Kel Nagle of Australia turns 92 on Saturday
Kelvin David George Nagle will turn 92 this Saturday. Happy birthday, Kel! Keep the momentum going!
Kel Nagle is an Australian golfer who has had one of the most illustrious and longest careers for a golfer. His career best win was the 1960 The Open Championship, for which, he is best remembered.
For the fact that starting 1949 and up until more than a good two decades later, he had won at least one tournament every year.
Kel Nagle has also been the Centenary Open Champion. Besides, there are another 61 titles of the Professional Golf Association Tour of Australasia to his credit.
These 61 are the most wins any golfer has ever had on the Professional Golf Association Tour of Australasia.
Greg “The Great White Shark” Norman is the only one to come closest to Kel Nagle’s record number of wins by a 30-win margin. Norman has the second highest 30 wins in the Professional Golf Association Tour of Australasia.
The World Golf Hall of Famer (inducted in November 2007) has been playing since before the times of Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer. He beat a relatively new Palmer in The Open of 1961.
Palmer had not yet flourished as the great golfing legend he was to become, but the following year he had turned tables on the North Sydney-born Kel Nagle, who would not recover the title again.
In the 1980s, and in his 60s, an indefatigable Kel Nagle teed off on the Senior Professional Golf Association Tour. The event held in the United States has since come to be called the Champions Tour.
The World Golf Hall of Fame Profile describes Kel Nagle as “powerfully built” and “one of golf’s quiet men.”
Fellow Australian Peter Thomson called Kel Nagle “Mr Accuracy, the Ben Hogan of Australia” after his surprisingly accurate long-distance shots.
"There was absolutely no malice in him, or vice of any kind, and he was always in good humour," Thomson said of Kel Nagle.
Gary Player has had some nice things to say about the 92-year old too, "I can honestly say I never met anybody in my life that didn't really like Kel Nagle".
Bruce Devlin named his son after Kel Nagle. Long live Mr Accuracy, the Ben Hogan of Australia!
Tags: