Lanny Wadkins

That's a tournament record that still stands up.

Watson is skipping the event, but the tournament does, uh, boast 17 of this year's winners, including Lanny Wadkins, Bruce Lietzke, and defending champion Ben Crenshaw.

The 156-man field will be trimmed to the low 70s after Friday's second round, and on Saturday, the players will use both the first and temp tees to finish before the start of the Ohio State-Oklahoma football game.

Nicklaus is an Ohio State graduate, and earlier this month, he complained that he might have to miss the Buckeye-Sooner contest.

I think the first major m- m- winner might have been, if he won the major, maybe he, he, he contended ...

R- remember the Pebble Beach PGA was all browned out, and, uh, Gene Littler and Lanny Wadkins I think went at it, and I think Littler had a, a, a, a graphite shaft, uh, in that.

Uh, but so anyway, the trend is there's so many things that they could do with shafts- That it's probably the, the higher end shaft or just different kinds of shafts that might be not very super expensive.

Or it, it's probably going up and not down, so.

I ask how they're thinking, "What were you thinking on that shot?" And then maybe just give them a little bit of thought or show them a little something.

Um, Lanny Wadkins was, you know, one of the greatest players ever.

He's in the Hall of Fame, 21 wins, unbelievable amateur record, and he would play with guys on the Wake Forest team.

He didn't care if they were the 10th guy or the eighth guy or whatever.

I don't think that one will ever be broken.

592 is a lot of cuts.

And as Lanny Wadkins told me the other day, you had to play a lot more to make money.

You know?

He brings in all of the world's best players and their agents behind closed doors.

So we're talking about Tom Watson, Johnny Miller, Lee Trevino, Raymond Floyd, Lanny Wadkins.

One man not invited was Gary Player, who was-

[laughs]

Uh, Ken Schofield from the European Tour not happy about that.

It becomes a pretty mocking li- like, Lanny Wadkins started railing on it of, like, uh, you know, how important the Ryder Cup is and how silly a lot of these team events are that are popping up, so.

More on the FTC investigation this week.

Finchem calls it the bureaucratic momentum at its zenith.

Uh, the, the sparse crowds on the European tour and how big they are on the PGA Tour gives the Americans at a big advantage.

Some real leadership is shown by Tom Watson early on.

Uh, Lanny Wadkins is the captain, uh, but Watson says, quote, "He, he said that if he qualified for the team he would want to play as well.

I told him, 'No way.' I thought the same, but when I got into the job, I knew that to be captain and play well was impossible.

That included five runner-up finishes during that stretch, tied for the most in the last 40 years on the PGA Tour with six other players.

Scheffler, who is 30, notched his 21st Tour title, matching the career win total of the likes of World Golf Hall of Famer members Davis Love III and Lanny Wadkins, and then became the third youngest to do so behind Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus.

On a day when the temps approached 100 degrees and felt even hotter, he got off to a sluggish start with a bogey at the par five third hole after his green side bunker shot splashed out, hit a sprinkler head, took a big bounce, and rolled into a water hazard.

Before taking his penalty drop, he said to his caddy, Ted Scott, "When is this going to stop happening?" "I don't know, man," said Scott.

He won a major.

My uncle Dickie, uh, my dad's middle brother who passed away, he worked with Lanny Wadkins, Curtis Strange, you know, Ben Crenshaw.

So I was always around-

Wow

Yes.

Lanny Wadkins wins his only major title in the event's-

Yeah

... first ever sudden death playoff with Gene Littler.