handful of PGA Tour events before tragically losing his life, along with his wife Betty, in a small plane crash in 1966. Seattle is now known as a major sports city with the Mariners in the MLB, the Seahawks in the NFL (with a Super Bowl victory), the Sounders in MLS and a new NHL team on the horizon.
