Professional Career
Sanders had 13 top-10 finishes in major championships, including four second-place finishes: 1959 PGA Championship, 1961 U.S. Open, 1966 and 1970 British Opens. In 1966, he became one of the few players in history to finish in the top ten of all four major championships in a single season, despite winning none of them. He earned unfortunate notoriety for taking four shots from just 74 yards as the leader playing the final hole of the 1970 British Open at St Andrews, missing a sidehill 3-foot putt to win, before losing the resulting 18-hole playoff by just a single shot the next day to Jack Nicklaus.
He is remembered for an exceptionally short, flat golf swing—a consequence, it appears, of a painful neck condition that radically restricted his movements.
Read more about this topic: Doug Sanders
Famous quotes containing the words professional and/or career:
“Smoking ... is downright dangerous. Most people who smoke will eventually contract a fatal disease and die. But they don’t brag about it, do they? Most people who ski, play professional football or drive race cars, will not die—at least not in the act—and yet they are the ones with the glamorous images, the expensive equipment and the mythic proportions. Why this should be I cannot say, unless it is simply that the average American does not know a daredevil when he sees one.”
—Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950)
“A black boxer’s career is the perfect metaphor for the career of a black male. Every day is like being in the gym, sparring with impersonal opponents as one faces the rudeness and hostility that a black male must confront in the United States, where he is the object of both fear and fascination.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)