Presented by POOL SCOUTS.
This Day In Sports…July 21, 1996, 30 years ago today:
Six years after playing in the first Albertsons Boise Open at Hillcrest Country Club, Tom Lehman hits the jackpot at what we used to call the British Open. Lehman became the first American to win an Open Championship on the Royal Lytham & St. Annes course since the great Bobby Jones 70 years earlier, topping Mark McCumber and another Boise Open alum, Ernie Els, by two shots after leading by six strokes at the beginning of the day.
Lehman, while taking his only major title, set a new 54-hole Open record by shooting an impressive 198 after three rounds. That included a Royal Lytham & St. Annes course-record 64 on Saturday. The title came in the middle of a three-year stretch in which Lehman led after 54 holes of the U.S. Open each year but faltered in the final round. But he still achieved the World No. 1 ranking in April, 1997—albeit for only one week. Lehman is the only golfer ever to be named Player of the Year on the PGA Tour (1996), Korn Ferry Tour (1991, then the Ben Hogan Tour) and the Champions Tour (2011 and 2012).
The 1996 Open Championship also marked the first time Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus played in the same major. Woods made his major championship debut in the tournament as a 20-year-old amateur. He was the only amateur to make the cut and finished tied for 22nd in a performance that included a second-round 66, tying the record for the lowest score ever by an amateur at an Open Championship. Nicklaus, at the age of 56, made noise as he was one stroke off the lead at the midway point before fading over the weekend to tie for 45th.
By the way, other notable future PGA golfers who played the inaugural Boise Open in 1990 include Jeff Maggert, the first Ben Hogan Tour Player of the Year that season, David Toms, winner of the 2001 PGA Championship, and John Daly, the 1995 Open Championship winner who also captured the 1991 PGA Championship. Daly’s son, John Daly Jr., received a sponsor’s exemption into August’s Albertsons Boise Open after beginning his pro career a month ago.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
