On This Date: Jack Nicklaus Wins the U.S. Amateur at Pebble Beach, 20 Under Par — and Then Turns Pro (Sept. 16, 1961)

On this date in 1961, at Pebble Beach Golf Links, a 21-year-old Ohio State student named Jack Nicklaus beat Dudley Wysong of Texas 8 and 6 in the 36-hole final of the U.S. Amateur. It was his second national amateur title in three years, and it was not close. Over the seven matches it took to win the championship, Nicklaus played 138 holes in 20 under par, made 34 birdies and an eagle, and never wrote a 6 on his card. He was so far ahead in every match that he only ever saw the 18th hole in the morning rounds.

"I played every round under par," he said later, which was the whole story.

The Best Amateur in the World

By September 1961 the golf world already knew what was coming; it just hadn't been told yet. Nicklaus had won his first U.S. Amateur at 19, at the Broadmoor in 1959, beating the great Charlie Coe 1 up with a birdie on the last hole. The following June, still an amateur, he finished second in the U.S. Open at Cherry Hills, two strokes behind Arnold Palmer, with a 282 that stood as the amateur record in that championship for 59 years. In the spring of 1961 he won the NCAA individual title for Ohio State. Two weeks before Pebble Beach he went 2-0 for the United States in the Walker Cup at Seattle, beating Ireland's Joe Carr 6 and 4 in singles.

So when he arrived on the Monterey Peninsula for the Amateur, he was the best golfer in the field by a distance, professional or otherwise, and he played like it. The semifinal was a 9-and-8 rout of Marion Methvin, an LSU student from Little Rock. Wysong, a 22-year-old Byron Nelson pupil from McKinney, Texas, had beaten Carr in the other semifinal and was a genuinely good player. He lost the final by eight holes.

Pebble, Three Times

The 1961 championship was the third U.S. Amateur played at Pebble Beach, and the course carries a strange kind of memory. In 1929, the first time the championship came west, Bobby Jones, the greatest amateur who ever lived, lost in the first round to a 19-year-old caddie from Omaha named Johnny Goodman. Jones spent the rest of the week watching, and a good part of it playing Cypress Point, an experience that eventually produced Augusta National.

Nicklaus's caddie that week in 1961 was a Pebble Beach regular named Al Gonzales, who, 32 years earlier, had carried the bag for Jimmy Johnston, the man who won the 1929 Amateur after Jones went out. Pebble Beach does not forget anybody.

Nicklaus came back in 1972 and won the U.S. Open there, closing with a 1-iron into the wind on the 17th hole that hit the flagstick. Pebble would host the Amateur again in 1999 and 2018, but 1961 remains the last time a man came to it and simply took the thing apart.

Seven Weeks Later

He wrote a letter to Joseph Dey, the executive director of the USGA, on Nov. 7, 1961, and announced the next day that he was turning professional. His first professional check, for a tie for 50th at the Los Angeles Open in January 1962, was $33.33. Five months after that he beat Palmer in a playoff at Oakmont to win the U.S. Open, and the next 25 years happened.

The 1961 Amateur was the last tournament Jack Nicklaus ever played that didn't have money on the line. He won it by eight holes, 20 under par, without ever needing the 18th. It was a preview, and everybody who saw it knew.

Which was the more dominant amateur: Jones or Nicklaus? Comments below.