GAY BREWER... WE REMEMBER!

In my opinion, one of the greatest losses in the world of golf in 2007 was the loss of Gay Brewer, the 1967 Masters Champion. Gay Robert Brewer, Jr. died in August 31 in Lexington, KY of lung cancer. He was 75 years old.

He was born in Middletown, OH, and raised in Lexington, KY. As an amateur, Brewer won the Kentucky State Boys Golf Championship in three consecutive years from 1949-1951. In 1949, he also won the USGA Boys Jr. Amateur, the most prestigious amateur event for golfers under the age of eighteen and in 1952 he won the Southern Amateur Golf Championship.

Playing on the PGA Tour in 1965, Brewer won the Hawaiian Open, the first ever PGA event held in that state. At the 1966 Masters Tournament, he bogeyed the final hole to finish in a three-way tie for the lead after regulation play and ended up finishing third to Jack Nickalus following an 18-hole playoff (in those days, if there were more than two players in a playoff, the playoff determinded not only won won, but also second, third and so forth). He came back to win the prestigious event the next year, scoring a one stroke victory over lifelong friend Bobby Nichols.

"Personally, I could not have been happier for a fellow player when Gay won the Masters in 1967," Nicklaus said. "A year earlier, Gay was playing arguably the most solid golf of anyone at Augusta, and I was fortunate to get into a Monday playoff with him and Tommy Jacobs. Gay had a tough day in the playoff, and although I was delighted to win, I felt badly for him," he added. "For Gay to come back the next year and win a green jacket was fitting for such a tremendous person and a darn good player. Around that time, Gay was as good as there was."

That same year at the Pensacola Open, he set a PGA Tour record for the best 54-hole total on a par-72 course. His score of 25-under par is a record that still stands almost forty years later. Overall, Brewer was victorious in eleven tour events during his career. He joined the Senior PGA Tour and won the 1984 "Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf" (this event was the genesis of the Senior Tour) tournament with New Mexico resident Billy Casper and at age sixty-three he won the 1995 "MasterCard Champions Championship".

In 2006, Brewer was voted to the University of Kentucky Athletics Hall of Fame. In 2007, the golf course in Lexington where he learned to play was renamed the "Gay Brewer Jr. Course at Picadome."

I met Gay Brewer in Mexico City in 1978 during the Mexican Open played at Chiluca G.C. in Mexico City. He was as fine gentleman as you will ever find. I remember warming up next to him one morning and he was as talkative as anyone I had ever seen, praising Mexico, the culture and the course (apparenty, he'd never played in Mexico and was surprised at the conditions and hospitality). Gay was the complete opposite (in the area of talking with strangers) of his close friend and eventual champion in that event, Billy Casper, who beat him by one shot. The headlines in the Mexican newspaper read: “Bill Casper wins Mexican Open, Unknown Gay Brewer Takes Second”… now, I bet that headline brought a chuckle out of him but, would bet my house that the sports reporter wrote it, had never picked up a golf club!