Hale Irwin

Hale S. Irwin was born June 3, 1945 and is an American professional golfer. He was one of the world’s leading golfers from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. He is one of the few players in history to win three U.S. Opens, becoming the oldest ever U.S. Open champion in 1990 at the age of 45. As a senior golfer, Irwin ranks tied-first all-time in PGA Tour Champions victories. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in Champions Tour history.

Irwin was born in Joplin, Missouri, and raised in Baxter Springs, Kansas and Boulder, Colorado. His father introduced him to the game of golf when he was four years old; he broke 70 for the first time at age 14. Irwin was a star athlete in football, baseball, and golf at Boulder High School and graduated in 1963.

Irwin then attended the University of Colorado in Boulder, played football for the Buffaloes under head coach Eddie Crowder, was a two-time All-Big Eight defensive back (1965, 1966), and academic All-American. He won the individual NCAA championship in golf in his senior year in 1967 and turned professional the following year.

Irwin had 20 victories on the PGA Tour beginning with the 1971 Sea Pines Heritage Classic and finishing with the 1994 MCI Heritage Golf Classic. His 1994 Heritage win at the age of nearly 49 made him one of the oldest winners in Tour history.

Irwin’s tournament victories kept him ranked high among his peers – he was ranked among the top five in McCormack’s World Golf Rankings in every year from 1975 to 1979, inclusive. He ranked in the top-10 of the Official World Golf Rankings for a few weeks in 1991.

Irwin is one of five golfers to win official tournaments on all six continents on which golf is played: Africa, Australia, Asia, Europe, North America and South America. Irwin played on five Ryder Cup teams: 1975, 1977, 1979, 1981, and 1991. He was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1992.

He has also developed a career as a golf course architect.

In 2000, Irwin was ranked as the 19th greatest golfer of all time by Golf Digest magazine.

Irwin is the oldest player to finish in the top five in a senior major, with a third-place finish at the 2012 Senior PGA Championship at the age of 66. In the 2012 3M Championship, Irwin shot a score under his age for the first time in his career. His round of 65 included an eagle on the 9th hole and six consecutive birdies on the back nine. Irwin has since gone on to shoot his age 44 times in official PGA Tour Champions events (as of August 11, 2020), well ahead of Gary Player’s second-place 30. While he has continued to play PGA Tour Champions well into his seventies, he has significantly cut back his tournament schedule, competing in no more than eight tour events in any season since 2015.