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Floyd's career has been a very long roller coaster with more downs than ups. Yet he won three of the four major tournaments over an eighteen-year period.
He joined the professional tour in 1961 and had just one victory going into 1969, when he won four tournaments, including the PGA Championship. Then he virtually disappeared for several years; he didn't even finish among the top sixty in 1972 or 1973.
Floyd bounced back, winning more than $100,000 in both 1974 and 1975. Still, his name wasn't even on the leader board as a player to watch at the 1976 Masters until he shot a 32 on the first nine holes. He finished that round with a 65 and shot a 66 on the second day, setting a record of 131 for the first 36 holes of the Masters. He won the tournament easily, tying Jack Nicklaus's record of 271.
Ten years later, he was in the hunt for the U. S. Open championship. He had played the tournament twenty-one times before and had finished in the top ten only twice, most recently in 1971. Yet Floyd was just two shots behind Payne Stewart with six holes to play in the 1986 Open, and he hit two great shots to win. On the thirteenth hole, he hit a 6-iron to within four feet of the hole and putted for a birdie. Stewart bogeyed the hole, so they were tied. Hitting into the wind on the sixteenth hole, Floyd punched a low 8-iron shot that stopped ten feet from the cup, and his birdie putt gave him the lead for good. He was the oldest player ever to win the tournament.
Floyd suddenly reappeared in the news in February of 1992, when fire destroyed his home near Miami. Three weeks later, he won the Doral-Ryder Open. That made him the second player in history to win tournaments in four different decades. (Sam Snead was the other). More remarkably, he finished second in the Masters. Floyd also began playing on the PGA Senior circuit after turning fifty in September, won the second event he entered, and donated his winnings of $67,500 to the Hurricane Andrew Relief Fund. |
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