They share, with seven wins each, the seventh place in the ranking of major winners. They are the Americans Juli Inkster and Arnold Palmer.
Palmer was the first to win a million dollars in prize money and four Augusta Masters. He was an outstanding golfer and, above all, very popular. His great charisma made him one of the most famous sportsmen in the United States and had a decisive influence on the great growth of golf in that country. He passed away forever in 2016 at the age of 87 after a life full of success and recognition from the entire golf world.
Also known as The King or simply Arnie, this charismatic player was born on September 10, 1929 in Youngstown, Pennsylvania, United States. He started in the world of golf when he was only 3 years old by the hand of his father, who was a greenkeeper. He soon saw the fruits of his enviable skill with the golf clubs and as an amateur he won five West Penn Amateur Championships. Despite his splendid projection in the sport, he gave up golf for several years when he decided to enlist in the U.S. Coast Guard. He returned to competitive golf in the early 1950s.
In 1954 he won his most important amateur victory, the U.S. Championship. It was clear to him where his future career was headed and only five months later he became a professional golfer.
After a couple of seasons of settling into the Circuit, 1957 was his first great season, as he achieved, by adding four, the highest number of victories. The following year Arnold Palmer’s first Grand Slam victory came the following year, when he won the Augusta Masters, a tournament he would win three more times (1960, 1962 and 1964).
His aggressive game, his characteristic swing and his Hollywood actor look soon made him a media star. His charisma and attractiveness for television in the early years when this new media was beginning to become popular led to a huge development of golf and a great increase in the earnings of professional golfers.
The 1960 season was especially favorable for him, as he won eight tournaments, including two majors, the Masters at Augusta and the US Open. The 1962 season would also be a special year for Palmer, as he again won eight competitions, including two majors, this time the Masters and the British Open, a tournament he had won for the first time the previous season. As could not be otherwise, Palmer was named PGA Tour Player of the Year in 1960 and 1962.
Throughout his long and successful career as a professional golfer, El Rey won seven majors, concentrated between 1958 and 1964: four Masters (he was the first to win four Masters in his career), one in 1964 and one in 1958. times that tournament), two British Opens and one U.S. Open. Between 1957 and 1963, Palmer led the American Tour victory list five times and the winnings ranking four times.
In 1968 he had become the first golfer to win more than $1 million in prize money in tournaments on the Professional Golf Association Tour, the U.S. Tour.
His last great year on the US Tour was 1971, a season in which he won five tournaments. The last of his 62 major professional victories came in 1973, although his popularity never waned among fans of the sport.
In 1980 he joined the Senior Tour and again his charismatic presence helped to popularize that circuit. Success would come soon, as in his first season he won the U.S. Championship and the following year he won the U.S. Senior Open. In total he won ten tournaments on the Senior Tour.
His Ryder Cup experience was twofold, as he was a player on seven occasions and captain on two, the last in 1975.
Palmer was able to maintain his popularity thanks to the advertising of commercial products and established himself in the business world with his own company, Arnold Palmer Enterprises, an emporium that included golf academies and companies that organized tournaments, golf course management, sports equipment and clothing. He was the co-founder of The Golf Channel. His prolific business activity made him one of the wealthiest sportsmen in the world.
Among the many sporting merit awards he received throughout his long life, he was elected, in 1974, to the World Golf Hall of Fame.
JULI INKSTER
Born in Santa Cruz, California, on June 24, 1960, Juli Inkster is one of the greatest names in modern golf history. This is attested by her 31 victories on the LPGA Tour, her seven majors, her three World Championships, her two triumphs on the Ladies European Tour, her eight victories on other professional tours, her nine participations in the Solheim Cup…
Inkster’s accomplishments as an amateur are almost single-handedly deserving of his place in the World Golf Hall of Fame. He learned to play the sport at a club in Northern California, where he practiced every day before and after school. Like many young people her age, she applied for a job on the golf course for extra playing privileges and began parking carts and picking up balls before working as a proshop clerk. It was there that she met her future husband, Brian, a professional golfer who recognized Juli’s untapped potential.
