Arnold Palmer had an 8-foot putt on the last hole at Pecan Valley Golf Club in San Antonio, Texas, to force a playoff and win the US PGA Championship for the first time. But the ball did not want to go in and the glory and the triumph went to Julius Boros, who, at 48 years and 4 months, became that summer of 1968 the oldest player to win a major. The record remains unbeaten. Palmer, by the way, came second twice more in that major, the only one of the majors he never won.
The US PGA Championship was celebrating its 50th anniversary that year. It was mid-July and the heat was sweltering, which did not prevent Boros from winning the third of his three majors, one stroke ahead of Palmer and Bob Charles. That 1968 was the last major played before the formation of the Tournament Players Division, later renamed the PGA Tour.
In his seventh US PGA Championship, Jack Nicklaus missed his first cut in that tournament by one stroke (he signed 71 and 79: +10); and that after five of his six previous finishes in the top three, with a victory in 1963 in Dallas. The Golden Bear made the next nine cuts in that major and won four more times (1971, 1973, 1975 and 1980).
Boros started the tournament with a round of 71, six strokes behind the first leader, Marty Fleckman. On the second day he repeated his result and placed ninth, four strokes behind the two co-leaders, Frank Beard and Marty Fleckman. Palmer and Lee Treviño shared fourth place, two strokes behind Boros.
In the third round, Boros’s 70 strokes put him in third place, shared with Palmer and Bob Charles, two strokes behind the leaders, who were still Beard and Fleckman.
And then came the big day, Sunday, July 21, 1968. Boros squeezed his talent and experience and with 69 strokes for a total of 281 (+1) he won by one over Palmer and Charles. Fleckman was fourth and Beard fifth. Boros thus became the oldest player to win a major. He also won, by the way, the 25,000 dollars destined to the champion.
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Perfect combination
If any golfer perfectly embodies a combination of relaxed play, perfect technique and competitive fire, it is undoubtedly Boros. Everything about the phlegmatic former American accountant was relaxed and unflappable. But when an opportunity to win a tournament presented itself, few were as efficient and energetic as he was.
He won 18 times between 1952 and 1968, including three majors. He was North American Tour Player of the Year in 1952 and 1963, topped the money list in 1952 and 1955, and played on four Ryder Cup teams.
His first victory was at no less than the U.S. Open in 1952, which he won by four strokes at Northwood CC in Dallas. He triumphed again in that major in 1963, at Brookline, holing birdies on two of the last three holes to reach a playoff with Arnold Palmer and Jackie Cupit, whom he defeated, with 70 strokes, in the playoff round. At 43, he became the oldest Open winner since Ted Ray. Then, in 1968, Boros won the PGA Championship in San Antonio by beating Palmer again and, at 48, set the record for being the oldest player to win a major.
Apart from his victories in the big ones, he was characterized by winning the tournaments with the highest prize money. Thus, he won the World Championship in 1952 and 1955, when the first prize was an astronomical $50,000 at that time. His last victory came at the 1968 Westchester Classic, which then had the highest prize money in a PGA Tour golf tournament: $50,000.
The son of Hungarian immigrants, Boros was born on March 3, 1920 in Fairfield, Conetica. As an adult, his height, at 6’2″, his corpulence, around 200 pounds, and his easy-going nature earned him the nickname Moose. He learned to take things even more calmly after discovering during his military service that he had a heart condition. Despite his apparent unflappability, he admitted that he was “as fearful as anyone else in a difficult situation; I felt like I had razor blades in my stomach.”
The main reason he was able to last so long in the limelight at the highest level of competition was that his technique was unstressed and technically flawless. His motto was “easy swing, hard hit,” and he thus generated great energy. “Julius Boros was all hands and wrists, like a man dusting furniture,” the 1964 British Open winner Tony Lema said of him. Especially his iron shots landed with a unique softness, as if the ball carried a parachute. He was also the master of the sand wedge, especially from the rough around the green: his smooth, slow swing projected the ball with a mysterious touch.
All this was reflected in his success in the tournament that requires the most control in the strokes, the U.S. Open. Boros finished in the top five of that major nine times between 1951 and 1965. And in 1973, at the age of 53, he was tied for the lead after 62 holes before finishing seventh.
Boros won the 1977 PGA Seniors Championship, and played a key role in launching the Champions Tour, the U.S. Senior Circuit, holing a birdie putt on the sixth playoff hole alongside Roberto De Vicenzo that gave him victory over Tommy Bolt and Art Wall in the 1979 Legends of Golf tournament.
Boros died on a golf course near his home in Florida on May 28, 1994, at the age of 74. His son, Guy, won the 1996 Vancouver Open, making the Boros family one of three father-son tandems to have won so far on the PGA Tour.
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