PGA Features

The first tournament on the calendar exclusively for professionals aged 50 and over, opened the doors for former Major champions and Ryder Cup players to renew acquaintances and rivalries.

For any venerable institution, its origins are always of intrigue and fascination. The Professional Golfers' Association took its lead from the players of the day, keen to look after their interests. At its first meeting, there were 70 people in the room with a vested interest and now, more than a century later, that number is a hundred fold. It's hard to imagine that the PGA's founding fathers could have foreseen the global impact their actions on the sport would take, given how dramatically the game has grown.

That can also be said for the PGA Seniors Championship, which is beginning a new chapter in its 52nd staging with the return of De Vere as principal sponsors of the event and a new venue in Slaley Hall.

De Vere's return has seen the prize fund rise to record levels with £300,000 in the pot, a 50 per cent increase on last year. The sums of money, and today's format of a 72-hole Championship, are a long way from its origins, when the event was founded by Ronald Teacher, the chairman of Wm. Teacher & Sons.

Having exported the company's whisky across the Atlantic, Teacher imported a golfing institution that is still flourishing today.

Teacher's involvement in golf had begun after he agreed to sponsor the US Senior PGA Tournament in 1953, which was by then already in its 17th year. A year later, Teacher invited the British Association of Golf Writers (BAGW) to select a leading over-50 British PGA member to play the reigning US Senior PGA Champion in a two-man match-play contest named the Teacher International Trophy.

Three-time Ryder Cup player Percy Alliss (pictured above), father of broadcaster Peter, was nominated to travel to the United States where he was to take on the legendary Gene Sarazen in the inaugural battle. The Ferndown professional put up a good fight against the seven-time Major winner and former Ryder Cup rival, going down 4&3.

A heavyweight battle had begun and in 1955 John Burton of Lancashire's Hillside Golf Club was selected to take on another former Ryder Cup player - California's Mortie Dutra. Another enthralling contest, which almost went to the wire, again ended in favour of the hosts with Dutra claiming victory by two holes.

But the following year Letchworth's Bob Kenyon, again nominated by the BAGW, triumphed 4&3 over America's Pete Burke to give Great Britain its first victory in the Teacher Trophy.

It was evident, however, that in the three years since the contest's inception, it had grown in popularity prompting Teacher to add some extra spirit to the golfing arena by creating the equivalent of the US Senior PGA Championship in Great Britain.

This was a ground-breaking move as it was the first and only tournament on the golfing calendar that was exclusively for professionals aged 50 and over, opening the doors for former Major champions and Ryder Cup players to renew acquaintances and rivalries.

Middlesex's Fulwell Golf Club had the honour of hosting the inaugural 54-hole Teacher's Senior Professional Tournament, as it was known, which was duly won by Burton.

It earned him a second chance to win the Teacher International Trophy, which was now seen as a contest to be crowned the unofficial World senior champion. Burton missed out again as he lost 7&6 to Michigan's Al Watrous.

Exeter's Norman Sutton won the title in 1958 at Copt Heath and then went on to beat Sarazen 2&1 in the Teacher International Trophy.

The transatlantic contest would be an annual highlight on the golfing calendar - competed for on the eve of the Open, while the Seniors tournament grew in strength as more and more eminent golfers became eligible to play in it. A quirk of the tournament also distinguished those ageing grandees in the event's formative years with six different age categories split into five-year spans, while those aged 70 and over would tee off from the front tees.

Prize money was also a little bit different to the sums available to today. The 1962 winner, Sam King, who had won 12 months earlier, pocketed £100, while the rest of the prize fund - a considerable sum of £1,400 - was split between the six age categories.

By now the tournament was flourishing and Teacher's vision was in full swing with successful events either side of the Atlantic.

This list of winners of the prestigious title over the past half a century has since read like a who's who of golf, with Arthur Lees, veteran of four Ryder Cups between 1947 and 1953, becoming the third holder of the title when he won at Royal Mid-Surrey in 1959.

Wales' Dai Rees added the crown to his impressive CV in 1966, which already included captaining the Great Britain Ryder Cup team to victory over the United States at Sheffield in 1957, which was their first defeat since 1933.

Max Faulkner (above), a member of that successful Ryder Cup team and the 1951 Open champion, claimed the last title to be sponsored by Teacher's in 1968 at Aldeburgh and won it again in 1970 when it was staged at Longniddry.

There has always been one constant - the quality of golf needed to become the PGA Seniors champion.

By now the tournament's format had changed from 54 to 72 holes, and today remains one of just two 72-hole tournaments on the schedule. Scotland's John Panton had the distinction of being the first winner over four days in 1967 when he claimed the first of his two titles at Ayr Bellside. Panton and Faulkner appeared to have launched a trend as the following two decades saw the tournament's roll of honour littered with multiple winners as five players netted 17 titles between them.

Australian Kel Nagle, who became for the first overseas winner of the title when he won in 1971, went on to win again in 1973 and 1975 to become the first player to claim three victories.

But that record was to be usurped by Christy O'Connor (below) who dominated the tournament by winning the title an incredible six times in eight years between 1976 and 1983 at five different venues.

Fellow Irishman Paddy Skerritt denied O'Connor an eight-year streak by winning the event in 1978 and 1980, while another Irishman - Ernie Jones - lifted the title in 1984.

Having seen one man carve his name into PGA Seniors folklore, it was then monopolised again as Neil Coles secured a straight hat-trick of titles between 1985 and 1987 before adding a fourth in 1989.

He was denied a nap hand by Australian Peter Thomson, five-time winner of the Open, who won his only PGA Seniors title at North Berwick in 1988.

Brian Waites then completed back to back successes in 1990 and 1991 before Tommy Horton, the European Seniors' Tour most successful player, won the title for the first time in 1992.

Welsh wizard Brian Huggett - a veteran of six Ryder Cups - won it in 1993 before the late John Morgan's double in 1994 and 1995.

The tournament then saw an new era of domination - this time from overseas as the title left these shores no less than five times in six years - the one exception being Horton's second success in 1998.

A trio of Australians made their mark with Terry Gale in 1996, Ross Metherell in 1999 and Ian Stanley in 2001 all winning.

Walter Hall became the first American to win the prestigious title at the Belfry in 1997, with John Grace becoming the second in 2000 - the final year the tournament was staged at the four-time Ryder Cup venue.

The championship then had its first Asian winner when Japan's Seiji Ebihara came out on top at Carden Park in 2002, notching another significant benchmark in the tournament's rich history.

It returned to these shores as Seniors veterans Bill Longmuir and Carl Mason added their name to the list of prestigious winners prior to Sam Torrance's back-to-back victories, before Mason won it for a third time last year.

Since starting life as two-man battle between America's and Britain's top senior, the PGA Seniors Championship has been graced and won by a string of golfing legends, and supported by various sponsors, it has been played at courses the length and breadth of the British Isles.

But there has always been one constant - the quality of golf needed to become the PGA Seniors champion. Ronald Teacher would certainly have raised a wee dram to that and to the tournament's continued success.