Inkster demonstrated her immeasurable talent when she reeled off three straight U.S. Women’s Amateur victories from 1980-82. “When I look back now, I don’t know how I managed to win three in a row,” Inkster said. “It’s probably my best accomplishment as a golfer, whether it was professional or amateur,” she said of her triple amateur triumph. Before turning pro, she also won the 1981 California Amateur, represented the United States on the 1982 Curtis Cup team and was a four-year All-America team player for San Jose State University.
Inkster graduated to the LPGA Tour in 1983 and won her first title quickly, in her fifth tournament. She became the first player on the American Women’s Tour to win two majors in one season, the 1984 Nabisco Dinah Shore and the Du Maurier Classic. Suddenly she was the brightest young star in women’s golf.
Inkster won assiduously throughout the 1980s. She won four times in 1986 and captured her second Nabisco Dinah Shore title in 1989. In 1992 she almost won a third title at this major but succumbed to Dottie Pepper in sudden death, and she nearly won the U.S. Women’s Open, which she desperately craved, against Patty Sheehan in an 18-hole playoff.
From 1993 to 1997, Inkster did not win a single tournament because she could not adequately balance her career development with caring for her daughters. Inkster had averaged two wins a year until 1990, when her first daughter, Hayley, was born. To become a top athlete, she said, “you have to be a little selfish. Until I had children, for most of my life, it was all about me, and then that changed. There were many times when I was running around like a headless chicken, feeling like I wasn’t putting 100% into my daughters and not 100% into my golf. It wasn’t true, but that’s how I felt. It was hard to find a balance and, in the mid-1990s, my golf took a setback.”
But that situation changed in the late 1990s. He recalled: “I couldn’t be with my daughters all the time, but I could give them what they needed. When I understood that, my golf improved. I no longer took every tournament as if it was life or death. I just matured, I guess.
The return of tranquility also brought the return of her best game and Juli was rewarded with victories in 1997 and 1998.
A rejuvenated Inkster had one of the most memorable seasons in LPGA Tour history in 1999. She won five times, including finally winning the difficult U.S. Women’s Open. After achieving that career-long goal, she triumphed three weeks later at the LPGA Championship to become only the fourth woman to win the Grand Slam.
The last point she needed to be inducted into the Hall of Fame came at the Safeway Championship, where she received a shower of champagne from her teammates after holing the final putt. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think this would happen to me,” Inkster said of his place alongside Mickey Wright, Arnold Palmer and all the other golf greats in the Hall of Fame, where he was inducted in 2000.
In 2000 she won the LPGA Championship and in 2002 she won her last major, the U.S. Women’s Open, with a final round of 66 strokes and beating Annika Sorenstam. Her last LPGA Tour victory, her 31st, was at the 2006 Safeway International, which also marked a financial milestone, as she surpassed $10 million in career earnings for that tournament. At the beginning of this year, her tournament earnings slightly exceed 14 million and she is fifth in this regard in the ranking among active players, behind Karrie Webb, Cristie Kerr, Suzann Pettersen and Inbee Park.
At 59 years old, Juli is still competing on the LPGA Tour, although at a much slower pace than in her glory years. In 2017 she played ten tournaments, of which she made the cut in seven, and her best result was twenty-fourth. Last year she only made the cut in one of the eleven tournaments she started, and this season she has started four but has fallen in all the cuts.
In addition to her 31 victories on the LPGA Tour, Juli has two victories on the Ladies European Tour, eight on other professional circuits, five on the Legends Tour (the U.S. Senior Women’s Tour), the last one just a few weeks ago.
Inkster will become a Solheim Cup captain for the third time next September. Her previous two captaincies, in 2015 and 2017, both resulted in victories for the Americans.
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