U.S. Open Championship

The third U.S. Open held at Inverness Club weathered a couple of storms—and the inevitable playoff. The first squall to hit the 1957 U.S. Open came early on Friday, during the first round. High winds from Lake Erie caused trees to bend and tents to blow over the fairway and rough – play was suspended. Few were aware of the presence of a blonde haired, seventeen-year-old amateur from central Ohio—Jack Nicklaus, playing in his first U.S. Open. Nicklaus, considered by many to be the games’ greatest player of all-time, recalled that he birdied the first hole and parred the second before fading to rounds of 80 and 80. He missed the cut. After the first two days of play, two names were at the top of the leader board—Dick Mayer and Billy Joe Patton. Experts didn’t expect either of them to stay there. But Mayer’s game stood up as another U.S. Open at Inverness produced an Iron Man or, perhaps, a Fiberglas Man. Appropriately enough, all of Mayer’s clubs were shafted in a relatively new product–at least as it applied to the world of golf– called Fiberglas, a product of the Toledo-based Owens-Corning Corporation. Mayer, after his second Saturday round, carding a 70, had eliminated the sentimental favorite, Jimmy Demaret from title consideration. It appeared so conclusive that Mayer went to the press tent and submitted to a champion’s interview. But, defending champion, Cary Middelcoff was still on the course, roaring back from an eight-shot deficit to tie Mayer, with a twelve-foot putt for birdie on eighteen, shooting 68 and 68 on Saturday, the final day of regulation play. Sunday’s eighteen-hole playoff was anti-climactic. Middelcoff never seriously contested Mayer, who won by six strokes to win the 1957 U.S. Open, his only major championship.